I don't know that I was ever in love with Deborah. I don't know that she was ever really in love with me. But, all in all, we had more good times than bad. Until the day I drove into Muroc.
***
"He likes you." Those were Margaret's first words to me. (I was never able to call her Peggy; that was one thing that separated me from the others.)
"Who?"
"Rowe."
"We just met."
"He knows all about you, or you wouldn't be here."
"That doesn't mean he likes me."
"He doesn't give tours of the X-11 to everyone he hires." She reached out and stroked the leading edge of the spacecraft, her red nails and pale fingers in stark contrast to the black titanium.
"You're keeping track."
"I keep my eyes open. Part of my job."
"Which is?"
"Flight nurse."
"I think I'm going to faint."
"Don't do it now. She walked past me, so close that I caught a wisp of her perfume. "I'm off-duty."
***
The big question around the office, I learned later that day, concerned the pilot who would be selected for the first X-11 launch. All four candidates had been given the same training and told they would all remain at some mental and physical peak.
In fact, the strain was driving them crazy. I got my first hint the next morning, when I went through suiting with Enloe and Guinan prior to a test flight. (Sampson and Dearborn had done theirs the day before I arrived.)
I later learned that it was Enloe who insisted on my presence: he had very firm ideas about who he wanted making decisions involving his life or death. He wanted to size me up.
I didn't know whether to admire Enloe, or write him off as some kind of obsessive freak. He made this run-through as realistic as possible, right down to paying forty cents for his low-residue breakfast from the officer's club. (I asked one of the chase pilots, a Major Meadows, why the program didn't pay for breakfast. He just stared at me and said, "Tradition." By which he meant, I realized, "superstition.")
The surgeon, Dr. Lawrence, had checked Enloe out prior to breakfast. So it was just Enloe, Guan, Meadows and me. The moment the coffee had been cleared away, Enloe put on his long-johns and flight helmet. (He had to pre-breathe for two hours, since the X-11A was pressurized with pure oxygen at five pounds per square inch, much less than sea level.)
While the suit techs periodically checked Enloe's helmet, I did the weather briefing and Meadows went over the flight conditions - ground track, call signs, abort points. Enloe absorbed it all without a trace of emotion. He was like an actor doing Hamlet, and it was impossible to tell whether for the fourth - or four hundredth - time.
Guinan was more of a mystery, eating a double breakfast while seemingly paying absolutely no attention to what was going on. He could have been some truck driver having ham and eggs between oil changes.
By now a second chase pilot, Captain Grissom, had joined us. He and Meadows donned regular flight suits, then helped Guinan with what looked like a brand new one, right out of its paper bag. I didn't learn why until later.
Then it was into the pressure suit for Enloe: lacing the heavy boots, connecting the pressure hoses and electrical leads. "I want you to ride in the tank this morning."
"I'm supposed to be in flight control."
"They'll survive without you for one more day."
I wouldn't have dared to ask, but Enloe, as senior test pilot, had almost as much clout as Rowe himself. I stepped out the back door to use a phone, got through to Rowe and explained Enloe's request. Rowe's answer was brief: "Do as he says."
Outside the suiting room I saw two very strange sights:
First was Woody Enloe ... all buttoned up in his orange pressure suit ... bowing his head in prayer. Then lifting off the ground ... hovering briefly ... flying, one arm extended like Black Eagle, toward the flight line.
Enloe was an ace.
Second, in the hallway, just inside the door, was Casey Guinan ... passionately kissing Margaret Durand. I almost ran into them. Guinan didn't even look at me. He merely patted Margaret on the behind and went out. Margaret's glance met mine.
"Everyone likes me, Thayer."
***
Guinan's tank - I never heard the NACA-modified KC-135 called anything else - was already in flight ... orbiting in a racetrack pattern, when Enloe took off, the stubby wings of the X-11A biting the desert air. I barely paid attention, so appalled was I at the tank's cockpit.
The controls had been specially modified so that there were almost no displays ... just open panels. I could only think of them as wounds. Gone were the traditional pilot's chairs - gone, for that matter, was the co-pilot. In place was a couch of sorts.
And squatting on that couch was what was left of Guinan ... he had literally flowed into the controls. His head was pressed up to the windshield, one arm was wrapped around the control yoke, the other splayed across the throttles. Mercifully, I couldn't quite see what had happened to his lower torso and legs. His flight suit had exploded.
Guinan was an ace, too.
I tried to put it out of my mind, concentrating instead on listening to Jack Ridley, the navigator sitting next to me. He noticed my alarm. "Don't worry, Ed. I've got backup controls, if anything happens to Casey. But he actually gets into the hydraulics. Told me once he could feel the breeze on the wings."
"But he's an ace! Is that even legal?"
Ridley just smiled.
We weren't able to observe the climbout to altitude. My imagination might have failed me where Guinan was concerned, but one thing I could imagine was the shattering roar of the 11A's Pratt and Whitney ... a big brute designed only for one thing: thrust. To hell with fuel efficiency.
Enloe took the 11A off runway 22 and headed straight toward Death Valley. He would circle back and intercept us at 31,000 feet, in the heart of the Tomlin Test Range. I glanced through some of Ridley's charts and noticed that the rendezvous would take place while we were almost directly over over the concrete hangar where the Takisian ship Baby was entombed.
I was plugged in throughout our takeoff and Enloe's, noting the sequence of test events on my kneepad. As rendezvous approached, Ridley indicated I was to go to the boom station in the rear of the tanker.
I had expected the tank to be cramped with extra insulating equipment - it wasn't just carrying room temperature jet fuel, as designed, but a liquid oxygen slurry that had to be kept at minus 400 degrees. In fact, there were tons of additional equipment, in addition to special pumps and a bigger boom. But there was still room to move around: Guinan's tank only had to refuel one relatively small spacecraft, not a dozen jet fighters.
Flopping onto the observer's couch, one of three at the boom station, I tried to keep out of the way as Sergeant Vidrine, the boomer - who must have been a joker, since he had three arms - dumped a few pounds of LOX and kerosene through the twin nozzles, clearing them as the 11A crawled up behind us. Then the boomer and Enloe began talking.
My briefing had told me that this was to be a full-load refueling, with Enloe dropping away to fire the 11A's rocket motor for twenty seconds ... enough to test the system and, incidentally, to propel him higher than any human had ever flown.
Enloe and the X-11A approached ... the boom was toggled into place ... the fuel dumped in less than four minutes. Vidrine said, "You're full with regular and super."
"Roger. Disconnect."
The exhilaration I had felt upon Enloe's invitation had worn off, a casualty, I first thought, of clear air turbulence, the smell of J-4 jet fuel, and the sight of Guinan. Or worrying that I was surrounded by wild card freaks.
Then I realized what the problem was: no one seemed to be having any fun. Enloe said little, confining himself to cryptic callouts of altitude, fuel, speed. Dearborn, the communicator for the flight, was surprisingly terse. Only Vidrine and the chase pilots - who were making a bet involving beers at Pancho's place - added a human touch. It certainly had none
of the rakish charm of the heroes of the Tak World novels, who were always bickering and stabbing each other in the back. I could have been listening to a couple of guys tearing down an engine block for a '49 Chevy.
The X-11A dropped several hundred feet behind us while the tanker rolled to the right. Dearborn counted down. At zero a tongue of flame shot out of the 11A. It was out of sight before I realized it.
Only then did I remember where I was ... six miles over the California desert, refueling the world's first real spaceship. It went so far beyond the amazing that we had to invent new ways of describing - and appreciating - the experience.
There was a dicey moment during Enloe's altitude run ... some pogo effect in one of the rocket's pumps. He had to shut down at 17 seconds and wasn't able to crack the 100,000 foot barrier.
"Next time we'll go all the way," he said. I didn't hear a trace of disappointment in his voice.
***
The X-11A was on the ground before we were, though Enloe would be tied up in debrief through lunch. That was where Rowe and the rest of the team would be, so I was eager to join them.
But Margaret was waiting for me as I walked away from the tank. "What did you think?" she asked brightly.
"I think we're just about ready to go."
"I mean Casey. She raised an eyebrow. Only then did I realize she was inviting me to picture the two of them in bed.
"I've got work to do." I started walking away.
"I know. Rowe sent me to pick you up." She opened the car door for me. When I hesitated, she said: "Get in. Don't be such a baby."
She was amazing. I told her. "I'm not used to talking about things like this."
"Sex? Or aces?"
"Neither."
"You'll learn."
We drove in silence for a minute. "Rowe wanted me to give you a message."
"I'm listening."
"He says that unless there are any further technical problems, we'll attempt a launch on May 5th."
"That's great."
"He also says the Soviets announced today that they will try to put a man into orbit tomorrow morning."
(From The Los Angeles Herald, Thursday, April 14, 1958:)
RUSSIAN ROCKET FIZZLES!
Red Spaceman Lucky to Be Alive!
Moscow (AP). The first attempt to put a man into space ended prematurely today with a huge rocket explosion, according to TASS, the official Soviet news agency. The pilot, Konstantin Feoktistov, was lifted to safety inside his vehicle, which was equipped with its own parachute.
The accident took place at the Soviet rocket research center at Kapustin Yar, on the Volga River just east of Stalingrad. Previous unmanned Soviet rockets, some of them carrying orbital satellites, have been launched from this site since 1947, under the direction of space scientists Sergei Korolev and Werner von Braun.
According to TASS, Feoktistov, a 32-year-old engineer said to be a protege of Korolev, boarded the bell-shaped Sever spacecraft atop its giant R-11 rocket at 7:30 local time. He wore a special protective spacesuit for the mission, which was to see him orbit the earth three times.
Liftoff of the R-11, said to stand 12 stories tall and weigh over a million pounds, took place shortly after nine. The R-11's twenty-four first stage engines ignited, lifting Sever (which means "North") into the sky.
But at an altitude of nine thousand feet, as the rocket was passing through the area of maximum dynamic pressure, there was an explosion. Automatic devices aboard Sever ignited an escape rocket mounted forward of Feoktistov's cabin, pulling it free of the fireball.
Sever then descended by parachute into the swamp five miles east of the launch site, as debris from the exploding rocket rained down around it. Reached by rescuers within minutes, Feoktistov was reported to be injured, but not seriously. He is rumored to be convalescing at a resort on the Black Sea.
TASS quoted von Braun as comparing the failure to those of the World War II V-2 ...
(From the notebooks of Edgar Thayer)
We got the news of the Soviet failure at Muroc the same way everybody else did ... from the radio. For everyone's convenience they had moved me from the motel in Rosamond to the Tomlin visiting officer's quarters - logically enough, seeing as how I would only be around for a month - which left me twenty miles closer to the action. Which on that particular night was at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club, just west of the base.
I had spent the rest of the test day in debriefing and can't remember who suggested that we have a Soviet Watch at the bar. It might have been Al Dearborn, who, it was said, had run up such a tab that Pancho herself had had to make him a part owner in the joint. I do remember asking if Dr. Rowe would join us, only to told that Rowe probably didn't know where Pancho's was.
Anyway, we were there early, before six, ostensibly for steaks: Dearborn, Sampson, Grissom, Meadows, Ridley, a brace of test engineers, and me. Enloe and Guinan showed up soon after. It was the single wildest evening I have ever spent, though it began innocently enough, just beers with Dearborn.
Midway through the third Budweiser, I got the nerve to ask him how he managed to handle the pressure ... not knowing who was going to make the first flight.
"Listen, buddy, I do know."
"Don't keep me in suspense."
"You're looking at him."" He saw my amused disbelief. "Look, I'll prove it to you. Give me a quarter." I produced a half-dollar. He took it and flipped it. "Call it."
"Heads."
Heads of it was. In fact, Dearborn got it right fourteen times in a row. "Pure luck," I said.
He winked. "Bingo. That's me: Mr. Lucky. Fall in shit, come up smelling like roses. It might not be pretty, but it got me where I am today. Another beer?"
Through the haze of my growing intoxication, I realized that Dearborn, too, was an ace. I didn't know whether to be shocked, or just amused. In those days, to use a term from another circumstance, aces were largely in the closet. Yet, just like people in those other circumstances, they were everywhere you looked ... if you looked closely.
At Muroc, however, it seemed that no one cared. Or that none of the aces cared if anyone cared. As if the rules had been suspended.
(I just wondered what Sampson's wild card talent was.)
True to his reputation, five minutes later Dearborn caused some local talent to materialize, two blondes and a brunette, who made themselves right at home on various laps. One of them had brought a camera, an Argus, I recall, and they were posing for photos with the famous pilot.
By seven I was so drunk I was necking with blonde number one on the pool table, to the raucous cheers of Sampson and Meadows. Even Enloe cracked what I hoped was an approving smile.
I was still a deux with the blonde when I realized that Margaret had come in. She gave me a wink as she squeezed past us, murmuring, "Pretty fast work for an engineer," and took a place at the bar between Guinan and Meadows. Soon Enloe and Dearborn had joined them.
Everyone seemed to be having a good time, particularly the three 11A pilots. At some point Meadows called over to Mike Sampson, and with some reluctance he joined the group. Meadows had picked up the camera and was trying to take a snap of the pilots with Margaret. He was too drunk to make it work. Equally drunk, I disengaged myself from my blonde and rolled off the pool table long enough to point out that he wasn't advancing the film. Without a word he just handed the camera to me, so I took the photo ... Margaret in the middle, Enloe and Dearborn to her right, Guinan and Sampson to her left.
I'm not sure exactly what happened after that. Sampson's voice suddenly got very loud: "If I wouldn't fly in formation with him, I sure as hell wouldn't get close enough to fuck him." Followed by Margaret: "Shut up, Mike." Guinan added: "If she wanted to be with you, buddy, she'd still be with you."
Sampson leered. "I never heard any complaints."
Margaret shot back, "You were too busy watching yourself perform."
The next thing I remember is Sampson tapping my blonde on the shoulder. "Let's go, baby." Her lip
stick smeared, the blonde straightened like she was on a string. She actually followed him out.
Now, a juicy scene like that would have silenced any ordinary bar, but the general din and jukebox wail never diminished. I'm not sure anybody but me actually heard the three-way love fest.
I staggered to the bar, where Pancho thoughtfully had a cup of coffee waiting for me. Then Enloe summoned Guinan over to the table where he was sitting with Grissom and Meadows, leaving me alone with Margaret.
"Well, go ahead," she said. "Say it."
"Say what?"
"Call me a tramp, or whatever it is boys from Minnesota say. You're just radiating disapproval."
"I think it's the beer. Honest."
She stabbed out her cigarette and swung around on her stool. "They're awfully fun," she said, nodding toward what had become the pilots-only table. "A bunch of eighteen-year-olds with their first hot rods." She turned back to me. "How old are you, Thayer?"
"Twenty-eight."
"That means you're still fourteen. In boy years."
"Boy years?"
"Like dog years. A boy's real age is only half his chronological age. Believe me, I've done all the research." She took out another cigarette. "There are girl years, too."
"I can't wait."
"They're a little trickier. The conversion factor is one-point-five. When I was thirteen -"
"- You were actually twenty."
"Of course, that's only good up to twenty-one. Then the conversion factor begins to diminish until you're twenty-nine when you're twenty-nine."
"And twenty-nine when you're thirty-three."