outside Omaha, Nebraska, at the ICBM site near Cheyenne, Wyoming, at Fort Bliss, Texas, Dilman had been maddened by an entirely different kind of contempt.
At the military installations, the Commander in Chief could not be met by placards and fists and curses. Instead, disdain and low opinion were implied subtly, through mock formality, extravagant courtesy, lack of social warmth. On every inspection and tour, he had found his hosts, his guides, his companions, his servants, to be low-ranking Negro officers or Negro enlisted men. Wherever he had appeared, television sets and radios had been flicked off, newspapers had been hidden, and nowhere had mention been made, reasonably or unreasonably, encouragingly or discouragingly, of his impeachment being debated in the House of Representatives-and throughout the nation. From the seething rage and turmoil of the big cities, he had been dropped by jet airplane into the chilly, soundless atmosphere of ostracism by silence. He had been kept at arm’s length (and a salute), as if he were a leper forced in among them, a leper who would soon, by the vote of his betters, be removed to some political Molokai.
When his jet aircraft had put him down at Patrick Air Force Base, south of Cape Kennedy, this morning, he had known what to expect. With dread he had entered the motorcade, expecting vocal censure from the citizenry and silent rejection from the military once more, and in both instances he had been surprised. While there had often been a hundred thousand persons lining the route to cheer every successful astronaut from John H. Glenn to Leo Jaskawich, and, by Flannery’s estimate, there had been no more than ten thousand along the route to receive him, Dilman had been anything but dismayed. If there had been no cheers, there had also been, for the first time, no catcalls, no shouts of disapprobation, no visible hatred. The onlookers watching him ride past had proved orderly, and their sunburned faces had reflected only interest and curiosity.
Even after his entry through the main gate of Cape Kennedy, acknowledging the saluting security guards and uniformed staff and workers, he had found the atmosphere more courteous than hostile. His short speech to the assembled personnel and the press, promising full support of the administration to the Apollo program, to its forthcoming three-man reconnaissance of the moon, had been received without snickers or protest, with full attention and respect.
Yet, after visiting the sprawling Central Control Building, with its four intricate IBM electronic computers, after arriving at the Gemini launching pad to pose for the photographers, Dilman’s sense of anxiety had been revived. The session of picture taking, much of it by cameramen who had trailed him constantly from the White House to this site, had reminded him of the whole disastrous trip and of what was taking place on the floor of the House of Representatives this moment.
Leaving the Control Building, Tim Flannery had whispered to him that the members of the House had reconvened, and that the summations had been concluded, and that there had been heartening support of Dilman from several Western representatives, notably Collins of Montana, who had warned his colleagues that their evidence for impeachment was “built on quicksand” and “if they indicted a President for his personal habits and his friends and his opinions,” they were opening the way for future Congresses to control the executive branch completely, and “punish Presidents for the cut of their clothes or the behavior of their wives or the score of their intelligence quotients.”
Nevertheless, the knowledge that the debate had come to an end, and that the final vote on impeachment was about to begin, had filled Dilman with oppressive concern. If the House, which more closely reflected the feelings of the voters than did the Senate, felt the same hatred for him that he had recently witnessed around the nation, he was doomed.
Still he could not believe it would happen. His firm belief was that the House members, having enjoyed the catharsis of vituperation, would now realize the historic gravity of the decision they faced. They would realize that an impeachment in modern times was unthinkable, that the legal instrument of reproof and discipline in the Constitution had become obsolete. In fact, just the other night, unable to sleep, Dilman had come across the words of an eminent political scientist who had once characterized impeachment as a “rusted blunderbuss, that will probably never be taken in hand again.” Surely, the more judicious of the House members would see that, would think twice before signifying aye or nay. In the end, these members would not give their vote to Zeke Miller, whose own political motives were more questionable than those he had attributed to Dilman. There could be no question about it. When the vote came shortly, cooler heads would prevail.
Dilman heard General Fortney’s Texas-accented voice drawl forth, “All righty, you fellows, you’ve had enough of your picture taking for now!” Fortney turned to General Leo Jaskawich. “What next? Want to put us into orbit?”
Jaskawich offered the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a restrained official smile, then he said to Dilman, “Mr. President, I hope you’ll allow me to ride you up to the top of the pad. There is a wonderful view from there.”
“I’d certainly like to see it,” said Dilman.
Dilman stepped into the elevator, followed by Fortney, Jaskawich, and the Operations Director. Slowly they ascended alongside the upper portion of the Titan rocket until they rattled to a halt 100 feet above the concrete pad.
Emerging onto the platform between the rocket’s nose and the steel tower overheard, Dilman found it windier and cooler. He followed Jaskawich’s arm and hand, straight as a signpost, as the astronaut pointed out the blockhouses, the Test Annex, the workstands, the service towers, the other launch rings, the moonport on Merritt Island. For the most, Dilman was inattentive, absently gazing out at the indigo-blue ocean to the east, the ocean that led to Washington.
Suddenly he became conscious of the fact that Jaskawich was looking at him, and that they were alone. Fortney and the Operations Director had moved to another section of the platform.
Jaskawich offered an understanding smile. “I can’t blame you for not listening, Mr. President,” he said. “I’m sure your thoughts today are more concerned with what’s happening on the ground than with what’s happened in outer space.”
The young man’s directness and quick perception nudged Dilman’s interest in him. He attempted to smile back. “As a matter of fact, you are quite right, General.”
“I-while I can speak to you like this-there is something I wanted to say to you, sir. I’ve been reading about your trip around the United States. I’ve been following the debate in the House of Representatives on television. I’ve never been more ashamed of my fellow Americans, or their representatives, and I wanted you to know. I want you to know also, there are many of us who feel this has been rigged, blown up out of all proportion, and that you are being judged solely because of prejudice against your color. Maybe I’m out of line, but I had to tell you.”
Not in days had Dilman been so genuinely moved by the friendliness of another human being. His eyes moistened, and he averted his head. “I thank you,” he said, almost inaudibly. “I sincerely appreciate your understanding. I-in fact, I was impressed from the moment I arrived here-by the courtesy, an air of decency, such as I have not seen in four days.”
Jaskawich’s frank, open face had become intensely serious. “We are another breed here at Cape Kennedy-not everyone, but certainly the men who have finally gone up, and the handful most closely involved with them. We’re trained to be cast closer to heaven and its planets. And when you leave the earth for orbit in space, as I have three times, you can see how small our little mudball of a world is in true godly perspective. When a one-and-a- half-million-pound thrust puts you up there, alone in the Mercury capsule, or with one other in the Gemini capsule, and you swing around the earth for several days, you come to have some spiritual knowledge of what the Maker meant when he packed our patty-cake together, and populated it with living beings, and gave this mudball a semblance of order and its men a modicum of intelligence. Believe me, Mr. President, you lose all petty poisons that corrupt men and spoil life. You lose all that in outer space. You come to understand how lucky man is even to exist, how fortunate he is to survive, and you come to speculate on why he lacks appreciation of his lot, and why he destroys so much of his own pleasure and the enjoyment of those around him with incredible pettiness of mind and action. One period, when I was up there, I thought-I know this will sound odd-but I thought, if only men like Caligula, Attila, Torquemada, Hitler, the jurors of Socrates, the witch burners of Salem, the bombers of Birmingham, the ravagers of reason and decency had been made to don our twenty-pound pressurized space suits and been hurtled into orbit, to look above and look below, and then had fired their retrorockets to descend to earth once more, they would come down like resurrected saints. That’s what can happen, Mr. President. No matter how many or few your failings, when you return from there to here, you are never the same again. You’ve left prejudice, hatred, destructiveness, lying, cheating in the reaches of outer space. You look upon your fellow men
