indeed ready to govern the universe without an agreeable culture to call its own—for then, virgin ore, steadfastly undeveloped in all the hinterworld of the national psyche, a single idea could still electrify the land. Culture was insulation against a single idea, and America was like a rawboned lover gangling into middle age, still looking for his mission.
Since Aquarius on evenings like this would look for the nutrientin liquor the way a hound needles out marrow from a bone, he was nose-deep into his second drink, and hardly saw the helicopter come in. A sense of presence overhead, fore and aft lights whirruping like crickets in the dusk, a beating of rotors in a wheat-flattened gust, and it was down, a creature. Nothing inspired so fine a patriotic cocktail of mild awe, mild respect, and uncorrupted envy as the sight of Praetorians emerging from an insect the size of an elephant which
they
commanded.
The guests immediately made their way inside. Von Braun, dressed in a silver-gray suit, white shirt, and black tie looked more impressive tonight than the day before at a press conference. That had taken place in front of several hundred correspondents with movie cameras, television, and ushers in the audience holding portable microphones to amplify and record all questions the Press might ask for posterity. Von Braun had been on a panel with Dr. Mueller, Dr. Debus, Dr. Gilruth, and a director from Langley, but half the questions had gone to Von Braun. He seemed sensitive to the fact that the Press made jokes about his past. There was one tale every reporter had heard—“Tell me, Dr. von Braun,” a correspondent said, “what is there to keep Saturn V from landing on London?” Von Braun walked out of the room. But the story was doubtless apocryphal; it smacked of reporters’ bile. Journalists were often vicious in their prior comments about VIPs they were going to interview, as if to compensate for the uxorious tone of the restrained questions they would finally ask. Aquarius had been with a small pack who had gone to talk to Dr. Debus, director of all launching operations at Kennedy and a former colleague of Von Braun’s. “Just give the Nazi salute and he’ll holler ‘Heil Hitler!’ ” they all promised each other, but Debus to their consternation proved out a pleasant Junker gentleman with dueling scars on his mouth and bags under his eyes—the sort of aristocratic face and gracious if saturnine manner which belongs to an unhappy German prince from a small principality. The questions of the Press were predictably unctuous, and trading notes afterward, they quoted Debus respectfully. He had given them the best of lines;when asked if he were planning a celebration while the astronauts were on the moon surface he had smiled and cleared his throat with a cultivated sound. “No,” he had said, “no champagne in the refrigerator.” Debus was not afraid of the Press.
But Von Braun was too prominent, and had—although his official position was nominally no more elevated than his countryman’s—much too much to lose. A press conference, no matter how many he had had, was a putative den of menace. So his eyes flew left and right as he answered a question, flicking back and forth in their attention with the speed of eyes watching a Ping-Pong game, and his mouth moved from a straight line to a smile, but the smile was no more than a significator, a tooth-filled rectangle. Words were being mouthed like signal flags.
Since he had, in contrast to his delivery, a big burly squared-off bulk of a body which gave hint of the methodical ruthlessness of more than one Russian bureaucrat, Von Braun’s relatively small voice, darting eyes, and semaphoric presentations of lip made it obvious he was a man of opposites. He revealed a confusing aura of strength and vulnerability, of calm and agitation, cruelty and concern, phlegm and sensitivity, which would have given fine play to the talents of so virtuoso an actor as Mr.
Since Aquarius on evenings like this would look for the nutrientin liquor the way a hound needles out marrow from a bone, he was nose-deep into his second drink, and hardly saw the helicopter come in. A sense of presence overhead, fore and aft lights whirruping like crickets in the dusk, a beating of rotors in a wheat-flattened gust, and it was down, a creature. Nothing inspired so fine a patriotic cocktail of mild awe, mild respect, and uncorrupted envy as the sight of Praetorians emerging from an insect the size of an elephant which
they
commanded.
The guests immediately made their way inside. Von Braun, dressed in a silver-gray suit, white shirt, and black tie looked more impressive tonight than the day before at a press conference. That had taken place in front of several hundred correspondents with movie cameras, television, and ushers in the audience holding portable microphones to amplify and record all questions the Press might ask for posterity. Von Braun had been on a panel with Dr. Mueller, Dr. Debus, Dr. Gilruth, and a director from Langley, but half the questions had gone to Von Braun. He seemed sensitive to the fact that the Press made jokes about his past. There was one tale every reporter had heard—“Tell me, Dr. von Braun,” a correspondent said, “what is there to keep Saturn V from landing on London?” Von Braun walked out of the room. But the story was doubtless apocryphal; it smacked of reporters’ bile. Journalists were often vicious in their prior comments about VIPs they were going to interview, as if to compensate for the uxorious tone of the restrained questions they would finally ask. Aquarius had been with a small pack who had gone to talk to Dr. Debus, director of all launching operations at Kennedy and a former colleague of Von Braun’s. “Just give the Nazi salute and he’ll holler ‘Heil Hitler!’ ” they all promised each other, but Debus to their consternation proved out a pleasant Junker gentleman with dueling scars on his mouth and bags under his eyes—the sort of aristocratic face and gracious if saturnine manner which belongs to an unhappy German prince from a small principality. The questions of the Press were predictably unctuous, and trading notes afterward, they quoted Debus respectfully. He had given them the best of lines;when asked if he were planning a celebration while the astronauts were on the moon surface he had smiled and cleared his throat with a cultivated sound. “No,” he had said, “no champagne in the refrigerator.” Debus was not afraid of the Press.
But Von Braun was too prominent, and had—although his official position was nominally no more elevated than his countryman’s—much too much to lose. A press conference, no matter how many he had had, was a putative den of menace. So his eyes flew left and right as he answered a question, flicking back and forth in their attention with the speed of eyes watching a Ping-Pong game, and his mouth moved from a straight line to a smile, but the smile was no more than a significator, a tooth-filled rectangle. Words were being mouthed like signal flags.
Since he had, in contrast to his delivery, a big burly squared-off bulk of a body which gave hint of the methodical ruthlessness of more than one Russian bureaucrat, Von Braun’s relatively small voice, darting eyes, and semaphoric presentations of lip made it obvious he was a man of opposites. He revealed a confusing aura of strength and vulnerability, of calm and agitation, cruelty and concern, phlegm and sensitivity, which would have given fine play to the talents of so virtuoso an actor as Mr.
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