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Late in August, Air Force Major Clifton Wadsworth Quartermain climbed out of the port of the two-hundred-ton, two dozen-egg, two-hundred-thirty gallon space rocket Icarus, the first man into space and back. He had circled Venus and returned.
The light rocket hull would pop a separate chute and also drift down for recovery and analysis. Inside the ship, Quartermain sniffed the air and curled his nose. "Let's get this thing on the road," he spoke into his throat mike. "Some of that Florida air must have seeped in here." "Four minutes to final countdown," blockhouse control replied. "Turn on your blowers for a second."
Outside the ship, the fuel crews cleared their equipment away from the pad. The same ripe, heavy odor hung in the warm night air. At 8:02 p.m., twenty-eight days after the new milks made their first appearance, Major Quartermain blasted off in a perfect launching. At 8:03 p.m., the two other Melody Mix hulls standing on nearby pads, began to melt.
Over it hangs a mantle of mystery which the fictionist has employed to full, and at times thrilling advantage. In this vicinity were the "King Solomon's Mines," that Rider Haggard wrote about in what is perhaps his most popular book. Here came "Allan Quartermain" in pursuit of love and treasure.
Selous was the original of Quartermain. Adventures like these of Selous, the opportunity to see the marvelous African country, and the chance to shoot the dangerous big game, made Roosevelt long to visit Africa. So he headed a scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian Institution to collect specimens for the National Museum at Washington.
Numbers two and three, following, are about half a yard apart. The others come in pretty much in a group. All were picked men, and there were no laggards. The names of the winners were as follows: 1. Ainsworth; 2. Quartermain; 3. H. Coulter. The time occupied in the race was 1 min. 24 sec.
Piloting a smaller and more sophisticated but equally-well protected version of Icarus, Major Quartermain abandoned the fleshpots of earth and the adulation of his coast-to-coast collection of worshiping females to again hurtle into the unknown. "It was strictly a milk run," Major Quartermain was quoted as saying as he emerged from his ship after an uneventful but propaganda-loaded trip.
Fuel crews had finished loading the tanks which would be jettisoned along with the engine at burn-out. Inside the rocket, Major Quartermain lounged uncomfortably and cramped in the take-off sling for a short but telling trip through the Van Allen radiation fields and back to Earth.
Stowe's "Uncle Tom's cabin" and "Oldtown folks"; Howells' "Lady of the Aroostook," "A Chance acquaintance," "The Quality of mercy" and "The Rise of Silas Lapham"; Gilbert Parker's "Seats of the mighty" and "When Valmond came to Pontiac"; Paul Leicester Ford's "The Honorable Peter Stirling"; Richard Harding Davis' "Van gibber," "Gallagher," "Soldiers of fortune" and "The Bar sinister"; Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's mines" and "Allen Quartermain"; Weir Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne", Marion Crawford's "Marietta", "Marzio's crucifix", and "Arethusa"; Kipling's "The Day's work", "Kim" and "Many inventions" and, if they have been removed as juvenile titles, I think we should restore "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" under the head of adult fiction.
The take-off sling rested inside an escape capsule since the use of chemical fuel brought back many of the old uncertainties of launchings. On the return trip, Quartermain would eject at sixty thousand feet and pull the capsule's huge parachute for a slow drop to the surface of the Atlantic where a recovery fleet was standing by.
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