Sadly I don't own Quatermass.
Please let me know what you think.
Looking out to the Stars.
The night sky was beautiful and as he looked up into the inky blackness of space marked with gleaming stars that were millions of miles away from Earth, Professor Bernard Quatermass sat back in his chair by his battered but still serviceable telescope and peered through the lens.
One day, we will get out there, using some kind of interstellar propulsion, and we'll be travelling the stars as we travel in the air between countries; a few centuries ago, such a thing would be scoffed at, but now it's just so commonplace, and as easy as grabbing a bus from Hampstead Heath to the nearest Tube station. I don't know how long it will take, but we will be out there, exploring space, Quatermass thought to himself.
There was no doubt in his mind it was going to happen. With Earth becoming a crowded and overdeveloped planet, the demand for more living space would always ensure the future of space travel. The solar system would hold everything humanity needed to survive; space for people to live with colonies on the moon, Mars, and maybe other bodies in space, where people would live, work, fall in love and prosper while having the resources to live long lives, educate their children, and yet have enough food and water to live on.
Everyone in the British Rocket Group was more than aware of how driven Professor Quatermass was with the small, private space program he had ushered in. They all knew only too well how he was fighting every step of the way to keep the rocket group going. They knew he was determined to continue experimenting with rocket engines until they had discovered a means of constructing a renewable spacecraft design that could take off from Earth and blast off into space and return safely.
But what many in the British Rocket Group did not realise was just why Professor Quatermass was taking so many steps for the British Rocket Group to get out into space. They knew he easily became tired and frustrated with the British government over funding, but that was expected, really; the country had suffered severe damage during the last war. They were still rebuilding. Understandably, the Rocket Group sometimes could not carry out their experiments due to a lack of funds.
Some of them had little idea Professor Quatermass was so determined to get humanity out into space was because during the war, he had seen just how many people were dying like everyone else but Quatermass had become increasingly worried as science and technology was brought to bear on the human race.
The German rockets which had ironically inspired his work into space flight had demolished large amounts of the city of London and other parts of Europe, and the nuclear bomb which ended the war in the Pacific with the brutal devastation of two Japanese cities, and ensured the threat of war would be discouraged unless both sides wanted to be wiped out at the same time. They called nuclear weapons the Ultimate weapon.
Idiots.
There was no such thing as an ultimate weapon. There would always be something more devastating just waiting to be discovered - Quatermass would always remember the horror and disdain he had felt during that meeting with Breen and those other officials who spoke about the future of the Rocket Group as if he wasn't even there unless he forced his presence on them; they had continually talked about military bases on Mars, where rockets equipped with nuclear warheads would be installed instead of research establishments, even calling it Operation Damocles. What had worried Quatermass the most was how all of those closed-minded militaristic idiots didn't care about the reality he and a few others could see clearly, especially since Operation Damocles and the idea behind it was exactly what Quatermass had been fearing for a long time.
Couldn't they see if they went through with plans like that, and they actually used the weapons either because government and military officials became corrupt and self-serving during a war, they could bring about the complete extinction of all life on Earth?
Contrary to their beliefs, resources on the planet were actually finite. They would and could never last forever. And what about the human race, what about the thousands of years of history? Artworks? Music? Technology? Literature? All of it would be gone, destroyed in an atomic blast.
With Breen's death, while tragic, had shaken up the government who had a hard time explaining the strange, chaotic events surrounding Hobb's Lane and even Quatermass had problems believing and assimilating even half of it, but the implications alone had been more than enough to make him wonder curiously if there were other ties between Earth and other alien entities out there.
There were theories that stated the possibility of life on Earth coming from the frozen bacteria of a passing comet or asteroid, which could have crashed into Earth untold millions of centuries ago. Quatermass didn't have any opinion on the matter, because he knew anything was possible; if you discovered life on Mars had influenced human development along supernatural lines, much was possible although even before then Quatermass had not scoffed about it as some of his more closed-minded colleagues might have done.
Anyway, the government's confusion had been more than enough time for Quatermass to try to seek out other investors who could dream in later years to see colonies on the moon and on Mars. He hadn't wanted to lose control of the British Rocket Group as he had almost when he'd met Breen for the first time. While Breen had done his best to be amiable when they had first met, respectable, it wasn't until Hobbs' Lane that Quatermass saw how closed-minded the colonel was with his claims the Martian ship was a Nazi war rocket. It made no sense to Quatermass then and it made little sense to him now.
Quatermass sighed as he thought about the search for investors. Tragically there were very few of them in Britain. It seemed as if everyone was determined to remain on Terra Firma and ensure their descendants were as closed-minded as they were themselves. But he had found a few more open-minded and forward-thinking individuals who were willing to invest in the Rocket Group. A few of them were tourist agencies, and Quatermass truly hoped he could justify their faith in his work.
He sighed again and pushed aside the worries locked in his mind, and he returned to gazing through the telescope.
"In a few more years, we're going to be among you all freely," Quatermass murmured as he watched a star blink slightly in the telescope.