The Secret of Pad 34

By Leigh Kimmel

Who would put a ceiling on humanity's expansion into space?

That's what Gus Grissom wants to know. While fishing offshore from Cape Canaveral, he glimpses a mysterious undersea city of unearthly geometries, marked with a strange three-armed cross symbol.

His efforts to research it bring him veiled threats from strangers at his door. Trouble blights an exemplary career. However, Gus refuses to be cowed into silence, and pursues every lead he can find.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we live on a placid island of ignorance and were not meant to travel far. This is the Space Race in a world where the Soviet Union is not our only adversary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Starship Cat Press
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223633891

Book preview

In the history books we learn that the Apollo I Fire was the result of major deficiencies in the construction of the Block I Command Module. These issues were known to the people working with the spacecraft, and Apollo I commander Gus Grissom attempted to bring them to the attention of the program managers. However, his warnings were ignored, and only when fire swept through the spacecraft, killing the crew, were the necessary corrective measures finally taken.

This account is factual and documented, but is it the whole truth? In investigating the mysterious death of a Miskatonic University astronomy professor, I discovered that Professor Curwen had been scheduled to meet that day with Grissom. Why would an astronaut and US Air Force colonel want to meet with a professor of paleoastronomy? Might someone, or something, have desired to prevent that meeting?

——draft of an unfinished paper by Professor Emmaline Waite, found in her Miskatonic University office subsequent to her disappearance

The waters off the Florida coast were quiet, the light breeze raising a few whitecaps but no real waves. Perfect weather to go out fishing, in Gus Grissom's opinion. He needed the respite in the battles of this strange new front of the Cold War that was space, a front in which the United States had started behind and just couldn't seem to catch up with the Soviet Union. Already the Soviets had launched a man into orbit, and America was still trying to get a manned suborbital flight together.

On the other side of the boat fellow Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton hunched over his own fishing rod. Although all seven Mercury astronauts had become as a band of brothers in their struggles with the engineers who wanted to reduce professional test pilots to passengers in their own spacecraft, Gus and Deke had forged a tight friendship. They often spent their free hours together, whether getting extra flying hours in a T-33 trainer or heading out to hunt and fish.

A sharp tug on the line focused Gus's attention on his fishing. He had only a moment to glimpse a black bulk speeding just below the surface before the rod jerked in his hand. He tightened his grip, preparing to play the catch and reel it in.

Except that thing pulled so hard, the next thing he knew he was flying right over the side of the boat.  Behind him came a distant shout: Gus? Gus!

Salty water closed around his head so fast he didn't even have time to close his eyes. He could see all the way to the bottom. There below him spread an impossible sight: ancient, barnacle-encrusted structures built from