Rocket Ship Galileo. Robert A. Heinlein. A Puke (TM) Audiobook

Rocket Ship Galileo.
Robert Anson Heinlein.
Reformatted from a scan, 2023.

Contents
Chapter 1, “LET THE ROCKET ROAR”
Chapter 2, A MAN-SIZED CHALLENGE
Chapter 3, CUT -RATE COLUMBUS
Chapter 4, THE BLOOD OF PIONEERS
Chapter 5, GROWING PAINS
Chapter 6, DANGER IN THE DESERT
Chapter 7, “WE’LL GO IF WE HAVE TO WALK”
Chapter 8, SKYWARD!
Chapter 9, INTO THE LONE LYDEPTHS
Chapter 10, THE METHOD OF SCIENCE
Chapter 11, ONE ATOM WAR TOO MANY?
Chapter 12, THE BARE BONE S
Chapter 13, SOME BODY IS NUTS!
Chapter 14, NO CHANCE A TALL!
Chapter 15, WHAT POSSIBLE REAS ON?
Chapter 16, THE SECRET BEHIND THE MOON
Chapter 17, UNTIL WE ROT
Chapter 18, TOO LITTLE TIME
Chapter 19, SQUEEZE PLAY

Chapter One.
LET THE ROCKET ROAR.

“Everybody all set?” Young Ross Jenkins glanced nervously at his two chums. “How about your camera, Art? You sure you got the lens cover off this time?”
The three boys were huddled against a thick concrete wall, higher than their heads and about ten feet long. It separated them from a steel stand, anchored to the ground, to which was bolted a black metal shape, a pointed projectile, venomous in appearance and an ugly rocket. There were fittings on each side to which stub wings might be attached, but the fittings were empty; the creature was chained down for scientific examination.
“How about it, Art?” Ross repeated. The boy addressed straightened up to his full five feet three and faced him.
“Look,” Art Mueller answered, “of course I took the cover off, it’s on my check-off list. You worry about your rocket, last time it didn’t fire at all and I wasted twenty feet of film.”
“But you forgot it once, okay, how about your lights?”
For answer Art switched on his spot lights; the beams shot straight up, bounced against highly polished stainless-steel mirrors and brilliantly illuminated the model rocket and the framework which would keep it from taking off during the test.
A third boy, Maurice Abrams, peered at the scene through a periscope which allowed them to look over the reinforced concrete wall which shielded them from the rocket test stand.
“Pretty as a picture,” he announced, excitement in his voice. “Ross, do you really think this fuel mix is what we’re looking for?”
Ross shrugged, “I don’t know. The lab tests looked good, we’ll soon know. All right, places everybody! Check-off lists, Art?”
“Complete.”
“Morrie?”
“Complete.”
“And mine’s complete. Stand by! I’m going to start the clock. Here goes!” He started checking off the seconds until the rocket was fired. “Minus ten, minus nine, minus eight, minus seven, minus six, minus five, minus four.”
Art wet his lips and started his camera.
“Minus three! Minus two! Minus one! Contact!”
“Let it roar!” Morrie yelled, his voice already drowned by the ear-splitting noise of the escaping rocket gas.
A great plume of black smoke surged out the orifice of the thundering rocket when it was first fired, billowed against an earth ramp set twenty feet behind the rocket test stand and filled the little clearing with choking fumes. Ross shook his head in dissatisfaction at this and made an adjustment in the controls under his hand. The smoke cleared away; through the periscope in front of him he could see the rocket exhaust on the other side of the concrete barricade. The flame had cleared of the wasteful smoke and was almost transparent, save for occasional sparks. He could actually see trees and ground through the jet of flame. The images shimmered and shook but the exhaust gases were smoke-free.
“What does the dynamometer read?” he shouted to Morrie without taking his eyes away from the periscope. Morrie studied the instrument, rigged to the test stand itself, by means of a pair of opera glasses and his own periscope. “I can’t read it!” he shouted. “Yes, I can, wait a minute. Fifty-two, no, make it a hundred and fifty-two; it’s second time around. Hunder’ fiftytwo, fif-three, four. Ross, you’ve done it! You’ve done it! That’s more than twice as much thrust as the best we’ve ever had.”
Art looked up from where he was nursing his motion-picture camera. It was a commercial 8-millimeter job, modified by him to permit the use of more film so that every second of a test could be recorded. The modification worked, but was cantankerous and had to be nursed along. “How much more time?,” he demanded.
“Seventeen seconds,” Ross yelled at him. “Stand by, I’m going to give her the works.” He twisted his throttle-monitor valve to the right, wide open. The rocket responded by raising its voice from a deep-throated roar to a higher pitch with an angry overtone almost out of the audible range. It spoke with snarling menace.
Ross looked up to see Morrie back away from his periscope and climb on a box, opera glasses in hand.
“Morrie-get your head down!” The boy did not hear him against the scream of the jet, intent as he was on getting a better view of the rocket. Ross jumped away from the controls and dived at him, tackling him around the waist and dragging him down behind the safety of the barricade. They hit the ground together rather heavily and struggled there. It was not a real fight;
Ross was angry, though not fighting mad, while Morrie was merely surprised.
“What’s the idea?,” he protested, when he caught his breath.
“You crazy idiot!” Ross grunted in his ear. “What were you trying to do? Get your head blown off?”
“But I wasn’t.” But Ross was already clambering to his feet and returning to his place at the controls; Morrie’s explanation, if any, was lost in the roar of the rocket.
“What goes on?” Art yelled. He had not left his place by his beloved camera, not only from a sense of duty but at least partly from indecision as to which side of the battle he should join.
Ross heard his shout and turned to speak. “This goon,” he yelled bitterly, jerking a thumb at Morrie, “tried to.”
Ross’s version of the incident was lost; the snarling voice of the rocket suddenly changed pitch, then lost itself in a boneshaking explosion. At the same time there was a dazzling flash which would have blinded the boys had they not been protected by the barricade, but which nevertheless picked out every detail of the clearing in the trees with brilliance that numbed the eyes.
They were still blinking at the memory of the ghastly light when billowing clouds of smoke welled up from beyond the barricade, surrounded them, and made them cough.
“Well,” Ross said bitterly and looked directly at Morrie, “that’s the last of the Starstruck Five.”
“Look, Ross,” Morrie protested, his voice sounding shrill in the strange new stillness, “I didn’t do it. I was only trying to.”
“I didn’t say you did,” Ross cut him short. “I know you didn’t do it. I had already made my last adjustment. She was on her own and she couldn’t take it. Forget it. But keep your head down after this-you darn near lost it. That’s what the barricade is for.”
“But I wasn’t going to stick my head up. I was just going to try.”
“Both of you forget it,” Art butted in. “So we blew up another one. So what? We’ll build another one. Whatever happened, I got it right here in the can.” He patted his camera. “Let’s take a look at the wreck.” He started to head around the end of the barricade.
“Wait a minute,” Ross commanded. He took a careful look through his periscope, then announced: “Seems okay. Both fuel chambers are split. There can’t be any real danger now. Don’t burn yourselves. Come on.”
They followed him around to the test stand.
The rocket itself was a complete wreck but the test stand was undamaged; it was built to take such punishment. Art turned his attention to the dynamometer which measured the thrust generated by the rocket. “I’ll have to recalibrate this,” he announced. “The loop isn’t hurt, but the dial and the rack-and-pinion are shot.”
The other two boys did not answer him; they were busy with the rocket itself. The combustion chamber was split wide open and it was evident that pieces were missing.
“How about it, Ross?” Morrie inquired. “Do you figure it was the metering pump going haywire, or was the soup just too hot for it?”
“Hard to tell,” Ross mused absently. “I don’t think it was the pump. The pump might jam and refuse to deliver fuel at all, but I don’t see how it could deliver too much fuel unless it reared back and passed a miracle.”
“Then it must have been the combustion chamber. The throat is all right. It isn’t even pitted much,” he added as he peered at it in the gathering twilight.
“Maybe. Well, let’s throw a tarp over it and look it over tomorrow morning. Can’t see anything now. Come on, Art.”
“Okay. Just a sec while I get my camera.” He detached his camera from its bracket and placed it in its carrying case, then helped the other two drag canvas tarpaulins over all the test gear-one for the test stand, one for the barricade with its controls, instruments, and periscopes. Then the three turned away and headed out of the clearing.
The clearing was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, placed there at the insistence of Ross’s parents, to whom the land belonged, in order to keep creatures, both four-legged and two legged, from wandering into the line of fire while the boys were experimenting. The gate in this fence was directly behind the barricade and about fifty feet from it.
They had had no occasion to glance in the direction of the gate since the beginning of the test run-indeed, their attentions had been so heavily on the rocket that anything less than an earthquake would hardly have disturbed them.
Ross and Morrie were a little in front with Art close at their heels, so close that, when they stopped suddenly, he stumbled over them and almost dropped his camera. “Hey, watch where you’re going, can’t you?” he protested. “Pick up your big feet!”
They did not answer but stood still, staring ahead and at the ground. “What gives?” he went on. “Why the trance? Why do-oh!” He had seen it too.
“It” was the body of a large man, crumpled on the ground, half in and half out the gate. There was a bloody wound on his head and blood on the ground. They all rushed forward together, but it was Morrie who shoved them back and kept them from touching the prone figure. “Take it easy!” he ordered.
“Don’t touch him. Remember your first aid. That’s a head wound. If you touch him, you may kill him.”
“But we’ve got to find out if he’s alive,” Ross objected.
“I’ll find out. Here-give me those.” He reached out and appropriated the data sheets of the rocket test run from where they stuck out of Ross’s pocket. These he rolled into a tube about an inch in diameter, then cautiously placed it against the back of the still figure, on the left side over the heart. Placing his ear to the other end of the improvised stethoscope he listened.
Ross and Art waited breathlessly. Presently his tense face relaxed into a grin. “His motor is turning over,” he announced. “Good and strong. At least we didn’t kill him.”
“We?”
“Who do you think? How do you think he got this way? Take a look around and you’ll probably find the piece of the rocket that konked him.” He straightened up.
“But never mind that now. Ross, you shag up to your house and call an ambulance. Make it fast! Art and I will wait here with, with, uh, him. He may come to and we’ll have to keep him quiet.”
“Okay.” Ross was gone as he spoke. Art was staring at the unconscious man. Morrie touched him on the arm. “Sit down, kid. No use getting in a sweat. We’ll have trouble enough later.
Even if this guy isn’t hurt much I suppose you realize this about winds up the activities the Galileo Marching-and-Chowder Society, at least the rocketry-and-loud-noises branch of it.”
Art looked unhappy. “I suppose so.”
“Suppose nothing. It’s certain. Ross’s father took a very dim view of the matter the time we blew all the windows out of his basement, not that I blame him. Now we hand him this. Loss of the use of the land is the least we can expect. We’ll be lucky not to have handed him a suit for damages too. Art agreed miserably. “I guess it’s back to stamp collecting for us,” he assented, but his mind was elsewhere. Law suit. The use of the land did not matter. To be sure the use of the Old Ross Place on the edge of town had been swell for all three of them, what with him and his mother living in back of the store, and Morrie’s folks living in a flat, but-law suit! Maybe Ross’s parents could afford it; but the little store just about kept Art and his mother going, even with the afterschool jobs he had had ever since junior high, a law suit would take the store away from them.
His first feeling of frightened sympathy for the wounded man was beginning to be replaced by a feeling of injustice done him. What was the guy doing there anyhow? It wasn’t just.
“Let me have a look at this guy,” he said.
“Don’t touch him,” Morrie warned.
“I won’t. Got your pocket flash?” It was becoming quite dark in the clearing.
“Sure. Here, catch.” Art took the little flashlight and tried to examine the face of their victim-hard to do, as he was almost face down and the side of his face that was visible was smeared with blood.
Presently Art said in an odd tone of voice, “Morrie-would it hurt anything to wipe some of this blood away?”
“You’re dern tootin’ it would! You let him be till the doctor comes.” “All right, all right. Anyhow I don’t need to, I’m sure anyhow. Morrie, I know who he is.”
“You do? Who?”
“He’s my uncle.”
“Your uncle!”
“Yes, my uncle. You know-the one I’ve told you about. He’s my Uncle Don. Doctor Donald Cargraves, my Atomic Bomb uncle.”

Chapter Two.
A MAN-SIZED CHALLENGE.

“At least I’m pretty sure it’s my uncle,” Art went on. “I could tell for certain if I could see his whole face.”
“Don’t you know whether or not he’s your uncle? After all, a member of your own family.”
“Nope. I haven’t seen him since he came through here to see Mother, just after the war. That’s been a long time. I was just a kid then. But it looks like him.”
“But he doesn’t look old enough,” Morrie said judiciously. “I should think, Here comes the ambulance!”
It was indeed, with Ross riding with the driver to show him the road and the driver cussing the fact that the road existed mostly in Ross’s imagination. They were all too busy for a few minutes, worrying over the stranger as a patient, to be much concerned with his identity as an individual. “Doesn’t look too bad,” the interne who rode with the ambulance announced.
“Nasty scalp wound. Maybe concussion, maybe not. Now over with him, easy! While I hold his head.” When turned face up and lifted into the stretcher, the patient’s eyes flickered; he moaned and seemed to try to say something. The doctor leaned over him.
Art caught Morrie’s eye and pressed a thumb and forefinger together. There was no longer any doubt as to the man’s identity, now that Art had seen his face.
Ross started to climb back in the ambulance but the interne waved him away. “But all of you boys show up at the hospital. We’ll have to make out an accident report on this.”
As soon as the ambulance lumbered away Art told Ross about his discovery. Ross looked startled. “Your uncle, eh? Your own uncle. What was he doing here?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know he was in town.”
“Say, look, I hope he’s not hurt bad, especially seeing as how he’s your uncle, but is this the uncle, the one you were telling us about who has been mentioned for the Nobel Prize?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. He’s my Uncle Donald Cargraves.”
“Doctor Donald Cargraves!” Ross whistled. “Jeepers! When we start slugging people we certainly go after big game, don’t we?”
“It’s no laughing matter. Suppose he dies? What’ll I tell my mother?”
“I wasn’t laughing. Let’s get over to the hospital and find out how bad he’s hurt before you tell her anything. No use in worrying her unnecessarily.” Ross sighed, “I guess we might as well break the news to my folks. Then I’ll drive us over to the hospital.”
“Didn’t you tell them when you telephoned?,” Morrie asked. “No. They were out in the garden, so I just phoned and then leaned out to the curb to wait for the ambulance. They may have seen it come in the drive but I didn’t wait to find out.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t.”
Ross’s father was waiting for them at the house. He answered their greetings, then said, “Ross.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I heard an explosion down toward your private stamping ground. Then I saw an ambulance drive in and drive away. What happened?”
“Well, Dad, it was like this: We were making a full-power captive run on the new rocket and.” He sketched out the events.
Mister Jenkins nodded and said, “I see. Come along, boys.” He started toward the converted stable which housed the family car. “Ross, run tell your mother where we are going. Tell her I said not to worry.” He went on, leaning on his cane a bit as he walked. Mister Jenkins was a retired electrical engineer, even-tempered and taciturn.
Art could not remember his own father; Morrie’s father was still living but a very different personality. Mister Abrams ruled a large and noisy, children-cluttered household by combining a loud voice with lavish affection.
When Ross returned, puffing, his father waved away his offer to drive. “No, thank you. I want us to get there.”
The trip was made in silence. Mister Jenkins left them in the foyer of the hospital with an injunction to wait.
“What do you think he will do?” Morrie asked nervously.
“I don’t know. Dad’ll be fair about it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Morrie admitted. “Right now I don’t want justice; I want charity.”
“I hope Uncle Don is all right,” Art put in.
“Huh? Oh, yes, indeed! Sorry, Art, I’m afraid we’ve kind of forgotten your feelings. The principal thing is for him to get well, of course.”
“To tell the truth, before I knew it was Uncle Don, I was more worried over the chance that I might have gotten Mother into a law suit than I was over what we might have done to a stranger.”
“Forget it,” Ross advised. “A person can’t help worrying over his own troubles. Dad says the test is in what you do, not in what you think. We all did what we could for him.”
“Which was mostly not to touch him before the doctor came,” Morrie pointed out.
“Which was what he needed.”
“Yes,” agreed Art, “but I don’t check you, Ross, on it not mattering what you think as long as you act all right. It seems to me that wrong ideas can be just as bad as wrong ways to do things.”
“Easy, now. If a guy does something brave when he’s scared to death is he braver than the guy who does the same thing but isn’t scared?”
“He’s less, no, he’s more. You’ve got me all mixed up. It’s not the same thing.”
“Not quite, maybe. Skip it.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Then Morrie said, “Anyhow, I hope he’s all right.”
Mister Jenkins came out with news. “Well, boys, this is your lucky day. Skull uninjured according to the X-ray. The patient woke when they sewed up his scalp. I talked with him and he has decided not to scalp any of you in return.” He smiled.
“May I see him?” asked Art.
“Not tonight. They’ve given him a hypo and he is asleep. I telephoned your mother, Art.”
“You did? Thank you, sir.”
“She’s expecting you. I’ll drop you by.”
Art’s interview with his mother was not too difficult; Mister Jenkins had laid a good foundation. In fact, Missus Mueller was incapable of believing that Art could be “bad.” But she did worry about him and Mister Jenkins had soothed her, not only about Art but also as to the welfare of her brother. Morrie had still less trouble with Mister Abrams. After being assured that the innocent bystander was not badly hurt, he had shrugged. “So what? So we have lawyers in the family for such things. At fifty cents a week it’ll take you about five hundred years to pay it off. Go to bed.”
“Yes, Poppa.”
The boys gathered at the rocket testing grounds the next morning, after being assured by a telephone call to the hospital that Doctor Cargraves had spent a good night. They planned to call on him that afternoon; at the moment they wanted to hold a post-mortem on the ill-starred Starstruck Five.
The first job was to gather up the pieces, try to reassemble them, and then try to figure out what had happened. Art’s film of the event would be necessary to complete the story, but it was not yet ready.
They were well along with the reassembling when they heard a whistle and a shout from the direction of the gate. “Hello there! Anybody home?”
“Coming!” Ross answered. They skirted the barricade to where they could see the gate. A tall, husky figure waited there, a man so young, strong, and dynamic in appearance that the bandage around his head seemed out of place, and still more so in contrast with his friendly grin.
“Uncle Don!” Art yelled as he ran up to meet him.
“Hi,” said the newcomer. “You’re Art. Well, you’ve grown a lot but you haven’t changed much.” He shook hands.
“What are you doing out of bed? You’re sick.”
“Not me,” his uncle asserted. “I’ve got a release from the hospital to prove it. But introduce me, are these the rest of the assassins?”
“Oh-excuse me. Uncle Don, this is Maurice Abrams and this is Ross Jenkins. Doctor Cargraves.”
“How do you do, sir?”
“Glad to know you, Doctor.”
“Glad to know you, too.” Cargraves started through the gate, then hesitated. “Sure this place isn’t booby-trapped?”
Ross looked worried. “Say, Doctor-we’re all sorry as can be. I still can’t see how it happened. This gate is covered by the barricade.”
“Ricochet shot probably. Forget it. I’m not hurt. A little skin and a little blood-that’s all. If I had turned back at your first warning sign, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“How did you happen to be coming here?”
“A fair question. I hadn’t been invited, had I?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that.”
“But I owe you an explanation. When I breezed into town yesterday, I already knew of the Galileo Club; Art’s mother had mentioned it in letters. When my sister told me where Art was and what he was up to, I decided to slide over in hope of getting here in time to watch your test run. Your hired girl told me how to find my way out here.”
“You mean you hurried out here just to see this stuff we play around with?”
“Sure. Why not? I’m interested in rockets.”
“Yes, but-we really haven’t got anything to show you. These are just little models.”
“A new model,” Doctor Cargraves answered seriously, “of anything can be important, no matter who makes it nor how small it is. I wanted to see how you work. May I?”
“Oh, certainly, sir-we’d be honored.” Ross showed their guest around, with Morrie helping out and Art chipping in. Art was pink-faced and happy, this was his uncle, one of the world’s great, a pioneer of the Atomic Age. They inspected the test stand and the control panel. Cargraves looked properly impressed and tut-tutted over the loss of Starstruck Five.
As a matter of fact he was impressed. It is common enough in the United States for boys to build and take apart almost anything mechanical, from alarm clocks to hiked-up jaloppies. It is not so common for them to understand the sort of controlled and recorded experimentation on which science is based.
Their equipment was crude and their facilities limited, but the approach was correct and the scientist recognized it.
The stainless steel mirrors used to bounce the spotlight beams over the barricade puzzled Doctor Cargraves. “Why take so much trouble to protect light bulbs?” he asked. “Bulbs are cheaper than stainless steel.”
“We were able to get the mirror steel free,” Ross explained. “The spotlight bulbs take cash money.”
The scientist chuckled. “That reason appeals to me. Well, you fellows have certainly thrown together quite a set-up. I wish I had seen your rocket before it blew up.”
“Of course the stuff we build,” Ross said diffidently, “can’t compare with a commercial unmanned rocket, say like a mailcarrier. But we would like to dope out something good enough to go after the junior prizes.”
“Ever competed?”
“Not yet. Our physics class in high school entered one last year in the novice classification. It wasn’t much, just a powder job, but that’s what got us started, though we’ve all been crazy about rockets ever since I can remember.”
“You’ve got some fancy control equipment. Where do you do your machine-shop work? Or do you have it done?”
“Oh, no. We do it in the high-school shop. If the shop instructor okays you, you can work after school on your own.”
“It must be quite a high school,” the physicist commented. “The one I went to didn’t have a machine shop.”
“I guess it is a pretty progressive school,” Ross agreed. “It’s a mechanical-arts-and-science high school and it has more courses in math and science and shop work than most. It’s nice to be able to use the shops. That’s where we built our telescope.”
“Astronomers too, eh?”
“Well-Morrie is the astronomer of the three of us.”
“Is that so?” Cargraves inquired, turning to Morrie.
Morrie shrugged. “Oh, not exactly. We all have our hobbies. Ross goes in for chemistry and rocket fuels. Art is a radio ham and a camera nut. You can study astronomy sitting down.”
“I see,” the physicist replied gravely. “A matter of efficient self-protection. I knew about Art’s hobbies. By the way, Art, I owe you an apology; yesterday afternoon I took a look in your basement. But don’t worry-I didn’t touch anything.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about your touching stuff, Uncle Don,” Art protested, turning pinker, “but the place must have looked a mess.”
“It didn’t look like a drawing room but it did look like a working laboratory. I see you keep notebooks, no, I didn’t touch them, either!”
“We all keep notebooks,” Morrie volunteered. “That’s the influence of Ross’s old man.”
“Dad told me he did not care,” Ross explained, “how much I messed around as long as I kept it above the tinker-toy level. He used to make me submit notes to him on everything I tried and he would grade them on clearness and completeness. After a while I got the idea and he quit.”
“Does he help you with your projects?”
“Not a bit. He says they’re our babies and we’ll have to nurse them.”
They prepared to adjourn to their clubhouse, an out-building left over from the days when the Old Ross Place was worked as a farm. They gathered up the forlorn pieces of Starstruck Five, while Ross checked each item. “I guess that’s all,” he announced and started to pick up the remains.
“Wait a minute,” Morrie suggested. “We never did search for the piece that clipped Doctor Cargraves.”
“That’s right,” the scientist agreed. “I have a personal interest in that item, blunt instrument, missile, shrapnel, or whatever. I want to know how close I came to playing a harp.”
Ross looked puzzled. “Come here, Art,” he said in a low voice.
“I am here. What do you want?”
“Tell me what piece is still missing.”
“What difference does it make?” But he bent over the box containing the broken rocket and checked the items. Presently he too looked puzzled.
“Ross.”
“Yeah?”
“There isn’t anything missing.”
“That’s what I thought. But there has to be.”
“Wouldn’t it be more to the point,” suggested Cargraves, “to look around near where I was hit?”
“I suppose so.”
They all searched, they found nothing. Presently they organized a system which covered the ground with such thoroughness that anything larger than a medium-small ant should have come to light. They found a penny and a broken Indian arrowhead, but nothing resembling a piece of the exploded rocket.
“This is getting us nowhere,” the doctor admitted. “Just where was I when you found me?”
“Right in the gateway,” Morrie told him. “You were collapsed on your face and.”
“Just a minute. On my face?”
“Yes. You were.”
“But how did I get knocked on my face? I was facing toward your testing ground when the lights went out. I’m sure of that. I should have fallen backwards.”
“Well, I’m sure you didn’t, sir. Maybe it was a ricochet, as you said.”
“Hum, maybe.” The doctor looked around. There was nothing near the gate which would make a ricochet probable. He looked at the spot where he had lain and spoke to himself.
“What did you say, doctor?”
“Uh? Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Forget it. It was just a silly idea I had. It couldn’t be.” He straightened up as if dismissing the whole thing.
“Let’s not waste any more time on my vanishing blunt instrument. It was just curiosity. Let’s get on back.”
The clubhouse was a one-story frame building about twenty feet square. One wall was filled with Ross’s chemistry workbench with the usual clutter of test-tube racks, bunsen burners, awkward-looking, pretzel-like arrangements of glass tubing, and a double sink which looked as if it had been salvaged from a junk dealer. A home-made hood with a hinged glass front occupied one end of the bench. Parallel to the adjacent wall, in a little glass case, a precision balance’ of a good make but of very early vintage stood mounted on its own concrete pillar.
“We ought to have air-conditioning,” Ross told the doctor, “to do really good work.”
“You haven’t done so badly,” Cargraves commented. The boys had covered the rough walls with ply board; the cracks had been filled and the interior painted with washable enamel. The floor they had covered with linoleum, salvaged like the sink, but serviceable. The windows and door were tight. The place was clean.
“Humidity changes could play hob with some of your experiments, however,” he went on. “Do you plan to put in air-conditioning sometime?”
“I doubt it. I guess the Galileo Club is about to fold up.”
“What? Oh, that seems a shame.”
“It is and it isn’t. This fall we all expect to go away to Tech.”
“I see. But aren’t there any other members?”
“There used to be, but they’ve moved, gone away to school, gone in the army. I suppose we could have gotten new members but we didn’t try. Well, we work together well and, you know how it is.”
Cargraves nodded. He felt that he knew more explicitly than did the boy. These three were doing serious work; most of their schoolmates, even though mechanically minded, would be more interested in needling a stripped-down car up to a hundred miles an hour than in keeping careful notes.
“Well, you are certainly comfortable here. It’s a shame you can’t take it with you.” A low, wide, padded seat stretched from wall to wall opposite the chemistry layout. The other two boys were sprawled on it, listening. Behind them, bookshelves had been built into the wall. Jules Verne crowded against Mark’s Handbook of Mechanical Engineering. Cargraves noted other old friends: H G Wells’ Seven Famous Novels, The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and Smyth’s Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Jammed in with them, side by side with Ley’s Rockets and Eddington’s Nature of the Physical World, were dozens of pulp magazines of the sort with robot men or space ships on their covers.
He pulled down a dog-eared copy of Haggard’s When the Earth Trembled and settled his long body between the boys. He was beginning to feel at home. These boys he knew; he had only to gaze back through the corridors of his mind to recognize himself.
Ross said, “If you’ll excuse me, I want to run up to the house.” Cargraves grunted, “Sure thing,” with his nose still in the book. Ross came back to announce, “My mother would like all of you to stay for lunch.”
Morrie grinned, Art looked troubled. “My mother thinks I eat too many meals over here as it is,” he protested feebly, his eyes on his uncle. Cargraves took him by the arm. “I’ll go your bail on this one, Art,” he assured him; then to Ross, “Please tell your mother that we are very happy to accept.”
At lunch the adults talked, the boys listened. The scientist, his turban bandage looking stranger than ever, hit it off well with his elders. Anyone would hit it off well with Missus Jenkins, who could have been friendly and gracious at a cannibal feast, but the boys were not used to seeing Mister Jenkins in a chatty mood.
The boys were surprised to find out how much Mister Jenkins knew about atomics. They had the usual low opinion of the mental processes of adults; Mister Jenkins they respected but had subconsciously considered him the anachronism which most of his generation in fact was, a generation as a whole incapable of realizing that the world had changed completely a few years before, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Yet Mister Jenkins seemed to know who Doctor Cargraves was and seemed to know that he had been retained until recently by North American Atomics. The boys listened carefully to find out what Doctor Cargraves planned to do next, but Mister Jenkins did not ask and Cargraves did not volunteer the information.
After lunch the three and their guest went back to the clubhouse. Cargraves spent most of the afternoon spread over the bunk, telling stories of the early days at Oak Ridge when the prospect of drowning in the inescapable, adhesive mud was more dismaying than the ever-present danger of radioactive poisoning, and the story, old but ever new and eternally exciting, of the black, rainy morning in the New Mexico desert when a great purple-and-golden mushroom had climbed to the stratosphere, proclaiming that man had at last unloosed the power of the suns.
Then he shut up, claiming that he wanted to re-read the old H Rider Haggard novel he had found. Ross and Morrie got busy at the bench; Art took a magazine. His eyes kept returning to his fabulous uncle. He noticed that the man did not seem to be turning the pages very often.
Quite a while later Doctor Cargraves put down his book. “What do you fellows know about atomics?”
The boys exchanged glances before Morrie ventured to answer. “Not much I guess. High-school physics can’t touch it, really, and you can’t mess with it in a home laboratory.”
“That’s right. But you are interested?”
“Oh, my, yes! We’ve read what we could, Pollard and Davidson, and Gamov’s new book. But we don’t have the math for atomics.”
“How much math do you have?”
“Through differential equations.”
“Huh?” Cargraves looked amazed. “Wait a minute. You guys are still in high school?”
“Just graduated.”
“What kind of high school teaches differential equations? Or am I an old fuddy-duddy?”
Morrie seemed almost defensive in his explanation. “It’s a new approach. You have to pass a test, then they give you algebra through quadratics, plane and spherical trigonometry, plane and solid geometry, and plane and solid analytical geometry all in one course, stirred in together. When you finish that course, and you take it as slow or as fast as you like, you go on.”
Cargraves shook his head. “There’ve been some changes made while I was busy with the neutrons. Okay, Quiz Kids, at that rate you’ll be ready for quantum theory and wave mechanics before long. But I wonder how they go about cramming you this way? Do you savvy the postulational notion in math?”
“Why, I think so.”
“Tell me.”
Morrie took a deep breath. “No mathematics has any reality of its own, not even common arithmetic. All mathematics is purely an invention of the mind, with no connection with the world around us, except that we find some mathematics convenient in describing things.”
“Go on. You’re doing fine!”
“Even then it isn’t real, or isn’t true, the way the ancients thought of it. Any system of mathematics is derived from purely arbitrary assumptions, called postulates, the sort of thing the ancients called axioms.”
“Your jets are driving, kid! How about the operational notion in scientific theory? No, Art-you tell me.”
Art looked embarrassed; Morrie looked pleased but relieved. “Well, uh, the operational idea is, uh, it’s building up your theory in terms of the operations you perform, like measuring, or timing, so that you don’t go reading into the experiments things that aren’t there.”
Cargraves nodded. “That’s good enough, it shows you know what you’re talking about.” He kept quiet for a long time, then he added, “You fellows really interested in rockets?”
Ross answered this time, “Why, er, yes, we are. Rockets among other things. We would certainly like to have a go at those junior prizes.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, no, not exactly. I guess we all think, well, maybe some day.” His voice trailed off.
“I think I see.” Cargraves sat up. “But why bother with the competition? After all, as you pointed out, model rockets can’t touch the full-sized commercial jobs. The prizes are offered just to keep up interest in rocketry, it’s like the model airplane meets they used to have when I was a kid. But you guys can do better than that, why don’t you go in for the senior prizes?”
Three sets of eyes were fixed on him. “What do you mean?” Cargraves shrugged. “Why don’t you go to the moon with me?”

Chapter Three.
CUT-RATE COLUMBUS.

The silence that filled the clubhouse had a solid quality, as if one could slice it and make sandwiches. Ross recovered his voice first. “You don’t mean it,” he said in a hushed tone.
“But I do,” Doctor Cargraves answered evenly. “I mean it quite seriously. I propose to try to make a trip to the moon. I’d like to have you fellows with me. Art,” he added, “close your mouth.
You’ll make a draft.”
Art gulped, did as he was told, then promptly opened it again. “But look,” he said, his words racing, “Uncle Don, if you take us, I mean, how could we-or if we did, what would we use for, how do you propose.”
“Easy, easy!” Cargraves protested. “All of you keep quiet and I’ll tell you what I have in mind. Then you can think it over and tell me whether or not you want to go for it.”
Morrie slapped the bench beside him. “I don’t care,” he said, “I don’t care if you’re going to try to fly there on your own broom, I’m in. I’m going along.”
“So am I,” Ross added quickly, moistening his lips.
Art looked wildly at the other two. “But I didn’t mean that I wasn’t, I was just asking, Oh, shucks! Me, too! You know that.”
The young scientist gave the impression of bowing without getting up.
“Gentlemen, I appreciate the confidence you place in me. But you are not committed to anything just yet.”
“But.”
“So kindly pipe down,” he went on, “and I’ll lay out my cards, face up. Then we’ll talk. Have you guys ever taken an oath?”
“Oh, sure, Scout Oath, anyhow.”
“I was a witness in court once.”
“Fine. I want you all to promise, on your honor, not to spill anything I tell you without my specific permission, whether we do business or not. It is understood that you are not bound thereby to remain silent if you are morally obligated to speak up, you are free to tell on me if there are moral or legal reasons why you should. Otherwise, you keep mum, on your honor.
How about it?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Right!”
“Check.”
“Okay,” agreed Cargraves, settling back on his spine. “That was mostly a matter of form, to impress you with the necessity of keeping your lips buttoned. You’ll understand why, later. Now here is the idea: All my life I’ve wanted to see the day when men would conquer space and explore the planets, and I wanted to take part in it. I don’t have to tell you how that feels.” He waved a hand at the book shelves. “Those books show me you understand it; you’ve got the madness yourselves. Besides that, what I saw out on your rocket grounds, what I see here, what I saw yesterday when I sneaked a look in Art’s lab, shows me that you aren’t satisfied just to dream about it and read about it, you want to do something. Right?”
“Right!” It was a chorus.
Cargraves nodded. “I felt the same way. I took my first degree in mechanical engineering with the notion that rockets were mechanical engineering and that I would need the training. I worked as an engineer after graduation until I had saved up enough to go back to school. I took my doctor’s degree in atomic physics, because I had a hunch, oh, I wasn’t the only one! I had a hunch that atomic power was needed for practical space ships. Then came the war and the Manhattan Project. When the Atomic Age opened up a lot of people predicted that space flight was just around the corner. But it didn’t work out that way-nobody knew how to harness the atom to a rocket. Do you know why?”
Somewhat hesitantly Ross spoke up. “Yes, I think I do.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, for a rocket you need mass times velocity, quite a bit of mass in what the jet throws out and plenty of velocity. But in an atomic reaction there isn’t very much mass and the energy comes out in radiations in all directions instead of a nice, lined-up jet. Just the same.”
“Just the same what?”
“Well, there ought to be a way to harness all that power. Darn it, with so much power from so little weight, there ought to be some way.”
“Just what I’ve always thought,” Cargraves said with a grin. “We’ve built atomic plants that turn out more power than Boulder Dam. We’ve made atomic bombs that make the two used in the war seem like firecrackers. Power to burn, power to throw away. Yet we haven’t been able to hook it to a rocket. Of course there are other problems. An atomic power plant takes a lot of shielding to protect the operators, you know that. And that means weight. Weight is everything in a rocket. If you add another hundred pounds in dead load, you have to pay for it in fuel.
Suppose your shield weighed only a ton, how much fuel would that cost you, Ross?”
Ross scratched his head. “I don’t know what kind of fuel you mean nor what kind of a rocket you are talking about, what you want it to do.”
“Fair enough,” the scientist admitted. “I asked you an impossible question. Suppose we make it a chemical fuel and a moon rocket and assume a mass-ratio of twenty to one. Then for a shield weighing a ton we have to carry twenty tons of fuel.”
Art sat up suddenly. “Wait a minute, Uncle Don.”
“Yes?”
“If you use a chemical fuel, like alcohol and liquid oxygen say, then you won’t need a radiation shield.”
“You got me, kid. But that was just for illustration. If you had a decent way to use atomic power, you might be able to hold your mass-ratio down to, let’s say, one-to-one. Then a one-ton shield would only require one ton of fuel to carry it. That suit you better?”
Art wriggled in excitement. “I’ll say it does. That means a real space ship. We could go anywhere in it!”
“But we’re still on earth,” his uncle pointed out dryly. “I said if. Don’t burn out your jets before you take off. And there is still a third hurdle: atomic power plants are fussy to control, hard to turn on, hard to turn off. But we can let that one alone till we come to it. I still think we’ll get to the moon.”
He paused. They waited expectantly.
“I think I’ve got a way to apply atomic power to rockets.” Nobody stood up. Nobody cheered. No one made a speech starting, “On this historic occasion.” Instead they held their breaths, waiting for him to go on.
“Oh, I’m not going into details now. You’ll find out all about it, if we work together.”
“We will!”
“Sure thing!”
“I hope so. I tried to interest the company I was with in the scheme, but they wouldn’t hold still.”
“Gee whillickers! Why not?”
“Corporations are in business to make money; they owe that to their stockholders. Do you see any obvious way to make money out of a flight to the moon?”
“Shucks.” Art tossed it off. “They ought to be willing to risk going broke to back a thing like this.”
“Nope. You’re off the beam, kid. Remember they are handling other people’s money. Have you any idea how much it would cost to do the research and engineering development, using the ordinary commercial methods, for anything as big as a trip to the moon?”
“No,” Art admitted. “A good many thousands, I suppose.”
Morrie spoke up. “More like a hundred thousand.”
“That’s closer. The technical director of our company made up a tentative budget of a million and a quarter.”
“Whew!”
“Oh, he was just showing that it was not commercially practical. He wanted to adapt my idea to power plants for ships and trains. So I handed in my resignation.”
“Good for you!”
Morrie looked thoughtful. “I guess I see,” he said slowly, “why you swore us to secrecy. They own your idea.”
Cargraves shook his head emphatically, “No, not at all. You certainly would be entitled to squawk if I tried to get you into a scheme to jump somebody else’s patent rights, even if they held them by a yellow-dog, brain-picking contract.” Cargraves spoke with vehemence. “My contract wasn’t that sort. The company owns the idea for the purposes for which the research was carried out, power. And I own anything else I see in it. We parted on good terms. I don’t blame them. When the Queen staked Columbus, nobody dreamed that he would come back with the Empire State Building in his pocket.”
“Hey,” said Ross, “these senior prizes, they aren’t big enough. That’s why nobody has made a real bid for the top ones. The prize wouldn’t pay the expenses, not for the kind of budget you mentioned. It’s a sort of a swindle, isn’t it?”
“Not a swindle, but that’s about the size of it,” Cargraves conceded. “With the top prize only $250,000 it won’t tempt General Electric, or du Pont, or North American Atomic, or any other big research corporation. They can’t afford it, unless some other profit can be seen. As a matter of fact, a lot of the prize money comes from those corporations.” He sat up again. “But we can compete for it!”
“How?”
“I don’t give a darn about the prize money. I just want to go!” “Me too!” Ross made the statement; Art chimed in.
“My sentiments exactly. As to how, that’s where you come in. I can’t spend a million dollars, but I think there is a way to tackle this on a shoestring. We need a ship. We need the fuel. We need a lot of engineering and mechanical work. We need overhead expenses and supplies for the trip. I’ve got a ship.”
“You have? Now? A space ship?” Art was wide-eyed.
“I’ve got an option to buy an Atlantic freighter-rocket at scrap prices. I can swing that. It’s a good rocket, but they are replacing the manned freighters with the more economical robot controlled jobs. It’s a V-17 and it isn’t fit to convert to passenger service, so we get it as scrap. But if I buy it, it leaves me almost broke. Under the UN trusteeship for atomics, a senior member of the Global Association of Atomic Scientists, that’s me!” he stuck in, grinning, “can get fissionable material for experimental purposes, if the directors of the Association approve. I can swing that. I’ve picked thorium, rather than uranium-235, or plutonium-never mind why. But the project itself had me stumped, just too expensive. I was about ready to try to promote it by endorsements and lecture contracts and all the other clap, trap it sometimes takes to put over scientific work, when I met you fellows.”
He got up and faced them. “I don’t need much to convert that old V-17 into a space ship. But I do need skilled hands and brains and the imagination to know what is needed and why.
You’d be my mechanics and junior engineers and machine-shop workers and instrument men and presently my crew. You’ll do hard, dirty work for long hours and cook your own meals in the bargain. You’ll get nothing but coffee-and-cakes and a chance to break your necks. The ship may never leave the ground. If it does, chances are you’ll never live to tell about it. It won’t be one big adventure. I’ll work you till you’re sick of me and probably nothing will come of it. But that’s the proposition. Think it over and let me know.”
There was the nerve-tingling pause which precedes an earthquake. Then the boys were on their feet, shouting all at once. It was difficult to make out words, but the motion had been passed by acclamation; the Galileo Club intended to go to the moon.
When the buzzing had died down, Cargraves noticed that Ross’s face was suddenly grave. “What’s the matter, Ross? Cold feet already?”
“No,” Ross shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s too good to be true.”
“Could be, could be. I think I know what’s worrying you. Your parents?”
“Uh, huh. I doubt if our folks will ever let us do it.”

Chapter Four.
THE BLOOD OF PIONEERS.

Cargraves looked at their woebegone faces. He knew what they were faced with; a boy can’t just step up to his father and say, “By the way, old man, count me out on those plans we made for me to go to college. I’ve got a date to meet Santa Claus at the North Pole.” It was the real reason he had hesitated before speaking of his plans. Finally he said, “I’m afraid it’s up to each of you. Your promise to me does not apply to your parents, but ask them to respect your confidence. I don’t want our plans to get into the news.”
“But look, Doctor Cargraves,” Morrie put in, “why be so secret about it? It might make our folks feel that it was just a wild-eyed kid’s dream. Why can’t you just go to them and explain where we would fit into it?”
“No,” Cargraves answered, “they are your parents. When and if they want to see me, I’ll go to them and try to give satisfactory answers. But you will have to convince them that you mean business. As to secrecy, the reasons are these: there is only one aspect of my idea that can be patented and, under the rules of the UN Atomics Convention, it can be licensed by anyone who wants to use it. The company is obtaining the patent, but not as a rocket device. The idea that I can apply it to a cheap, shoestring venture into space travel is mine and I don’t want anyone else to beat me to it with more money and stronger backing. Just before we are ready to leave we will call in the reporters, probably to run a story about how we busted our necks on the take-off.”
“But I see your point,” he went on. “We don’t want this to look like a mad-scientist-and-secret-laboratory set-up. Well, I’ll try to convince them.”
Doctor Cargraves made an exception in the case of Art’s mother, because she was his own sister. He cautioned Art to retire to his basement laboratory as soon as dinner was over and then, after helping with the dishes, spoke to her. She listened quietly while he explained. “Well, what do you think of it?
She sat very still, her eyes everywhere but on his face, her hands busy twisting and untwisting her handkerchief. “Don, you can’t do this to me.” He waited for her to go on.
“I can’t let him go, Don. He’s all I’ve got. With Hans gone.”
“I know that,” the doctor answered gently. “But Hans has been gone since Art was a baby. You can’t limit the boy on that account.”
“Do you think that makes it any easier?” She was close to tears.
“No, I don’t. But it is on Hans’ account that you must not keep his son in cotton batting. Hans had courage to burn. If he had been willing to knuckle under to the Nazis he would have stayed at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. But Hans was a scientist. He wouldn’t trim his notion of truth to fit political gangsters. He.”
“And it killed him!”
“I know, I know. But remember, Grace, it was only the fact that you were an American girl that enabled you to pull enough strings to get him out of the concentration camp.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it. Oh, you should have seen him when they let him out!” She was crying now.
“I did see him when you brought him to this country,” he said gently, “and that was bad enough. But the fact that you are American has a lot to do with it. We have a tradition of freedom, personal freedom, scientific freedom. That freedom isn’t kept alive by caution and unwillingness to take risks. If Hans were alive he would be going with me, you know that, Sis. You owe it to his son not to keep him caged. You can’t keep him tied to your apron strings forever, anyhow. A few more years and you will have to let him follow his own bent.”
Her head was bowed. She did not answer. He patted her shoulder. “You think it over, Sis. I’ll try to bring him back in one piece.” When Art came upstairs, much later, his mother was still sitting, waiting for him. “Arthur?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“You want to go to the moon?”
“Yes, Mother.”
She took a deep breath, then replied steadily. “You be a good boy on the moon, Arthur. You do what your uncle tells you to.”
“I will, Mother.”
Morrie managed to separate his father from the rest of the swarming brood shortly after dinner. “Poppa, I want to talk to you man to man.”
“And how else?”
“Well, this is different. I know you wanted me to come into the business, but you agreed to help me go to Tech.”
His father nodded. “The business will get along. Scientists we are proud to have in the family. Your Uncle Bernard is a fine surgeon. Do we ask him to help with the business?”
“Yes, Poppa, but that’s just it-I don’t want to go to Tech.”
“So? Another school?”
“No, I don’t want to go to school.” He explained Doctor Cargraves’ scheme, blurting it out as fast as possible in an attempt to give his father the whole picture before he set his mind.
Finished, he waited.
His father rocked back and forth. “So it’s the moon now, is it? And maybe next week the sun. A man should settle down if he expects to accomplish anything, Maurice.”
“But, Poppa, this is what I want to accomplish!”
“When do you expect to start?”
“You mean you’ll let me? I can?”
“Not so fast, Maurice. I did not say yes; I did not say no. It has been quite a while since you stood up before the congregation and made your speech, ‘Today I am a man-‘ That meant you were a man, Maurice, right that moment. It’s not for me to let you; it’s for me to advise you. I advise you not to. I think it’s foolishness.”
Morrie stood silent, stubborn but respectful.
“Wait a week, then come back and tell me what you are going to do. There’s a pretty good chance that you will break your neck on this scheme, isn’t there?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so.”
“A week isn’t too long to make up your mind to kill yourself. In the meantime, don’t talk to Momma about this.”
“Oh, I won’t!”
“If you decide to go ahead anyway, I’ll break the news to her. Momma isn’t going to like this, Maurice.”
Doctor Donald Cargraves received a telephone call the next morning which requested him, if convenient, to come to the Jenkins’ home. He did so, feeling, unreasonably he thought, as if he were being called in on the carpet. He found Mister and Missus Jenkins in the drawing room; Ross was not in sight. Mister Jenkins shook hands with him and offered him a chair.
“Cigarette, Doctor? Cigar?”
“Neither, thank you.”
“If you smoke a pipe,” Missus Jenkins added, “please do so.” Cargraves thanked her and gratefully stoked up his old stinker.
“Ross tells me a strange story,” Mister Jenkins started in. “If he were not pretty reliable I’d think his imagination was working overtime. Perhaps you can explain it.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“Thanks. Is it true, Doctor, that you intend to try to make a trip to the moon.”
“Quite true.”
“Well! Is it also true that you have invited Ross and his chums to go with you in this fantastic adventure?”
“Yes, it is.” Doctor Cargraves found that he was biting hard on the stem of his pipe.
Mister Jenkins stared at him. “I’m amazed. Even if it were something safe and sane, your choice of boys as partners strikes me as outlandish.” Cargraves explained why he believed the boys could be competent junior partners in the enterprise. “In any case,” he concluded, “being young is not necessarily a handicap. The great majority of the scientists in the Manhattan Project were very young men.”
“But not boys, Doctor.”
“Perhaps not. Still, Sir Isaac Newton was a boy when he invented the calculus. Professor Einstein himself was only twenty-six when he published his first paper on relativity, and the work had been done when he was still younger. In mechanics and in the physical sciences, calendar age has nothing to do with the case; it’s solely a matter of training and ability.”
“Even if what you say is true, Doctor, training takes time and these boys have not had time for the training you need for such a job. It takes years to make an engineer, still more years to make a toolmaker or an instrument man. Tarnation, I’m an engineer myself. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Ordinarily I would agree with you. But these boys have what I need. Have you looked at their work?”
“Some of it.”
“How good is it?”
“It’s good work, within the limits of what they know.”
“But what they know is just what I need for this job. They are rocket fans now. They’ve learned in their hobbies the specialties I need.” Mister Jenkins considered this, then shook his head. “I suppose there is something in what you say. But the scheme is fantastic. I don’t say that space flight is fantastic; I expect that the engineering problems involved will some day be solved.
But space flight is not a back-yard enterprise. When it comes it will be done by the air forces, or as a project of one of the big corporations, not by half-grown boys.”
Cargraves shook his head. “The government won’t do it. It would be laughed off the floor of Congress. As for corporations, I have reason to be almost certain they won’t do it, either.”
Mister Jenkins looked at him quizzically. “Then it seems to me that we’re not likely to see space flight in our lifetimes.”
“I wouldn’t say so,” the scientist countered. “The United States isn’t the only country on the globe. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear some morning that the Russians had done it. They’ve got the technical ability and they seem to be willing to spend money on science. They might do it.”
“Well, what if they do?”
Cargraves took a deep breath. “I have nothing against the Russians; if they beat me to the moon, I’ll take off my hat to them. But I prefer our system to theirs; it would be a sour day for us if it turned out that they could do something as big and as wonderful as this when we weren’t even prepared to tackle it, under our set-up. Anyhow,” he continued, “I have enough pride in my own land to want it to be us, rather than some other country.”
Mister Jenkins nodded and changed his tack. “Even if these three boys have the special skills you need, I still don’t see why you picked boys. Frankly, that’s why the scheme looks rattlebrained to me. You should have experienced engineers and mechanics and your crew should be qualified rocket pilots.”
Doctor Cargraves laid the whole thing before them, and explained how he hoped to carry out his plans on a slim budget. When he had finished Mister Jenkins said, “Then as a matter of fact you braced these three boys because you were hard up for cash?”
“If you care to put it that way.”
“I didn’t put it that way; you did. Candidly, I don’t altogether approve of your actions. I don’t think you meant any harm, but you didn’t stop to think. I don’t thank you for getting Ross and his friends stirred up over a matter unsuited to their ages without consulting their parents first.” Donald Cargraves felt his mouth grow tense but said nothing; he felt that he could not explain that he had lain awake much of the night over misgivings of just that sort.
“However,” Mister Jenkins went on, “I understand your disappointment and sympathize with your enthusiasm.” He smiled briefly. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll hire three mechanics, you pick them, and one junior engineer or physicist, to help you in converting your ship. When the time comes, I’ll arrange for a crew. Hiring will not be needed there, in my opinion, we will be able to pick from a long list of volunteers. Wait a minute,” he said, as Cargraves started to speak, “you’ll be under no obligation to me. We will make it a business proposition of a speculative sort. We’ll draw up a contract under which, if you make it, you assign to me a proper percentage of the prize money and of the profits from exclusive news stories, books, lectures, and so forth. Does that look like a way out?”
Cargraves took a deep breath. “Mister Jenkins,” he said slowly, “if I had had that proposition last week, I would have jumped at it. But I can’t take it.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t let the boys down. I’m already committed.”
“Would it make a difference if I told you there was absolutely no chance of Ross being allowed to go?”
“No. I will have to go looking for just such a backer as yourself, but it can’t be you. It would smack too much of allowing myself to be bought off, No offense intended, Mister Jenkins! To welch on the proposition I made Ross.”
Mister Jenkins nodded. “I was afraid you would feel that way. I respect your attitude, Doctor. Let me call Ross in and tell him the outcome.” He started for the door.
“Just a moment, Mister Jenkins.”
“Yes?”
“I want to tell you that I respect your attitude, too. As I told you, the project is dangerous, quite dangerous. I think it is a proper danger but I don’t deny your right to forbid your son to risk his neck with me.”
“I am afraid you don’t understand me, Doctor Cargraves. It’s dangerous, certainly, and naturally that worries me and Missus Jenkins, but that is not my objection. I would not try to keep Ross out of danger. I let him take flying lessons; I even had something to do with getting two surplus army trainers for the high school. I haven’t tried to keep him from playing around with explosives. That’s not the reason.”
“May I asked what it is?”
“Of course. Ross is scheduled to start in at the Technical Institute this fall. I think it’s more important for him to get a sound basic education than for him to be first man on the moon.” He turned away again.
“Wait a minute! If it’s his education you are worried about, would you consider me a competent teacher?”
“Eh? Well, yes.”
“I will undertake to tutor the boys in technical and engineering subjects. I will see to it that they do not fall behind.”
Mister Jenkins hesitated momentarily. “No, Doctor, the matter is settled. An engineer without a degree has two strikes against him to start with. Ross is going to get his degree.” He stepped quickly to the door and called out,
“Ross!”
“Coming, Dad.” The center of the argument ran downstairs and into the room. He looked around, first at Cargraves, then anxiously at his father, and finally at his mother, who looked up from her knitting and smiled at him but did not speak. “What’s the verdict?” he inquired.
His father put it bluntly. “Ross, you start in school in the fall. I cannot okay this scheme.”
Ross’s jaw muscles twitched but he did not answer directly. Instead he said to Cargraves, “How about Art and Morrie?”
“Art’s going. Morrie phoned me and said his father didn’t think much of it but would not forbid it.”
“Does that make any difference, Dad?”
“I’m afraid not. I don’t like to oppose you, son, but when it comes right down to cases, I am responsible for you until you are twenty-one. You’ve got to get your degree.”
“But, but, look, Dad. A degree isn’t everything.
Heinlein Index:
https://rumble.com/v406mdz-index-of-robert-heinlein-audiobooks..html