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Starman Jones
By Robert A. Heinlein Pocket Copyright © 2005 Robert A. Heinlein
All right reserved. ISBN: 9781416505501
Chapter OneYou see, I had this space suit.
How it happened was this way:
"Dad," I said, "I want to go to the Moon."
"Certainly," he answered and looked back at his book. It was Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, which he must know by heart.
I said, "Dad, please! I'm serious."
This time he closed the book on a finger and said gently, "I said it was all right. Go ahead."
"Yes...but how?"
"Eh?" He looked mildly surprised. "Why, that's your problem, Clifford."
Dad was like that. The time I told him I wanted to buy a bicycle he said, "Go right ahead," without even glancing up -- so I had gone to the money basket in the dining room, intending to take enough for a bicycle. But there had been only eleven dollars and forty-three cents in it, so about a thousand miles of mowed lawns later I bought a bicycle. I hadn't said any more to Dad because if money wasn't in the basket, it wasn't anywhere; Dad didn't bother with banks -- just the money basket and one next to it marked "UNCLE SAM," the contents of which he bundled up and mailed to the government once a year. This caused the Internal Revenue Service considerable headache and once they sent a man to remonstrate with him.
First the man demanded, then hepleaded. "But, Dr. Russell, we know your background. You've no excuse for not keeping proper records."
"But I do," Dad told him. "Up here." He tapped his forehead.
"The law requires written records."
"Look again," Dad advised him. "The law can't even require a man to read and write. More coffee?"
The man tried to get Dad to pay by check or money order. Dad read him the fine print on a dollar bill, the part about "legal tender for all debts, public and private."
In a despairing effort to get something out of the trip he asked Dad please not to fill in the space marked "occupation" with "Spy."
"Why not?"
"What? Why, because you aren't -- and it upsets people."
"Have you checked with the F.B.I.?"
"Eh? No."
"They probably wouldn't answer. But you've been very polite. I'll mark it 'Unemployed Spy.' Okay?"
The tax man almost forgot his briefcase. Nothing fazed Dad, he meant what he said, he wouldn't argue and he never gave in. So when he told me I could go to the Moon but the means were up to me, he meant just that. I could go tomorrow -- provided I could wangle a billet in a space ship.
But he added meditatively, "There must be a number of ways to get to the Moon, son. Better check 'em all. Reminds me of this passage I'm reading. They're trying to open a tin of pineapple and Harris has left the can opener back in London. They try several ways." He started to read aloud and I sneaked out -- I had heard that passage five hundred times. Well, three hundred.
I went to my workshop in the barn and thought about ways. One way was to go to the Air Academy at Colorado Springs -- if I got an appointment, if I graduated, if I managed to get picked for the Federation Space Corps, there was a chance that someday I would be ordered to Lunar Base, or at least one of the satellite stations.
Another way was to study engineering, get a job in jet propulsion, and buck for a spot that would get me sent to the Moon. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of engineers had been to the Moon, or were still there -- for all sorts of work: electronics, cryogenics, metallurgy, ceramics, air conditioning, as well as rocket engineering.
Oh, yes! Out of a million engineers a handful got picked for the Moon. Shucks, I rarely got picked even playing post office.
Or a man could be an M.D., or a lawyer, or geologist, or toolmaker, and wind up on the Moon at a fat salary -- provided they wanted him and nobody else. I didn't care about salary -- but how do you arrange to be number one in your specialty?
And there was the straightforward way: trundle in a wheelbarrow of money and buy a ticket.
This I would never manage -- I had eighty-seven cents at that moment -- but it had caused me to think about it steadily. Of the boys in our school half admitted that they wanted to space, half pretended not to care, knowing how feeble the chances were -- plus a handful of creeps who wouldn't leave Earth for any reason. But we talked about it and some of us were determined to go. I didn't break into a rash until American Express and Thos. Cook & Son announced tourist excursions.
I saw their ads in National Geographic while waiting to have my teeth cleaned. After that I never was the same.
The idea that any rich man could simply lay cash on the line and go was more than I could stand. I just had to go. I would never be able to pay for it -- or, at least, that was so far in the future there was no use thinking about it. So what could I do to be sent?
You see stories about boys, poor-but-honest, who go to the top because they're smarter than anyone in the county, maybe the state. But they're not talking about me. I was in the top quarter of my graduating class but they do not give scholarships to M.I.T. for that -- not from Centerville High. I am stating a fact; our high school isn't very good. It's great to go to -- we're league champions in basketball and our square-dance team is state runner-up and we have a swell sock hop every Wednesday. Lots of school spirit.
But not much studying.
The emphasis is on what our principal, Mr. Hanley, calls "preparation for life" rather than on trigonometry. Maybe it does prepare you for life; it certainly doesn't prepare you for CalTech.
I didn't find this out myself. Sophomore year I brought home a questionnaire cooked up by our group project in "Family Living" in social studies. One question read: "How is your family council organized?"
At dinner I said, "Dad, how is our family council organized?"
Mother said, "Don't disturb your father, dear."
Dad said, "Eh? Let me see that."
He read it, then told me to fetch my textbooks. I had not brought them home, so he sent me to school to get them. Fortunately the building was open -- rehearsals for the Fall Blow-Out. Dad rarely gave orders but when he did he expected results.
I had a swell course that semester -- social study, commercial arithmetic, applied English (the class had picked "slogan writing" which was fun), handicrafts (we were building sets for the Blow-Out), and gym -- which was basketball practice for me; I wasn't tall enough for first team but a reliable substitute gets his varsity letter his senior year. All in all, I was doing well in school and knew it.
Dad read all my textbooks that night; he is a fast reader. In social study I reported that our family was an informal democracy; it got by -- the class was arguing whether the chairmanship of a council should rotate or be elective, and whether a grandparent living in the home was eligible. We decided that a grandparent was a member but should not be chairman, then we formed committees to draw up a constitution for an ideal family organization, which we would present to our families as the project's findings.
Dad was around school a good bit the next few days, which worried me -- when parents get overactive they are always up to something.
The following Saturday evening Dad called me into his study. He had a stack of textbooks on his desk and a chart of Centerville High School's curriculum, from American Folk Dancing to Life Sciences. Marked on it was my course, not only for that semester but for junior and senior years the way my faculty advisor and I had planned it.
Dad stared at me like a gentle grasshopper and said mildly, "Kip, do you intend to go to college?"
"Huh? Why, certainly, Dad!"
"With what?"
I hesitated. I knew it cost money. While there had been times when dollar bills spilled out of the basket onto the floor, usually it wouldn't take long to count what was in it. "Uh, maybe I'll get a scholarship. Or I could work my way."
He nodded. "No doubt...if you want to. Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them. But when I said, 'With what?' I was talking about up here." He tapped his skull.
I simply stared. "Why, I'll graduate from high school, Dad. That'll get me into college."
"So it will. Into our State University, or the State Aggie, or State Normal. But, Kip, do you know that they are flunking out 40 per cent of each freshman class?"
"I wouldn't flunk!"
"Perhaps not. But you will if you tackle any serious subject -- engineering, or science, or pre-med. You would, that is to say, if your preparation were based on this." He waved a hand at the curriculum.
I felt shocked. "Why, Dad, Center is a swell school." I remembered things they had told us in P.T.A. Auxiliary. "It's run along the latest, most scientific lines, approved by psychologists, and -- "
" -- and paying excellent salaries," he interrupted, "for a staff highly trained in modern pedagogy. Study projects emphasize practical human problems to orient the child in democratic social living, to fit him for the vital, meaningful tests of adult life in our complex modern culture. Excuse me, son; I've talked with Mr. Hanley. Mr. Hanley is sincere -- and to achieve these noble purposes we are spending more per student than is any other state save California and New York."
"Well...what's wrong with that?"
"What's a dangling participle?"
I didn't answer. He went on, "Why did Van Buren fail at re-election? How do you extract the cube root of eighty-seven?"
Van Buren had been a president; that was all I remembered. But I could answer the other one. "If you want a cube root, you look in a table in the back of the book."
Dad sighed. "Kip, do you think that table was brought down from on high by an archangel?" He shook his head sadly. "It's my fault, not yours. I should have looked into this years ago -- but I had assumed, simply because you liked to read and were quick at figures and clever with your hands, that you were getting an education."
"You think I'm not?"
"I know you are not. Son, Centerville High is a delightful place, well equipped, smoothly administered, beautifully kept. Not a 'blackboard jungle,' oh, no! -- I think you kids love the place. You should. But this -- " Dad slapped the curriculum chart angrily. "Twaddle! Beetle tracking! Occupational therapy for morons!"
I didn't know what to say. Dad sat and brooded. At last he said, "The law declares that you must attend school until you are eighteen or have graduated from high school."
"Yes, sir."
"The school you are in is a waste of time. The toughest course we can pick won't stretch your mind. But it's either this school, or send you away."
I said, "Doesn't that cost a lot of money?"
He ignored my question. "I don't favor boarding schools, a teenager belongs with his family. Oh, a tough prep school back east can drill you so that you can enter Stanford, or Yale, or any of the best -- but you can pick up false standards, too -- nutty ideas about money and social position and the right tailor. It took me years to get rid of ones I acquired that way. Your mother and I did not pick a small town for your boyhood unpurposefully. So you'll stay in Centerville High."
I looked relieved.
"Nevertheless you intend to go to college. Do you intend to become a professional man? Or will you look for snap courses in more elaborate ways to make bayberry candles? Son, your life is yours, to do with as you wish. But if you have any thought of going to a good university and studying anything of importance, then we must consider how to make best use of your next three years."
"Why, gosh, Dad, of course I want to go to a good -- "
"See me when you've thought it over. Good night."
I did for a week. And, you know, I began to see that Dad was right. Our project in "Family Living" was twaddle. What did those kids know about running a family? Or Miss Finchley? -- unmarried and no kids. The class decided unanimously that every child should have a room of his own, and be given an allowance "to teach him to handle money." Great stuff...but how about the Quinlan family, nine kids in a five-room house? Let's not be foolish.
Commercial arithmetic wasn't silly but it was a waste of time. I read the book through the first week; after that I was bored.
Dad switched me to algebra, Spanish, general science, English grammar and composition; the only thing unchanged was gym. I didn't have it too tough catching up; even those courses were watered down. Nevertheless, I started to learn, for Dad threw a lot of books at me and said, "Clifford, you would be studying these if you were not in overgrown kindergarten. If you soak up what is in them, you should be able to pass College Entrance Board Examinations. Possibly."
After that he left me alone; he meant it when he said that it was my choice. I almost bogged down -- those books were hard, not the predigested pap I got in school. Anybody who thinks that studying Latin by himself is a snap should try it.
I got discouraged and nearly quit -- then I got mad and leaned into it. After a while I found that Latin was making Spanish easier and vice versa. When Miss Hernandez, my Spanish teacher, found out I was studying Latin, she began tutoring me. I not only worked my way through Virgil, I learned to speak Spanish like a Mexicano.
Algebra and plane geometry were all the math our school offered; I went ahead on my own with advanced algebra and solid geometry and trigonometry and might have stopped so far as College Boards were concerned -- but math is worse than peanuts. Analytical geometry seems pure Greek until you see what they're driving at -- then, if you know algebra, it bursts on you and you race through the rest of the book. Glorious!
I had to sample calculus and when I got interested in electronics I needed vector analysis. General science was the only science course the school had and pretty general it was, too -- about Sunday supplement level. But when you read about chemistry and physics you want to do it, too. The barn was mine and I had a chem lab and a darkroom and an electronics bench and, for a while, a ham station. Mother was perturbed when I blew out the windows and set fire to the barn -- just a small fire -- but Dad was not. He simply suggested that I not manufacture explosives in a frame building.
When I took the College Boards my senior year I passed them.
It was early March my senior year that I told Dad I wanted to go to the Moon. The idea had been made acute by the announcement of commercial flights but I had been "space happy" ever since the day they announced that the Federation Space Corps had established a lunar base. Or earlier. I told Dad about my decision because I felt that he would know the answer. You see, Dad always found ways to do anything he decided to do.
When I was little we lived lots of places -- Washington, New York, Los Angeles, I don't know where -- usually in hotel apartments. Dad was always flying somewhere and when he was home there were visitors; I never saw him much. Then we moved to Centerville and he was always home, his nose in a book or working at his desk. When people wanted to see him they had to come to him. I remember once, when the money basket was empty, Dad told Mother that "a royalty was due." I hung around that day because I had never seen a king (I was eight) and when a visitor showed up I was disappointed because he didn't wear a crown. There was money in the basket the next day so I decided that he had been incognito (I was reading The Little Lame Prince) and had tossed Dad a purse of gold -- it was at least a year before I found out that a "royalty" could be money from a patent or a book or business stock, and some of the glamour went out of life. But this visitor, though not king, thought he could make Dad do what he wanted rather than what Dad wanted:
"Dr. Russell, I concede that Washington has an atrocious climate. But you will have air-conditioned offices."
"With clocks, no doubt. And secretaries. And soundproofing."
"Anything you want, Doctor."
"The point is, Mr. Secretary, I don't want them. This household has no clocks. Nor calendars. Once I had a large income and a larger ulcer; I now have a small income and no ulcer. I stay here."
"But the job needs you."
"The need is not mutual. Do have some more meat loaf."
Since Dad did not want to go to the Moon, the problem was mine. I got down college catalogs I had collected and started listing engineering schools. I had no idea how I could pay tuition or even eat -- but the first thing was to get myself accepted by a tough school with a reputation.
If not, I could enlist in the Air Force and try for an appointment. If I missed, I could become an enlisted specialist in electronics; Lunar Base used radar and astrar techs. One way or another, I was going.
Next morning at breakfast Dad was hidden behind the New York Times while Mother read the Herald-Trib. I had the Centerville Clarion but it's fit only for wrapping salami. Dad looked over his paper at me. "Clifford, here's something in your line."
"Huh?"
"Don't grunt; that is an uncouth privilege of seniors. This." He handed it to me.
It was a soap ad.
It announced that tired old gimmick, a gigantic super-colossal prize contest. This one promised a thousand prizes down to a last hundred, each of which was a year's supply of Skyway Soap.
Then I spilled cornflakes in my lap. The first prize was --
" -- An All-Expense Trip to the Moon!!!"That's the way it read, with three exclamation points -- only to me there were a dozen, with bursting bombs and a heavenly choir.
Just complete this sentence in twenty-five words or less: "I use Skyway Soap because......"
(And send in the usual soap wrapper or reasonable facsimile.)
There was more about " -- joint management of American Express and Thos. Cook -- " and " -- with the cooperation of the United States Air Force -- " and a list of lesser prizes. But all I saw, while milk and soggy cereal soaked my pants, was:
" -- Trip to the Moon!!!"Copyright © 1958 by The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize TrustCopyright renewed 1986 by The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust
Continues...
Excerpted from Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein Copyright © 2005 by Robert A. Heinlein. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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