ROCKET SHIP GALILEO By Robert A. Heinlein

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 Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins in the drawing room; Ross was not in sight. Mr. Jenkins shook hands with him and offered him a chair.

“Cigarette, Doctor? Cigar?”

“Neither, thank you.”

“If you smoke a pipe,” Mrs. Jenkins added, “please do so.” Cargraves thanked her and gratefully stoked up his old stinker.

“Ross tells me a strange story,” Mr. 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.

Mr. 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.”

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