If Rumfoord accused the Martians of breeding people as though people were no better than farm animals, he was accusing the Martians of doing no more than his own class had done. The strength of his class depended to some extent on sound money management — but depended to a much larger extent on marriages based cynically on the sorts of children likely to be produced.
Healthy, charming, wise children were the desiderata.
The most competent, if humorless, analysis of Rumfoord’s class is, beyond question, Waltham Kittredge’s The American Philosopher Kings. It was Kittredge who proved that the dass was in fact a family, with its loose ends neatly turned back into a hard core of consanguinity through the agency of cousin marriages. Rumfoord and his wife, for instance, were third cousins, and detested each other.
And when Rumfoord’s class was diagramed by Kittredge, it resembled nothing so much as the hard, ball-like knot known as a monkey’s fist.
Waltham Kittredge often floundered in his The American Philosopher Kings, trying to translate the atmosphere of Rumfoord’s class into words. Like the college professor he was, Kittredge groped only for big words, and, finding no apt ones, he coined a lot of untranslatable new ones.
Of all Kittredge’s jargon, only one term has ever found its way into conversation. The term is un-neurotic courage.
It was that sort of courage, of course, that carried Winston Niles Rumfoord out into space. It was pure courage — not only pure of lusts for fame and money, but pure of any drives that smack of the misfit or screwball.
There are, incidentally, two strong, common words that would have served handsomely, one or the other, in place of all of Kittredge’s jargon. The words are style and gallantry.
When Rumfoord became the first person to own a private space ship, paying fifty-eight million dollars out of his own pocket for it — that was style.
When the governments of the earth suspended all space exploration because of the chrono-synclastic infundibula, and Rumfoord announced that he was going to Mars — that was style.
When Rumfoord announced that he was taking a perfectly tremendous dog along, as though a space ship were nothing more than a sophisticated sports car, as though a trip to Mars were little more than a spin down the Connecticut Turnpike — that was style.
When it was unknown what would happen if a space ship went into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, and Rumfoord steered a course straight for the middle of one — that was gallantry indeed.
To contrast Malachi Constant of Hollywood with Winston Niles Rumfoord of Newport and Eternity:
Everything Rumfoord did he did with style, making all mankind look good.
Everything Constant did he did in style — aggressively, loudly, childishly, wastefully — making himself and mankind look bad.
Constant bristled with courage — but it was anything but un-neurotic. Every courageous thing he had ever done had been motivated by spitefulness and by goads from childhood that made fear seem puny indeed.
Constant, having just heard from Rumfoord that he was to be mated to Rumfoord’s wife on Mars, looked away from Rumfoord to the museum of remains along one wall. Constant’s hands were clasped together, tightening on each other pulsingly.
Constant cleared his throat several times. Then he whistled thinly between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. In all, he was behaving like a man who was waiting for a terrible pain to pass. He closed his eyes and sucked in air between his teeth. “Loo dee doo, Mr. Rumfoord,” he said softly. He opened his eyes. “Mars?” be said.
“Mars,” said Rumfoord. “Of course, that isn’t your ultimate destination — or Mercury either.”
“Mercury?” said Constant. He made an unbecoming quack of that lovely name.
“Your destination is Titan,” said Rumfoord, “but you visit Mars, Mercury, and Earth again before you get there.”
It is crucial to understand at what point in the history of punctual space exploration it was that Malachi Constant received the news of his prospective visits to Mars, Mercury, Earth, and Titan. The state of mind on Earth with regard to space exploration was much like the state of mind in Europe with regard to exploration of the Atlantic before Christopher Columbus set out.