“So why should we cry out in surprise and pain now when God says to us what He said to the people who builded the Tower of Babel: ‘No! Get away from there! You aren’t going to Heaven or anywhere else with that thing! Scatter, you hear? Quit talking the language of science to each other! Nothing will be restrained from you which you have imagined to do, if you all keep on talking the language of science to each other, and I don’t want that! I, your Lord God on High want things restrained from you, so you will quit thinking about crazy towers and rockets to Heaven, and start thinking about how to be better neighbors and husbands and wives and daughters and sons! Don’t look to rockets for salvation – look to your homes and churches!’”
Bobby Denton’s voice grew hoarse and hushed. “You want to fly through space? God has already given you the most wonderful space ship in all creation! Yes! Speed? You want speed? The space ship God has given you goes sixty-six thousand miles an hour – and will keep on running at that speed for all eternity, if God wills it. You want a space ship that will carry men in comfort? You’ve got it! It won’t carry just a rich man and his dog, or just five men or ten men. No! God is no piker! He’s given you a space ship that will carry billions of men, women, and children! Yes! And they don’t have to stay strapped in chairs or wear fishbowls over their heads. No! Not on God’s space ship. The people on God’s space ship can go swimming, and walk in the sunshine and play baseball and go ice skating and go for family rides in the family automobile on Sunday after church and a family chicken dinner!”
Bobby Denton nodded. “Yes!” he said. “And if anybody thinks his God is mean for putting things out in space to stop us from flying out there, just let him remember the space ship God already gave us. And we don’t have to buy the fuel for it, and worry and fret over what kind of fuel to use. No! God worries about all that.
“God told us what we had to do on this wonderful space ship. He wrote the rules so anybody could understand them. You don’t have to be a physicist or a great chemist or an Albert Einstein to understand them. No! And He didn’t make a whole lot of rules, either. They tell me that if they were to fire The Whale, they would have to make eleven thousand separate checks before they could be sure it was ready to go: Is this valve open, is that valve dosed, is that wire tight, is that tank full? – and on and on and on to eleven thousand things to check. Here on God’s space ship, God only gives us ten things to check – and not for any little trip to some big, dead poisonous stones out in space, but for a trip to the Kingdom of Heaven! Think of it! Where would you rather be tomorrow – on Mars or in the Kingdom of Heaven?
“You know what the check list is on God’s round, green space ship? Do I have to tell you? You want to hear God’s countdown?”
The Love Crusaders shouted back that they did.
“Ten! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you covet thy neighbor’s house, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor’s?”
“No!” cried the Love Crusaders.
“Nine! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you bear false witness against thy neighbor?”
“No!” cried the Love Crusaders. “Eight! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you steal?” “No!” cried the Love Crusaders. “Seven! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you commit adultery?”
“No!” cried the Love Crusaders.
“Six! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you kill?”
“No!” cried the Love Crusaders.
“Five! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you honor thy father and thy mother?”
“Yes!” cried the Love Crusaders.
“Four! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy?”
“Yes!” cried the Love Crusaders.
“Three! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you take the name of the Lord thy God in vain?”
“No!” cried the Love Crusaders.
“Two! – ” said Bobby Denton. “Do you make any graven images?”
“No!” cried the Love Crusaders.
“One! – ” cried Bobby Denton. “Do you put any gods before the one true Lord thy God?”
“No!” cried the Love Crusaders.
“Blast off!” shouted Bobby Denton joyfully. “Paradise, here we come! Blast off, children, and Amen!”
“Well – ” murmured Malachi Constant, there in the chimneylike room under the staircase in Newport, “it looks like the messenger is finally going to be used.”
“What was that?” said Rumfoord.
“My name – it means faithful messenger,” said Constant. “What’s the message?”
“Sorry,” said Rumfoord, “I know nothing about any message.” He cocked his head quizzically. “Somebody said something to you about a message?”
Constant turned his palms upward. “I mean – what am I going to go to all this trouble to get to Triton for?”
“Titan,” Rumfoord corrected him.
“Titan, Triton,” said Constant. “What the blast would I go there for?” Blast was a weak, prissy, Eagle-Scoutish word for Constant to use – and it took him a moment to realize why he had used it. Blast was what space cadets on television said when a meteorite carried away a control surface, or the navigator turned out to be a space pirate from the planet Zircon. He stood. “Why the hell should I go there?”
“You do – I promise you,” said Rumfoord.
Constant went over to the window, some of his arrogant strength returning. “I tell you right now,” he said, “I’m not going.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Rumfoord.
“I’m supposed to do something for you when I get there?” said Constant.
“No,” said Rumfoord.
“Then why are you sorry?” said Constant. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” said Rumfoord. “I’m only sorry for you. You’ll really be missing something.”
“Like what?” said Constant.
“Well – the most pleasant climate imaginable, for one thing,” said Rumfoord.
“Climate!” said Constant contemptuously. “With houses in Hollywood, the Vale of Kashmir, Acapulco, Manitoba, Tahiti, Paris, Bermuda, Rome, New York, and Capetown, I should leave Earth in search of happier climes?”
“There’s more to Titan than just climate” said Rumfoord. “The women, for instance, are the most beautiful creatures between the Sun and Betelgeuse.”
Constant guffawed bitterly. “Women!” he said. “You think I’m having trouble getting beautiful women? You think I’m love-starved, and the only way I’ll ever get close to a beautiful woman is to climb on a rocket ship and head for one of Saturn’s moons? Are you kidding? I’ve had women so beautiful, anybody between the Sun and Betelgeuse would sit down and cry if the women said as much as hello to ‘em!”
He took out his billfold, and slipped from it a photograph of his most recent conquest. There was no question about it – the girl in the photograph was staggeringly beautiful. She was Miss Canal Zone, a runner-up in the Miss Universe Contest – and in fact far more beautiful than the winner of the contest. Her beauty had frightened the judges.
Constant handed Rumfoord the photograph. “They got anything like that on Titan?” he said.
Rumfoord studied the photograph respectfully, handed it back. “No – ” he said, “nothing like that on Titan.”
“O.K.,” said Constant, feeling very much in control of his own destiny again, “climate, beautiful women – what else?”
“Nothing else,” said Rumfoord mildly. He shrugged. “Oh – art objects, if you like art.”
“I’ve got the biggest private art collection in the world,” said Constant.
Constant had inherited this famous art collection. The collection had been made by his father – or, rather, by agents of his father. It was scattered through museums all over the world, each piece plainly marked as a part of the Constant Collection. The collection had been made and then deployed in this manner on the recommendation of the Director of Public Relations of Magnum Opus, Incorporated, the corporation whose sole purpose was to manage the Constant affairs.
The purpose of the collection had been to prove how generous and useful and sensitive billionaires could be. The collection had turned out to be a perfectly gorgeous investment, as well.
“That takes care of art,” said Rumfoord.
Constant was about to return the photograph of Miss Canal Zone to his billfold, when he felt that he held not one photograph but two. There was a photograph behind that of Miss Canal Zone. He supposed that that was a photograph of Miss Canal Zone’s predecessor, and he thought that he might as well show Rumfoord her, too – show Rumfoord what a celestial lulu he had given the gate to.