The teacher hardly knew what he meant. “Enrichment? Well, we haven’t been doing that lately, Foster. I suppose it’s still in the optional curriculum—”
“Yes, sir, Form Sixty-eight, English, Paragraph Forty-five, Section Seven. ‘Opportunities shall be afforded to students believed qualified by advisers to undertake projects equivalent to College Freshman English term papers, and the grades therefor shall be entered on the students’ records and weighed as evidence in assigning students’ positions in the graduating class.”
Mr. Edel had found Foster’s card by then and was studying it. The boy’s schedule was brutal, but his grade average was somewhere between B-plus and A. “Foster,” he told him, “there’s such a thing as a breaking point. I—I understand you want very much to go to Colorado Springs.” (Poor Fuqua! What had become of . . . ?)
“Very much, sir. They expect the best—they have a right to expect the best. I’m not complaining, Mr. Edel, but there are girls with straight-A averages who aren’t working as hard as I am. Well, I’ve just got to beat them at their own game.”
Mr. Edel understood. It wasn’t just girls, though mostly it was. There was a type of student who was no trouble, who did the work, every smidgen of it, who read every word of every assigned page, who turned in accurate, curiously dead, echoless, unresonant papers which you could not in decency fault though you wanted to tear them up and throw them in their authors’ bland faces. You had a curious certainty that the adeptly memorized data they reeled back on demand vanished forever once the need for a grade was gone, that it never by any chance became bone of their bone to strengthen them against future trials. Often enough when you asked them what they hoped to be they smilingly said, “I am going to teach.”
Foster, now. A boy who fought with the material and whipped it. He said, “Why so strong, Foster? What’s it about?”
The boy said, “Space, partly. And my father. Two big challenges, Mr. Edel. I think I’m a very lucky fellow. Here I am with a new frontier opening up, but there are lot’s of fellows my age who don’t see it. I see it because of my father. It’s wonderful to have a challenge like that: Can I be the man he is? Can I learn even more, be a better leader, a better engineer?”
Mr. Edel was moved deeply. “Your father just missed space flight, is that it?”
“By a whisker,” Foster said regretfully. “Nothing can be done about it except what I’m doing.”
“He’s an aeroengineer?”
“He can do anything,” Foster said positively. “And he has!”
A picture of the elder Foster was forming in Mr. Edel’s mind-young Fireball grown taller, solider and grizzled, the jaw firmed and controlled, the voice more powerful and sure. And, unquestionably, leather puttees.
Foster’s card said he had no mother, which made it more understandable. This fine boy was hard material honed to an edge, single-purposed. Did he have a young Hap Arnold here in his office? A Curtis LeMay? They had to come from somewhere, those driving, wide-ranging leaders and directors of millions. The slow-rolling conquest of space needed such men, first to navigate and pilot so no navigator or pilot would ever be able to snow them, then to move up step by step through research to command, then to great command.
“I’ll bet on you, Foster,” he said abruptly. “We can’t let the—the future English teachers outpoint you with their snap courses. You’ll do me a term paper on … on Henry V. First, read it. Read hell out of it and take notes. Get in touch with me when you think you’re ready to talk it over. I happen to be a bachelor; I have time in the evenings. And talk it over with your father, if you can persuade him to read along with you.”
Foster laughed. “I’m afraid Dad’s much too busy for Shakespeare, but I’ll try. Thanks, Mr. Edel.” He left.
Mr. Edel, with considerable trouble, found a pad of forms in his desk which covered Enrichment Projects, English, Adviser’s Permission for. He filled one out for Foster, looked it over and