“I’m going to give it, sir. We’re old men, both of us. I can get along without setting foot on this planet and so can you. But it looks different to young people. You know perfectly well that my people volunteered for the landing party not because they are angels, not scientists, not philanthropists…but because they are aching to go ashore. You know that; you told me as much, not ten minutes ago. If you are honest with yourself, you know that most of these children would never have signed up for this trip if they had suspected that they were to be locked up, never permitted to have what they call an “adventure.’ They didn’t sign up for money; they signed up for the far horizons. Now you rob them of their reasonable expectations.”
The Captain looked grim. He clenched end unclenched a fist, then said, “There may be something in what you say. But I must make the decisions; I can’t delegate that. My decision stands. You go and Bartlett stays.”
I said: (“Tell him he won’t get a darn’ message through!”)
Unc didn’t answer me. “I’m afraid not, Captain. This is a volunteer job…and I’m not volunteering.”
The Captain said slowly, “I’m not sure that volunteering is necessary. My authority to define a man’s duty is broad. I rather think you are refusing duty.”
“Not so; Captain. I didn’t say I wouldn’t take your orders; I just said I was not volunteering. But I’d ask for written orders, I think, and I would endorse them: ‘Accepted under protest,’ and ask to have a copy transmitted to the Foundation. I don’t volunteer.”
“But-confound it, man! You volunteered with the rest. That’s what you came in here for. And I picked you.”
Unc shook his head. “Not quite, Captain. We volunteered as a group. You turned us down as a group. If I gave you the impression that I was volunteering, any other way, I am sorry … but that’s how it is. Now if you will excuse me, sir, I’ll go back and tell my people you won’t have us.”
The Captain turned pink again. Then he suddenly started to roar with laughter. He jumped up and put his arm around Unc’s narrow shoulders. “You old scoundrel! You are an old scoundrel, a mutinous black-hearted scoundrel. You make me long for the days of bread-and-water and the rope’s end. Now sit back down and we’ll work this out. Bartlett, you can go,”
I left, reluctantly, and then stayed away from the other freaks because I didn’t want to answer questions. But Unc was thoughtful; he called me, mind to mind, as soon as he was out of the Captain’s cabin and told me the upshot. It was a compromise. He and I and Rupe and Sam would rotate, with the first trick (considered to be the most dangerous) to be his. The girls would take the shipside watch, with Dusty classed with them because of age. But a bone was thrown to them: once medicine and research classed the planet as safe, they would be allowed sightseeing, one at a time. “I had to twist his arm on that part,” Unc admitted, “but he agreed.”
Then it turned out to be an anticlimax; Connie was about as dangerous as Kansas. Before any human went outside the ship other than encased in a quarantine suit we exposed rats and canaries and hamsters to natural atmosphere; they loved it. When the first party went ashore, still in quarantine suits but breathing Connie’s air after it had passed through electrostatic precipitators, two more experimental animals went with them-Bernhard van Houten and Percival the Pig.
Van had been down in the dumps ever since his twin was killed; he volunteered and I think Dr. Devereaux urged the Captain to let him. Somebody had to do it; you can make all the microscopic and chemical tests you like-the day comes when a living man has to expose his. skin to a planet to find out if it is friendly. As Dr. Babcock says, eventually you must climb the tree. So Van went ashore without a quarantine suit, wearing shorts and shirt and shoes and looking like a scoutmaster.