Rocket Ship Galileo

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “Well, Dad, it was like this: We were making a full-power captive run on the new rocket and—” He sketched out the events.

  Mr. Jenkins nodded and said, “I see. Come along, boys.” He started toward the converted stable which housed the family car. “Ross, run tell your mother where we are going. Tell her I said not to worry.” He went on, leaning on his cane a bit as he walked. Mr. Jenkins was a retired electrical engineer, even-tempered and taciturn.

  Art could not remember his own father; Morrie’s father was still living but a very different personality. Mr. Abrams ruled a large and noisy, children-cluttered household by combining a loud voice with lavish affection.

  When Ross returned, puffing, his father waved away his offer to drive. “No, thank you. I want us to get there.” The trip was made in silence. Mr. Jenkins left them in the foyer of the hospital with an injunction to wait.

  “What do you think he will do?” Morrie asked nervously.

  “I don’t know. Dad’ll be fair about it.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Morrie admitted. “Right now I don’t want justice; I want charity.”

  “I hope Uncle Don is all right,” Art put in.

  “Huh? Oh, yes, indeed! Sorry, Art, I’m afraid we’ve kind of forgotten your feelings. The principal thing is for him to get well, of course.”

  “To tell the truth, before I knew it was Uncle Don, I was more worried over the chance that I might have gotten Mother into a law suit than I was over what we might have done to a stranger.”

  “Forget it,” Ross advised. “A person can’t help worrying over his own troubles. Dad says the test is in what you do, not in what you think. We all did what we could for him.”

  “Which was mostly not to touch him before the doctor came,” Morrie pointed out.

  “Which was what he needed.”

  “Yes,” agreed Art, “but I don’t check you, Ross, on it not mattering what you think as long as you act all right. It seems to me that wrong ideas can be just as bad as wrong ways to do things.”

  “Easy, now. If a guy does something brave when he’s scared to death is he braver than the guy who does the same thing but isn’t scared?”

  “He’s less…no, he’s more… You’ve got me all mixed up. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Not quite, maybe. Skip it.”

  They sat in silence for a long time. Then Morrie said, “Anyhow, I hope he’s all right.”

  Mr. Jenkins came out with news. “Well, boys, this is your lucky day. Skull uninjured according to the X-ray. The patient woke when they sewed up his scalp. I talked with him and he has decided not to scalp any of you in return.” He smiled.

  “May I see him?” asked Art.

  “Not tonight. They’ve given him a hypo and he is asleep. I telephoned your mother, Art.”

  “You did? Thank you, sir.”

  “She’s expecting you. I’ll drop you by.”

  Art’s interview with his mother was not too difficult; Mr. Jenkins had laid a good foundation. In fact, Mrs. Mueller was incapable of believing that Art could be “bad.” But she did worry about him and Mr. Jenkins had soothed her, not only about Art but also as to the welfare of her brother.

  Morrie had still less trouble with Mr. Abrams. After being assured that the innocent bystander was not badly hurt, he had shrugged. “So what? So we have lawyers in the family for such things. At fifty cents a week it’ll take you about five hundred years to pay it off. Go to bed.”

  “Yes, Poppa.”

  The boys gathered at the rocket testing grounds the next morning, after being assured by a telephone call to the hospital that Doctor Cargraves had spent a good night. They planned to call on him that afternoon; at the moment they wanted to hold a post-mortem on the ill-starred Starstruck V.

  The first job was to gather up the pieces, try to reassemble them, and then try to figure out what had happened. Art’s film of the event would be necessary to complete the story, but it was not yet ready.

  They were well along with the reassembling when they heard a whistle and a shout from the direction of the gate. “Hello there! Anybody home?”

  “Coming!” Ross answered. They skirted the barricade to where they could see the gate. A tall, husky figure waited there—a man so young, strong, and dynamic in appearance that the bandage around his head seemed out of place, and still more so in contrast with his friendly grin.

  “Uncle Don!” Art yelled as he ran up to meet him.

  “Hi,” said the newcomer. “You’re Art. Well, you’ve grown a lot but you haven’t changed much.” He shook hands.

  “What are you doing out of bed? You’re sick.”

  “Not me,” his uncle asserted. “I’ve got a release from the hospital to prove it. But introduce me—are these the rest of the assassins?”

  “Oh—excuse me. Uncle Don, this is Maurice Abrams and this is Ross Jenkins… Doctor Cargraves.”

  “How do you do, sir?”

  “Glad to know you, Doctor.”

  “Glad to know you, too.” Cargraves started through the gate, then hesitated. “Sure this place isn’t booby-trapped?”

  Ross looked worried. “Say, Doctor—we’re all sorry as can be. I still can’t see how it happened. This gate is covered by the barricade.”

  “Ricochet shot probably. Forget it. I’m not hurt. A little skin and a little blood—that’s all. If I had turned back at your first warning sign, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “How did you happen to be coming here?”

  “A fair question. I hadn’t been invited, had I?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that.”

  “But I owe you an explanation. When I breezed into town yesterday, I already knew of the Galileo Club; Art’s mother had mentioned it in letters. When my sister told me where Art was and what he was up to, I decided to slide over in hope of getting here in time to watch your test run. Your hired girl told me how to find my way out here.”

  “You mean you hurried out here just to see this stuff we play around with?”

  “Sure. Why not? I’m interested in rockets.”

  “Yes, but—we really haven’t got anything to show you. These are just little models.”

  “A new model,” Doctor Cargraves answered seriously, “of anything can be important, no matter who makes it nor how small it is. I wanted to see how you work. May I?”

  “Oh, certainly, sir—we’d be honored.”

  Ross showed their guest around, with Morrie helping out and Art chipping in. Art was pink-faced and happy—this was his uncle, one of the world’s great, a pioneer of the Atomic Age. They inspected the test stand and the control panel. Cargraves looked properly impressed and tut-tutted over the loss of Starstruck V.

  As a matter of fact he was impressed. It is common enough in the United States for boys to build and take apart almost anything mechanical, from alarm clocks to hiked-up jaloppies. It is not so common for them to understand the sort of controlled and recorded experimentation on which science is based. Their equipment was crude and their facilities limited, but the approach was correct and the scientist recognized it.

  The stainless steel mirrors used to bounce the spotlight beams over the barricade puzzled Doctor Cargraves. “Why take so much trouble to protect light bulbs?” he asked. “Bulbs are cheaper than stainless steel.”

  “We were able to get the mirror steel free,” Ross explained. “The spotlight bulbs take cash money.”

  The scientist chuckled. “That reason appeals to me. Well, you fellows have certainly thrown together quite a set-up. I wish I had seen your rocket before it blew up.”

  “Of course the stuff we build,” Ross said diffidently, “can’t compare with a commercial unmanned rocket, say like a mail-carrier. But we would like to dope out something good enough to go after the junior prizes.”

  “Ever competed?”

  “Not yet. Our physics class in high school entered one last year in the novice classification. It wasn’t much—just a powder job, but
that’s what got us started, though we’ve all been crazy about rockets ever since I can remember.”

  “You’ve got some fancy control equipment. Where do you do your machine-shop work? Or do you have it done?”

  “Oh, no. We do it in the high-school shop. If the shop instructor okays you, you can work after school on your own.”

  “It must be quite a high school,” the physicist commented. “The one I went to didn’t have a machine shop.”

  “I guess it is a pretty progressive school,” Ross agreed. “It’s a mechanical-arts-and-science high school and it has more courses in math and science and shop work than most. It’s nice to be able to use the shops. That’s where we built our telescope.”

  “Astronomers too, eh?”

  “Well—Morrie is the astronomer of the three of us.”

  “Is that so?” Cargraves inquired, turning to Morrie.

  Morrie shrugged. “Oh, not exactly. We all have our hobbies. Ross goes in for chemistry and rocket fuels. Art is a radio ham and a camera nut. You can study astronomy sitting down.”

  “I see,” the physicist replied gravely. “A matter of efficient self-protection. I knew about Art’s hobbies. By the way, Art, I owe you an apology; yesterday afternoon I took a look in your basement. But don’t worry—I didn’t touch anything.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about your touching stuff, Uncle Don,” Art protested, turning pinker, “but the place must have looked a mess.”

  “It didn’t look like a drawing room but it did look like a working laboratory. I see you keep notebooks—no, I didn’t touch them, either!”

  “We all keep notebooks,” Morrie volunteered. “That’s the influence of Ross’s old man.”

  “So?”

  “Dad told me he did not care,” Ross explained, “how much I messed around as long as I kept it above the tinker-toy level. He used to make me submit notes to him on everything I tried and he would grade them on clearness and completeness. After a while I got the idea and he quit.”

  “Does he help you with your projects?”

  “Not a bit. He says they’re our babies and we’ll have to nurse them.”

  They prepared to adjourn to their clubhouse, an out-building left over from the days when the Old Ross Place was worked as a farm. They gathered up the forlorn pieces of Starstruck V, while Ross checked each item. “I guess that’s all,” he announced and started to pick up the remains.

  “Wait a minute,” Morrie suggested. “We never did search for the piece that clipped Doctor Cargraves.”

  “That’s right,” the scientist agreed. “I have a personal interest in that item, blunt instrument, missile, shrapnel, or whatever. I want to know how close I came to playing a harp.”

  Ross looked puzzled. “Come here, Art,” he said in a low voice.

  “I am here. What do you want?”

  “Tell me what piece is still missing—”

  “What difference does it make?” But he bent over the box containing the broken rocket and checked the items. Presently he too looked puzzled. “Ross—”

  “Yeah?”

  “There isn’t anything missing.”

  “That’s what I thought. But there has to be.”

  “Wouldn’t it be more to the point,” suggested Cargraves, “to look around near where I was hit?”

  “I suppose so.”

  They all searched, they found nothing. Presently they organized a system which covered the ground with such thoroughness that anything larger than a medium-small ant should have come to light. They found a penny and a broken Indian arrowhead, but nothing resembling a piece of the exploded rocket.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” the doctor admitted. “Just where was I when you found me?”

  “Right in the gateway,” Morrie told him. “You were collapsed on your face and—”

  “Just a minute. On my face?”

  “Yes. You were—”

  “But how did I get knocked on my face? I was facing toward your testing ground when the lights went out. I’m sure of that. I should have fallen backwards.”

  “Well… I’m sure you didn’t, sir. Maybe it was a ricochet, as you said.”

  “Hmm…maybe.” The doctor looked around. There was nothing near the gate which would make a ricochet probable. He looked at the spot where he had lain and spoke to himself.

  “What did you say, doctor?”

  “Uh? Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Forget it. It was just a silly idea I had. It couldn’t be.” He straightened up as if dismissing the whole thing. “Let’s not waste any more time on my vanishing ‘blunt instrument.’ It was just curiosity. Let’s get on back.”

  The clubhouse was a one-story frame building about twenty feet square. One wall was filled with Ross’s chemistry workbench with the usual clutter of test-tube racks, bunsen burners, awkward-looking, pretzel-like arrangements of glass tubing, and a double sink which looked as if it had been salvaged from a junk dealer. A home-made hood with a hinged glass front occupied one end of the bench. Parallel to the adjacent wall, in a little glass case, a precision balance of a good make but of very early vintage stood mounted on its own concrete pillar.

  “We ought to have air-conditioning,” Ross told the doctor, “to do really good work.”

  “You haven’t done so badly,” Cargraves commented. The boys had covered the rough walls with ply board; the cracks had been filled and the interior painted with washable enamel. The floor they had covered with linoleum, salvaged like the sink, but serviceable. The windows and door were tight. The place was clean.

  “Humidity changes could play hob with some of your experiments, however,” he went on. “Do you plan to put in air-conditioning sometime?”

  “I doubt it. I guess the Galileo Club is about to fold up.”

  “What? Oh, that seems a shame.”

  “It is and it isn’t. This fall we all expect to go away to Tech.”

  “I see. But aren’t there any other members?”

  “There used to be, but they’ve moved, gone away to school, gone in the army. I suppose we could have gotten new members but we didn’t try. Well…we work together well and…you know how it is.”

  Cargraves nodded. He felt that he knew more explicitly than did the boy. These three were doing serious work; most of their schoolmates, even though mechanically minded, would be more interested in needling a stripped-down car up to a hundred miles an hour than in keeping careful notes. “Well, you are certainly comfortable here. It’s a shame you can’t take it with you.”

  A low, wide, padded seat stretched from wall to wall opposite the chemistry layout. The other two boys were sprawled on it, listening. Behind them, bookshelves had been built into the wall. Jules Verne crowded against Mark’s Handbook of Mechanical Engineering. Cargraves noted other old friends: H.G. Wells’ Seven Famous Novels, The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and Smyth’s Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Jammed in with them, side by side with Ley’s Rockets and Eddington’s Nature of the Physical World, were dozens of pulp magazines of the sort with robot men or space ships on their covers.

  He pulled down a dog-eared copy of Haggard’s When the Earth Trembled and settled his long body between the boys. He was beginning to feel at home. These boys he knew; he had only to gaze back through the corridors of his mind to recognize himself.

  Ross said, “If you’ll excuse me, I want to run up to the house.”

  Cargraves grunted, “Sure thing,” with his nose still in the book.

  Ross came back to announce, “My mother would like all of you to stay for lunch.”

  Morrie grinned, Art looked troubled. “My mother thinks I eat too many meals over here as it is,” he protested feebly, his eyes on his uncle.

  Cargraves took him by the arm. “I’ll go your bail on this one, Art,” he assured him; then to Ross, “Please tell your mother that we are very happy to accept.”

  At lunch the adults talked, the boys listened. The scientist, his turban bandage looking stranger th
an ever, hit it off well with his elders. Any one would hit it off well with Mrs. Jenkins, who could have been friendly and gracious at a cannibal feast, but the boys were not used to seeing Mr. Jenkins in a chatty mood.

  The boys were surprised to find out how much Mr. Jenkins knew about atomics. They had the usual low opinion of the mental processes of adults; Mr. Jenkins they respected but had subconsciously considered him the anachronism which most of his generation in fact was, a generation as a whole incapable of realizing that the world had changed completely a few years before, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945.

  Yet Mr. Jenkins seemed to know who Doctor Cargraves was and seemed to know that he had been retained until recently by North American Atomics. The boys listened carefully to find out what Doctor Cargraves planned to do next, but Mr. Jenkins did not ask and Cargraves did not volunteer the information.

  After lunch the three and their guest went back to the clubhouse. Cargraves spent most of the afternoon spread over the bunk, telling stories of the early days at Oak Ridge when the prospect of drowning in the inescapable, adhesive mud was more dismaying than the ever-present danger of radioactive poisoning, and the story, old but ever new and eternally exciting, of the black, rainy morning in the New Mexico desert when a great purple-and-golden mushroom had climbed to the stratosphere, proclaiming that man had at last unloosed the power of the suns.

  Then he shut up, claiming that he wanted to reread the old H. Rider Haggard novel he had found. Ross and Morrie got busy at the bench; Art took a magazine. His eyes kept returning to his fabulous uncle. He noticed that the man did not seem to be turning the pages very often.

  Quite a while later Doctor Cargraves put down his book. “What do you fellows know about atomics?”

  The boys exchanged glances before Morrie ventured to answer. “Not much I guess. High-school physics can’t touch it, really, and you can’t mess with it in a home laboratory.”

  “That’s right. But you are interested?”

  “Oh, my, yes! We’ve read what we could—Pollard and Davidson, and Gamov’s new book. But we don’t have the math for atomics.”

  “How much math do you have?”