“The rocket is just about completed,” Elwood said.
He felt Mary Anne’s hand tighten on his sleeve and realised with elation that she was a scientist’s daughter to her fingertips. He was gratified quite as much by the sudden hiss of Melvin’s indrawn breath.
“Come along—I’ll show you!” he said.
Elwood derived the most intense pleasure from showing groups of visiting dignitaries—scientific big shots for the most part—through his basement laboratory. But when the dignitaries happened to be his own children his elation knew no bounds.
Down the basement stairs they trooped, Melvin to the right of him, Mary Anne to the left. A door opened with a gentle click, a light came on and Melvin let out a yell which resounded through the house.
“You’ve got the blast reflector set up. Pop!”
The rocket stood out, silver on black at its base, with a dull shine where it tapered to catch and hold the light.
It was not large as rockets go. It was barely five feet in height, a miracle of technical craftsmanship wrought by the unerring skill and scientific knowhow of a very practical man with a family to support. But it had been built with an eye to beauty as well and as the light glimmered and danced on its sloping vanes it seemed as gracefully poised for flight as some half-mythical bird cast in metal by a long-vanished elfin race.
As gracefully poised and as shiningly beautiful. …
It was Mary Anne who broke the spell. “Daddy, will it really go to the moon?”
Elwood looked down at his daughter and patted her tousled red-gold hair. “How many times must I tell you it isn’t an experimental model?” he chided. “It was designed for actual space flight.”
“But daddy—”
“If you’ve any more silly notions you’d better get rid of them right now. You may never get another chance. Yesterday Melvin and I discussed the details as fellow-scientists. Suppose you tell her just how much the Government is contributing, son.”
“Forty thousand dollars!” Melvin said promptly, rolling the figure over his tongue as though it had some mysterious magic of its own which could elevate him to man’s estate—if he repeated it often enough.
“A research grant,” Elwood added as if thinking aloud for his own benefit. “I had a tough time persuading them to let me do all the construction work right here in my own laboratory. I’ve probably cut more yards of official red tape than any odd duck since Archimedes.”
He smiled a little ruefully. “In case you’re interested—I’ve had to pay through the nose for the technical assistance I’ve been getting. Those owl-faced characters you’ve seen drifting in and out won’t work for peanuts.”
“But all of the rockets in the stereo-cineramas are much bigger!” Mary Anne protested. “Why is that, daddy?”
“We’ve just about seen the end of the huge outmoded, stratosphere observation-type rockets,” Elwood replied, including both children in his glance. “In the future observation rockets will be much smaller and there is little to be gained by attempting to send a large rocket to the moon. The cost would be a thousand times as great.”
“But daddy, how could such a little rocket ever get as far as the moon.”
“Perhaps the worst mistake an individual or a society can make is to confuse size with power,” Elwood said. “There is a tiny bee which, in proportion to its size, can travel faster than our cleverest flight specialists in their jet planes.”
“But daddy—”
“Don’t look so incredulous, honeybunch. You remind me of your mother. Melvin knows just how much progress we’ve made in atomic research since Eniwetok. Tell her, son.”
“The primitive hydrogen bomb tested at Eniwetok laid the groundwork for the storage of vast amounts of nuclear power in blast compartments a few inches square,” Melvin said pridefully. “We can now power a very small rocket designed for space flight with the equivalent of fifty million tons of T.N.T..”
“You left out one vital consideration, Melvin,” Elwood said. “The automatic-control factor.”
“Pop’s right,” Melvin said, confronting his sister almost accusingly. “The power won’t be released all at once.”
“It will be released in successive stages,” Elwood corroborated. “We hope eventually to regulate the stages—or steps, as they are called—in such a way that other rockets, identical in design, will build up velocities approaching the speed of light.”
Elwood picked up an odd-looking instrument from the workbench against which he had been leaning. As he fingered it idly he enjoyed his daughter’s stunned acceptance of his accomplishment, realising more than ever what an important contribution he had made to man’s eventual conquest of the stars.
That conquest would come in good time. Even now enough atomic potential had been stored in the rocket to carry it to Alpha Centauri—and back. The blast mechanism had to have an overload to function at all. But only a tiny fraction of the potential would be needed to make the moon flight an accomplished fact.
The rocket wouldn’t be traveling at anything like the speed of light. But just as soon as a few more complicated technical details had been worked out. …
Elwood felt suddenly very tired. His back ached with stiffness and his eyelids throbbed. Fortunately he knew the reason for his weariness and refused to become alarmed. He had simply been driving himself too hard. But with the rocket so near completion he couldn’t afford to let even a draft of cold wind blow upon him and increase his chances of becoming really ill.
“If it’s all right with you, kiddies,” he said, “I’m going upstairs to bed. I’m practically out on my feet.”
“Aw, Pop, it isn’t six o’clock yet!” Melvin protested.
Instantly Mary Anne came to his rescue. “Daddy, you’re not getting enough rest!” she said, her eyes darting to the rocket and then to her brother in fierce reproach.
“I ought to turn in early when I can,” Elwood said. “If your mother wasn’t at Aunt Martha’s I’d have to sit up half the night convincing her I’ve got enough practical sense left to shave and bathe myself and take in the mail.”
“Goodnight, daddy!” Mary Anne said.
“Goodnight, kids.
