The O’Neil Drive was just as baffling as the way O’Neil had developed it. It was large and required a tremendous energy source, but it could drive a ship out of the Earth’s powerful gravity field. The power source was extremely complicated and approached an unbelievable ninety-nine per cent efficiency. The actual drive unit itself was as deceptively simple in appearance and construction as an electrical transformer. It didn’t look like it could work, but it did.
And, most amazing of all, Bill O’Neil was in control of his company. He had matched wits with the financial brains of the world and had come out of the game one-up. His patents were so basic and his drive unit so indispensable that he also became “Mister Space Travel.” When he landed the Venture on the Moon, the entire Solar System became his plaything, lock, stock, and barrel. Rockets were no longer the only way, they were not even the best way, so they were abandoned.
It did not happen overnight, but when rocketry collapsed, it did so with a bang. Enright remembered the day with bitterness. He had just successfully completed the development tests at Devil’s Head on the first catalyst monopropellant unit. He had advanced the science of rocketry, and he had been elated that day.
That had also been the day when Propulsion Research common stock dropped from 67½ to 9¼ in four hours on the New York Exchange. The government had dropped three big P-R contracts in favor of the O’Neil Drive. Devil’s Head never got off another run. Propulsion Research went: into receivership five months later. Enright had seen his beloved test stand equipment and machine tools auctioned off. It left him a broken man, his life shattered and sold to the highest bidder.
He turned off at the tracks and wailed while a fast freight passed, its turbine locomotive howling at him with a sound akin to that of his beloved rockets. Beating his way through strings of empty freight cars in the marshaling yards, he wound his way around a smoldering slag heap from a nearby smelter and started down the muddy flats of the Platte River.
There was a light glowing in his shack he noted as he reached it.
He didn’t remember having left it on, but he’d gone out in a hurry for that drink at Marlin’s. He realized he was getting forgetful lately. Have to watch it after this. Shrugging, he pushed open the door and went in.
A stocky, heavy-set man got up from a box in the corner. His pugnacious Irish features were set in a halfsmile. “Hello, Henry. I knew you’d come back if I waited long enough.”
Enright stopped dead, his hand still on the door. He shook his head violently, thinking the alcohol was making him see things again. But the man didn’t disappear. Throwing the door open again, Enright made a quick jerk of his head. “Get out! You’ve got no business here!” he snapped at Bill O’Neil.
“I’ve got something for you, Henry. I spent a week trying to find you to give it to you.” O’Neil’s manner was quiet. He didn’t move from where he was.
“I don’t want anything you’ve got! Get out!” Enright shouted.
O’Neil folded his arms and rocked back on his heels, making no move toward the open door. “Henry, stop thinking you’re the boss. You never were, and you’re not now. You’re just an ordinary Larimer Street bum full of booze.” O’Neil had changed in the last two years. His language had improved somewhat, and he had the assured manner that signifies one has matched wits with the most powerful men in the world on equal ground. “I didn’t come here to help you, because it seems you don’t want to be helped. But I came here to give you something, and I’m not leaving until you get it.”
“I said, get out!”
“Henry, you know I used to slug it out on the circuits as a heavyweight. You couldn’t throw me out. You look like you ain’t had a square meal in a month, besides. So forget it. Shut that door, Henry, and sid-down!” It was an order. Given in the same tone of voice Bill O’Neil had used with his test-stand crews on occasion. There was no arguing with a person who could make the toughest pipe fitter in the business knuckle under.
Enright glared at him for a full minute, then slowly closed the rickety door without taking his eyes from the former rocket technician. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
“I came to give you something you wouldn’t come and get for yourself. I had it splashed all over the newspapers so you’d maybe see it.” O’Neil paused. Enright didn’t say anything, so he went on, “You see, the International Astronautical Federation met in Los Angeles last week and gave out a brand new award. Only men who’ve contributed to the conquest of space get it. It’s the highest honor they give, Henry. Von Braun, Sänger, Bridgeman, Peterson, Eaton, and myself were nominated. They decided on me, hut I didn’t want it. What I did wasn’t the result of a life’s work; I just got an idea and I didn’t have to sweat over it much.
“I asked them to give it to you, Henry. You were the one who got me really interested in space travel, and you were the project engineer for the first satellite.
“We couldn’t find you, though, so I told them I’d deliver it to you. Took me a week to find out where you were.” His hand slipped into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, Hat, blue box. He thrust it toward Henry Enright. “Here it is, Henry. We all thought you deserved it, so you’ve got the first Goddard Medal.”
The engineer slowly put out his hand and took it. Opening the lid, he discovered a gold medallion with a bas relief of one of Dr. Goddard’s little rockets rising out of its tower at Roswell. Good for five bucks at Benny’s.
No. Not this. This was not something to pawn.
His mind was a maelstrom of confused thoughts. Slapping the cover shut, he dropped down into a chair with no back. Somehow, he was touched and humbled by that little piece of gold; it also made him feel ashamed of himself. Finally, he asked, “Why? Everything I’ve worked for is gone. It’s finished. It’s dead.”
O’Neil sat down across the table from him. He seemed puzzled for a moment before he asked, “Yeah? Is it?”
“Certainly it’s dead! You and your force-field killed it all! When does a rocket blast off for the satellite any more? There are no rockets! You killed them!”
O’Neil waved him off. “Aw, you talk like I was a murderer! Rockets aren’t living things; they’re powerful, exciting gadgets, but they’re too inefficient and you know it! I just saw a better way to do it and made it pay off. That’s not important.” He leaned forward over the table.
“Henry, they landed on Ganymede yesterday.”
“Not in a rocket!”
“No, but they landed, Henry. We’ve landed on Mars and Venus, and now we’ve walked on another world where we’ve never been before. Remember at White Sands when you had the picture of Tenzing Norkey at the top of Everest? You told me you were going to hang the picture of the first men on the Moon next to it, because both pictures showed men standing where nobody’d stood before and because both pictures would show that the human race could do everything it wanted to do. That gave me the first inkling of why people were fired-up about space travel, and I caught the bug from that. But you left the picture there at the Sands.”
“I’d forgotten all about that,”
Enright admitted.
“You’ve forgotten more than that, Henry,” O’Neil replied thoughtfully. “You were in rocketry then because you were all hot to be a space cadet and go to the Moon—just for the adventure and the sake of doing it. Everybody used to laugh at you—me included, at first. It was a dream then; we could do it, but there didn’t seem to be any practical reason for doing it. But you pushed it anyway. Remember when we put the first manned job in orbit? You hollered ‘Fire!’ and I pushed the button. There was a fifty-fifty chance of the whole works blowing up on the launcher, but we got it up there with Peterson riding it. Whether you realized it or not, Henry, that was the turning point. Space travel bloomed overnight, because you proved your point and showed it could be done. It didn’t make any difference then if it was impractical; it went ahead because you’d won the big battle.”