“But I lost,” Enright put in bitterly. “I lost to you. Engineers and scientists spent years, decades, to develop the rocket for space flight. It isn’t right for a man like you… an amateur… to hit something on blind luck and make everything we’ve done worthless!”
O’Neil put his elbows on the rough table top and looked levelly at Enright. “Sure, I was an amateur, Henry. But I ain’t the first amateur to do something the pros couldn’t. Ever read anything about the history of science? Let’s take aviation, for example. It runs a pretty close parallel to space travel. ’Way back in 1890, the lighter-than-air ships were the only things they had to fly with. But they were big, unreliable, expensive, inefficient, and hard to handle. A lot of people were working on flying machines on account of the disadvantages of the balloons. But nobody could make them work—except a couple of guys who built bicycles for a living. They were pure amateurs at flying. They did what the brains couldn’t do: built a machine that used the air itself to keep it up there. Do you think that was luck?
“Henry, any jerk can win at craps—but it ain’t luck, or accident of numbers, or the fact that somebody’s gotta win that makes the Wright Brothers. Ever hear of Marconi and the amateur radio hams? How about Henry Ford? Einstein? Was it all dumb luck? How come they whipped the specialists? Could it be on account of mankind is where he is today because he’s an unspecialized animal? It ain’t dumb luck; it’s a lot of things.”
“So you’re proud of being an amateur? Are you proud of having wrecked the lives and works of other men?” Enright shot at him. “Are you proud of it when you sit there and tell me one of your ships landed on Ganymede, knowing as you must that the two of us could have done it with rockets, and knowing you wrecked my life to put that ship there?”
O’Neil sat back and smiled broadly for the first time. “You know, Henry, I haven’t been able to understand your actions in the last two years. I guess it’s always been natural to me to find a new line of work when the old job folded up, so I couldn’t figure out why you got dumped so hard. Now I think I know why. You got a form of occupational disease, Henry, one that’s common in the sciences. They’ve been hollering for specialization. You fell for it. At first, you were tooting the big horn for space travel; when you got space travel, you settled back to being the expert on rocket motors who got us out there. And you lost sight of your real goal. You got so you couldn’t see any answer except the one you were trying to get.
“So, when rocketry collapsed from the big-time, you didn’t try to apply your natural talents to the new field. Instead, you fought it. Remember the dirigibles, Henry? They were hot stuff until the airplane came along. Then the dirigible boys fought the simpler, cheaper, faster airplane right on down the line until the Hindenberg blew up. There ain’t been a dirigible built since, but the smart dirigible boys still got jobs designing blimps to do things planes and copters won’t do. Henry, rocketry ain’t lost. Space travel will always need engineers who know hydraulics, high-pressure systems, thermo, combustion, and a lot of stuff associated with rocketry. We need boosters and jatos and auxiliary power plants. And we’ve got to use taxi rockets at the satellites because the force-field units are too big to put in the little ships. Henry, we’ve still got a lot of problems to solve.”
“If you’re trying to get me to come to work for you, the answer is no!” Enright growled. “If you used this medal to try to soften me up, you can have it back.”
O’Neil took out a cigarette and offered one to Enright. When the engineer turned it down, O’Neil lit up and replied, “Believe me, Henry, the only reason I came was to give you that medal. I respect you as an expert and for what you did.”
“What good did it all do me when the only thing I’ve got to show for it is a medal?” Enright complained.
O’Neil leaped to his feet and leaned over the table. His eyes blazed as he brought his big fist down. “Damn it, Henry, some people don’t even get a medal—much less live to get a single honor! Quit being sorry for yourself! So there’s someone turns out to be smarter than you are; so what? You’ve gotten so stubborn and small-minded that you missed the biggest point of all. You wanted to get to Mars with rockets. Well, to hell with the way to get there! The important thing is: we did it! It was done! We got to Mars! And we’re going to the stars! The method we use is not important! Can’t you get that through your head?”
He sat down and snubbed out his cigarette. Catching his breath, he went on easily, “Come on in, Henry; the water’s fine. There’s still a lot of work to be done. There will always be work to be done. You’ve only got to see old Terra from twenty thousand miles out to know that what we’ve done was worth it, no matter how. The sight of a rocket taking off can’t hold a candle to it. It gives you a feeling of… of—Well, why don’t you find out for yourself?”
A month later, Henry Enright did find out for himself. It took him two weeks to decide to, and even when he boarded ship he had a little trouble suppressing the hatred for the ungraceful ships that he’d allowed to build up within him for years. It was all new to him, this force-field astrogation, and the distrust born of not understanding made him a little hesitant and nervous.
But later, as he gazed through the control-room ports of the Venture IV and saw the Earth as a small sphere set against the innumerable stars of the universe, he suddenly gained a new and sweeping perspective of the vastness of the Universe that mankind had set out to conquer. The sheer emotional impact of it humbled him, and yet exalted him in the knowledge that mankind had done this. The feeling certainly did surpass anything a rocket alone had stirred in him.
And in the face of the tremendous panorama before him, he saw how small and insignificant his troubles and hatreds had been. It was accompanied by that numbing sense of disgust and shame which comes when men see themselves as they were. He had been a weak and inadequate human being—but there would be time to start correcting that now.
But greatest of all was that satisfying, thrilling feeling that this was the sight he’d wanted to see for thirty years, that this was what he’d set out to do with his life, and that what was past didn’t matter any more.
Bill O’Neil quietly pointed toward a pin point of light known to them both as Alpha Centauri.
Enright merely nodded. “Some day. But we’ve got to look around our own backyard first. And we’ve got some work to do, too. Right now, let’s go see those canals.”