He surely did; there were seconds all over the place. Then he asked for debate.
Somebody objected that we couldn't call ourselves the Boy Scouts of Ganymede because we weren't on Ganymede yet. He got a chilly reception and shut up. Then somebody else pointed out that Ganymede wasn't a star, which made that part about "Carrying the Scouting trail out to the stars" nonsense.
Hank told him that was poetic license and anyhow going out to Ganymede was a step in the right direction and that there would be more steps; what about the Star Rover III? That shut him up.
The worst objection was from "Millimetre" Muntz, a weary little squirt too big for his britches. He said, "Mr. Chairman, this is an outlaw meeting. You haven't any authority to set up a new Scouting jurisdiction. As a member in good standing of Troop -Ninety-Six, New Jersey, I object to the whole proceeding."
Hank asked him just what authority he thought Troop Ninety-Six, New Jersey, had out around the orbit of Mars? Somebody yelled, "Throw him out!"
Hank banged on the mess table. "It isn't necessary to throw him out—but, since Brother Millimetre thinks this is not a proper meeting, then it isn't proper for him to take part in it. He is excused and the chair will recognize him no further. Are you ready to vote?"
It was passed unanimously and then Hank was elected organizational chairman. He appointed a flock of committees, for organization and for plans and programs and for credentials and tests and for liaison, and such. That last was to dig out the men in the ship who had been troop masters and commissioners and things and get a Court of Honor set up. There were maybe a dozen of the men passengers at the meeting, listening. One of them, a Dr. Archibald who was an aide on "A" deck, spoke up.
"Mr. Chairman, I was a Scoutmaster in Nebraska. I'd like to volunteer my services to this new organization."
Hank looked him straight in the eye. "Thank you, sir. Your application will be considered."
Dr. Archibald looked startled, but Hank went smoothly on, "We want and need and will appreciate the help of all you older Scouts. The liaison committee is instructed to get the names of any who are willing to serve."
It was decided that we would have to have three troops, one for each deck, since it wasn't convenient to try to meet all at the same time. Hank asked all the Explorer Scouts to stand up. There were too many of them, so he asked those who were Eagles to remain standing. There were about a dozen of us.
Hank separated us Eagles by decks and told us to get busy and organize our troops and to start by picking an acting senior patrol leader. "A" deck had only three Eagles, me, Hank, and a kid from another bunk room whom I hadn't met before, Douglas MacArthur Okajima. Doug and Hank combined on me and I found myself tagged with the job.
Hank and I had planned to finish the meeting with setting up exercises, but there just wasn't room, so I got out my accordion again and we sang The Scouting Trail and followed it with The Green Hills of Earth. Then we took the oath together again:
"Upon my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my planet, and to keep myself physically fit, mentally alert, and morally straight."
After that the meeting busted up.
For a while we held meetings every day. Between troop meetings and committee meetings and Explorer meetings and patrol leader meetings we didn't have time to get bored. At first the troops were just "A" troop, "B" troop, and "C" troop, after the decks, but we wanted names to give them some personality. Anyhow I wanted a name for my troop; we were about to start a membership drive and I wanted something with more oomph to it than "'A'" deck troop."
Somebody suggested "The Space Rats" but that was voted down, and somebody else suggested "The Mayflowers"; they didn't bother to vote on that; they simply sat on him.
After that we turned down "The Pilgrims," "Deep Space Troop," "Star Rovers," and "Sky High." A kid named John Edward Forbes-Smith got up. "Look," he said, "we're divided into three troops on the basis of the time zones we use, aren't we? "B" deck has California time; "C" deck has Philippine time; and we have Greenwich or English time. Why don't we pick names that will show that fact? We could call ourselves the Saint George Troop."
Bud Kelly said it was a good idea as far as it went but make it Saint Patrick instead of Saint George; after all, Dublin was on Greenwich time, too, and Saint Patrick was a more important saint.
Forbes-Smith said, "Since when?"
Bud said, "Since always, you limey—" So we sat on both of them, too, and it was decided not to use saints. But Johnny Edwards had a good idea, just the same; we settled on the Baden-Powell Troop, Boy Scouts of Ganymede, which tied in with the English time zone and didn't offend anybody.
The idea took hold; "C" deck picked Aguinaldo as a name and "B" deck called themselves the Junipero Serra Troop. When I heard that last I was kind of sorry our deck didn't have California time so that we could have used it. But I got over it; after all "Baden-Powell" is a mighty proud name, too.
For that matter they were all good names—scouts and explorers and brave men, all three of them. Two of them never had a chance to be Scouts in the narrow, organized meaning, but they were all Scouts in the wider sense—like Daniel Boone.
Dad says there is a lot in a name.
As soon as they heard about what we were doing the girls set up Girl Scouting, too, and Peggy was a member of the Florence Nightingale Troop. I suppose there was no harm in it, but why do girls copy what the boys do? We were too busy to worry about them, though; we had to revamp Scouting activities to fit new conditions.
We decided to confirm whatever ranks and badges a boy had held in his former organization—permanent rankings, I mean, not offices. Having been a patrol leader or a scribe didn't mean anything, but if you were an Eagle on Earth, you stayed one in the B.S.G.; if you were a Cub, then you were still a Cub. If a boy didn't have records—and about half of them didn't— we took his Scout oath statement as official.
That was simple; working over the tests and the badges was complicated. After all you can't expect a boy to pass beekeeping when you haven't any bees.
(It turned out that there were several swarms of bees sleep-frozen in the cargo, but we didn't have the use of them.)
But we could set up a merit badge in hydroponics and give tests right there in the ship. And Mr. Ortega set up a test for us in spaceship engineering and Captain Harkness did the same for ballistics and astrogation. By the end of the trip we had enough new tests to let a boy go up for Eagle Scout, once we had a Court of Honor.
That came last. For some reason I couldn't figure Hank had kept putting off the final report of the liaison committee, the committee which had as its job getting Scout Masters and Commissioners and such. I asked him about it, but he just looked mysterious and said that I would see.
I did see, eventually. At last we had a joint meeting of all three troops to install Scout Masters and dedicate the Court of Honor and such. And from then on the adults ran things and we went back to being patrol leaders at the most. Oh well—it was fun while it lasted.
8. Trouble
When we were fifty-three days out and about a week to go to reach Ganymede, Captain Harkness used the flywheel to precess the ship so that we could see where we were going—so that the passengers could see, that is; it didn't make any difference to his astrogation.
You see, the axis of the Mayflower had been pointed pretty much toward Jupiter and the torch had been pointed back at the Sun. Since the view ports were spaced every ninety degrees around the sides, while we had been able to see most of the sky, we hadn't been able to see ahead to Jupiter nor behind to the Sun. Now he tilted the ship over ninety degrees and we were rolling, so to speak, along our line of flight. That way, you could see Jupiter and the Sun both, from any view port, though not both at the same time.