There was a stereo in the book of Jupiter as seen from Ganymede—round as an apple, ruddy orange, and squashed on both poles. And big as all outdoors. Beautiful. I fell asleep staring at it.
Dad and I didn't get a chance to talk for the next three days as my geography class spent that time in Antarctica. I came back with a frostbitten nose and some swell pix of penguins—and some revised ideas. I had had time to think.
Dad had fouled up the account book as usual but he had remembered to save the wrappers and it didn't take me long to straighten things out. After dinner I let him beat me two games, then said, "Look, George——"
"Yes?"
"You know what we were talking about?"
"Well, yes."
"It's this way. I'm under age; I can't go if you won't let me. Seems to me you ought to, but if you don't, I won't quit school. In any case, you ought to go—you need to go—you know why. I'm asking you to think it over and take me along, but I'm not going to be a baby about it."
Dad almost looked embarrassed. "That's quite a speech, Son. You mean you're willing to let me go, you stay here and go to school, and not make a fuss about it?"
"Well, not 'willing'-but I'd put up with it."
"Thanks." Dad fumbled in his pouch and pulled out a flat photo. "Take a look at this."
"What is it?"
"Your file copy of your application for emigration. I submitted it two days ago."
2. The Green-Eyed Monster
I wasn't much good in school for the next few days. Dad cautioned me not to get worked up over it; they hadn't approved our applications as yet. "You know, Bill, ten times as many people apply as can possibly go."
"But most of them want to go to Venus or Mars. Ganymede is too far away; that scares the sissies out."
"I wasn't talking about applications for all the colonies; I meant applications for Ganymede, specifically for this first trip of the Mayflower"
"Even so, you can't scare me. Only about one in ten can qualify. That's the way it's always been."
Dad agreed. He said that this was the first time in history that some effort was being made to select the best stock for colonization instead of using colonies as dumping grounds for misfits and criminals and failures. Then he added, "But look, Bill, what gives you the notion that you and I can necessarily qualify? Neither one of us is a superman,"
That rocked me back on my heels. The idea that we might not be good enough hadn't occurred to me. "George, they couldn't turn us down!"
"They could and they might."
"But how? They need engineers out there and you're tops. Me—I'm not a genius but I do all right in school. We're both healthy and we don't have any bad mutations; we aren't color blind or bleeders or anything like that."
"No bad mutations that we know of," Dad answered. "However, I agree that we seem to have done a fair job in picking our grandparents. I wasn't thinking of anything as obvious as that."
"Well, what, then? What could they possibly get us on?"
He fiddled with his pipe the way he always does when he doesn't want to answer right away. "Bill, when I pick a steel alloy for a job, it's not enough to say, 'Well, it's a nice shiny piece of metal; let's use it.' No, I take into account a list of tests as long as your arm that tells me all about that alloy, what it's good for and just what I can expect it to do in the particular circumstances I intend to use it. Now if you had to pick people for a tough job of colonizing, what would you look for?"
"Uh ... I don't know."
"Neither do I. I'm not a social psychometrician. But to say that they want healthy people with fair educations is like saying that I want steel rather than wood for a job. It doesn't tell what sort of steel. Or it might not be steel that was needed; it might be titanium alloy. So don't get your hopes too high."
"But—well, look, what can we do about it?"
"Nothing. If we don't get picked, then tell yourself that you are a darn good grade of steel and that it's no fault of yours that they wanted magnesium."
It was all very well to look at it that way, but it worried me. I didn't let it show at school, though. I had already let everybody know that we had put in for Ganymede; if we missed—well, it would be sort of embarrassing.
My best friend, Duck Miller, was all excited about it and was determined to go, too.
"But how can you?" I asked. "Do your folks want to go?"
"I already looked into that," Duck answered. "All I have to have is a grown person as a sponsor, a guardian. Now if you can tease your old man into signing for me, it's in the bag."
"But what will your father say?"
"He won't care. He's always telling me that when he was my age he was earning his own living. He says a boy should be self reliant. Now how about it? Will you speak to your old man about it—tonight?"
I said I would and I did. Dad didn't say anything for a moment, then he asked: "You really want Duck with you?"
"Sure I do. He's my best friend."
"What does his father say?"
"He hasn't asked him yet," and then I explained how Mr. Miller felt about it
"So?" said Dad. "Then let's wait and see what Mr. Miller says."
"Well—look, George, does that mean that you'll sign for Duck if his father says it's okay?"
"I meant what I said, Bill. Let's wait. The problem may solve itself."
I said, "Oh well, maybe Mr. and Mrs. Miller will decide to put in for it, too, after Duck gets them stirred up."
Dad just cocked an eyebrow at me. "Mr. Miller has, shall we say, numerous business interests here. I think it would be easier to jack up one corner of Boulder Dam than to get him to give them up."
"You're giving up your business."
"Not my business, my professional practice. But I'm not giving up my profession; I'm taking it with me."
I saw Duck at school the next day and asked him what his father had said.
"Forget it," he told me. "The deal is off."
"Huh?"
"My old man says that nobody but an utter idiot would even think of going out to Ganymede. He says that Earth is the only planet in the system fit to live on and that if the government wasn't loaded up with a bunch of starry-eyed dreamers we would quit pouring money down a rat hole trying to turn a bunch of bare rocks in the sky into green pastures. He says the whole enterprise is doomed."
"You didn't think so yesterday."
"That was before I got the straight dope. You know what? My old man is going to take me into partnership. Just as soon as I'm through college he's going to start breaking me into the management end. He says he didn't tell me before because he wanted me to learn self reliance and initiative, but he thought it was time I knew about it. What do you think of that?"
"Why, that's pretty nice, I suppose. But what's this about the 'enterprise being doomed'?"
" 'Nice', he calls it! Well, my old man says that it is an absolute impossibility to keep a permanent colony on Ganymede. It's a perilous toehold, artificially maintained—those were his exact words—and someday the gadgets will bust and the whole colony will be wiped out, every man jack, and then we will quit trying to go against nature."
We didn't talk any more then as we had to go to class. I told Dad about it that night. "What do you think, George?"
"Well, there is something in what he says——"
"Huh?"
"Don't jump the gun. If everything went sour on Ganymede at once and we didn't have the means to fix it, it would revert to the state we found it in. But that's not the whole answer. People have a funny habit of taking as 'natural' whatever they are used to—but there hasn't been any 'natural' environment, the way they mean it, since men climbed down out of trees. Bill, how many people are there in California?"