At least once in every generation there turns up a person who is
embarrassing to the Custodians of History. With neither talent nor
ambition, nor studious application nor admirable character, this person
succeeds where the bright and the studious and the intellectually
honest would have failed miserably. Stubborn, egocentric, vain--often
stupid--our person blunders in where the wise and the sincere would
not dare. His hide is thicker than that of the rhinoceros. He is not
abashed to tell the surgeon where to ply his scalpel, or to instruct
the statesman on a course of diplomacy. His little knowledge is a
dangerous thing--for other people.
His success is due to the law of averages.
History holds many accounts where the brave and the brilliant have
stepped in at the right time to avoid disaster. Yet there are more
bums than geniuses, more cowards than heroes and more laziness than
ambition in our human race, so it is not surprising that there should
be occasions when a bum or a self-centered braggart should find that
history has a special niche waiting for him.
I
They were parked on the dark side of Mercury, snug and comfortable in
their hemisphere of force that kept out the cold and kept in the air.
At one side where force met ground, a tall silvery spacecraft rose like
a chimney.
They were three:
Chat Honger was tall, red-headed, and thin faced. He looked as though
he were incapable of quieting down, but he was really the type of
person who has an incredible amount of patience for things which cannot
be performed in a hurry.
Bren Fallow was shorter than Chat Honger, darker, stouter, more round
of face and more amiable. Definitely, Bren was the methodical type.
The third man was Scyth Radnor. Scyth was the kind of man who is quick
to grasp a new idea and as quick to reduce it to practise. His failing
was that he seldom looked deep or planned far ahead. Being quick of
mind he preferred to play everything by ear because planning required
study, and Scyth felt that study for the sake of study consumed too
much time--time that could better be spent in the pursuit of fun and
games.
Teach them the language and drop them in Greater New York and they
would be lost among Manhattan's millions. Better change their clothing,
though. Striped shorts, Greek sandals, a Sam Browne belt across a bare
chest, and a Roman toga of iridescent changing hues is not the kind of
costume seen on Fifth Avenue.
Aside from their costume they were human to the last detail. Even their
speech, when translated, sounded like the human tongue. They used
slang, elision, swearwords and poor grammar. They made bum jokes and
puns. They sounded more like displaced earthmen than technicians from a
culture that had been establishing galactic centers of population for
thirty thousand years.
"You're certain?" asked Bren.
Scyth nodded. "Dead certain now. It was that last computation that sold
me."
"Then I'd better shut down."
Chat Honger shook his head. "We've got a job to do. We're behind
schedule now, fellows, because of this question. We've got a beacon to
start here, I say let's get along with it and bedamned to the--"
"You can't," said Bren. "The first time you put down in the log that
this is a middle sequence flare-star, right smack-dab in the middle of
Yalt Gangrow's Diagram, the Bureau of Colonization is going to ask you
if you took a look for habitable planets. Then--then what, Scyth?"
Scyth Radnor shrugged. "The answer is 'yes' we took a look and we
found one, just at the right distance, the right size, and the right
conditioning. To say nothing of upper atmosphere and other data made by
observation. So Planet Three is about as habitable as Marandis itself."