"You don't think I can do it?" Dan roared.
"Oh, no doubt you _could_. But such a lot of trouble for an unwilling
victim. And I'm your brother, Dan. Remember?"
Dan Fowler spread his hands in defeat, then sank down in the chair.
"Paul, tell me _why_."
"I don't want to be rejuvenated." As though he were saying, "I don't
want any sugar in my coffee."
"Why not? If I could only see why, if I knew what was going through
your mind, maybe I could understand. But I can't."
Dan looked up at Paul, practically pleading. "You're _needed_. I had a
tape from Lijinsky last month--do you know what he said? He said why
couldn't you have come to Starship ten years earlier? Nobody knows
that ship like you do, you're making it go. That ship can take men to
the stars, now, with rejuvenation, and the same men can come back
again to find the same people waiting for them when they get here.
They can _live_ that long, now. We've been tied down to seventy years
of life, to a tight little universe of one sun and nine planets for
thousands of years. Well, we can change that now. We can go out.
That's what your work can do for us." He stared helplessly at his
brother. "You could go out on that ship you're building, Paul. You've
always wanted to. _Why not?_"
Paul looked across at him for a long moment. There was pity in his
eyes. There was also hatred there, and victory, long awaited, bitterly
won. "Do you really want me to tell you?"
"I want you to tell me."
Then Paul told him. It took about ten minutes. It was not tempered
with mercy.
It split Dan Fowler's world wide open at the seams.
* * * * *
"You've been talking about the Starship," said Paul Fowler. "All
right, that's as good a starting place as any. I came to Starship
Project--what was it, fifteen years ago? Almost sixteen, I guess. This
was my meat. I couldn't work well with people, I worked with _things_,
processes, ideas. I dug in hard on Starship. I loved it, dreamed it,
lived with it. I had dreams in those days. Work hard, make myself
valuable here, maybe I'd _get_ rejuvenation, so I could work more on
Starship. I believed everything you just said. Alpha Centauri,
Arcturus, Vega, anywhere we wanted to go--and I could go along! It
wouldn't be long, either. We had Lijinsky back with us after his
rejuvenation, directing the Project, we had Keller and Stark and Eddie
Cochran--great men, the men who had pounded Starship Project into
reality, took it out of the story books and made the people of this
country want it bad enough to pay for it. Those men were back now--new
men, rebuilt bodies, with all their knowledge and experience
preserved. Only now they had something even more precious than life:
_time_. And I was part of it, and I too could have time."
Paul shook his head, slowly, and sank back into the chair. His eyes
were very tired. "A dream, nothing more. A fantasy. It took me fifteen
years to learn what a dream it was. Not even a suspicion at
first--only a vague puzzlement, things happening that I couldn't quite
grasp. Easy to shrug off, until it got too obvious. Not a matter of
wrong decisions, really. The decisions were right, but they were in
the wrong places. Something about Starship Project shifting, changing
somehow. Something being lost. Slowly. Nothing you could nail down, at
first, but growing month by month.
"Then one night I saw what it was. That was when I equipped the lab
here, and proved to myself that Starship Project was a dream."
* * * * *
He spread his hands and smiled at Dan like a benign old Chips to a
third-form schoolboy. "The Starship isn't going to Alpha Centauri or
anywhere else. It's not going to leave the ground. I thought I'd live
long enough to launch that ship and be one of its crew. Well, I won't.
That ship wouldn't leave the ground if I lived a million years."
"Garbage," said Dan Fowler succinctly.
"No, Dan. Not garbage. Unfortunately, we sometimes have to recognize
our dreams as dreams, and look reality right square in the face.
Starship Project is dying. Our whole civilization is dying. Nimrock
drove the first nail into the coffin a hundred and thirty years
ago--lord, if they'd only hanged him when his first rejuvenation
failed! But that would only have delayed it. Now we're dying, slowly
right now, but soon it will be fast, very fast. And do you know who's
getting set to land the death-blow?" He smiled sadly across at his
brother. "You are, Dan."
Dan Fowler sprang from his chair with a roar. "My god, Paul, you're
_sick_! Of all the idiot's delights I ever heard, I--I--oh, Jesus." He
stood shaking, groping for words, staring at his brother.
"You said you wanted me to tell you."
"Tell me! Tell me what?" Dan took a trembling breath, and sat down,
visibly, gripping himself. "All right, all right, I heard what you
said--you must mean something, but I don't know what. Let's be
reasonable. Let's forget philosophy and semantics and concepts and all
the frills for just a minute and talk about facts, huh? _Just facts._"
"All right, facts," said Paul. "Kenneth Armstrong wrote MAN ON MARS in
2028--he was fifty-seven years old then, and he hadn't been
rejuvenated yet. Fundamentally a good book, analyzing his first Mars
Colony, taking it apart right down to the silk undies, to show why it
had failed so miserably, and why the next one could succeed if he
could ever get up there again. He had foresight; with rejuvenation
just getting started, he had a whole flock of ideas about
overpopulation and the need for a Mars Colony--he was all wet on the
population angle, of course, but nobody knew that then. He kicked
Keller and Lijinsky off on the Starship idea. They admit it--it was
MAN ON MARS that first started them thinking. They were both young,
with lots of fight in them. Okay?"
"Just stick to facts," said Dan coldly.
* * * * *
"Okay. Starship Project got started, and blossomed into the people's
Baby. They started work on the basic blueprints about 60 years ago.
Everybody knew it would be a long job--cost money, plenty of it, and
there was so much to do before the building ever began. That was where
I came in, fifteen years ago. Building. They were looking for
engineers who weren't eager to get rich. It went fine. We started to
build. Then Keller and Stark came back from rejuvenation. Lijinsky had
been rejuvenated five years before."
"Look, I don't need a course in history," Dan exploded.
"Yes, you do," Paul snapped. "You need to sit down and listen for
once, instead of shooting your big mouth off all the time. That's what
you need real bad, Dan." Paul Fowler rubbed his chin. There were red
spots in his cheeks. "Okay, there were some changes made. I didn't
like the engine housing--I never had, so I went along with them a
hundred percent on that. Even though I designed it--I'd learned a few
things since. And there were bugs. It made perfectly good sense,
talking to Lijinsky. Starship Project was pretty important to all of
us. Dangerous to risk a fumble on the first play, even a tiny risk. We
might never get another chance. Lijinsky knew we youngsters were
driving along on adrenalin and nerves, and couldn't wait to get out
there, but when you thought about it, what was the rush? Was it worth
a chance of a fumble to get out there _this_ year instead of _next_?
Couldn't we take time to find a valid test for that engine at
ultra-high acceleration before we put it back in? After all, we _had_
time now--Keller and Stark just back with sixty more years to
live--why the rush?
"Okay. I bought it. We worked out a valid test on paper. Took us four
years of work on it to find out you couldn't build such a device on
Earth, but never mind that. Other things were stalling all the while.
The colony-plan for the ship. Choosing the crew--what criteria, what
qualifications? There was plenty of time--why not make _sure_ it's
right? Don't leave anything crude, if we can refine it a little
first--"
Paul sighed wearily. "It snowballed. Keller and Stark backed Lijinsky
to the hilt. There was some trouble about money--I think you had your
thumb in the pie there, getting it fixed for us, didn't you? More
refining. Work it out. Detail. Get sidetracked on some aspect for a
few years--so what? Lots of time. Rejuvenation, and all that, talk
about the Universalists beating Rinehart out and throwing the Center
open to everybody. Et cetera, et cetera. But somewhere along the line
I began to see that it just wasn't true. The holdups, the changes, the
digressions and snags and refinements were all excuses, all part of a
big, beautiful, exquisitely reasonable facade built up to obscure the
real truth. _Lijinsky and Keller and Stark had changed._"
Dan Fowler snorted. "I know a very smart young doctor who told me that
there _weren't_ any changes."
"I don't mean anything physical--their bodies were fine. Nothing
mental, either--they had the same sharp minds they always had. It was
a change in values. They'd lost something that they'd had before. The
_drive_ that made them start Starship Project, the _urgency_, the
vital importance of the thing--it was all gone. They just didn't have
the push any more. They began to look for the easy way, and it was far
easier to build and rebuild, and refine, and improve the Starship here
on the ground than to throw that Starship out into space--"
* * * * *
There was a long, long silence. Dan Fowler sat grey-faced, staring at
Paul, just shaking his head and staring. "I don't believe it," he said
finally. "You do maybe, because you want to, but you're mixed up,
Paul. I've seen Lijinsky's reports. There's been progress, regular
progress, month by month. You've been too close to it, maybe. Of
course there have been delays, but only when they were necessary. The
progress has gone on--"
Paul stood up suddenly. "Come in here, Dan. Look." He threw open a
door, strode rapidly down a corridor and a flight of stairs into the
long, low barn of a laboratory. "Here, here, let me show you
something." He pulled out drawers, dragged out rolls of blueprints.
"These are my own. They're based on the working prints from Starship
that we drew up ten years ago, scaled down to model size. I've tested
them, I've run tolerances, I've checked the math five ways and back
again. I've tested the parts, the engine--model size. The blueprints
haven't got a flaw in them. They're perfect as they'll ever get. No,
wait a minute, look--"
He strode fiercely across to slide back a floor panel, drew up the
long, glittering thing from a well in the floor--sleek, beautiful,
three feet long. Paul maneuvered a midget loading crane, guided the
thing into launching position on the floor, then turned back to Dan.
"There it is. Just a model, but it's perfect. Every detail is perfect.
There's even fuel in it. No men, but there could be if there were any
men small enough."
Anger was blazing in Paul's voice now, bitterness and frustration. "I
built it, because I had to be sure. I've tested its thrust. I could
launch this model for Alpha Centauri tonight--and _it would get
there_. If there were little men who could get into it, _they'd_ get
there, too--alive. Starship Project is completed, it's been completed
for ten years now, but do you know what happened to these blueprints,
the originals? They were studied. They were improvements. They almost
had the ship built, and then they took it apart again."
"But I've read the reports," Dan cried.
"Have you _seen_ the Starship? Have you _talked_ to them over there?
It isn't just there, it's _everywhere_, Dan. There are only about
70,000 rejuvenated men alive in this hemisphere so far, but already
the change is beginning to show. Go talk to the Advertising
people--_there's_ a delicate indicator of social change if there ever
was one. See what they say. Who are they backing in the Government?
You? Like hell. Rinehart? No, they're backing up 'Moses' Tyndall and
his Abolitionist goon-squad who preach that rejuvenation is the work
of Satan, and they're giving him enough strength that he's even
getting _you_ worried. How about Roderigo Aviado and his Solar Energy
Project down in Antarctica? Do you know what he's been doing down
there lately? You'd better find out, Dan. What's happening to the Mars
Colony? Do you have any idea? You'd better find out. Have you gone to
see any of the Noble Ten that are still rattling around? Oh, you ought
to. How about all the suicides we've been having in the last ten
years? What do the insurance people say about that?"
* * * * *
He stopped, from lack of breath. Dan just stared at him, shaking his
head like Silly Willy on the teevies. "Find out what you're doing,
Dan--before you push this universal rejuvenation idea of yours
through. Find out--if you've got the guts to find out, that is. We've
got a monster on our hands, and now you've got to be Big Dan Fowler
playing God and turning him loose on the world. Well, be careful. Find
out first, while you can. It's all here to see, if you'll open your
eyes, but you're all so dead sure that you want life everlasting that
nobody's even bothered to _look_. And now it's become such a political
bludgeon that nobody _dares_ to look."
The model ship seemed to gleam in the dim laboratory light. Dan Fowler
walked over to it, ran a finger up the shiny side to the pinpoint tip.
His face was old, and something was gone from his eyes when he turned
back to Paul. "You've known this for so long, and you never told me.
You never said a word." He shook his head slowly. "I didn't know you
hated me so much. But I'm not going to let you win this one, either,
Paul. You're wrong. I'm going to prove it if it kills me."
V
"Well, try his home number, then," Dan Fowler snarled into the
speaker. He gnawed his cigar and fumed as long minutes spun off the
wall clock. His fingers drummed the wall. "How's that? Dammit, I want
to speak to Dwight McKenzie, his aide will _not_ do--well, of course
he's in town. I just saw him yesterday--"
He waited another five minutes, and then his half dollar clanked back
in the return, with apologies. "All right, get his office when it
opens, and call me back." He reeled off the number of the private
booth.
Carl Golden looked up as he came back to the table and stirred
sugar-cream into half-cold coffee. "No luck?"
"Son of a bitch has vanished." Dan leaned back against the wall,
glowering at Carl and Jean. Through the transparent walls of the
glassed-in booth, they could see the morning breakfast-seekers
drifting into the place. "We should have him pretty soon." He bit off
the end of a fresh cigar, and assaulted it with a match.
"Dad, you know what Dr. Moss said--"
"Look, little girl--if I'm going to die in ten minutes, I'm going to
smoke for those ten minutes and enjoy them," Dan snapped. The coffee
was like lukewarm dishwater. Both the young people sipped theirs with
bleary early-morning resignation. Carl Golden needed a shave badly. He
opened his second pack of cigarettes. "Did you sleep on the way back?"