by Algis Budrys
(_illustrated by Milton Luros_)
"_Desire no more than to thy lot may fall...._"
--Chaucer
The small young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've _got_ to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I
can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of
his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and
hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard
that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor
with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A _rocket_ pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet
parlor. "A ro--_oh, no!_--a rocket _pilot_!"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips
fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the
tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked
out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch.
He stopped there, hesitating a little.
"_Marty!_" His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed
to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost
ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she
came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against
the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his
son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the
street. "_Come back here!_" he shouted. "A _rocket_ pilot," he cursed
under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket
pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But--isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd
things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! _Come
back here, you idiot!_" Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his
clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm _sure_!"
"But, where's he going?"
"_Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me?_ Marty?"
"_Howard!_ Stop acting like a child and _talk_ to me! Where is that boy
going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned
away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he
told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of
age at seventeen.
The small man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not
interested in working for a degree."
"But--" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow
pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc
of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the
basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine
semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about
every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going
to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've
studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish?
Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that
Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav--they
won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in
themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a
snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at
his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't
convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give
up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's
go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy,"
he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next
man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and
softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care,
I am nothing a-cold;
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the
unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a
poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's
not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"