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_This story may, in a sense, be tongue-in-cheek. But the underlying
struggle, if you look into the characters' hearts, is terrifyingly
real and human--the kind of struggle so many of us go through. But
Sam Meecham was lucky. He not only got what he wanted, but something
he hadn't realized he wanted._
the
odyssey
of
sam
meecham
_by ... Charles E. Fritch_
Sam Meecham did not realize that his chance discovery of unlimited
power would bring back that which he had lost eight long years ago.
To look at Sam Meecham you'd never have dreamed he was a man of decision
and potential explorer of the unknown. In fact, there were times when
Sam wouldn't either. He was a pink, frail-looking person with a weak
chin and shoulders used to stooping, and stereotyped thinking
immediately relegated him to the ranks of the meek and mannerly. These,
oddly enough, happened to be his characteristics--but that was before he
discovered the hyperdrive.
In his capacity as an atomic engine inspector, his work was most
uncreative. He was a small cog in a large cog-laden machine. A
government worker helping to produce engines that would send supplies
and immigrants and tourists to the U.S. Sector of the Moon Colony.
Day after day, week after week, freshly made engines would come sliding
down the conveyor belt. And mechanically Sam Meecham would attach to
each two wires that led from a machine by his side, flip a switch, and
if the dial on his machine read at least fifty, he could pass the
machine on as being adequate for the job of Moon ferry. He'd been
attaching those two wires in place and watching fifties for five years,
and it looked as though he'd be doing it for fifty-five more.
Then one day a defectively wired machine came sliding along, and
dutifully Sam hooked it up and flipped the switch. Automatically, his
eyes glanced disinterestedly at the dial showing Comparative Thrust. His
eyes bugged. The needle had passed fifty, had gone to the 100 mark
(never before reached), struck the metal projection, bent, and was
whirling in a rapid circle!
Sam quickly cut off the motor, then he glanced furtively about to see if
anyone had noticed. The room was a flurry of men busy at routine tasks
and none of them seemed particularly interested in anything that was
going on at his table.
Sam checked his own machine and found the tester in perfect working
order. He hesitated a brief moment, then flipped the switch again. He
was prepared for the whir of the dial now but still it frightened him a
little. There must be something wrong; no atomic engine could have that
much Comparative Thrust. Yet--the tester was perfect.
Sam Meecham shut off the tester and stood very still for a minute and
thought about it. His glance fell on the intricate wiring within the
atomic engine and he saw with a start that it looked different from
usual. Wires were where wires had never been before, where wires were
not supposed to be.
With another quick glance about him Sam began copying the wiring pattern
on a sheet of paper. He thrust the paper into his pocket as the foreman
came up to him.
"Say, Meecham," the foreman said, "that last engine okay?"
Sam Meecham hesitated briefly, then said, "The wiring was a little
fouled up. Busted the dial on the tester."
The foreman shook his head. "I was afraid of that. Some wireman on the
third floor came in half drunk a few minutes ago. That was only his
first machine, so the others ought to be okay." He jabbed a finger at
the engine. "You'd better send it back up."
When the foreman was gone Sam checked the wiring with his diagram to
make certain he hadn't made any mistakes, and then he disconnected some
of the wires--just in case.
For the first time in years Sam Meecham felt a new freedom. He'd always
been a dreamer hampered by cold reality--a man with his head in the
stars and his feet chained to solid earth. He'd wanted to go to the Moon
when the government first started colonizing; but Dorothy, his wife,
talked him out of it.
At various times he had felt that secret longing, that beckoning of the
stars, but each time he had shelved the desire and turned to attaching
his two wires of the tester to their proper terminals on each atomic
engine, and then when his shift was up he turned homeward to face an
existence equally uninspiring.
The moment he had seen that needle pass into the hundreds, Sam Meecham
knew what he was going to do. He had planned it years ago, when he first
stood alone in the night and gazed upward at the glittering diamonds
that lay beyond reach. Even then he had known what he would do if ever
the opportunity presented itself. In those moments of self-pity that
came too often, however, he had told himself that it was only wishful
thinking and cursed himself for being a weakling and a dreamer who did
nothing about his dreams. But he had resolved that someday he _would_ go
out among the stars.
That day had come, and as Sam Meecham went homeward that evening he felt
his heart beat in time with the pulsing light of the stars overhead. But
with this new exultation he felt a desperate fear. A fear that he might
again bypass his opportunity as he had done so often before. Yet he knew
that this was his greatest chance, perhaps his last chance. He must be
brave and strong, and above all confident that his intense longing would
make his venture successful.
"How did everything go?" Dorothy asked when he came in.
It was a mechanical question and he answered it mechanically, "Okay.
Everything went as usual."
He didn't want to look at her. She had grown plump since they had
married eight years ago, and by not looking at her he could somehow
pretend she was still slim and attractive.
She was lying on a couch, wearing a housecoat, and didn't look up from
the magazine in front of her. "Supper's on the table," she said.
For eight years he'd had flat, uninspiring meals, meals that kept one
from starving and no more. His complaints had met with more hostility
than he cared to cope with, and always, meekly he had retired from
the scene of battle wishing he had submitted and thus avoided the
tongue-lashing before which he felt so helpless.
Once more in the surroundings that bred it, a familiar, distasteful
helplessness rose to envelop Sam Meecham. It came across him as a
feeling of despair and bewilderment, and he wondered sickly if he would
ever escape this.
_Yes_, he told himself, clenching his fists determinedly. But he would
have to bide his time. Slowly, not really tasting it, he ate the cold,
uninviting meal set on the table.
Securing the engine was the least of his worries--at least from a
commercial standpoint. The factory was turning out atomic engines at
almost production-line rates, and civilians could easily get them for
private use--so long as they operated them at low speeds and within the
atmosphere of Earth.
That last thought drew a long secret laugh from Sam Meecham. At low
speeds. The government considered anything above a 50 CT as high speed.
And here he was with a secret that could enable him to travel at--who
knows what speeds? He could give it to the government later, but right
now he had his own use for it.
Dorothy would prove an obstacle, however. She always was an obstacle,
and there was no reason to assume she wouldn't be one now. And he was
right about that. The following payday, when he took his check and
splurged it on an atomic engine, Dorothy was madder than a Uranium pile
approaching critical mass.
"Here I scrimp and save on that measly paycheck you bring home," she
wailed, "and you go out and buy luxuries we don't need if we could
afford them. Look at this dress! It's old--all my clothes are old. And
you know why? You want to know why?"
Sam Meecham already knew why. It was because as a manager of his
financial affairs Dorothy was a flop. Often he had wanted to tell her
so, but the more times he attempted to open his mouth the louder she had
wailed. It was a lot easier just to let her explode and then fizzle out.
Even now he had the desire to shout at her to see what would happen. But
her shrieks made him grow sullen and unsure of himself. Perhaps he _had_
wasted the money. After all, the engine they had in their outdated model
rocket was good for a few years more. But for a long trip through
space--it would never do.
The explosion was over and she was merely sizzling. She had folded her
arms resolutely, determined that he should cancel the order for the
engine immediately.
Sam Meecham felt a wave of helplessness surge over him. He felt lost and
bewildered. Perhaps she was right; maybe it _was_ foolish. Here he was:
Sam Meecham, thirty-five, whose mediocre living was made attaching two
wires to two terminals day after day, week after week--a man who
suddenly saw a pointer go unexpectedly beyond the fifty mark, and who
immediately began having delusions of grandeur. He was a dreamer--but
dreams and reality were two different things, and sometimes he confused
them. He shook his head, feeling like a fool.
"Well?" Dorothy's face was before him, determined, demanding.
Sam said, "All right, I'll take it back."
She smiled condescendingly, like a mother does when a child admits a
wrongdoing.
Conditioned responses, Sam thought bitterly; that was the whole trouble.
This cravenness, this kowtowing before any idiot with a louder voice,
certainly wasn't in his genes. The trouble was in his conditioning,
started when he was an adolescent. Give somebody an inch and they'll
take two. Pretty soon they're walking all over you, and you've become so
used to it you don't complain.
He thought of his job, of the eternal fitting of two wires in place. He
was a cog and nothing more--a cog that could be replaced as swiftly, as
efficiently as any part of an assembly-line atomic engine could be
replaced. He looked up into the blank, smiling, self-satisfied face of
his wife. He thought of the stars beckoning overhead. The _stars_!
"No," he said suddenly, decisively. The word fell like a sledgehammer
blow in the stillness of the room.