Have space suit-- will travel (2 page)

I looked relieved.

“Nevertheless you intend to go to college. Do you intend to become a professional man? Or will you look for snap courses in more elaborate ways to make bayberry candles? Son, your life is yours, to do with as you wish. But if you have any thought of going to a good university and studying anything of importance, then we must consider how to make best use of your next three years.”

“Why, gosh, Dad, of course I want to go to a good-“

“See me when you’ve thought it over. Good night.”

I did for a week. And, you know, I began to see that Dad was right. Our project in “Family Living” was twaddle. What did those kids know about running a family? Or Miss Finchley?-unmarried and no kids. The class decided unanimously that every child should have a room of his own, and be given an allowance “to teach him to handle money.” Great stuff . . . but how about the Quinlan family, nine kids in a five-room house? Let’s not be foolish.

Commercial arithmetic wasn’t silly but it was a waste of time. I read the book through the first week; after that I was bored.

Dad switched me to algebra, Spanish, general science, English grammar and composition; the only thing unchanged was gym. I didn’t have it too tough catching up; even those courses were watered down. Nevertheless, I started to learn, for Dad threw a lot of books at me and said, “Clifford, you would be studying these if you were not in overgrown kindergarten. If you soak up what is in them, you should be able to pass College Entrance Board Examinations. Possibly.”

After that he left me alone; he meant it when he said that it was my choice. I almost bogged down-those books were hard, not the predigested pap I got in school. Anybody who thinks that studying Latin by himself is a snap should try it.

I got discouraged and nearly quit-then I got mad and leaned into it. After a while I found that Latin was making Spanish easier and vice versa. When Miss Hernandez, my Spanish teacher, found out I was studying Latin, she began tutoring me. I not only worked my way through Virgil, I learned to speak Spanish like a Mexicano.

Algebra and plane geometry were all the math our school offered; I went ahead on my own with advanced algebra and solid geometry and trigonometry and might have stopped so far as College Boards were concerned-but math is worse than peanuts. Analytical geometry seems pure Greek until you see what they’re driving at-then, if you know algebra, it bursts on you and you race through the rest of the book. Glorious!

I had to sample calculus and when I got interested in electronics I needed vector analysis. General science was the only science course the school had and pretty general it was, too-about Sunday supplement level. But when you read about chemistry and physics you want to do it, too. The barn was mine and I had a chem lab and a darkroom and an electronics bench and, for a while, a ham station. Mother was perturbed when I blew out the windows and set fire to the barn-just a small fire-but Dad was not. He simply suggested that I not manufacture explosives in a frame building.

When I took the College Boards my senior year I passed them.

It was early March my senior year that I told Dad I wanted to go to the Moon. The idea had been made acute by the announcement of commercial flights but I had been “space happy” ever since the day they announced that the Federation Space Corps had established a lunar base. Or earlier. I told Dad about my decision because I felt that he would know the answer. You see. Dad always found ways to do anything he decided to do.

When I was little we lived lots of places-Washington, New York/Los Angeles, I don’t know where-usually in hotel apartments. Dad was always flying somewhere and when he was home there were visitors; I never saw him much. Then we moved to Centerville and he was always home, his nose in a book or working at his desk. When people wanted to see him they had to come to him. I remember once, when the money basket was empty, Dad told Mother that “a royalty was due.” I hung around that day because I had never seen a king (I was eight) and when a visitor showed up I was disappointed because he didn’t wear a crown. There was money in the basket the next day so I decided that he had been incognito (I was reading The Little Lame Prince) and had tossed Dad a purse of gold-it was at least a year before I found out that a “royalty” could be money from a patent or a book or business stock, and some of the glamour went out of life. But this visitor, though not king, thought he could make Dad do what he wanted rather than what Dad wanted:

“Dr. Russell, I concede that Washington has an atrocious climate. But you will have air-conditioned offices.”

“With clocks, no doubt. And secretaries. And soundproofing.”

“Anything you want. Doctor.”

“The point is, Mr. Secretary, I don’t want them. This household has no clocks. Nor calendars. Once I had a large income and a larger ulcer; I now have a small income and no ulcer. I stay here.”

“But the job needs you.”

“The need is not mutual. Do have some more meat loaf.”

Since Dad did not want to go to the Moon, the problem was mine. I got down college catalogs I had collected and started listing engineering schools. I had no idea how I could pay tuition or even eat-but the first thing was to get myself accepted by a tough school with a reputation.

If not, I could enlist in the Air Force and try for an appointment. If I missed, I could become an enlisted specialist in electronics; Lunar Base used radar and astrar techs. One way or another, I was going.

Next morning at breakfast Dad was hidden behind the New York Times while Mother read the Herald-Trib. I had the Centerville Clarion but it’s fit only for wrapping salami. Dad looked over his paper at me. “Clifford, here’s something in your line.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t grunt; that is an uncouth privilege of seniors. This.” He handed it to me.

It was a soap ad.

It announced that tired old gimmick, a gigantic super-colossal prize contest. This one promised a thousand prizes down to a last hundred, each of which was a year’s supply of Skyway Soap.

Then I spilled cornflakes in my lap. The first prize was- “-AN ALL-EXPENSE TRIP TO THE MOON!!!”

That’s the way it read, with three exclamation points-only to me there were a dozen, with bursting bombs and a heavenly choir.

Just complete this sentence in twenty-five words or less: “I use Skyway Soap because . . .” (And send in the usual soap wrapper or reasonable facsimile.)

There was more about”-joint management of American Express and Thos. Cook-“ and “-with the cooperation of the United States Air Force-“ and a list of lesser prizes. But all I saw, while milk and soggy cereal soaked my pants, was: “-TRIP TO THE MOON!!!”

First I went sky-high with excitement . . . then as far down with depression. I didn’t win contests-why, if I bought a box of Cracker Jack, I’d get one they forgot to put a prize in. I had been cured of matching pennies. If I ever-

“Stop it,” said Dad.

I shut up.

“There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe. Do you intend to enter this?”

“Do I!”

“I assume that to be affirmative. Very well, make a systematic effort.”

I did and Dad was helpful-he didn’t just offer me more meat loaf. But he saw to it I didn’t go to pieces; I finished school and sent off applications for college and kept my job-I was working after school that semester at Charton’s Pharmacy-soda jerk, but also learning about pharmacy. Mr. Charton was too conscientious to let me touch anything but packaged items, but I learned-materia medica and nomenclature and what various antibiotics were for and why you had to be careful. That led into organic chemistry and biochemistry and he lent me Walker, Boyd and Asimov- biochemistry makes atomic physics look simple, but presently it begins to make sense.

Mr. Charton was an old widower and pharmacology was his life. He hinted that someone would have to carry on the pharmacy someday- some young fellow with a degree in pharmacy and devotion to the profession. He said that he might be able to help such a person get through school. If he had suggested that I could someday run the dispensary at Lunar Base, I might have taken the bait. I explained that I was dead set on spacing, and engineering looked like my one chance.

He didn’t laugh. He said I was probably right-but that I shouldn’t forget that wherever Man went, to the Moon, on Mars, or the farthest stars, pharmacists and dispensaries would go along. Then he dug out books for me on space medicine-Strughold and Haber and Stapp and others. “I once had ideas along that line. Kip,” he said quietly, “but now it’s too late.”

Even though Mr. Charton was not really interested in anything but drugs, we sold everything that drugstores sell, from bicycle tires to home permanent kits.

Including soap, of course.

We were selling darned little Skyway Soap; Centerville is conservative about new brands-I’ll bet some of them made their own soap. But when I showed up for work that day I had to tell Mr. Charton about it. He dug out two dust-covered boxes and put them on the counter. Then he phoned his jobber in Springfield.

He really did right by me. He marked Skyway Soap down almost to cost and pushed it-and he almost always got the wrappers before he let the customer go. Me, I stacked a pyramid of Skyway Soap on each end of the fountain and every coke was accompanied by a spiel for good old Skyway, the soap that washes cleaner, is packed with vitamins, and improves your chances of Heaven, not to mention its rich creamy lather, finer ingredients, and refusal to take the Fifth Amendment. Oh, I was shameless! Anybody who got away without buying was deaf or fast on his feet.

If he bought soap without leaving the wrappers with me he was a magician. Adults I talked out of it; kids, if I had to, I paid a penny for each wrapper. If they brought in wrappers from around town, I paid a dime a dozen and threw in a cone. The rules permitted a contestant to submit any number of entries as long as each was written on a Skyway Soap wrapper or reasonable facsimile.

I considered photographing one and turning out facsimiles by the gross, but Dad advised me not to. “It is within the rules, Kip, but I’ve never yet known a skunk to be welcome at a picnic.”

So I used soap. And I sent in wrappers with slogans:

“I use Skyway Soap because-

it makes me feel so clean.”

highway or byway, there’s no soap like Skyway!”

its quality is sky-high.”

it is pure as the Milky Way.”

it is pure as Interstellar Space.”

it leaves me fresh as a rain-swept sky.”

And so on endlessly, until I tasted soap in my dreams. Not just my own slogans either; Dad thought them up, and so did Mother and Mr. Charton. I kept a notebook and wrote them down in school or at work or in the middle of the night. I came home one evening and found that Dad had set up a card file for me and after that I kept them alphabetically to avoid repeating. A good thing, too, for toward the last I sent in as many as a hundred a day. Postage mounted, not to mention having to buy some wrappers.

Other kids in town were in the contest and probably some adults, but they didn’t have the production line I had. I’d leave work at ten o’clock, hurry home with the day’s slogans and wrappers, pick up more slogans from Dad and Mother, then use a rubber stamp on the inside of each wrapper: “I use Skyway Soap because-“ with my name and address. As I typed, Dad filled out file cards. Each morning I mailed the bunch on my way to school.

I got laughed at but the adults most inclined to kid me were quickest to let me have their wrappers.

All but one, an oaf called “Ace” Quiggle. I shouldn’t class Ace as an adult; he was an over-age juvenile delinquent. I guess every town has at least one Ace. He hadn’t finished Centerville High, a distinction since Mr. Hanley believed in promoting everybody “to keep age groups together.” As far back as I remember Ace hung around Main Street, sometimes working, mostly not.

He specialized in “wit.” He was at our fountain one day, using up two dollars’ worth of space and time for one thirty-five-cent malt. I had just persuaded old Mrs. Jenkins to buy a dozen cakes and had relieved her of the wrappers. As she left, Ace picked one off my counter display and said, “You’re selling these. Space Cadet?”

“That’s right, Ace. You’ll never find such a bargain again.”

“You expect to go to the Moon, just selling soap, Captain? Or should I say ‘Commodore’? Yuk yuk yukkity yuk!” That’s how Ace laughed, like a comic strip.

“I’m trying,” I said politely. “How about some?”

“You’re sure it’s good soap?”

“Positive.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. Just to help you out-I’ll buy one bar.”

A plunger. But this might be the winning wrapper. “Sure thing, Ace. Thanks a lot.” I took his money, he slipped the cake into his pocket and started to leave. “Just a second, Ace. The wrapper. Please?”

He stopped. “Oh, yes.” He took out the bar, peeled it, held up the wrapper. “You want this?”

“Yes, Ace. Thanks.”

“Well, I’ll show you how to get the best use of it.” He reached across to the cigar lighter on the tobacco counter and set fire to it, lit a cigarette with it, let the wrapper bum almost to his fingers, dropped it and stepped on it.