Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 1 Part 18

It is much better to hear him speak than it is to read his books. He's limited by the fact that he's got to stick to the typewriter, to the printed word, but when he talks, when he talks, it's another matter! He gestures, he's not tied down with his hands to the desk the way I am, he walks, stumps all around the stage, and waves his hands, and when he's putting quotation marks on a word, he puts them on...[ill.u.s.trates, audience laughs]. And you really gather what he means. Incidentally, he looks like Conan Doyle's description of Professor Challenger if Professor Challenger had shaved his beard. Dynamic character.

You may not like him personally, but he's at least as great a man as Einstein, at least, because his field is broader. The same kind of work that Einstein did, the same kind of work using the same methods, but in a much broader field, much closer to human relationships. I hope that some of you will be able to hear him. I said that this will be one of the last chances, because the old man's well over seventy now. As he puts it, "I vill coagulate someday, I vill someday soon, I vill coagulate," which is the term he uses for dying.

He speaks in terms of colloidal chemistry. Properly, it's appropriate. He won't last much longer. In the meantime, he's done a monumental piece of work that H. G. Wells did in the matter of description, and the two together are giants in our intellectual horizon, our intellectual matrix today, that stick up over the rest like the Empire State Building.

I started out to talk primarily about science fiction and I got off on some of my own hobbies. It's a luxury to me not to be held down by a plot and a set of characters. Here I can say anything I like and not be bothered.

I myself have been- reading science fiction since Gernsback started putting it out in the Electrical Experimenter. Then I read it in Argosy and I dug up all that I could out of the Kansas City Public Library. Every member of my family had a library card; there were seven of us, so I could bring home quite a number of books at one time. I wear gla.s.ses now as a result. I never had any particular notion of writing it until about two years ago when a concatenation of peculiar circ.u.mstances started me writing. I happened to hit the jackpot on the first one, so I continued writing. It amazed me to discover that people gave money away for doing things like that-it beats working.

It's likely that I won't be writing very much longer. With the way things are shaping up, I'll probably have other things I'll have to do, as will others here, whether we like it or not. But I hope to be a fan of science fiction for at least fifty years if I can hold myself together that long and keep from getting my teeth kicked in.

All I really want to do is to hang around as long as I can, watch the world unfold, see some of the changes-what they really are-that suits me.

THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH.

This is the story of Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the s.p.a.ceways -- but not the official version. You sang his words in school:

"I pray for one last landing

On the globe that gave me birth;

Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies

And the cool, green hills of Earth."

Or perhaps you sang in French, or German. Or it might have been Esperanto, while Terra's rainbow banner rippled over your head.

The language does not matter -- it was certainly an Earth tongue. No one has ever translated "Green Hills" into the lisping Venerian speech; no Martian ever croaked and whispered it in the dry corridors. This is ours. We of Earth have exported everything from Hollywood crawlies to synthetic radioactives, but this belongs solely to Terra, and to her sons and daughters wherever they may be.

We have all heard many stories of Rhysling. You may even be one of the many who have sought degrees, or acclaim, by scholarly evaluations of his published works - _Songs of the s.p.a.ceways_, _The Grand Ca.n.a.l and other Poems_, _High and Far_, and _"UP SHIP!"_

Nevertheless, although you have sung his songs and read his verses, in school and out your whole life, it is at least an even money bet -- unless you are a s.p.a.ceman yourself -- that you have never even heard of most of Rhysling's unpublished songs, such items as _Since the Pusher Met My Cousin_, _That Red-Headed Venusburg Gal_, _Keep Your Pants On, Skipper_, or _A s.p.a.ce Suit Built for Two_.

Nor can we quote them in a family magazine.

Rhysling's reputation was protected by a careful literary executor and by the happy chance that he was never interviewed. _Songs of the s.p.a.ceways_ appeared the week he died; when it became a best seller, the publicity stories about him were pieced together from what people remembered about him plus the highly colored handouts from his publishers.

The resulting traditional picture of Rhysling is about as authentic as George Washington's hatchet or King Alfred's cakes.

In truth you would not have wanted him in your parlor; he was not socially acceptable. He had a permanent case of sun itch, which he scratched continually, adding nothing to his negligible beauty.

Van der Voort's portrait of him for the Harriman Centennial edition of his works shows a figure of high tragedy, a solemn mouth, sightless eyes concealed by black silk bandage. He was never solemn! His mouth was always open, singing, grinning, drinking, or eating. The bandage was any rag, usually dirty. After he lost his sight he became less and less neat about his person.

"Noisy" Rhysling was a jetman, second cla.s.s, with eyes as good as yours, when he signed on for a ioop trip to the Jovian asteroids in the RS _Goshawk_. The crew signed releases for everything in those days; a Lloyd's a.s.sociate would have laughed in your face at the notion of insuring a s.p.a.ceman. The s.p.a.ce Precautionary Act had never been heard of, and the Company was responsible only for wages, if and when. Half the ships that went further than Luna City never came back. s.p.a.cemen did not care; by preference they signed for shares, and any one of them would have bet you that he could jump from the 200th floor of Harriman Tower and ground safely, if you offered him three to two and allowed him rubber heels for the landing.

Jetmen were the most carefree of the lot, and the meanest. Compared with them the masters, the radarmen, and the astrogators (there were no supers nor stewards in those days) were gentle vegetarians. Jetmen knew too much. The others trusted the skill of the captain to get them down safely; jetmen knew that skill was useless against the blind and fitful devils chained inside their rocket motors.

The _Goshawk_ was the first of Harriman's ships to be converted from chemical fuel to atomic power-piles -- or rather the first that did not blow up. Rhysling knew her well; she was an old tub that had plied the Luna City run, Supra-New York s.p.a.ce station to Leyport and back, before she was converted for deep s.p.a.ce. He had worked the Luna run in her and had been along on the first deep s.p.a.ce trip, Drywater on Mars -- and back, to everyone's surprise.

He should have made chief engineer by the time he signed for the Jovian loop trip, but, after the Drywater pioneer trip, he had been fired, blacklisted, and grounded at Luna City for having spent his time writing a chorus and several verses at a time when he should have been watching his gauges. The song was the infamous _The Skipper is a Father to his Crew_, with the uproariously unprintable final couplet.

The blacklist did not bother him. He won an accordion from a Chinese barkeep in Luna City by cheating at onethumb and thereafter kept going by singing to the miners for drinks and tips until the rapid attrition in s.p.a.cemen caused the Company agent there to give him another chance. He kept his nose clean on the Luna run for a year or two, got back into deep s.p.a.ce, helped give Venusburg its original ripe reputation, strolled the banks of the Grand Ca.n.a.l when a second colony was established at the ancient Martian capital, and froze his toes and ears on the second trip to t.i.tan.

Things moved fast in those days. Once the power-pile drive was accepted the number of ships that put out from the LunaTerra system was limited only by the availability of crews. Jetmen were scarce; the shielding was cut to a minimum to save weight and few married men cared to risk possible exposure to radioactivity. Rhysling did not want to be a father, so jobs were always open to him during the golden days of the claiming boom. He crossed and recrossed the system, singing the doggerel that boiled up in his head and chording it out on his accordion.

The master of the _Goshawk_ knew him; Captain Hicks had been astrogator on Rhysling's first trip in her. "Welcome home, Noisy," Hicks had greeted him. "Are you sober, or shall I sign the book for you?"

"You can't get drunk on the bug juice they sell here, Skipper." He signed and went below, lugging his accordion.

Ten minutes later he was back. "Captain," he stated darkly, "that number two jet ain't fit. The cadmium dampers are warped."

"Why tell me? Tell the Chief."

"I did, but he says they will do. He's wrong."

The captain gestured at the book. "Scratch out your name and scram. We raise ship in thirty minutes."

Rhysling looked at him, shrugged, and went below again.

It is a long climb to the Jovian planetoids; a Hawk-cla.s.s clunker had to blast for three watches before going into free flight. Rhysling had the second watch. Damping was done by hand then, with a multiplying vernier and a danger gauge. When the gauge showed red, he tried to correct it -- no luck.

Jetmen don't wait; that's why they are jetmen. He slapped the emergency discover and fished at the hot stuff with the tongs. The lights went out, he went right ahead. A jetman has to know his power room the way your tongue knows the inside of your mouth.

He sneaked a quick look over the top of the lead baffle when the lights went out. The blue radioactive glow did not help him any; he jerked his head back and went on fishing by touch.

When he was done he called over the tube, "Number two jet out. And for crissake get me some light down here!"

There was light -- the emergency circuit -- but not for him. The blue radioactive glow was the last thing his optic nerve ever responded to.

2.

"As Time and s.p.a.ce come bending back to shape this starspecked scene,

The tranquil tears of tragic joy still spread their silver sheen;

Along the Grand Ca.n.a.l still soar the fragile Towers of Truth;

Their fairy grace defends this place of Beauty, calm and couth.

"Bone-tired the race that raised the Towers, forgotten are their lores,

Long gone the G.o.ds who shed the tears that lap these crystal sh.o.r.es.

Slow heats the time-worn heart of Mars beneath this icy sky;

The thin air whispers voicelessly that all who live must die --