Algis Budrys: Golden Age Space Opera Tales

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 i***t!” 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. - - - -