George Carlin had ruthlessly trampled his way to
industrial power. Naturally, to win undying
gratitude, he had to buy a one-way ticket to the moon.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Every day people travel great distances to stand in silence before thestatue at Southwestern Spaceport. It is a shrine.
The figure stands with arms raised in an upreaching, yearning gesturethat invokes thoughts of man's potential greatness, and the faceseen beneath the helmet wears an expression of inspired nobilityand idealism. In the indestructible impervium alloy image that ishis masterpiece, Hayden Brush successfully captured the spirit ofenthusiasm and adulation which swept the world. In a strange way it isnot so much a statue of an individual as of an idea, for the sculptorworked entirely from photographs taken with a telephoto lens. He nevermet his subject.
A plaque on the granite base carries numerous words—sacrifice for theGreater Good—advancement of Man's frontiers—conquest of disease anddeath. And a name, George Carlin. Whenever I read that I recall theancient witticism about this history being the fabric of accepted lies.In it there is much truth.
On the moon is another shrine, unvisited because the surface of Lunais still a perilous and inhospitable place. No compelling work of artis to be found there. Nothing but a roughly circular blasted areacontaining scattered fragments of spaceship hull that scorch in thedirect sunlight and freeze in the unrelieved darkness, riddled bycolonies of creeping moon-lice that penetrate the toughest metal.
That is the real, the veritable shrine.
The idea of building a spaceship did not enter George Carlin'smind until after he contracted the dread—and at that timeincurable—Matson's Disease. And then he thought of it only as the mostspectacular form of suicide ever devised. That was typical of the man.
George Carlin, owner of Carlin Industries and indubitably the richestand worst spoiled individual on the North American continent, was anirresponsible egocentric who had never done anyone a good turn in allhis thirty-six years of life. Bad turns he had done in plenty.
Take just this one example. A doctor had the effrontery to submit toa medical journal an article suggesting a possible connection betweenthe bone-destroying virus infection called Matson's Disease andCarlin Industries' highly profitable operations in thawing Antarcticareas with atomic heat. He hinted that age-old spores might have beenreleased from the melting ice, and been carried to seaports.
Carlin's private intelligence operatives got wind of the article beforepublication, and Carlin himself ordered that measures be taken. Thecampaign was short and filthy, ending with the unfortunate doctordiscredited and barred from practice on framed evidence. The articlewas not printed.
And then came a morning when George Carlin noticed a slight soreness inhis ribs and his fingers detected a peculiar flexibility. For a whilehe could not believe it. Such things just did not happen to him. Toothers perhaps, but he was above them. For he was George Carlin.
But when the symptoms not only persisted but increased he was at lastforced to a realization of doom. Gradually his bones would softenand dissolve, until in a year or two he would be a mere lump ofquivering flesh without a skeleton to give it shape. He did not tellhis physician. That was useless, for the atypical plague had defiedall efforts of medical science. Instead he reacted in cha