Never was there a spaceflight more daring!
Virgil and Lanya sought what everyone
else their age had given up in despair.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Lanya Greggor, holding tightly to her brother Virgil's hand, saunteredwith deliberate and exaggerated nonchalance through the great hallsof the Martian Museum of Science. Her eyes were wide with excitementand pleasure. She was ten years old and Virgil twelve and this was herfirst visit to the museum. Hand in hand, always under the watchful eyesof strategically-placed uniformed attendants they walked ecstaticallythrough the innumerable fascinating rooms, stopping to gaze withequally undisguised admiration at mammoth and complex industrialmachinery and minute, hypersensitive instruments of obscure function.
The attendant smiled warmly as they walked past him and entered thebiggest room they had yet been in.
"There she is," Virgil said proudly. "Just like I told you."
Lanya looked. She was dwarfed by the colossal metal hulk that loomedponderously before her. She leaned back to scan its immense bulk fromtop to bottom.
The bronze inscription plate divulged the information that it was the"Ghost", the first ship to land safely on Mars from a foreign planet.That was the Von Erickson expedition from Earth almost two centuriesago. According to the history texts that Lanya had read, that eventbrought about the almost overnight transformation of Mars from anagrarian to a scientific civilization. Trade and exchange of ideas withEarth, and later with other planets, had accomplished seeming miracleson Mars.
The ship seemed comically primitive to little Lanya. Its huge bulk wasalmost entirely made up of rocket-drive engine and fuel compartments.She studied the elongated shape that stretched to the vaulted rooflike a spear head and rested solidly on the rear jet clusters. Highup in the nose she could see the tiny cabin just big enough for threeastronauts.
Compared with the sleek, beautifully-designed atomic craft in the restof the museum, it was grotesque.
"Gosh," breathed Lanya, "it's big, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Virgil, with the full confidence of two years at theTechnological Institute. "Very crude design, but necessary becausethere is so much engine to it. Simple to construct, though, and with afew refinements ... oh boy!"
Lanya was properly awed. She wouldn't start at the Institute until nextyear. No matter how hard she studied or how fast she learned, Virgilwas always two years of knowledge ahead of her. She had just struggledthrough higher mathematics and physics, thinking she was getting aheadat last, only to find that Virgil, from the vantage point of hisengineering studies, considered the laws of mathematics and physicsmerely basic.
In the old days, Grandma had said, one didn't matriculate at theInstitute until one was as old as fifteen. "How they learn today!" shewas always saying when Lanya accidentally exhibited her knowledge. "Allso fast you would think they haven't as much time to live as before."She would throw up her hands in mock despair. "This new generation! Idon't know what Mars is coming to." But she usually laughed so Lanyaknew that Grandma didn't really despair for Mars' future.
Lanya was vague about her father Jonathan Greggor's origin. He seemedto be a physicist and they said he had been sent to Mars from Earth toassist in the development of uranium and plutonium deposits. But hermother, Klee, a beautiful Martian, had induced Jonathan to stay. Lanyaknew lit