Frederik Pohl wrote recently about the time, when he was young, whenhe spent more time in Barsoom than in Brooklyn. Allan Howard, Directorof the Eastern Science Fiction Association in Newark, takes us backto those nostalgic days in this vignette of man's first hours on Mars.
Soon the three representatives of Earth were walkingshoulder to shoulder, the Captain first to touch soil.
Know him?
Well you might say I practicallygrew up with him. Hewas my hero in those days. Ithought few wiser or greatermen ever lived. In my eyes hewas greater than Babe Ruth,Lindy, or the President.
Of course, time, and mygrowing up caused me tobring him into a perspectivethat I felt to be more consonantwith his true position inhis field of endeavor. Whenhe died his friends mournedfor fond remembrance ofthings past, but privatelymany of them felt that he hadoutlived his best days. Nowwith this glorious vindication,I wonder how many of themare still alive to feel thetwinge of conscience....
Oh, we're delighted ofcourse, but it seems incredibleeven today to us elated oldsters.Although we were alwayshis staunchest admirers,in retrospect we can see nowthat no one believed morethan we that he did it strictlyfor the dollar. It is likelythere was always a smallcorps of starry-eyed adolescentswho found the wholeimprobable saga entirely believable,or at least half believedit might be partly true.The attitude of the rest of usranged from a patronizingdisparagement that we thoughtwas expected of us, throughgrudging admiration, to out-and-outenthusiasm.
Certainly if anybody hadtaken the trouble to considerit—and why should theyhave?—the landing of thefirst manned ship on oursatellite seemed to renderhim as obsolete as a horde ofother lesser and even greaterlights. At any rate, it wasinevitable that the conquestof the moon would be merelya stepping-stone to more distantpoints.
Oh, no, I had nothing to dowith the selection of the RedPlanet. Coming in as head ofProject P-4 in its latterstages, as I did when Dr.Fredericks died, the selectionhad already been made. Yes,it's quite likely I may havebeen plugging for Mars belowthe conscious level. A combinationof chance, expediencyand popular demand madeMars the next target, ratherthan Venus, which was, insome ways, the more logicalgoal. I would have given anythingto have gone, but themetaphorical stout heart thatone reporter once credited mewith is not the same as an oldman's actual fatty heart.
And there were heartbreakyears ahead before the Goddardwas finally ready. Duringthis time he slipped furtherinto obscurity while big,important things were happeningall around us. You'reright, that one really big creationof his is bigger thanever. It has passed into thelanguage, and meant employmentfor thousands of people.Too few of them have evenheard of him. Of course, hewas still known and welcomedby a small circle of acquaintances,but to the world atlarge he was truly a "forgottenman."
It is worthy of note thatone of the oldest of these acquaintanceswas present atblast-off time. He happenedto be the grandfather of a certaincompetent young crewman.The old man was a proudfigure during the brief ceremoniesand his eyes filledwith tears as the mightyrocket climbed straight up onits fiery tail. He remainedthere gazing up at the skylong after it had vanished.
He was heard to murmur,"I am glad the kid could go,but it is just a lark to him. Henever had a 'sens