His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

Down the steps he snapped a switch, and the plot-sized basement sprang into sharp being under the glareless brilliance of the most modern refractory glow-tube installation. He smiled proudly on the place and its furnishings. This, he thought, is my real life, and I can deny it nothing.

From the shelf of black-bound, imperishable notebooks, through great racks of reagents, turning lathe, forge, reference library, glassware and balances to the electronics and radioactivity outfits, nothing was lacking to make up an almost complete experimental set-up for advanced work in physics, chemistry or practical mechanics.

Gallacher, sitting there among his tools, had a spark of something in his eyes that would have baffled his wife. He opened a notebook and stared almost feverishly down at the half-written page. The last words had been: "—to dry set in 12 hrs. This cmpnd to be xmnd tomorrow."

Swallowing gingerly, he turned the book face down and lifted a tray from a drying rack cunningly placed in the cool draft of a window high up in the wall. Removing a tiny speck of the marble-sized, flinty mass that rested on the glass surface he inserted it into a spectroscope's field chamber, then snapped on the current that sent his electric bills soaring higher month by month. The speck glowed a vivid white; he squinted through a series of colored filters at the incandescent particle.

Then, sighing inaudibly, he lit the projector's bulb. On the calibrated ground-glass screen appeared the banded spectrum of the compound.

Gallacher ticked off the bands with a pencil. Thoughtfully he turned up his notebook and wrote: "Spctrscpe confirms 100%."

Mrs. Gallacher was in bed, a magazine flung irritably on the floor beside her. As she heard the steps of her husband coming slowly up the cellar stairs she settled her hair and scowled.

He came through the door and blinked dazedly. "Still up?" he asked. "I had some special work to do—finishing my tinkering …" He smiled feebly.

"Tinkering!" She crowded into his own word all the vitriolic indignation of which her small, mean soul was capable. Then, seeing his face, she paused, frightened and almost terrified. For it was white and giddy with triumph. "Andrew," she said sharply, "what have you done?"

"My series of experiments," he said mildly. "Tonight I closed my notebooks. My work is finished—and successful." Then, astonishingly, he blazed forth: "Edith! What I have done, no man has done before me—in this house I have synthesized the perfect rocket fuel." He smiled as he saw her face pale. "The fumbling adventurers who tried three times to reach the Moon and finally blew themselves up—their mistake was not to wait for me. Their fuel was not only dangerous but too weak for the job; any adding machine could have told them that. I have been working with explosive propellants for seventeen years, and have you ever heard one of my thousands of tests? No, for I worked calmly and with small quantities. And yet through me the universe has been opened to man! Venus, Luna, Mars—"

"Mars," whispered Mrs. Gallacher inaudibly. Then for the first time in many years she addressed her husband sweetly: "Andrew, what are you going to do now?"

"Publish my facts," he rapped. "Take my place among the immortals of science."

"Just—have them printed in some magazine?" she asked, bewildered.

"That would be sufficient," he said. "I shall give my work to the world."

He turned into himself, smiling secretly at the thought of honorary degrees, banquets, plaques …

"Andrew," snapped his wife, "if you think I'll allow you to waste this stuff you're mistaken. For your own sake, Andrew, for your own sake I ask you to come to your senses. Her eyes grew hard as she mused, "We could be rich—richer than anyone!" A sudden purpose crystallized in her mind. "How big would one of your ships have to be?" she demanded.

"Thinking of that Lunar Rocket?" he asked. "Foolishness! All a ship powered with my propellant needs is living quarters, a hull, about a half-ton firing chamber with an infusible exhaust tube and tanks holding a few cubic feet. Foolproof firing apparatus weighs about two pounds. I could build a rocket myself."

"Yes," she said abstractedly. "I know that." And in her mind the proud boast was spinning, "Wife of the first interplanetary traveller!" How she could lord it over the full professors' wives who wouldn't invite her to tea more than twice a year! She'd show them— "Andrew," she began carefully …

And so it was that Gallacher found himself with a sick headache and groaning muscles roaring through space in the tiniest one-man rocket imaginable, following only his bare specifications, from end to end no larger than a light automobile. Far astern was Mars, red planet that he had not reached, and frustration bit into his vitals.