R is for Rocket. Ray Bradbury
Chris!”
“Sick?”
“No. Just—Just go on without me, gang. I’ll see you.”
I felt numb. I turned away from their upturned, questioning faces and glanced at the door. Mother wasn’t there. She had gone downstairs, quietly. I heard the kids moving off, not quite as boisterously, toward the monorail station.
Instead of using the vac-elevator, I walked slowly downstairs. “Jhene,” I said, “where’s Ralph?”
Jhene pretended to be interested in combing her long light hair with a vibro-toothed comb. “I sent him off. I didn’t want him here this morning.”
“Why am I staying home from formula, Jhene?”
“Chris, please don’t ask.”
Before I could say anything else, there was a sound in the air. It cut through the very soundproofed wall of the house, and hummed in my marrow, quick and high as an arrow of glittering music.
I swallowed. All the fear and uncertainty and doubt went away, instantly.
When I heard that note, I thought of Ralph Priory. Oh, Ralph, if you could be here now. I couldn’t believe the truth of it. Hearing that note and hearing it with my whole body and soul as well as with my ears.
It came closer, that sound. I was afraid it would go away. But it didn’t go away. It lowered its pitch and came down outside the house in great whirling petals of light and shadow and I knew it was a helicopter the color of the sky. It stopped humming, and in the silence my mother tensed forward, dropped the vibro-comb and took in her breath.
In that silence, too, I heard booted footsteps walking up the ramp below. Footsteps that I had waited for a long time.
Footsteps I was afraid would never come.
Somebody touched the bell.
And I knew who it was.
And all I could think was, Ralph, why in heck did you have to go away now, when all this is happening? Blast it, Ralph, why did you?
The man looked as if he had been born in his uniform. It fitted like a second layer of salt-colored skin, touched here and there with a line, a dot of blue. As simple and perfect a uniform as could be made, but with all the muscled power of the universe behind it.
His name was Trent. He spoke firmly, with a natural round perfection, directly to the subject.
I stood there, and my mother was on the far side of the room, looking like a bewildered little girl. I stood listening.
Out of all the talking I remember some of the snatches:
“… highest grades, high IQ. Perception A-1, curiosity Triple-A. Enthusiasm necessary to the long, eight-year educational grind.…”
“Yes, sir.”
“… talks with your semantics and psychology teachers—”
“Yes, sir.”
“… and don’t forget, Mr. Christopher …”
Mister Christopher!
“… and don’t forget, Mr. Christopher, nobody is to know you have been selected by the Astronaut Board.”
“No one?”
“Your mother and teacher know, naturally. But no other person must know. Is that perfectly understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Trent smiled quietly, standing there with his big hands at his sides. “You want to ask why, don’t you? Why you can’t tell your friends? I’ll explain.
“It’s a form of psychological protection. We select about ten thousand young men each year from the earth’s billions. Out of that number three thousand wind up, eight years later, as spacemen of one sort or another. The others must return to society. They’ve flunked out, but there’s no reason for everyone to know. They usually flunk out, if they’re going to flunk, in the first six months. And it’s tough to go back and face your friends and say you couldn’t make the grade at the biggest job in the world. So we make it easy to go back.
“But there’s still another reason. It’s psychological, too. Half the fun of being a kid is being able to lord it over the other guys, by being superior in some way. We take half the fun out of Astronaut selection by strictly forbidding you to tell your pals. Then, we’ll know if you wanted to go into space for frivolous reasons, or for space itself. If you’re in it for personal conceit—you’re damned. If you’re in it because you can’t help being in it and have to be in it—you’re blessed.”
He nodded to my mother. “Thank you, Mrs. Christopher.”
“Sir,” I said. “A question. I have a friend. Ralph Priory. He lives at an ortho-station—”
Trent nodded. “I can’t tell you his rating, of course, but he’s on our list. He’s your buddy? You want him along, of course. I’ll check his record. Station-bred, you say? That’s not good. But—we’ll see.”
“If you would, please, thanks.”
“Report to me at the Rocket Station Saturday afternoon at five, Mr. Christopher. Meantime: silence.”
He saluted. He walked off. He went away in the helicopter into the sky, and Mother was beside me quickly, saying, “Oh, Chris, Chris,” over and over, and we held to each other and whispered and talked and she said many things, how good this was going to be for us, but especially for me, how fine, what an honor it was, like the old old days when men fasted and took vows and joined churches and stopped up their tongues and were silent and prayed to be worthy and to live well as monks and priests of many churches in far places, and came forth and moved in the world and lived as examples and taught well. It was no different now, this was a greater priesthood, in a way, she said, she inferred, she knew, and I was to be some small part of it, I would not be hers any more, I would belong to all the worlds, I would be all the things my father wanted to be and never lived or had a chance to be.…
“Darn rights, darn rights,” I murmured. “I will, I promise I will …”
I caught my voice. “Jhene—how—how will we tell Ralph? What about him?”
“You’re going away, that’s all, Chris. Tell him that. Very simply. Tell him no more. He’ll understand.”
“But, Jhene, you—”
She smiled softly. “Yes, I’ll be lonely, Chris. But I’ll have my work and I’ll have Ralph.”
“You mean …”
“I’m taking him from the ortho-station. He’ll live here, when you’re gone. That’s what you wanted me to say, isn’t it, Chris?”
I nodded, all paralyzed and strange inside.
“That’s exactly what I wanted you to say.”
“He’ll be a good son, Chris. Almost as good as you.”
“He’ll be fine!”
We told Ralph Priory. How I was going away maybe to school in Europe for a year and how Mother wanted him to come live as her son, now, until such time as I came back. We said it quick and fast, as if it burned our tongues. And when we finished, Ralph came and shook my hand and kissed my mother on the cheek and he said:
“I’ll be proud. I’ll be very proud.”
It was funny, but Ralph didn’t even ask any more about why I was going, or where, or how long I would be away. All he would say was, “We had a lot of fun, didn’t we?” and let it go at that, as if he didn’t dare say any more.
It was Friday night, after a concert at the amphitheater in the center of our public circle, and Priory and Jhene and I came home, laughing, ready