 Who is most likely to end up going to Jupiter?
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight. They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility." I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time, for I was thinking: He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the others alone! My parents had died in a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those "You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie Taggart. He was a veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the Lunar Lady , a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White Sands. I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. The Universe was mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only half as big. Though it was daytime, I saw the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by the sons of Earth. They expect us to make a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth. "You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as good spacemen should!" Charlie scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol. And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships.
 Ben
 Mickey  Dean Dawson  Ben  Charlie