"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot!" Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure!"
"But, where's he going?"
"Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
"Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs. "Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"