O’Neil also claimed in the application to have held a patent on a transistor-switching circuit, an improved trumpet mouthpiece, and a modified color-film process for which he was receiving a small royalty.
Enright, remembered the personal interview with equal clarity. He had been amused at the time. O’Neil had admitted he didn’t have much experience in rocket motor testing, that he wanted to learn it anyway, that he was here because he liked the climate, and that he would most probably stay in rocketry because it was new, changing, and had a lot of promise. What really cinched the job for him was when he told Enright he’d been interested in space travel for a long time and wanted to get in on it now that he had the chance.
Enright put him to jockeying a wrench on Test Stand No. 9. In fourteen months, he was crew chief. Two years after he’d first walked into Enright’s office, he was chief mechanic over all test stands and Enright’s righthand man. Together, the two of them ran the largest testing operation in the country, and there was not an hour during the day when the now-silent Organ Mountains had not echoed back the blast of static firings and splashed the flowing flames from their granite slopes.
White Sands was now slowly blending back into the desert from which it had risen.
Then O’Neil had gone with Enright to help found Propulsion Research in Denver. He had been indispensable to Enright in those days. He was full of new ideas and ways to improve the thundering monsters on which they worked. He was quick to grasp new concepts and eager to simplify, improve, and attempt new things. Enright had to restrain him, for the technician wiped out half a million dollars worth of rocket motor and equipment one day trying out a new and faster starting sequence of his own devising. The stand plumbing and not the sequence itself turned out to be at fault, however, and together the two of them finally got the bugs out of the oxygen-hydrogen motors and developed them to such a pitch of perfection that they started and went to full thrust in less than a second. At the big test stands near Devil’s Head, they evolved the most powerful and efficient motors of the time. Henry Enright and Bill O’Neil were the best team Propulsion Research had; they were Propulsion Research, and the board of directors knew it.
In the meantime, Bill O’Neil took a Denver mine equipment company for about a million dollars because he’d worked out a method of improved flotation processing which gave a better yield. And an offshoot of this, a method of getting germanium out of old mine tailings, started bringing in royalties from RCA and Western Electric. But O’Neil stayed with his babies, the big test stands at Devil’s Head, because the satellite was out there by then and he wanted a bottle of Martian canal water.
The test stands at Devil’s Head were now mute monuments to the past, their concrete walls and flame pits crumbling under the forces of wind and water.
The mere thought of it almost made Enright weep as he trudged along with the night deepening around him. But the darkness seemed almost artificial in the spots where the glare and glow of the neon lights cast shadows into the alleys. A chill wind swept down the street, and there was just a hint that there might be snow before morning. Enright pulled his jacket tighter about him and shivered, wishing he had not pawned his overcoat. And if it did snow, there would be no heat in his shack unless he was able to pick up some driftwood along the Platt River. There was very little lump coal along the railroad tracks any more.
A sign in a pawn shop window, brilliant and garish in fluorescent plastic letters, attracted his attention. He stopped to view the display it heralded.
GENUINE MOON ROCK Guaranteed to contain uranium, gold, silver, tungsten, and other rare metals. All Pieces Souvenirs Of The First Moon Expedition!!! YOUR CHOICE: $1.00 EACH!!!