When the health officers found George Carlin in his isolated cabin he was almost dead. His skeleton had softened to such an extent that he could not stand, and could crawl across the dirty, littered floor only with the greatest difficulty. His atrophied muscles had almost nothing against which to work, and malnutrition and alcoholism complicated the case.
After six months in a sanitarium bed he had recovered enough to become bored. He borrowed a book from the man in the next bed and was disappointed to find it an advanced treatise on rocket fuels. But he read it through and surprised himself by becoming interested.
Still flat on his back, unable to move, he began an intensive course of study. He had been so nearly boneless when admitted, one of the most advanced cases to survive, that the complete cure took three and a half years.
When he was finally released he had learned enough to obtain a minor job as technical assistant—under an assumed name—in the Carlin Institute For Research which had replaced the old Carlin Industries. He has been there fourteen years now, trying to compensate for lack of brilliance by earnest effort and long hours.
He still has one dream. He hopes some day to stand on a barren, airless spot marked by twisted fragments of a spaceship. And he hopes Verne Harris' spirit still hovers there to hear his apologies.
He has long since given up trying to have his story believed. The myth is too deeply embedded in the public consciousness, and no one has ever heard of Verne Harris. Even the history books teach the children that George Carlin was the first man to reach the moon alive. The last time he attempted to tell the truth he was excoriated as an evil-minded muckracker, probably insane, and received a fractured nose at the hands of an irate listener for maligning a world hero. So he has surrendered to the inevitable.
How do I know all this?
Once I was George Carlin.