The idea of building a spaceship did not enter George Carlin's mind until after he contracted the dread—and at that time incurable—Matson's Disease. And then he thought of it only as the most spectacular form of suicide ever devised. That was typical of the man.
George Carlin, owner of Carlin Industries and indubitably the richest and worst spoiled individual on the North American continent, was an irresponsible egocentric who had never done anyone a good turn in all his thirty-six years of life. Bad turns he had done in plenty.
Take just this one example. A doctor had the effrontery to submit to a medical journal an article suggesting a possible connection between the bone-destroying virus infection called Matson's Disease and Carlin Industries' highly profitable operations in thawing Antarctic areas with atomic heat. He hinted that age-old spores might have been released from the melting ice, and been carried to seaports.
Carlin's private intelligence operatives got wind of the article before publication, and Carlin himself ordered that measures be taken. The campaign was short and filthy, ending with the unfortunate doctor discredited and barred from practice on framed evidence. The article was not printed.
And then came a morning when George Carlin noticed a slight soreness in his ribs and his fingers detected a peculiar flexibility. For a while he could not believe it. Such things just did not happen to him. To others perhaps, but he was above them. For he was George Carlin.
But when the symptoms not only persisted but increased he was at last forced to a realization of doom. Gradually his bones would soften and dissolve, until in a year or two he would be a mere lump of quivering flesh without a skeleton to give it shape. He did not tell his physician. That was useless, for the atypical plague had defied all efforts of medical science. Instead he reacted in characteristic fashion by getting grossly and disgustingly drunk.
During the hangover he decided upon suicide. There was nothing unique about this; thousands upon thousands of victims had taken the short road rather than helplessly endure the horrors of the final stages. But mere suicide was not enough for George Carlin. He was not just anybody. He was different.
With his money it had always been easier to arrange spectacular gestures than to force himself through the hard work necessary for more constructive achievements, and the substitutes had been just as satisfying to his ego. This habit of thought persisted even in planning his own death.
Verne Harris was an obscure junior engineer at one of Carlin Industries' minor branch plants. A confidential report rated him as extremely brilliant and original, although somewhat visionary and inclined to overlook commercial possibilities. His very obscurity was one of the reasons he was placed in charge of constructing the spaceship. He could be handled, and the impression would be given in all publicity releases that George Carlin himself was the moving force.