"If I can't dispose of my cargo—"
"We waive all field charges in cases of destitution. You can dump the Redearth and the kids will stake you to a cargo of iron ore; it's going at triple premium on Venus, we're told."
Greg turned on his heel and walked stiffly out of the building. One bitter word burned in his mind: destitution. It was like a kick in the teeth. He thought, in a fury of blind anger, I gave them the stars and they make me a charity case—this new generation! Children who could never build a colonial bubble or pioneer a star route. Soft-minded and soft-muscled idiots.
The field attendant hadn't even recognized Greg's name.
Suddenly the past was alive again, like an angry nightmare. The speeches and the headlines, the bands and the screaming mobs, the politicians, the scientists, the generals. Handclasps and newsreel pictures. "Just one more, sir, for the TV cameras." ... "A Citation by a joint session of the Congress of the United States, to Captain Victor Greg, U. S. Rocket Forces...." GREG MAKES MARS.... L. A. WELCOMES GREG.... FIRST SPACEMAN IN N. Y. PARADE... "And I say to you, my constituents, the name Greg shall be forever writ large in the hearts of a grateful people." ... GREG LANDS FIRST MARTIAN CARGO.... "For the discovery of Redearth, the eternal gratitude of the medical profession...." GREG TAKES NOBEL PRIZE.... "A small token of the gratitude of American industry...." GREG JOINS IMPORT FIRM.... "The undying gratitude of the United Patriotic Mothers of America...." FIRST COLONISTS ON MARS.... COLONIES ON THE MOONS OF JUPITER.... VENUS BUBBLE COMPLETED....
The dream of yesterday, and the dream was gone. The rocket ports were dead. The machines were crumbling into rust. And Captain Victor Greg?—a destitute tramp, waiting for a handout from a generation of brats which had forgotten him.
He crossed the field toward the clutter of buildings beyond the terminal: Port City, raised in less than a year on the California desert, the first minor miracle of the new frontier. The endless mass of traffic, the noisy honky tonks, the nervous neon shimmering in the night, the brassy bands and the fancy women—all of it was gone. Desert sand had drifted across the streets. The highpoled intersection lights, still burning, cast a blue halo in the empty, dirty windows.
Greg's shoulders sagged as he walked toward the central square of Port City. He had to see the monument again. He had to drain the last bitterness from his homecoming. In the Martian colony they had told him it would be like this. He hadn't believed them. How could a legend be forgotten in a generation?
From a block away he saw the metal statue, turned a sickly blue by the corner street light. The high shaft of a primitive rocket ship, with its nose foregear lifted proudly toward the stars; in the foreground, the towering giant of a spaceman, his legs spread wide to embrace the symbolic sphere of the earth. "Sky Frontier"; the sculptor had named it that.