“There will be vacation time—baseball——”
“But I want real excitement. I’d like to be a Modern Pioneer. You are one, going off to Borneo for the museum just the way Columbus set out for Queen Isabella.”
His father looked up.
“You can be a Modern Pioneer. I will show you a House of Mystery, and once you step into its door you are in a land where there are more exciting activities packed into one day than you could get being a combination cow-hand, bad man, pirate and pony express rider. You may not be able to convoy an ox-team across a prairie, carry a squirrel gun and stand off scalping Sioux; but you will help battle against Pirate Fire, and Bad Man Erosion, and Bandit Microbe.”
“You mean—work in cousin Grover’s research lab?”
That was it, he found. And under the brilliant training of his older cousin, as he came to be the supply clerk and learned more about the work of the active place, Roger saw how truly his father had spoken.
There was fun, and mystery, and excitement, even in the work. Also, there was the feeling of being a Modern Pioneer, one who belonged to the band that had substituted electricity and wings for ox-wagon and candles, who gave the world instead of the pony rider carrying news, the radio and radio-telephone. Science was the Modern Pioneer.
Where their forefathers sought new borderlands, these modern way-showers explore the stratosphere. As their trail-blazing ancestors fought Indians and hardship and poor crops, these men battle against disease germs, and soil erosion, and eye-straining light and every other detriment to safer, happier existence.
As great as the feat of Columbus, Roger found the announcement that a cure had been found for a terrible disease.
On a par with Daniel Boone’s fame was the renown of the research worker who extended the range of compact radio receivers.