SPACEMEN ARE BORN By BOLLING BRANHAM _Everyone knows that spacemen are born--not made. But grav-bound Trase Barnes, No. 1 v.p. of Air-Lines, Inc., bet his arrogant soul that he could shoot Saturn's rings--and live._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "O, Jewel of the Eastern Sky, O, Mother of many things, Bring home your sons to safety, From the Stars to Saturn's rings...." Curse it, I am too old to go to space, and why can't I be content with that? Must I hear the spacemen's songs and the stories they tell, so that the breath of romance aches each day in my bones? For here on Earth's cool moon I am as close to the sky as I need be, and the sky is close enough to me. But those spacemen who go to Saturn--ah, they have viewed a scene that exists nowhere else in all our universe, and I think they delight in singing the Saturn "Home Song" in my ears and telling me of the wonders of Saturn's skies. For have you ever been to Saturn? No, you needn't go away, for in a moment I'm going to tell the story of Trase Barnes. But in order to understand him you've got to know about Saturn. For, you see, you're coasting when you come in, riding with idling jets, cutting in under the edge of the outside ring, into the darkness away from the sun. On the fourth day you go between the big ring and the crape, and then, when you look above you--you see one magnificent reason why men go to space. There's Saturn. The God of Time, he is, and you're looking out over the flatness of the rings at the yellow bulk of a planet, filling your sky ahead. Yellow, streaked with purple streamers, fading away at the edges into the blackness that is eternal space. Yes, fortunes have been made and lost on trips to Saturn, but no one loses the memory of how it looks when you shoot the rings. Now about Trase Barnes.... Trase was born here on the Moon, right in the dispatcher's station, with the pull of artificial gravity helping to push the blood around for the first time in his little squalling body. You know what gravity does for you? Of course, it's the reason that today spacemen are a special breed. Back when every country was racing to get the first rocket on the moon no one thought much about gravity except how to nullify it. But when the first men got out in space on the way to the moon, they couldn't think much of gravity except how to get back to it. They didn't get back, nor did the men on the next trip, nor the next sixteen brave crews that darted off into the night sky with the howling fire coming out below them. It was number 19 before they found the trouble, for aboard it was the first crew member with spacemen's ear--and don't we know now that spacemen are born?