It's In The Blood
Fantastic Universe – June/July 1953
(1953)*
Eric Frank Russell

Space may flow in a young man's veins. But at times the laws of heredity can take tragic twists.

-

	He posed four-square in the driving seat and threaded a way through thick traffic of which he was no more than subconsciously aware. It was as if the big automobile were part of him, a mechanical extension of his brain and limbs, making of him a sort of machine-age centaur.

	"It was the most wonderful day of my life—and I'm living it again through you," he said, with difficulty holding his voice steady.

	The car glided smoothly around a parked truck, straightened out. He shot a swift glance at his quiet passenger, absorbing in a split second the gray uniform with silver buttons, the fresh young face so closely resembling his own in days gone by. Then his attention came back to the road.

	"You're not jumpy, son?" he asked gently.

	"No, Dad." The reply was automatic.

	"You have every right to be. I was—a little jumpy when my turn came. Sort of all bunched up inside."

	A black cigar arrowed across the horizon, left a widening vapor-trail behind it.

	"There she goes—outward bound." He licked his lips nervously. "When your mother was alive she used to look for the ship and wave. Of course I couldn't see her and she couldn't see me. But I knew she was there."

	His son did not answer. He hadn't looked at the departing space-ship. His gaze was on the shops lining the street.

	"Maybe someday a girl will wave for you." The father gave a little chuckle of satisfaction. "You will return from Mars or Ceres and walk up the graveled path and hear her singing in the kitchen just like your mother did."

	His strong hands twisted the wheel, took the car around a corner. He talked on.

	"She was always singing. Oh, Star of Eve and stuff like that. She had a pretty voice. It never got her anywhere. No concert halls. She sang just for me."

	"Yes, Dad."

	They stopped for a traffic light. The younger man stared at a shop. Its window was filled with musical instruments—banjos, mandolins, guitars, accordions, violins, trumpets. A baby-grand piano stood in the middle of the display, lid open, keys exposed, a sheet of music on .its stand. His blue eyes devoured it as if it were a tender girl in a clinging transparent summer frock.

	The light changed to green. The car moved on.

	"Yes, your mother always was inclined that way. A songbird with raven hair. When you were four she bought you that toy piano, remember?"

	"I remember."

	"You hammered it for hours." He clicked his teeth deprecatingly. "Almost drove me out of my mind. You went on and on until you could pick out a tune. Three Blind Mice. Pretty good for a child of four." A pause, then, "But you're grown up now, aren't you, son?"

	"At twenty I ought to be."

-

	"That's the way to look at it. Your mother was a fine woman, a wonderful woman. All the same I can tell you something you ought to have learned by the time you're my age."

	"What's that, Dad?"

	"A mother is all right for bringing up daughters but it takes a father to raise a son. Yes, sir! What's more a man needs a man's job. A space-pilot is every inch a man and none come better, A spaceman is a hell of a lot more man than any soft-handed musician. I once saw a fellow thumping a piano in a saloon. He was nothing but a no-good bum."

	"I didn't want to play m saloons, Dad."

	"Of course not, Tom. Perhaps he didn't cither. Perhaps he'd had dreams that never came true. So he sat in a saloon with butts on the floor around him and played for beer. Supposing you'd gone to that foreign college your mother talked about, the ... the—"

	"Brussels Conservatoire of Music."

	"Yes, that dump. What would it have got you?"

	"A degree."

	"And then what?"

	"Does it matter now?"

	"In a way. I was thinking of when you retire. If you pass your solo test today you'll be a fully-qualified space-pilot."

	"And so ...?"

	"It won't last forever, Tom. A pilot is too old at forty. Ultimately they'll offer you a ground post or release you on pension. And you'll still be young." He gave a jovial laugh. "Plenty of time for piano playing then, eh?"

	"I suppose so." The words were flat.

	"You bet there will. You'll be able to go in for it in a big way, foreign college and all, with money behind you. No half-starving in an attic for you—no hammering the notes in a cheap dance hall. A musician and a gentleman."

	Silence piled deep while they accelerated, shot ahead of a lumbering bus, left it behind them.

	"But above all a spaceman. Pilot Fanshaw Number Six. Just like your father, your grandfather and three more ahead of him. We've been part of the space-service since the first ships landed on the Moon. The family name is a byword in space. There has always been a Fanshaw  flying  the  space-lanes." 

	"I know, Dad." Again that curious flatness.

	"The reason is easy to understand. We're natural-born pilots. We're made that way. It's in the blood. It's part of us."

	He studied himself in the rear-view mirror. Baggy jowls, grey hair of course—but the eyes remained clear and steady.

-

	"That's important, Tom. Five thousand candidates go through the college every year and never more than fifty reach their solo flight. One in a hundred—and many of those fail on the last lap solely because they aren't naturals. It isn't enough for a man to be physically fit, highly intelligent and top of the class in all his exams. He has also to be a natural. Pilots are born, not made."

	A traffic block held them. Nearby a loudspeaker in a radio store trilled Mendelssohn's Spring Song. Tom hummed it silently, so that his father could not hear. The block untangled itself. The car surged forward once again.

	"A man who's a natural becomes part of his ship, a veritable living part of it. Injury to the vessel is injury to himself. He is born that way. All the Fanshaws were born that way. Know what they will do when you land her unaided and without a scratch?"

	"No, Dad. What do you think?" The question was mechanical, unbacked by curiosity.

	"They won't cheer you and clap your back like they would with anyone else. They'll shrug and walk away, saying, 'He's a Fanshaw—what else can you expect?' See what I mean? You're a foregone conclusion."

	"I hope so. I really hope so." The flatness became uneven.

	The car swung off the road, stopped between a pair of huge gates. Customs sheds stood near, a tall control-tower rose farther back. Several great metal cylinders gleamed in the distance, their tails down, their noses pointing to the sky.

	A uniformed attendant came forward, saluting respectfully. "Morning, Mr. Fanshaw."

	"Morning, Harry. This is the day my boy shows them how."

	Tom said with faint surprise, "You're not coming inside to watch, Dad?"

	"No, son." He grinned, reached across, opened the door. "When my old man brought me here he said, 'You go take it all on your own. The boy who is brought along by his father is a sissy.' Then he went home, waited for me to turn up by mid-afternoon with a gold cord around my left shoulder." His grin widened. "I got it. I was as big a man as he. I knew it then for the first time."

	"All right." Tom got out, hesitated, looked at his right hand, shoved it into his pocket.

	"That's the spirit," approved his father. "No shaking hands. No wishing luck. Fanshaws don't need it." Leaning sidewise, he lowered his voice, bestowed a significant wink. "I'll tell you something in strict confidence—it's dead easy!"

	Then he backed up, turned the car toward town, drove in at fast pace. Tom would make it all right. Twenty take-offs and landings with skilled instructors aboard is one thing. Doing it all on one's own-some is something else—but Tom would make it. The son of his father. The Fanshaws had it bred into their bones.

-

	They would give Tom a seven-hundred-ton test-boat—they would watch him boost it beyond the atmosphere, land it, step out. They would hand him his gold cord, tell him when to report for his first pukka space trip and send him home.

	Almost every week a test-boat was badly dented and once a month some ambitious youngster broke his neck because he could not make himself an integral part of his vessel. Tom wasn't like that. He'd land her astride a handkerchief without a scratch. What is in the blood must come out when called by circumstance.

	He tooled the car into an underground garage three blocks from home, spent five minutes jockeying it into parking position, came out just too late to hear the moan of Tom's ship going up.

	It was one minute past ten. Tom would have blown his tubes precisely at ten because time was a most important factor. One second too early, one second too late, would cost him a mark. Five seconds either way would cost him five marks. The little ship was up and away beyond the clouds by now. Involuntarily he searched the sky, could see nothing of it.

-

	He strode along the sidewalk, ignoring the shops, not heeding the passers-by, thinking. A pity mother would not be there to sing Oh, Star of Eve when Tom came back. She would be mighty proud of her boy, spruce in his uniform with its gleaming gold cord. She would be so happy and proud at having given the space-lines another Fanshaw.

	Chewing his nether lip he crossed a street, reached the middle of the second block. The ground perked. Store windows quivered. A moment or two later a roar came down from the sky and ended in a crack like the snapping of a gigantic stick.

	Facing him was a fat man, gaping fascinatedly at something far behind his back, something he refused to turn to see. The fat man said, "My God!" and ran past him. Others ran. Workingmen, businessmen, housewives, stenographers, children, all ran the same way, toward something behind him.

	He walked straight ahead, slowly—very slowly—beating against the mainstream of running people. They brushed past him, pushed at him, buffeted him, shouldered him aside.

-

	Moving like one in a dream he crossed another street, his legs sluggish, his eyes level, looking steadfastly straight ahead. In the middle of the third block he entered a building, took the elevator to the top floor. With intense deliberation he fitted his key into a lock, went into his own apartment, closed the door gently and did not hear the click of its catch.

	Still slowly he crossed the room to his bed, lowered himself and sat there, facing his own private hell.

The End