Captain Thomas Murdock has spent fifteen years as the space station's "garbage man"—the pilot whose ship became permanently contaminated after ferrying the station's waste back to Earth, costing him all standing among his fellow spacemen. While the cadets march to the Heroes' March and the current star pilot, Colonel Larry Hennings, basks in adulation, Murdock quietly does the unglamorous work that keeps the base's byproduct-fed pig farm—his partnership with retired officer Pete Crane and Pete's sister Sheila, Murdock's unofficial fiancée—afloat. A hurricane named Hulda, missed by the station's forecasters, grounds all flights just as Murdock is due to deliver another load of processed waste to feed the farm's hogs. When Bailey calls for a volunteer to rush replacement filters to the station after a chemical accident poisons its air supply, the glory-seeking Hennings leaps at the assignment ahead of Murdock, despite Murdock's ship already being loaded and ready. Hennings' takeoff through the storm is harrowing but successful, and he returns to a hero's newsreel treatment—except that on ascent, faulty loading and a sprung airlock spill most of the cargo of filters into space, leaving the station critically undersupplied, endangering the crew and two children living aboard. Realizing what happened from a radar anomaly he witnessed, Murdock resolves to fly the replacement filters himself despite the worsening hurricane. With Sheila's fierce, matter-of-fact support, he confronts General Bailey and argues his case not on heroics but on cold competence: nearly a thousand solo flights, unmatched experience flying manually without dependence on automatic pilot systems, and the plain fact that no one else has done this thankless job long enough to master it. Sheila's blunt appeal—that after fifteen years of unrewarded service, Murdock has earned this chance—finally moves Bailey to clear him. Murdock's takeoff is a virtuoso feat of piloting skill dressed in no glory at all: reading the storm's radar patterns to time his launch, wrestling the ship through violent turbulence by feel and instinct rather than heroic bravado, and getting violently ill from the strain once he reaches orbit. He has no interest in performing courage for an audience—his only thought is finishing the job. At the station, the poisoned, exhausted crew is overjoyed by the filters' arrival; Commander Phillips, an old classmate, tries to refuse letting Murdock fly back into the storm, but is persuaded, on condition that Hennings accompany him as co-pilot. The descent proves even more perilous than the ascent. A failed servo system forces Murdock to wrestle the controls by brute strength, and loose cargo cans threaten the ship's balance until Hennings, showing real courage, crawls into the reeking cargo hold to secure them. Overshooting the runway and burning extra fuel to correct, Murdock lands the battered ship hard, striking his head unconscious just as they clear the crash barrier. Hennings carries him from the wreck, and press photographers capture the image—inadvertently making it look like Hennings performed the rescue. Recovering in the base recreation hall, Murdock overhears Hennings indignantly defending his true role to Sheila, insisting the papers credit Murdock properly; Sheila calmly tells him it doesn't matter, since the people who matter already know the truth. Murdock thanks Hennings for his own courage in the cargo hold, and the young pilot, humbled, drops his swagger. General Bailey arrives to promote Murdock to colonel and reveals he's been trying to secure the honor for a long time. When Murdock mentions his old application for coveted Moon service, he withdraws it himself, choosing to remain the garbage-run pilot because the hogs—and the unglamorous, essential work—need him. As Murdock and Sheila leave, he discovers the base has erected a canopy and assembled the pilots and band in his honor, playing the Heroes' March for him at last. Rather than accept the ceremony solemnly, Murdock gives the assembled pilots an irreverent, thumbing-the-nose salute—Hennings and the others gleefully returning the same gesture—before driving off with Sheila toward home, the farm, and the hungry pigs, the band still playing behind him, unheeded.
By Lester Del Rey · First published 1957 · Genre: Science Fiction, Human Drama, Redemption Drama · 4 chapters