The Pioneer

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.