The narrator, talking as though the subject has arisen during a conversation, tells the story of his association with Morris Perlman.
Perlman attended the narrator's lecture the previous evening, and tells him that he was always fascinated by Saturn: he saw Chesley Bonestell's paintings; a memorable moment in his youth was seeing the planet for the first time, with a home-made telescope.
His father, manager of a hotel in Third Avenue, New York, with business worries, resented his timewasting and destroyed the telescope.
When the Third Avenue El closed, land values there rose and the hotel business, now run by Perlman, expanded.
When Perlman is very old, and paragravity drives, of which he financed the research, have replaced rocket propulsion, he offers the narrator a job.