Illustrated by STALLMAN
Not everyone will think of the first
moon-flight as the first glorious
step on the road to space. There
will always, for instance, be the
fast-buck boys like Lubrano....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity, December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeanne turned off the radio and went downstairs slowly, watching howthe gold-shot curtains on the landing window caught the sunlight in amultitude of brilliant flecks. She shuddered slightly. Up there, thesun would scorch and sear.
When she entered the living room, Aunt Anna looked up from hermagazine, and Pop puffed on his calabash pipe, occasionally gruntingwith satisfaction. Mom looked at Jeanne hopefully, but soon turned awayin confusion. She could not tell whether Jeanne wanted her to laugh orcry.
"Well," said Jeanne, instantly hating the flippant way she tried tospeak, "he got there." She never quite knew why, but whenever emotionsthreatened to choke her up she would slip on the mask, the carefreeattitude, the what-do-I-care voice she was using now.
"All the way—there?" Aunt Anna fluttered her eyebrows, allowingherself a rare display of emotion.
Mom smiled, laughed briefly and nervously. She touched Jeanne's cheektentatively with a trembling hand, hugged her daughter quickly and drewback. "I didn't know," she said. "None of us knew. We were afraid tolisten. I mean, it's so far."
"Knew he'd make it," said Pop, tamping his pipe full with another loadof tobacco from the humidor. "Tom's got good stuff in him. Smokes apipe, you know."
"Not up there," said Jeanne practically. "It would waste oxygen."
"It says here in this magazine the moon is 240,000 miles away," AuntAnna told them.
"Did the announcer say how Tom felt?" Mom wanted to know.
"Just imagine how it will be," Aunt Anna said, "when we get Tomback here and he speaks to the Women's League. We'll have to makearrangements—"
"Can't," Pop reminded her. "Government hasn't said anything about whenTom's coming back. Liable to keep him there a long time. Do the boygood. See what he's really made of, I always say. Andrea, your roast isburning."
Mom scurried off toward the kitchen. A moment after she disappeared,the phone rang and Aunt Anna took the receiver off its cradle. "Hello?Yes, this is the Peterson home. Yes, she is. In a moment. Jeanne, it'sfor you."
"Hmmmm," Jeanne chortled. "Some fellow trying to make time becauseTom's too far away to protest." She hated herself for saying it, andadministered the mental kick in the pants which never helped. She wasmissing Tom more acutely every minute. The distance was unthinkable,the moon almost too remote to consider, lost up there in infinite void,surrounded by parcels—parsecs?—of nothing.
Picking up the receiver, Jeanne turned her back to Aunt Anna, whoappeared quite eager to listen to at least half of the conversation."Hello? Yes, this is Jeanne Peterson. The Times-Democrat? I couldsee you today, I suppose. Why, here at home. I'm on vacation. Butwhat—about Tom? Oh, I see. Oh, they told you down at White Sands.Well, all right. 'Bye."
"It was a man," said Aunt Anna.
"Who said my roast was burning?" Mom asked them all indignantly as shereturned from the kitchen.
"Who was the young man, Jeanne?" Aunt Anna asked.
Jeanne grinned, brushed back a stray lock of her blonde hair. "Sorry todisappoint an old gossip like you, but—"
"Tom is a long way off!"
"That was just Mr. Lubrano