we will. What do you want to do, Chris?”
I told them.
We spent the morning playing Kick the Can and some games we’d given up a long time ago, and we hiked out along some old rusty and abandoned railroad tracks and walked in a small woods outside town and photographed some birds and went swimming raw, and all the time I kept thinking—this is the last day.
We did everything we had ever done before on Saturday. All the silly crazy things, and nobody knew I was going away except Ralph, and five o’clock kept getting nearer and nearer.
At four, I said good-bye to the kids.
“Leaving so soon, Chris? What about tonight?”
“Call for me at eight,” I said. “We’ll go see the new Sally Gibberts picture!”
“Swell.”
“Cut gravity!”
And Ralph and I went home.
Mother wasn’t there, but she had left part of herself, her smile and her voice and her words on a spool of audio-film on my bed. I inserted it in the viewer and threw the picture on the wall. Soft yellow hair, her white face and her quiet words:
“I hate good-byes, Chris. I’ve gone to the laboratory to do some extra work. Good luck. All of my love. When I see you again—you’ll be a man.”
That was all.
Priory waited outside while I saw it over four times. “I hate good-byes, Chris. I’ve gone … work.… luck. All … my love.…”
I had made a film-spool myself the night before. I spotted it in the viewer and left it there. It only said good-bye.
Priory walked halfway with me. I wouldn’t let him get on the Rocket Port monorail with me. I just shook his hand, tight, and said, “It was fun today, Ralph.”
“Yeah. Well, see you next Saturday, huh, Chris?”
“I wish I could say yes.”
“Say yes anyway. Next Saturday—the woods, the gang, the rockets, and Old Man Wickard and his trusty para-gun.”
We laughed. “Sure. Next Saturday, early. Take—Take care of our mother, will you, Priory?”
“That’s a silly question, you nut,” he said.
“It is, isn’t it?”
He swallowed. “Chris.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll be waiting. Just like you waited and don’t have to wait any more. I’ll wait.”
“Maybe it won’t be long, Priory. I hope not.”
I jabbed him, once, in the arm. He jabbed back.
The monorail door sealed. The car hurled itself away, and Priory was left behind.
I stepped out at the Port. It was a five-hundred-yard walk down to the Administration building. It took me ten years to walk it.
“Next time I see you you’ll be a man—”
“Don’t tell anybody—”
“I’ll wait, Chris—”
It was all choked in my heart and it wouldn’t go away and it swam around in my eyes.
I thought about my dreams. The Moon Rocket. It won’t be part of me, part of my dream any longer. I’ll be part of it.
I felt small there, walking, walking, walking.
The afternoon rocket to London was just taking off as I went down the ramp to the office. It shivered the ground and it shivered and thrilled my heart.
I was beginning to grow up awfully fast.
I stood watching the rocket until someone snapped their heels, cracked me a quick salute.
I was numb.
“C. M. Christopher?”
“Yes, sir. Reporting, sir.”
“This way, Christopher. Through that gate.”
Through that gate and beyond the fence …
This fence where we had pressed our faces and felt the wind turn warm and held to the fence and forgot who we were or where we came from but dreamed of who we might be and where we might go …
This fence where had stood the boys who liked being boys who lived in a town and liked the town and fairly liked school and liked football and liked their fathers and mothers …
The boys who some time every hour of every day of every week thought on fire and stars and the fence beyond which they waited.… The boys who liked the rockets more.
Mother, Ralph, I’ll see you. I’ll be back.
Mother!
Ralph!
And, walking, I went beyond the fence.
He stopped the lawn mower in the middle of the yard, because he felt that the sun at just that moment had gone down and the stars come out. The fresh-cut grass that had showered his face and body died softly away. Yes, the stars were there, faint at first, but brightening in the clear desert sky. He heard the porch screen door tap shut and felt his wife watching him as he watched the night.
“Almost time,” she said.
He nodded; he did not have to check his watch. In the passing moments he felt very old, then very young, very cold, then very warm, now this, now that. Suddenly he was miles away. He was his own son talking steadily, moving briskly to cover his pounding heart and the resurgent panics as he felt himself slip into fresh uniform, check food supplies, oxygen flasks, pressure helmet, space-suiting, and turn as every man on earth tonight turned, to gaze at the swiftly filling sky.
Then, quickly, he was back, once more the father of the son, hands gripped to the lawn-mower handle. His wife called, “Come sit on the porch.”
“I’ve got to keep busy!”
She came down the steps and across the lawn. “Don’t worry about Robert; he’ll be all right.”
“But it’s all so new,” he heard himself say. “It’s never been done before. Think of it—a manned rocket going up tonight to build the first space station. Good Lord, it can’t be done, it doesn’t exist, there’s no rocket, no proving ground, no takeoff time, no technicians. For that matter, I don’t even have a son named Bob. The whole thing’s too much for me!”
“Then
