A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Vol 2 Part 19

The curtain was late going up, and although the orchestra played patriotic airs during the interval, the crowd, further angered by the delay, grew steadily more restive. Then, when the situation seemed about to get completely out of hand, the musicians struck up "Hail to the Chief" and the curtain at the rear of the box on the left parted and the President and his guests entered and took their seats.

In an instant the temper of the audience changed. The shouts of derision died and were succeeded by a spontaneous burst of applause, for even the dullest-witted among them realized the significance and magnanimity of that moment.

The famous star excelled himself that night, and I observed that the President's applause was as prolonged and hearty as that of the others. The play was Oth.e.l.lo (which in view of all the circ.u.mstances was not the happiest choice that might have been made), but all agreed that Booth's lago was magnificent.

-R. Harrington Stockton, Cal. October 20, 1903 JULY 4, 1869:.

BEING THE RECORD OF A LONG-FORGOTTEN INCIDENT THAT BRIEFLY DREW.

NATIONAL ATTENTION TO THE TOWN OF AUBURN.

WHEN he urged his friend to visit him in California, Brooke David held forth a promise that he -would find his stay in the little foothill town serene and restful, where he could take his ease in peaceful surroundings and forget the cares that had long been his lot.

During the greater part of his stay that promise was fulfilled. Ever the considerate host, David was at pains to see that his guest enjoyed uninterrupted repose. Although, like most men who have long been in public life, David liked nothing better than to surround himself with companions, during the Shogun's stay he limited visitors to a few friends of long standing, men whom he knew could be relied on to respect the privacy of the honored guest.

The result of his careful planning must have been all Brooke David had envisioned. The Shogun had of course been in feeble health before he set off for California, and the long journey had made further inroads on his slender reserves of strength. But a few days of rest and quiet brought about a heartening change. Nights of tranquil sleep in the big corner room, its windows open tothe cool breezes that swept down from the mountains, had a beneficent effect, as did also the simple meals and the hours he spent each afternoon sitting beneath the oaks overlooking the canyon while the faithful Bosley read aloud from a favorite book, closing it quietly whenever his listener's head inclined forward in sleep, his gray beard touching his chest.

After less than a week of that placid routine it became clear to all that the Shogun was on the mend. In his diary Bosley makes daily note of his progress, although his grat.i.tude at his chief's reviving strength and spirits is tempered by his concern that the old man's impatience with the role of invalid might lead him to resume too quickly his normal activities and thus cancel his physical gains. The Shogun's resiliency, often before demonstrated, -was such, however, that he was presently following again his accustomed active schedule, with few signs of undue fatigue.

He resumed his lifelong habit of rising early, getting up before the rest of the household was astir and making his way downstairs into the cool freshness of the morning. There one can imagine him wandering slowly about the grounds, a tall, gaunt figure with bent shoulders and lined face, standing for long periods while he gazed out over the successive ridges of the hills into the haze-filled valley, or regarding with contemplative interest the colony of squirrels that, rarely visible at other hours of the day, then ventured down out of the oaks and playfully scurried along the paths, displaying no fear of the attentive watcher.

Bosley reports that the Shogun spoke often of these quiet interludes, saying that the solitude of early morning had a healing quality superior to any tonic known to the doctors, and saying too that these strolls beneath the trees awakened memories of his long-distant youth.

Since coming to this quiet retreat [wrote Bosley in late June] the Shogun's thoughts often turn toward times long past. It is as though the burdens of later years have been eased from his shoulders, leaving his mind free to range backward to the time when, a carefree backwoods youth, he had known the forests and villages of the frontier.

When he speaks of that period, as he often does, the signs of weariness disappear from his face, and his spirit grows buoyant and almost gay. This morning when he came in from his stroll he opened the door of my room and, finding me awake, came and sat at the foot of my bed. He remained silent for some moments while I waited quietly, knowing from the cast of his countenance that he had something he wished to say. At last he began, speaking in a half-humorous tone that presently grew quite serious.

"Matt," he said, "when I was a boy they used to tell about an old schoolmaster who lived down in Kentucky. He was a simple backwoodsman without much book learning, but he got along well enough as long as he confined himself to teaching his scholars how to read and write and cipher. But one day the members of the school board got the idea that he ought to branch out, so they ordered him to add another subject-geography-to the curriculum.

"The old teacher had no textbooks to consult, but he did the best he could under the circ.u.mstances. He had once made a trip down the Ohio, so every day for the next four months when it came time for the geography lesson he told them what he could recollect about the town of Louisville. By the time the term was over, his students had heard all they ever wanted to hear about that place. So on the last day the schoolmaster made an announcement. 'Next term,' he said, 'we're going to broaden out and take up the study of foreign geography, beginning with St. Louis.'"

He paused, chuckling at the memory, then after a moment he continued: "I've been thinking this morning that sometimes we're all inclined to take the view of that Kentucky schoolmaster, particularly those of uswho go into national politics and get elected to office. After we've spent a few years in Was.h.i.+ngton, we begin to think that's all there is to the country, and that when things go wrong there, the nation itself is going to the dogs. There have been times when I have felt that there was nothing much to hope for, when the people seemed blind to everything except self-interest and ready to follow any leader who offered them a chance to profit at the expense of their countrymen. You've sometimes heard me in my blindness rail against the blindness of others, little realizing that this land is far too big and too strong to be much affected by the quarrels of the politicians. What the office-holders need is a smattering of foreign geography. I've been taking that course myself these past few weeks and I've come to realize what I should have known all along: that the people's welfare is not, and never can be, in the hands of any one man or group of men."

He had become quite earnest as he talked, and now he stood up and began pacing between the bed and the window, his hands clasped behind his back.

"There's one thing this outing has done, Matt," he continued, "and that is to make me realize that the wrongs we saw done these past few years, and that we were powerless to prevent, are not nearly so serious as they appeared at the time. One can't ride for days across the plains and mountains, as we have done, without having one's eyes opened and one's faith renewed. This morning I've been sitting under that great oak and meditating while I looked out over the hills and canyons toward the far ridges of the mountains. And as I looked, it came to me how foolish it is to imagine that any set of men, no matter how wrong-headed or selfish, or how much power they hold, can do the nation any lasting hurt. Their day will pa.s.s, and with it all the injustices of their making; the bitterness too will pa.s.s and be forgotten; but the nation will endure, never fear, and be so little marred by all this turmoil that in a few years, or in a few decades at the most, what seem to us now matters of such import will be seen in their true light, and all this striving and grief and disappointment will end in-what? At the most, in a few pa.s.sing lines in the history books."

The Shogun paused before the door leading into the hall; his manner changed and a droll smile came over his face. "Matt," he added, "I hope you haven't minded having to listen to this harangue so early in the morning. But that's what you've got to expect from us politicians; once an idea gets into our heads we can never rest until we've had a chance to try it out on an audience."

The Shogun's habit of rising early not only inspired such philosophical observations as that reported above; it was also a contributing factor in the sequence of events that were to make his stay at Auburn memorable by bringing him again briefly to the notice of the entire nation.

The memoir of eighty-nine-year-old Hubert Gans, excerpts from which were quoted earlier in this narrative, recounts his meetings with the Shogun when the Auburn schoolboy rode out from his father's dairy each morning and delivered milk to the David summer home. This, however, was not the only friends.h.i.+p David's guest formed during those early-morning hours while the rest of the household slept. Several times each week the David housekeeper, Mrs. Odgers, made up a bundle of soiled linen and, before she went to bed, deposited it outside the kitchen door. Early the next morning it was picked up by the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Auburn washerwoman, who left in its place the freshly laundered pieces she had carried away on her last trip.

One morning not long after he arrived, the Shogun came upon the girl as she was lifting the heavy wicker basket down from her buckboard. He came forward and helped her carry it up on the back porch. This was the beginning of their friends.h.i.+p, the details of which have been preserved because the incident to which it led caused comment far beyond the confines of the town, stirring up a controversy so heated that it a.s.sumed an importance neither of them could have foreseen.Among various accounts of the episode that found their way into print, that of the one-time Auburn editor C. E. Hargraves (whose article in the October ij, 1903 issue of The California Plowman has already been quoted), states the facts more briefly than most. The version that follows is based on a later installment of Hargraves's reminiscences, that of October 24, which is mainly devoted to this matter.

The editor begins by describing the first meeting between Maud Luning and the Shogun and then goes on to relate that in the course of their subsequent visits he won the confidence of the reticent child and learned something of her history. The latter was simple enough. She lived with her mother and younger sisters in a cottage on lower High Street, near the edge of Chinatown. Since her husband's death, some two years earlier, Mrs. Luning had supported her small family by taking in was.h.i.+ng, and Maud, a slight, freckle-faced girl who looked less than her fourteen years, did her part by delivering the bundles before and after school. The vehicle in which she made her rounds was, states Hargraves, a dilapidated buckboard drawn by an ancient sorrel mare; both were familiar sights on Auburn's streets long before the events of July 4 projected them into wider prominence. The family had come to California in the summer of 1866 and settled at Auburn in the hope that the town's climate would prove beneficial to the husband and father, Henry Luning, whose health had been shattered by four years in the Confederate Army, where he had served under Jubal Early and, after 1864, with Mosby's guerrillas.

Hargraves goes on to state that one morning a week or two after their acquaintance began, the Shogun observed that his young friend, who was normally a quiet, uncommunicative child, seemed more than usually preoccupied. At first she offered no explanation of her silence, but under his kindly questioning she at length explained that a group of girls in her cla.s.s at school were preparing to ride on a float in the town's coming Fourth of July parade. Thirteen girls had been selected for that honor, and each was to wear a costume representing one of the original thirteen colonies, a project that had aroused added interest among the girls because their cla.s.s was then studying the history of the American Revolution.

Maud had not been one of those chosen to ride on the float, but that had disturbed her less than what she believed to be the reason why she had not been included. The other girls, she related, had gathered about her at recess the previous day and jeeringly addressed her as a Johnny Reft, adding that no one whose father had fought for old Jeff Davis would be permitted to take part in the celebration.

Having bit by bit drawn this story from the child, the Shogun rea.s.sured her as best he could, and at length she climbed into her buckboard and headed back to town, measurably cheered. Later that day he mentioned the incident to his host. Both men thought it likely that the whole matter was the result of a childish misunderstanding, but when Brooke David made inquiries in town that afternoon, he discovered that her version was substantially correct. The float, he learned, was being sponsored by the Auburn branch of the then dominant wing of the Shogun's party, and the county chairman, a staunch supporter of that faction's stem policy toward the South, had issued orders that no children of Southern sympathizers be allowed to partic.i.p.ate.

When David related these facts at supper that night, the Shogun listened without comment, but the lines about his mouth took on an added grimness, and those familiar with that expression grew convinced that the matter would not be dropped. And so it proved, although if at first he had any definite plans in mind he took no one into his confidence. The result was that the means he employed to rebuke the narrow intolerance of the town's Radical Republicans was as much a surprise to David and his friends as it was to the generality of the citizens.Only later did those close to him recall certain happenings that, had they given thought to them at the time, might have indicated that something was afoot. Soon after the Shogun's presence in Auburn had become known, the group in charge of the Independence Day celebration had invited him to view the parade from the reviewing stand and later to deliver the traditional Fourth of July oration. Bosley, in his reference to this, states that the Shogun's reply expressed his appreciation of the honor but he asked to be excused, pleading his uncertain health and adding with characteristic humor that in his opinion discarded politicians could best serve their country by maintaining a discreet silence on all public questions.

A day or two after his talk with the Liming girl, however, he mildly surprised his host by remarking that he had been thinking over the committee's invitation and had concluded that perhaps he had reached too hasty a decision. Would David get in touch with the committee chairman and tell him that, if their arrangements would permit a last-minute change, he would be happy to attend the parade. This offer was promptly accepted. Seldom had the town had the privilege of entertaining so well known a public figure, and news that he was to appear was duly heralded in the next issue of the Sentinel.

The committee had a.s.sumed that the Shogun's role in the exercises would be exclusively that of spectator, and a place had been reserved for him on the flag-draped stand at the head of High Street. But on the morning of the qth, to the growing concern of the officials, his chair remained unoccupied when the sound of distant music announced that the parade was getting under way. Brooke David, who was among the guests on the stand, could throw no light on the Shogun's whereabouts. They had, he explained, driven in to town together, but he and his guest had parted immediately on their arrival, the latter setting off through the crowd after remarking, casually that he had agreed to meet a friend on a little matter of business.

It was some time before those on the stand learned the nature of this business or the ident.i.ty of the Shogun's friend. The first of the floats, led by the twelve-piece Auburn band, had reached and pa.s.sed the reviewing stand, and still the chair of the honored guest remained vacant. Then from far down the street came a roar of applause from the sidewalk crowds. The cheers grew in volume moment by moment, interspersed with shouts of laughter, and all up High Street necks craned to learn what was causing so much hilarity.

Soon the dignitaries on the reviewing stand saw a curious sight. Well toward the end of the column and sandwiched between gaily decorated floats and uniformed marching teams was a vehicle that, despite the bunting draped from its sides and festooned from the bridle and reins of the horse, was instantly recognized as the familiar laundry wagon in which Maud Luning daily made her rounds. That young lady herself was driving, sitting erect and prim in her starched white frock, her corn-colored hair in two tight pigtails down her back, and her eyes straight ahead, seemingly oblivious of the tumult about her. But it was the odd figure on the seat beside her that captured the attention of the crowd. He, too, preserved a manner as decorous as that of his companion as he periodically doffed his stovepipe hat in acknowledgment of the cheers, his bearing as grave and formal as though this ancient vehicle had been the most elegant of open carriages.

Although the Shogun's presence at the David house was then generally known in Auburn, this was the first glimpse many of the townspeople had had of him. But portraits and caricatures of his homely, rough-hewn features had appeared so often in the public prints as to make them familiar to all. It was the una.s.suming informality of his first appearance among them that so captivatedthe onlookers, stirring them to continuous laughing applause as the little wagon and its oddly incongruous occupants filed past.

No was the reason for the Shogun's presence in this humble vehicle lost on the crowd, for news that Maud Luning had been refused permission to ride with her schoolmates had for days past been widely discussed. Having thoroughly debated the question pro and con, the great majority of the townspeople, whatever their political beliefs, had concluded that the float's sponsors had been clearly in the wrong to hold the child responsible for her father's having fought on the side of the Rebels. Thus the Shogun's unexpected presence in the parade, squiring the small figure about which this controversy had raged, made so strong an appeal to the spectators' sense of justice that the wagon's progress up Auburn's main street took on the aspect of a triumphal procession.

His gesture won, too, as events were to prove, the lively approbation of many thousands elsewhere, for news of the incident was not long restricted to that obscure California town. So deep-seated were the political animosities of the period that this small event, which in less contentious times would have pa.s.sed unnoticed, was eagerly seized upon and its importance magnified until it was presently claiming national attention. The wires of the overland telegraph carried the story across the mountains, and during the next few days it was printed, often with editorial comment, in hundreds of newspapers.

What significance the various journals attached to the incident depended of course on their political affiliations. Those that during the years following the war had supported the administration in its policy of conciliation saw in it a gesture of friends.h.i.+p to all helpless victims of popular prejudice and a rebuke to those who sought to keep alive wartime enmities. On the other hand, the opposition papers-and these included many of the most influential in the land- professed to see in the episode a plot on the part of the so-called moderate wing of the party to curry the favor of the unrepentant Rebels in the hope of thus regaining its lost political influence.

No useful end would be served by relating here the full story of that long-forgotten controversy.

Yet this small happening had consequences far out of proportion to its intrinsic importance.

Whether or no the Shogun, when he took that means of delivering a well-deserved rebuke to the bigotry of a local political faction, foresaw its possible result can only be guessed at, but it seems probable that so astute a politician could not have been unaware that it might cause far more than local repercussions.

It is a truism that consequences of importance sometimes spring from small beginnings, and so it proved now. For the Shogun's ride with small Maud Luning in Auburn's Fourth of July parade had the effect, whether planned or not, of bringing dramatically to the country's notice the treatment too often dealt out to innocent victims of ma.s.s prejudice. That his protest struck a responsive chord in the hearts of so many was due in part to the fact that the enmities growing out of the war, and intensified during the years that followed, had grown increasingly burdensome. Thus the Shogun, whether by design or accident, had chosen well the time to make his forthright plea for the burial of old resentments. The war had been over for more than four years, and the bitter quarrels that had followed, reaching their climax during the national election of 1868, had run their course. The rank and file were everywhere in a mood to welcome a return of peaee and tranquillity and eager for a leader to guide them back along the paths of harmony and good will.

That it was the Shogun who found himself abruptly elevated to this role is not surprising in view of the treatment we too often accord our leaders. For as a nation it has long been our habit alternately to place our public servants on a pedestal as paragons of wisdom and probity andthen, having tired of hero-wors.h.i.+p, to brand them as rogues and cast them into the outer darkness, only in the end to have another change of heart and restore them miraculously to public esteem.

Like others before him and since, it was the Shogun's lot to pa.s.s sue- cessively through periods of phenomenal popularity and of equally complete disfavor. It is pleasant to reflect that, having completed the cycle, he enjoyed during the few brief months still allotted him the renewed regard of his fellows, who by common consent conferred on him the accolade he valued above all others: that of spokesman for the weak and oppressed everywhere, who with courage and humility and infinite patience supported to the end the doctrine of justice and equality for all.

It is perhaps fitting that this memoir be brought to a close by a final brief quotation from the diary of Matthew Bosley, written in mid-October 1869, hardly three months after the Shogun's visit to Auburn ended.

Among the scores of messages that have daily arrived during the past fortnight [he wrote] the most touching by far have been those that come, not from men who occupy high places in the affairs of the nation, but from humble citizens who, prompted by one can only surmise what feelings of sorrow and compa.s.sion, were moved to take their pens in hand and record their deep sense of personal loss. For these messages, coming as they have from every corner of the land, many of them crudely written and phrased, yet have one quality in common, and s.h.i.+ning through even the least legible of their scrawls and investing them with a quiet dignity is their boundless admiration for a great and humble fellow American and their candid grief at his pa.s.sing.

These simple, heartfelt tributes form an imperishable garland to his memory, for one and all they voice the confidence and trust that so often sustained and comforted him during the troubled years when he walked among us.

DEAD CENTER.

by Judith Merril

CHAPTER ONE.

THEY GAVE HIM SWEET ICES, and kissed him all round, and the Important People who had come to dinner all smiled in a special way as his mother took him from the living room and led him down the hall to his own bedroom.

"Great kid you got there," they said to Jock, his father, and "Serious little b.u.g.g.e.r, isn't he?" Jock didn't say anything, but Toby knew he would be grinning, looking pleased and embarra.s.sed. Then their voices changed, and that meant they had begun to talk about the important events for which the important people had come.

In his own room, Toby wriggled his toes between crisp sheets, and breathed in the powder-and-perfume smell of his mother as she bent over him for a last hurried goodnight kiss. There was no use asking for a story tonight. Toby lay still and waited while she closed the door behind her and went off to the party, click-tap, tip-clack, hurrying on her high silver heels. She had heard the voices change back there too, and she didn't want to miss anything. Toby got up and opened his door just a crack, tnd set himself down in back of it, and listened.

In the big square living room, against the abstract patterns of gray and vermilion and chartreuse, the menand women moved in easy patterns of familiar acts. Coffee, brandy, cigarette, cigar. Find your partner, choose your seat. Jock sprawled with perfect relaxed contentment on the low couch with the deep red corduroy cover. Tim O'Heyer balanced nervously on the edge of the same couch, wreathed in cigar smoke, small and dark and alert. Gordon Kimberly dwarfed the big easy chair with the bulking importance of him. Ben Stein, s.h.a.ggy and rumpled as ever, was running a hand through his hair till it too stood on end. He was leaning against a window frame, one hand on the back of the straight chair in which his wife Sue sat, erect and neat and proper and chic, dressed in smart black that set off perfectly her precise blonde beauty. Mrs. Kimberly, just enough overstuffed so that her Copyright 1953 by Mercury Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

pearls gave the appearance of actually choking her, was the only stranger to the house. She was standing near the doorway, politely admiring Toby's personal art gallery, as Allie Madero valiantly strove to explain each minor masterpiece.

Ruth Kruger stood still a moment, surveying her room and her guests. Eight of them, herself included, and all Very Important People. In the familiar comfort of her own living room, the idea made her giggle. Allie and Mrs. Kimberly both turned to her, questioning. She laughed and shrugged, helpless to explain, and they all went across the room to join the others.

"Guts," O'Heyer said through the cloud of smoke. "How do you do it, Jock? Walk out of a setup like this into... G.o.d knows what?"

"Luck," Jock corrected him. "A setup like this helps. I'm the world's pampered darling and I know it."

"Faith is what he means," Ben put in. "He just gets by believing that last year's luck is going to hold up.

So it does."

"Depends on what you mean by luck. If you think of it as a vector sum composed of predictive powers and personal ability and accurate information and..."

"Charm and nerve and..."

"Guts," Tim said again, interrupting the interrupter.

"All right, all of them," Ben agreed. "Luck is as good a word as any to cover the combination."

"We're all lucky people." That was Allie, drifting into range, with Ruth behind him. "We just happened to get born at the right time with the right dream. Any one of us, fifty years ago, would have been called a wild-eyed visiona-"

"Any one of us," Kimberly said heavily, "fifty years ago, would have had a different dream--in time with the times."

Jock smiled, and let them talk, not joining in much. He listened to philosophy and compliments and speculations and comments, and lay sprawled across the comfortable couch in his own living room, with his wife's hand under his own, consciously letting his mind play back and forth between the two lives he lived: this, here... and the perfect mathematic bleakness of the metal beast that would be his home in three days' time.

He squeezed his wife's hand, and she turned and looked at him, and there was no doubt a man could have about what the world held in store.

When they had all gone, Jock walked down the hall and picked up the little boy asleep on the floor, andput him back into his bed. Toby woke up long enough to grab his father's hand and ask earnestly, out of the point in the conversation where sleep had overcome him: "Daddy, if the universe hasn't got any ends to it, how can you tell where you are?"

"Me?" Jock asked. "I'm right next to the middle of it."

"How do you know?"

His father tapped him lightly on the chest.

"Because that's where the middle is." Jock smiled and stood up. "Go to sleep, champ. Good night."

And Toby slept, while the universe revolved in all its mystery about the small center Jock Kruger had a.s.signed to it.

"Scared?" she asked, much later, in the s.p.a.celess silence of their bedroom.

He had to think about it before he could answer. "I guess not. I guess I think I ought to be, but I'm not. I don't think I'd do it at all if I wasn't sure." He was almost asleep, when the thought hit him, and he jerked awake and saw she was sure enough lying wide-eyed and sleepless beside him. "Babyl" he said, and it was almost an accusation. "Baby, you're not scared, are you?"

"Not if you're not," she said. But they never could lie to each other.

CHAPTER TWO.

TOBY SAT ON THE PLATFORM, next to his grandmother. They were in the second row, right in back of his mother and father, so it was all right for him to wriggle a little bit, or whisper. They couldn't hear much of the speeches back there, and what they did hear mostly didn't make sense to Toby. But every now and then Grandma would grab his hand tight all of a sudden, and he understood what the whole thing was about, it was because Daddy was going away again.

His Grandma's hand was very white, with little red and tan dots in it, and big blue veins that stood out higher than the wrinkles in her skin, whenever she grabbed at his hand. Later, walking over to the towering sky-sc.r.a.ping rocket, he held his mother's hand; it was smooth and cool and tan, all one color, and she didn't grasp at him the way Grandma did. Later still, his father's two hands, picking him up to kiss, were bigger and darker tan than his mother's, not so smooth, and the fingers were stronger, but so strong it hurt sometimes.

They took him up in an elevator, and showed him all around the inside of the rocket, where Daddy would sit, and where all the food was stored, for emergency, they said, and the radio and everything. Then it was time to say goodbye.

Daddy was laughing at first, and Toby tried to laugh, too, but he didn't really want Daddy to go away.

Daddy kissed him, and he felt like crying because it was scratchy against Daddy's cheek, and the strong fingers were hurting him now. Then Daddy stopped laughing and looked at him very seriously. "You take care of your mother, now," Daddy told him. "You're a big boy this time."

"Okay," Toby said. Last time Daddy went away in a rocket, he was not-quite-four, and they teased him with the poem in the book that said, James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, Took great care of his mother, though he was only three. ... So Toby didn't much like Daddy saying that now, because heknew they didn't really mean it.

"Okay," he said, and then because he was angry, he said, "Only she's supposed to take care of me, isn't she?"

Daddy and Mommy both laughed, and so did the two men who were standing there waiting for Daddy to get done saying goodbye to him. He wriggled, and Daddy put him down.

"I'll bring you a piece of the moon, son," Daddy said, and Toby said, "All right, fine." He reached for his mother's hand, but he found himself hanging onto Grandma instead, because Mommy and Daddy were kissing each other, and both of them had forgotten all about him.

He thought they were never going to get done kissing.

Ruth Kruger stood in the gla.s.s control booth with her son on one side of her, and Gordon Kimberly breathing heavily on the other side. Somethings wrong, she thought, this time something's wrong. And then swiftly, I mustn't think that wayl Jealous? she taunted herself. Do you want something to be wrong, just because this one isn't all yours, because Argent did some of it?

But if anything is wrong, she prayed, let it be now, right away, so he can't go. If anything's wrong let it be in the firing gear or the... what? Even now, it was too late. The beast was too big and too delicate and too precise. If something went wrong, even now, it was too late. It was...

You didn't finish that thought. Not if you were Ruth Kruger, and your husband was Jock Kruger, and n.o.body knew but the two of you how much of the courage that had gone twice round the moon, and was about to land on it, was yours. When a man knows his wife's faith is unshakeable, he can't help coming back. (But: "BabyI You're not scared, are you?") Twice around the moon, and they called him Jumping Jock. There was never a doubt in anyone's mind who'd pilot the KIM-5, the bulky beautiful beast out there today. Kruger and Kimberly, O'Heyer and Stein. It was a combo. It won every time. Every time. Nothing to doubt. No room for doubt.

"Minus five..." someone said into a mike, and there was perfect quiet all around. "Four... three..."

(But he held me too tight, and he laughed too loud...) ... two... one..."

(Only because he thought I was scared, she answered herself.) "... Mar-"

You didn't even hear the whole word, because the thunder-drumming roar of the beast itself split your ears.