"But it belongs down here."
"We're coming up on it the other way."
"Can't we get closer to home than that?"
"I'll not be too particular where it is, just so it's land. The Earth is
mostly covered with water."
Harold began turning the knobs and muttering. "Let me see now ... gotta
miss Mount Everest...." At last, he turned off the scope. "It's clear
gone. I'm taking her down slow. Will you look outside, Orville?"
Orville gulped. But Harold said it was the only way, so he squeezed into
the other compartment. There were now about six of the little circles
going back and across inside of him. He stood a little to one side and
struck the lever of the outer door sharply with the palm of his hand.
The door gave a faint "swoosh" and was open about an inch. His ears
crackled and there was a dull whispering in his head like the sound in a
sea-shell.
He put his face to the door, but saw nothing except the blue sky.
"You sure we came to the right place?" he asked worriedly.
"Positive ... almost," Harold called back. "Are we over land or water?"
Orville looked up. There was a brown, black and white landscape. Trees
hung down like icicles around a frozen lake.
"There's land, but it's upside down."
"Just a minute." Harold did something and the trees and land swirled
around until they were underneath.
* * * * *
Not far away, as they came down gently, Orville saw a building with
people outside. Or he thought they were people. Harold set the ship down
on its side in the snow and Orville stepped out. Then Harold was out
beside him, slapping him on the shoulder.
"Well, old buddy-buddy! How about that?"
"Yeah." Orville spoke with less enthusiasm. "How about that?"
He proposed that they get in and ride back to civilization, but Harold
said there wasn't enough power left and it couldn't be done. They
started walking toward the house Orville had seen.
Halfway there, they met four men wearing gray overcoats and furry hats.
One carried a rifle, and as Harold ran shouting up to him, the man
lifted the rifle and struck Harold across the head, knocking him into
the snow and breaking the other lens of his glasses. For a while,
Orville wondered if it was the right planet after all. But, he decided,
the men were Russian soldiers somewhere in Siberia.
Since the men were more interested in looting the ship than guarding the
prisoners, it was not hard to slip away and get to a railroad that ran
east and west. Even Harold knew which direction to take. Their journey
out of Siberia, through Korea and Japan to San Francisco, though more
difficult than their trip to the Moon, was not very interesting. Once,
on a freighter in mid-Pacific, Harold tried to convince a fellow
deckhand that they were on their way back from the Moon. He agreed not
to talk of it again.
"Looks like Rosie's still gone," Harold said as they slunk up the alley
behind Harold's shed. All the leaves had fallen and the place looked
forlorn without the spaceship poking up through the roof.
"Wonder what they thought," Orville said, "when the ship disappeared,
and us with it?"
"Nothing, I expect."
"If we'd disappeared with a couple of blondes now, the whole world would
know about it."
* * * * *
They parted. The back door was locked. As Orville went around the house,
he heard the TV going. Polly sat in the turquoise armchair, sewing on a
dress. She put down the sewing and folded her arms.
The oration lasted five minutes. He could still hear her upstairs
through the noise of the shower.
Then, after a visit to the barber's, he went to face old Haverstrom.
This lecture was not quite as long, and through it the boss had a trace
of a leer, and a certain respect, though he let Orville know these
disappearances should not become a habit.
Harold did not do so well. His old job was gone and he was a whole week
getting another. Rosie did not come back for still another week.
It was hard for Orville to believe that a moonstruck fellow like Harold
could change his ways, but that was what happened. It was as though that
one wild trip had satisfied something inside Harold, for he never fooled
with things like that again. He even joined church.
As for Orville: some evenings, when he reads of artificial satellites or
of trips to the Moon, he feels a sharp rise in blood pressure and he
breathes fast. But a glance across the room at Polly in her turquoise
chair sewing is enough to make him swallow and squirm back and keep his
mouth shut.