"All right, baby," he said.
As he paid their fare for the rocket-ride, Pete found himself looking
at the girl in the booth. Tired eyes and stringy hennaed hair. No
dreams there. He had an impulse to tell her that soon he'd really be
riding the rocket and that from then on things would be different.
New frontiers and new dreams for everybody. Up and up.
* * * * *
The girl's eyes met his, and it was Pete who looked away. You don't
talk frontiers to pale, worn faces and eyes bleached of color by tinny
music and stinks and men.
They walked up a wooden ramp to where a little metal bullet on rails
waited. The paint, once bright, was all scuffy. A sour-faced attendant
in grayish coveralls stood by a large lever.
"Fasten ya seat belts, Mac."
"We're off to the sky," Glory said.
Somewhere old machinery wheezed.
The little bullet began to move along the rails toward a hinged
trap-door in a wall painted to look like clouds.
"Hold my hand, Pete," Glory said breathlessly.
Glory, Glory, he thought. Young and simple and in love with life. Any
kind of life. Real or unreal. Glory with a bubbling laughter, a zest, a
faith. Maybe it was really for her that he was taking the big flight.
If only he could bring back the pot of gold. If only he could tell
weary Man that the sky was all his. He thought of the strained, unhappy
faces in the streets, the fear-filled eyes. If he could return and say
to them: "Here's your new frontier!" Yes, by God, it was worth the
work, and the risk. Glory was right. It was something to be proud of.
I'm going to the moon!
Me, Pete Moore, to the _moon_!
"There it is, Pete!"
They had bumped through the painted door into a musty semi-darkness.
The walls were perforated with holes for stars, and from somewhere
below a huge yellowish moon was rising.
Off a short way to the right was a glowing papier-mâché globe painted
with broad bands slightly askew, and behind that was another with rings.
A loudspeaker whistled tinnily and overhead, on wire runners, an
electric globe crossed the dim chamber, pieces of yellow and white
crepe paper fluttering feebly behind.
"Oh, Pete! A comet?"
"Sure enough, Glory," he said.
The rumbling little bullet skirted the walls and Pete could see the
electric lights behind the holes. Stars, he thought sardonically. Close
enough to touch. Lucky us.
"There's Mars, Pete," Glory said, squeezing his hand.
I'm getting disenchanted, he thought.
A red ball, all painted with canals and white polar caps far too big.
They should have had a technical advisor on this project, he thought.
Paging Palomar.
The bullet began its second circuit of the papier-mâché universe,
and the moon was high now, projected on the wall by some kind of
lantern-slide lamp. There was a face on the moon.
It began then--just a tiny bead of fear way down inside his belly. But
it grew. He felt suffocated, claustrophobic, oppressed by fakery and
cheapness.