First Man Part 6

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 gla.s.ses. 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 j.a.pan 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 s.p.a.ceship 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.