DEAD CENTERDEAD CENTER
 
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 
bugger, isn't he?" Jock didn't say anything, but Toby knew he would be grinning, 
looking pleased and embarrassed. 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, and 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 men and 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, shaggy 
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 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 . . . God 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 ago, would have had a different 
dreamin 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, and put 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 assigned to it. 
 
"Scared?" she asked, much later, in the spaceless 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. "Baby!" 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. 
 
II
 
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 skyscraping 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 he 
knew 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 Mammy 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 glass control booth with her son on one side of her, 
and Gordon Kimberly breathing heavily on the other side. Something's wrong, she 
thought, this time something's wrong. And then, swiftly, I mustn't think that 
way! 
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 nobody 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: 
"Baby! 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.) 
(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. 
Ringing quiet came down and she caught up Toby, held him tight, tight. . . . 
"Perfect!" Gordon Kimberly sighed. "Perfect!" 
So if anything was wrong, it hadn't showed up yet. 
She put Toby down, then took his hand. "Come on," she said. "I'll buy you an 
ice-cream soda." He grinned at her. He'd been looking very strange all day, but 
now he looked real again. His hair had got messed up when she grabbed him. 
"We're having cocktails for the press in the conference room," Kimberly said. "I 
think we could find something Toby would like." 
"Wel-l-l-1 . . ." She didn't want a cocktail, and she didn't want to talk to the 
press. "I think maybe we'll beg off this time. . . ." 
"I think there might be some disappointment" the man started; then Tim O'Heyer 
came dashing up. 
"Come on, babe," he said. "Your old man told me to take personal charge while he 
was gone." He leered. On him it looked cute. She laughed. Then she looked down 
at Toby. "What would you rather, Tobe? Want to go out by ourselves, or go to the 
party?" 
"I don't care," he said. 
Tim took the boy's hand. "What we were thinking of was having a kind of party 
here, and then I think they're going to bring some dinner in, and anybody who 
wants to can stay up till your Daddy gets to the moon. That'll be pretty late. I 
guess you wouldn't want to stay up late like that, would you?" 
Somebody else talking to Toby like that would be all wrong, but Tim was a 
friend, Toby's friend too. Ruth still didn't want to go to the party, but she 
remembered now that there had been plans for something like that all along, and 
since Toby was beginning to look eager, and it was important to keep the press 
on their side . . 
"You win, O'Heyer," she said. "Will somebody please send out for an ice-cream 
soda? Cherry syrup, I think it is this week . . ." She looked inquiringly at her 
son. ". . . and . . . strawberry ice cream?" 
Tim shuddered. Toby nodded. Ruth smiled, and they all went in to the party. 
 
"Well, young man!" Toby thought the redheaded man in the brown suit was probably 
what they called a reporter, but he wasn't sure. "How about it? You going along 
next time?" 
"I don't know," Toby said politely. "I guess not." 
"Don't you want to be a famous flier like your Daddy?" a strange woman in an 
evening gown asked him. 
"I don't know," he muttered, and looked around for his mother, but he couldn't 
see her. 
They kept asking him questions like that, about whether he wanted to go to the 
moon. Daddy said he was too little. You'd think all these people would know that 
much. 
 
Jock Kruger came up swiftly out of dizzying darkness into isolation and clarity. 
As soon as he could move his head, before he fully remembered why, he began 
checking the dials and meters and flashing lights on the banked panel in front 
of him. He was fully aware of the ship, of its needs and strains and motion, 
before he came to complete consciousness of himself, his weightless body, his 
purpose, or his memories. 
But he was aware of himself as a part of the ship before he remembered his name, 
so that by the time he knew he had a face and hands and innards, these parts 
were already occupied with feeding the beast's human brain a carefully prepared 
stimulant out of a nippled flask fastened in front of his head. 
He pressed a button under his index finger in the arm rest of the couch that 
held him strapped to safety. "Hi," he said. "Is anybody up besides me?" 
He pressed the button under his middle finger and waited. 
Not for long. 
"Thank God!" a voice crackled out of the loudspeaker. "You really conked out 
this time, Jock. Nothing wrong?" 
"Not so I'd know it. You want . . . How long was I out?" 
"Twenty-three minutes, eighteen seconds, takeoff to reception. Yeah. Give us a 
log reading." 
Methodically, in order, he read off the pointers and numbers on the control 
panel, the colors and codes and swinging needles and quiet ones that told him 
how each muscle and nerve and vital organ of the great beast was taking the 
trip. He did it slowly and with total concentration. Then, when he was all done, 
there was nothing else to do except sit back and start wondering about that big 
blackout. 
It shouldn't have happened. It never happened before. There was nothing in the 
compendium of information he'd just sent back to Earth to account for it. 
A different ship, different . . . different men. Two and a half years different. 
Years of easy living and . . . growing old? Too old for this game? 
Twenty-three minutes! 
Last time it was under ten The first time maybe 90 seconds more. It didn't 
matter, of course, not at takeoff. There was nothing for him to do then. Nothing 
now. Nothing for four more hours. He was there to put the beast back down on ... 

He grinned, and felt like Jock Kruger again. Identity returned complete. This 
time he was there to put the beast down where no man or beast had ever been 
before. This time they were going to the moon. 
 
III
 
Ruth Kruger sipped at a cocktail and murmured responses to the admiring, the 
curious, the envious, the hopeful, and the hate-full ones who spoke to her. She 
was waiting for something, and after an unmeasurable stretch of time Allie 
Madero brought it to her. 
First a big smile seeking her out across the room, so she knew it had come. Then 
a low-voiced confirmation. 
"Wasn't it . . . an awful long time?" she asked. She hadn't been watching the 
clock, on purpose, but she was sure it was longer than it should have been. 
Allie stopped smiling. "Twenty-three," she said. Ruth gasped. "What . . . ?" 
"You figure it. I can't." 
"There's nothing in the ship. I mean nothing was changed that would account for 
it." She shook her head slowly. This time she didn't know the ship well enough 
to talk like that. There could be something. Oh, Jock! "I don't know," she said. 
"Too many people worked on that thing. I .. ." 
"Mrs. Kruger!" It was the redheaded reporter, the obnoxious one. "We just got 
the report on the blackout. I'd like a statement from you, if you don't mind, as 
d, signer of the ship" 
"I am not the designer of this ship," she said coldly. "You worked on the 
design, didn't you?" 
"Well, then, to the best of your knowledge . . . ?" 
"To the best of my knowledge, there is no change in design to account for Mr. 
Kruger's prolonged unconsciousness. Had there been any such prognosis, the press 
would have been informed." 
"Mrs. Kruger, I'd like to ask you whether you feel that the innovations made by 
Mr. Argent could" 
"Aw, lay off, will you?" Allie broke in, trying to be casual and kidding about 
it; but behind her own flaming cheeks, Ruth was aware of her friend's matching 
anger. "How much do you want to milk this for, anyhow? So the guy conked out an 
extra ten minutes. If you want somebody to crucify for it, why don't you pick on 
one of us who doesn't happen to be married to him?" She turned to Ruth before 
the man could answer. "Where's Toby? He's probably about ready to bust from 
cookies and carbonation." 
"He's in the lounge," the reporter put in. "Or he was a few minutes" 
Ruth and Allie started off without waiting for the rest. The redhead had been 
talking to the kid. No telling how many of them were on top of him now. 
"I thought Tim was with him," Ruth said hastily, then she thought of something, 
and turned back long enough to say: "For the record, Mr. . . . uh . . . I know 
of no criticism that can be made of any of the work done by Mr. Argent." Then 
she went to find her son. 
 
There was nothing to do and nothing to see except the instrument meters and 
dials to check and log and check and log again. Radio stations all around Earth 
were beamed on him. He could have kibitzed his way to the moon, but he didn't 
want to. He was thinking. 
Thinking back, and forward, and right in this moment. Thinking of the instant's 
stiffness of Ruth's body when she said she wasn't scared, and the rambling big 
house on the hill, and Toby politely agreeing when he offered to bring him back 
a piece of the moon. 
Thinking of Toby's growing up some day, and how little he really knew about his 
son, and what would they do, Toby and Ruth, if anything . . .
He'd never thought that way before. He'd never thought anything except to know 
he'd come back, because he couldn't stay away. It was always that simple. He 
couldn't stay away now, either. That hadn't changed. But as he sat there, silent 
and useless for the time, it occurred to him that he'd left something out of his 
calculations. Luck, they'd been talking about. Yes, he'd had luck. Butwhat was 
it Sue had said about a vector sum?there was more to figure in than your own 
reflexes and the beast's strength. There was the outside. Space . . . 
environment . . . God . . . destiny. What difference does it make what name you 
give it? 
He couldn't stay away ... but maybe he could be kept away. 
He'd never thought that way before. 
 
"You tired, honey?" 
"No," he said. "I'm just sick of this party. I want to go home." 
"It'll be over pretty soon, Toby. I think as long as we stayed this long we 
better wait for . . . for the end of the party." 
"It's a silly party. You said you'd buy me an ice-cream soda." 
"I did, darling," she said patiently. "At least, if I didn't buy it, I got it 
for you. You had it, didn't you?" 
"Yes but you said we'd go out and have one." 
"Look. Why don't you just put your head down on my lap and . . ." 
"I'm no baby! Anyhow I'm not tired." 
"All right. We'll go pretty soon. You just sit here on the couch, and you don't 
have to talk to anybody if you don't feel like it. I'll tell you what. I'll go 
find you a magazine or a book or something to look at, and" 
"I don't want a magazine. I want my own book with the pirates in it." 
"You just stay put a minute, so I can find you. I'll bring you something." 
She got up and went out to the other part of the building where the officers 
were, and collected an assortment of leaflets and folders with shiny bright 
pictures of mail rockets and freight transports and jets and visionary moon 
rocket designs, and took them back to the little lounge where she'd left him. 
She looked at the clock on the way. Twenty-seven more minutes. There was no 
reason to believe that anything was wrong. 
 
They were falling now. A man's body is not equipped to sense direction toward or 
from, up or down, without the help of landmarks or gravity. But the body of the 
beast was designed to know such things; and Kruger, at the nerve center, knew 
everything the beast knew. 
Ship is extension of self, and self isextension or limitation?of ship. If Jock 
Kruger is the center of the universeremember the late night after the party, 
and picking Toby off the floor?then ship is extension of self, and the man is 
the brain of the beast. But if ship is universecertainly continuum; that's 
universe, isn't it?then the weakling man-thing in the couch is a limiting 
condition of the universe. A human brake. He was there to make it stop where it 
didn't "want" to. 
Suppose it wouldn't stop? Suppose it had decided to be a self-determined, 
free-willed universe? 
Jock grinned, and started setting controls. His time was coming. It was 
measurable in minutes, and then in seconds . . . now! 
His hand reached for the firing lever (but what was she scared of?), groped, and 
touched, hesitated, clasped, and pulled. 
 
Grown-up parties at home were fun. But other places, like this one, they were 
silly. Toby half-woke-up on the way home, enough to realize his Uncle Tim was 
driving them, and they weren't in their own car. He was sitting on the front 
seat next to his mother, with his head against her side, and her arm around him. 
He tried to come all the way awake, to listen to what they were saying, but they 
weren't talking, so he started to go back to sleep. 
Then Uncle Tim said, "For God's sake, Ruth, he's safe, and whatever happened 
certainly wasn't your fault. He's got enough supplies to hold out till . . ." 
"Shh!" his mother said sharply, and then, whispering, "I know." 
Now he remembered. 
"Mommy . . ." 
"Yes, hon?" 
"Did Daddy go to the moon all right?" 
"Y . . . yes, dear." 
Her voice was funny. 
"Where is it?" 
"Where's what?" 
"The moon." 
"Oh. We can't see it now, darling. It's around the other side of the earth." 
"Well, when is he going to come back?" 
Silence. 
"Mommy ... when?" 
"As soon as ... just as soon as he can, darling. Now go to sleep." 
 
And now the moon was up, high in the sky, a gilded football dangling from 
Somebody's black serge lapel. When she was a little girl, she used to say she 
loved the man in the moon, and now the man in the moon loved her too, but if she 
was a little girl still, somebody would tuck her into bed, and pat her head and 
tell her to go to sleep, and she would sleep as easy, breathe as soft, as Toby 
did. . . . 
But she wasn't a little girl, she was all grown up, and she married the man, the 
man in the moon, and sleep could come and sleep could go, but sleep could never 
stay with her while the moonwash swept the window panes. 
She stood at the open window and wrote a letter in her mind and sent it up the 
path of light to the man in the moon. It said: 
"Dear Jock: Tim says it wasn't my fault, and I can't explain it even to him. I'm 
sorry, darling. Please to stay alive till we can get to you. Faithfully yours, 
Cassandra." 
 
IV
 
The glasses and ashes and litter and spilled drinks had all been cleared away. 
The table top gleamed in polished stripes of light and dark, where the light 
came through the louvered plastic of the wall. The big chairs were empty, 
waiting, and at each place, arranged with the precision of a formal 
dinner-setting, was the inevitable pad of yellow paper, two freshly-sharpened 
pencils, a small neat pile of typed white sheets of paper, a small glass ashtray 
and a shining empty water glass. Down the center of the table, spaced for 
comfort, three crystal pitchers of ice and water stood in perfect alignment.
Ruth was the first one there. She stood in front of a chair, fingering the 
little stack of paper on which someone (Allie? She'd have had to be up early to 
get it done so quickly) had tabulated the details of yesterday's events. "To 
refresh your memory," was how they always put it. 
She poured a glass of water, and guiltily replaced the pitcher on the exact spot 
where it had been; lit a cigarette, and stared with dismay at the burnt match 
marring the cleanliness of the little ashtray; pulled her chair in beneath her 
and winced at the screech of the wooden leg across the floor. 
Get it over with! She picked up the typed pages, and glanced at them. Two at the 
bottom were headed "Recommendations of U.S. Rocket Corps to Facilitate 
Construction of KIM-VIII." That could wait. The three top sheets she'd better 
get through while she was still alone. 
She read slowly and carefully, trying to memorize each sentence, so that when 
the time came to talk, she could think of what happened this way, from outside, 
instead of remembering how it had been for her. 
There was nothing in the report she didn't already know. 
 
Jock Kruger had set out in the KIM-VII at 5:39 P.M., C.S.T., just at sunset. 
First report after recovery from blackout came at 6:02 plus. First log readings 
gave no reason to anticipate any difficulty. Subsequent reports and radioed log 
readings were, for Kruger, unusually terse and formal, and surprisingly 
infrequent; but earth-to-ship contact at twenty-minute intervals had been 
acknowledged. No reason to believe Kruger was having trouble at any time during 
the trip. 
At 11:54, an attempt to call the ship went unanswered for 56 seconds. The 
radioman here described Kruger's voice as "irritable" when the reply finally 
came, but all he said was, "Sorry. I was firing the first brake." Then a string 
of figures, and a quick log readingeverything just what you'd expect. 
Earth acknowledged, and waited. 
Eighteen seconds later: 
"Second brake." More figures. Again, everything as it should be. But twenty 
seconds after that call was completed: 
"This is Kruger. Anything wrong with the dope I gave you?" 
"Earth to Kruger. Everything okay in our book. Trouble?" 
"Track me, boy. I'm off." 
"You want a course correction?" 
"I can figure it quicker here. I'll keep talking as I go. Stop me if I'm wrong 
by your book." More figures, and Kruger's calculations coincided perfectly with 
the swift work done at the base. Both sides came to the same conclusion, and 
both sides knew what it meant. The man in the beast fired once more, and once 
again, and made a landing. 
There was no reason to believe that either ship or pilot had been hurt. There 
was no way of finding out. By the best calculations, they were five degrees of 
arc around onto the dark side. And there was no possibility at all, after that 
second corrective firing that Kruger had enough fuel left to take off again. The 
last thing Earth had heard, before the edge of the moon cut off Kruger's radio, 
was: 
"Sorry, boys. I guess I fouled up this time. Looks like you'll have to come and 
. . ." 
 
One by one, they filled the seats: Gordon Kimberly at one end, and the Colonel 
at the other; Tim O'Heyer to one side of Kimberly, and Ruth at the other; Allie, 
with her pad and pencil poised, alongside Tim; the Colonel's aide next down the 
line, with his little silent stenotype in front of him; the Steins across from 
him, next to Ruth. With a minimum of formality, Kimberly opened the meeting and 
introduced Col. Swenson. 
The Colonel cleared his throat. "I'd like to make something clear," he said. 
"Right from the start, I want to make this clear. I'm here to help. Not to get 
in the way. My presence does not indicate anycriticism on the part of the Armed 
Services. We are entirely satisfied with the work you people have been doing." 
He cleared his throat again, and Kimberly put in: 
"You saw our plans, I believe, Colonel. Everything was checked and approved by 
your outfit ahead of time." 
"Exactly. We had no criticism then, and we have none now. The rocket program is 
what's important. Getting Kruger back is important, not just for ordinary 
humanitarian reasonspardon me, Mrs. Kruger, if I'm too blunt but for the sake 
of the whole program. Public opinion, for one thing. That's your line, isn't it, 
Mr. O'Heyer? And then, we have to find out what happened! 
"I came down here today to offer any help we can give you on the relief ship, 
and to make a suggestion to facilitate matters." 
He paused deliberately this time. 
"Go ahead, Colonel," Tim said. "We're listening." 
"Briefly, the proposal is that you all accept temporary commissions while the 
project is going on. Part of that report in front of you embodies the details of 
the plan. I hope you'll find it acceptable. You all know there is a great deal 
ofnecessary, I'm afraidred tape, you'd call it, and 'going through channels,' 
and such in the Services. It makes cooperation between civilian and military 
groups difficult. If we can all get together as one outfit 'for the duration,' 
so to speak . . ." 
This time nobody jumped into the silence. The Colonel cleared his throat once 
more. 
"Perhaps you'd best read the full report before we discuss it any further. I 
brought the matter up now just toto let you know the attitude with which we are 
submitting the proposal to you . . ." 
"Thank you, Colonel." O'Heyer saved him. "I've already had a chance to look at 
the report. Don't know that anyone else has, except of course Miss Madero. But I 
personally, at least, appreciate your attitude. And I think I can speak for Mr. 
Kimberly too. . . ." 
He looked sideways at his boss; Gordon nodded. 
"What I'd like to suggest now," O'Heyer went on, "since I've seen the report 
already, and I believe everyone else would like to have a chance to bone up 
someperhaps you'd like to have a first-hand look at some of our plant, Colonel? 
I could take you around a bit. . . . ?" 
"Thank you. I would like to." The officer stood up, his gold Rocket Corps 
uniform blazing in the louvered light. "If I may say so, Mr. O'Heyer, you seem 
remarkably sensible, for awell, a publicity man." 
"That's all right, Colonel." Tim laughed easily. "I don't even think it's a 
dirty word. You seem like an all-right guy yourselffor an officer, that is." 
They all laughed then, and Tim led the blaze of glory out of the room while the 
rest of them settled down to studying the R.C. proposals. When they had all 
finished, Kimberly spoke slowly, voicing the general reaction: 
"I hate to admit it, but it makes sense." 
"They're being pretty decent about it, aren't they?" Ben said. "Putting it to us 
as a proposal instead of pulling a lot of weight." 
He nodded. "I've had a little contact with this man Swenson before. He's a good 
man to work with. It ... makes sense, that's all." 
"On paper, anyhow," Sue put in. 
"Well, Ruth . . ." the big man turned to her, waiting. "You haven't said 
anything." 
"I . . . it seems all right to me," she said, and added: "Frankly, Gordon, I 
don't know that I ought to speak at all. I'm not quite sure why I'm here." 
Allie looked up sharply, questioning, from her notes; Sue pushed back her chair 
and half-stood. "My God, you're not going to back out on us now?" 
"I . . . look, you all know I didn't do any of the real work on the last one. It 
was Andy Argent's job, and a good one. I've got Toby to think about, and . . ." 
"Kid, we need you," Sue protested. "Argent can't do this one; this is going to 
be another Three, only more so. Unmanned, remote-control stuff, and no returning 
atmosphere-landing problems. This is up your alley. It's ..." She sank back; 
there was nothing else to say. 
"That's true, Ruth." Tim had come back in during the last outburst. Now he sat 
down. "Speed is what counts, gal. That's why we're letting the gold braid in on 
the jobwe are, aren't we?" Kimberly nodded; Tim went on: "With you on the job, 
we've got a working team. With somebody newwell, you know what a ruckus we had 
until Sue got used to Argent's blueprints, and how Ben's pencil notes used to 
drive Andy wild. And we can't even use him this time. It's not his field. He did 
do a good job, but we'd have to start in with somebody new all over again . . ." 
He broke off, and looked at Kimberly. 
"I hope you'll decide to work with us, Ruth," he said simply. 
"If . . . obviously, if it's the best way to get it done quick, I will," she 
said. "Twenty-eight hours a day if you like." 
Tim grinned. "I guess we can let the braid back in now . . . ?" He got up and 
went to the door. 
Another Three, only more so . . . Sue's words danced in her mind while the 
Colonel and the Colonel's aide marched in, and took their places, while voices 
murmured politely, exchanging good will. 
Another Threethe first ship she had designed for Kimberly. The ship that made 
her rich and famous, but that was nothing, because it was the ship that brought 
Jock to her, that made him write the letter, that made her meet him, that led to 
the Five and Six and now .. . 
"I've got some ideas for a manned ship," he'd written. "If we could get together 
to discuss it some time . . ." 
". . . pleasure to know you'll be working with us, Mrs. Kruger." She shook her 
head sharply, and located in time and place. 
"Thank you, Colonel. I want to do what I can, of course. . . ." 
 
V
 
James James Morrison's mother put on a golden gown . . .
Toby knew the whole thing, almost, by heart. The little boy in the poem told his 
mother not to go down to the end of town, wherever that was, unless she took him 
along. And she said she wouldn't, but she put on that golden gown and went, and 
thought she'd be back in time for tea. Only she wasn't. She never came back at 
all. Last seen wandering vaguely . . . King John said he was sorry ... 
Who's King John? And what time is tea? 
Toby sat quietly beside his mother on the front seat of the car, and looked 
obliquely at the golden uniform she wore, and could not find a way to ask the 
questions in his mind. 
Where was James James's father? 'Why did James James have to be the one to keep 
his mother from going down to the end of the town? 
"Are you in the Army now, Mommy?" he asked. "Well . . . sort of. But not for 
long, darling. Just till Daddy comes home." 
"When is Daddy coming home?" 
"Soon. Soon, I hope. Not too long." 
She didn't sound right. Her voice had a cracking sound like Grandma's, and other 
old ladies. She didn't look right, either, in that golden-gown uniform. When she 
kissed him goodbye in front of the school, she didn't feel right. She didn't 
even smell the same as she used to. 
"'Bye, boy. See you tonight," she saidthe words she always said, but they 
sounded different. 
"'Bye." He walked up the driveway and up the front steps and down the corridor 
and into the pretty-painted room where his teacher was waiting. Miss Callahan 
was nice. Today she was too nice. The other kids teased him, and called him 
teacher's pet. At lunch time he went back in the room before anybody else did, 
and made pictures all over the floor with the colored chalk. It was the worst 
thing he could think of to do. Miss Callahan made him wash it all up, and she 
wasn't nice any more for the rest of the afternoon. 
When he went out front after school, he couldn't see the car anywhere. It was 
true then. His mother had put on that golden gown, and mow she was gone. Then he 
saw Grandma waving to him out of her car, and he remembered Mommy had said 
Grandma would come and get him. He got in the car, and she grabbed at him like 
she always did. He pulled away. 
"Is Daddy home yet?" he asked. 
Grandma started the car. "Not yet," she said, and she was crying. He didn't dare 
ask about Mommy after that, but she wasn't home when they got there. It was a 
long time after that till dinner was ready. 
She came home for dinner, though. 
 
"You have to allow for the human factor. . . ." Nobody had said it to her, of 
course. Nobody would. 
She wondered how much tougher it made the job for everybody, having her around. 
She wondered how she'd stay sane, if she didn't have the job to do. 
Thank God Toby was in school now! She couldn't do it, if it meant leaving him 
with someone else all dayeven his grandmother. As it was, having the old lady 
in the house so much was nerve-racking. 
I ought to ask her if she'd like to sleep here for a while, Ruth thought, and 
shivered. Dinner time was enough. Anyhow, Toby liked having her there, and 
that's what counted. 
I'll have to go in and see his teacher. Tomorrow, she thought. I've got to make 
time for it tomorrow. Let her know . . . but of course she knew. Jock Kruger's 
family's affairs were hardly private. Just the same, I better talk to her. 
Ruth got out of bed and stood at the window, waiting for the moon. Another ten 
minutes, fifteen, twenty maybe, and it would edge over the hills on the other 
side of town. The white hands on the clock said 2:40. She had to get some sleep. 
She couldn't stand here waiting for the moon. Get to sleep now, before it comes 
up. That's better. . . 
"Oh, Jock! 
" . . . the human factor . . ." They didn't know. She wanted to go tell them 
all, find somebody right away, and shout it. "It's not his fault. I did it!" 
"You're not scared, are you, baby?" 
Oh, no! No, no! Don't be silly. 'Who, me? Just stiff and trembling. The cold, 
you know . . . ? 
Stop that! 
She stood at the window, waiting for the moon, the man, the man in the moon. 
Human factor . . . well, there wouldn't be a human factor in this one. If she 
went out to the field on takeoff day and told KIM-VIII she was scared, it 
wouldn't matter at all. 
Thank God I can do something, at least! 
Abruptly, she closed the blind, so she wouldn't know when it came, and pulled 
out the envelope she'd brought home; switched on the bed light, and unfolded the 
first blueprints. 
It was all familiar. Just small changes here and there. Otherwise, it was the 
Three all over againthe first unmanned ship to be landed successfully on the 
moon surface. The only important difference was that this one had to have some 
fancy gadgetry on the landing mech. Stein had given her the orbit cafes today. 
The rest of the job was hers and Sue's: design and production. Between them, 
they could do it. What they needed was a goldberg that would take the thing once 
around low enough to contact Jock, if . . . to contact him, that's all. Then 
back again, prepared for him to take over the landing by remote, according to 
instructions, if he wanted to. If he could. If his radio was working. If ... 
Twice around, and then down where they figured he was, if he hadn't tried to 
bring it down himself. 
It was complicated, but only quantitatively. Nothing basically new, or untried. 
And no human factors to be allowed for, once it was off the ground. 
She fell asleep, finally, with the light still on, and the blind drawn, and the 
blueprints spread out on the floor next to the bed. 
 
Every day, she drove him to school, dressed in her golden gown. And every 
afternoon, he waited, telling himself she was sure to come home. 
That was a very silly little poem, and he wasn't three, he was six now. 
But it was a long time since Daddy went away. 
 
"I'd rather not," she said stiffly. 
"I'm sorry, Ruth. I knowwell, I don't know, but I can imagine how you feel. I 
hate to ask it, but if you can do it at all . . . just be there and look 
confident, and . . . you know." 
Look confident! I couldn't do it for Jock, she thought; why should I do it for 
them? But of course that was silly. They didn't know her the way Jock did. They 
couldn't read her smiles, or sense a barely present stiffness, or know anything 
except what she chose to show on the front of her face. 
"Look confident? What difference does it make, Tim? If the thing works, they'll 
all know soon enough. If ..." 
She stopped. 
"All right, I'll be blunt. If it doesn't work, it's going to make a hell of a 
difference what the public feeling was at the time it went off. If we have to 
try again. Ifdamn it, you want it straight, all right! If we can't save Jock, 
we're not going to give up the whole thing! We're not going to let space travel 
wait another half century while the psychological effects wear off. And Jock 
wouldn't want us to! Don't forget that. It was his dream, too. It was yours, 
once upon a time. If . . ." 
"All right!" She was startled by her voice. She was screaming, or almost. 
"All right," she said bitterly, more quietly. "If you think I'll be holding up 
progress for fifty years by not dragging Toby along to a launching, I'll come." 
"Oh, Ruth, I'm sorry. No, it's not that important. And I had no business talking 
that way. But listen, babe, you used to understand thisthe way I feel, the way 
Jock felfeels. Even a guy like Kimberly. You used to feel it too. Look: the 
single item of you showing your face at the takeoff doesn't amount to much. 
Neither does one ounce of fuel. But either one could be the little bit that 
makes the difference. Kid, we got to put everything we've got behind it this 
time." 
"All right," she said again. "I told you I'd come." 
"You do understand, don't you?" he pleaded. 
"I don't know, Tim. I'm not sure I do. But you're right. I would have, once. 
MaybeI don't know. It's different for a woman, I guess. But I'll come. Don't 
worry about it." 
She turned and started out. 
"Thanks, Ruth. And I am sorry. Uhwant me to come and pick you up?" 
She nodded. "Thanks." She was glad she wouldn't have to drive. 
 
VI
 
He kept waiting for a chance to ask her. He couldn't do it in the house before 
they left, because right after she told him where they were going, she went to 
get dressed in her golden uniform, and he had to stay with Grandma all the time. 

Then Mr. O'Heyer came with the car, and he couldn't ask because, even though he 
sat up front with Mommy, Mr. O'Heyer was there too. 
When they got to the launching field, there were people around all the time. 
Once he tried to get her off by himself, but all she did was think he had to go 
to the bathroom. Then, bit by bit, he didn't have to ask, because he could tell 
from the way they were all talking, and the way the cameras were all pointed at 
her all the time, like they had been at Daddy the other time. 
Then there was the speeches part again, and this time she got up and talked, so 
that settled it. 
He was glad he hadn't asked. They probably all thought he knew. Maybe they'd 
even told him, and he'd forgotten, like he sometimes did. "Mommy," he listened 
to himself in his mind, "Mommy, are you going to the moon too?" Wouldn't that 
sound silly! 
She'd come back for him, he told himself. The other times, when Daddy went some 
placelike when they first came here to live, and Daddy went first, then Mommy, 
and then they came back to get him, and some other time, he didn't remember just 
whatbut when Daddy went away, Mommy always went to stay with him, and then they 
always came to get him too. 
It wasn't any different from Mommy going back to be with Daddy at a party or 
something, instead of staying in his room to talk to him when she put him to 
bed. It didn't feel any worse than that, he told himself. 
Only he didn't believe himself. 
She never did tell me! I wouldn't of forgotten that! She should of told me! 
 
She did not want to make a speech. Nobody had warned her that she would be 
called upon to make a speech. It was bad enough trying to answer reporters 
coherently. She stood up and went forward to the microphone dutifully, and shook 
hands with the President of the United States, and tried to look confident. She 
opened her mouth and nothing came out. 
"Thank you," she said finally, though she didn't know just what for. "You've all 
been very kind." She turned to the mike, and spoke directly into it. "I feel 
that a good deal of honor is being accorded me today which is not rightfully 
mine. We gave ourselves a two-month limit to complete a job, and the fact that 
it was finished inside of six weeks instead . . ." 
She had to stop because everybody was cheering, and they wouldn't have heard 
her. 
". . . that fact is not something for which the designer of a ship can be 
thanked. The credit is due to all the people at Kimberly who worked so hard, and 
to the Rocket Corps personnel who helped so much. I think . . ." This time she 
paused to find the right words. It had suddenly become very important to level 
with the crowd, to tell them what she honestly felt. 
"I think it is I who should be doing the thanking. I happen to be a designer of 
rockets, but much more importantly, to me, I am Jock Kruger's wife. So I want to 
thank everyone who helped . . ." 
 
Grandma's hand tightened around his, and then pulled away to get a handkerchief, 
because she was crying. Right up here on the platform! Then he realized what 
Mommy had just said. She said that being jock Kruger's wife was more important 
to her than anything else. 
It was funny that Grandma should feel bad about that. Everybody else seemed to 
think it was a right thing to say, the way they were yelling and clapping and 
shouting. It occurred to Toby with a small shock of surprise that maybe Grandma 
sometimes felt bad about things the same way he did. 
He was sort of sorry he wouldn't have much chance to find out more about that. 
 
She broke away from the reporters and V.I.P.'s, and went and got Toby, and asked 
him did he want to look inside the rocket before it left. 
He nodded. He was certainly being quiet today. Poor kidhe must be pretty mixed 
up about the whole thing by now. 
She tried to figure out what was going on inside the small brown head, but all 
she could think of was how much like Jock he looked today. 
She took him up the elevator inside the rocket. There wasn't much room to move 
around, of course, but they'd rigged it so that all the big shots who were there 
could have a look. She was a little startled to see the President and her 
mother-in-law come up together in the next elevator, but between trying to 
answer Toby's questions, and trying to brush off reporters, she didn't have much 
time to be concerned about such oddities. 
She had never seen Toby so intent on anything. He wanted to know everything. 
Where's this, and what's that for? And where are you going to sit, Mommy? 
"I'm not, hon. You know that. There isn't room in this rocket for . . ." 
"Mrs. Kruger, pardon me, but . . ." 
"Just a minute, please." 
"Oh, I'm sorry." 
"What was it you wanted to know now, Toby?" There were too many people; there 
was too much talk. She felt slightly dizzy. "Look, hon, I want to go on down." 
It was hard to talk. She saw Mrs. Kruger on the ramp, and called her, and left 
Toby with her. Down at the bottom, she saw Sue Stein, and asked her if she'd go 
take over with Toby and try to answer his questions. 
"Sure. Feeling rocky, kid?" 
"Kind of." She tried to smile. 
"You better go lie down. Maybe Allie can get something for you. I saw her over 
there. . . ." She waved a vague hand. "You look like hell, kid. Better lie 
down." Then she rushed off. 
 
He got away from Grandma when Sue Stein came and said Mother wanted her to show 
him everything. Then he said he was tired and got away from her. He could find 
his Grandma all right, he said. 
He'd found the spot he wanted. He could just about wiggle into it, he thought. 
 
The loudspeaker crackled over her head. Five minutes now. 
The other women who'd been fixing their hair and brightening their lipstick 
snapped their bags shut and took a last look and ran out, to find places where 
they could see everything. Ruth stretched out on the couch and closed her eyes. 
Five minutes now, by herself, to get used to the idea that the job was done. 
She had done everything she could do, including coming here today. There was 
nothing further she could do. From now on, or in five minutes' time, it was out 
of anyone's hands, butWhose? And Jock's, of course. Once the relief rocket got 
there, it was up to him. 
If it got there. 
If he was there for it to get to. 
The way they had worked it, there was a chance at least they'd know the answer 
in an hour's time. If the rocket made its orbit once, and only once, it would 
mean he was alive and well and in control of his own ship, with the radio 
working, and ... 
And if it made a second orbit, there was still hope. It might mean nothing worse 
than that his radio was out. But that way they would have to wait ... 
God! It could take months, if the calculations as to where he'd come down were 
not quite right. If . . . if a million little things that would make it harder 
to get the fuel from one rocket to the other. 
But if they only saw one orbit. 
For the first time, she let herself, forced herself to, consider the possibility 
that Jock was dead. That he would not come back. 
He's not dead, she thought. I'd know it if he was. Like I knew something was 
wrong last time. Like I'd know it now if . . . 
"Sixty seconds before zero," said the speaker. 
But there is! She sat bolt upright, not tired or dizzy any more. Now she had 
faced it, she didn't feel confused. There was something ... something dreadfully 
wrong. . 
She ran out, and as she came on to the open field, the speaker was saying, 
"Fifty-one." 
She ran to the edge of the crowd, and couldn't get through, and had to run, keep 
running, around the edges, to find the aisle between the cords. 
Stop it! she screamed but not out loud, because she had to use all her breath 
for running. 
And while she ran, she tried to think. 
"Minus forty-seven." 
She couldn't make them stop without a reason. They'd think she was hysterical 
... 
". . . forty-five . . ." 
Maybe she was, at that. Coolly, her mind considered the idea and rejected it. 
No; there was a problem that hadn't been solved, a question she hadn't answered. 

But what problem? What ... 
"Minus forty." 
She dashed down between the ropes, toward the control booth. The guard stepped 
forward, then recognized her, and stepped back. The corridor between the packed 
crowds went on forever. 
"Minus thirty-nine . . . eight . . . thirty-seven." 
She stopped outside the door of Control, and tried to think, think, think what 
was it? What could she tell them? How could she convince them? She knew, but 
they'd want to know what, why ... 
You just didn't change plans at a moment like this. 
But if they fired the rocket before she figured it out, before she remembered 
the problem, and then found an answer, it was as good as murdering Jock. They 
could never get another one up quickly enough if anything went wrong this time. 
She pushed open the door. 
"Stop!" she said. "Listen, you've got to stop. Wait! There's something . . ." 
Tim O'Heyer came and took her arm, and smiled and said something. Something 
soothing. 
"Minus nineteen," somebody said into a microphone, quietly. 
She kept trying to explain, and Tim kept talking at her, and when she tried to 
pull away she realized the hand on her arm wasn't just there to comfort her. He 
was keeping her from making trouble. He .. . 
Oh, God! If there was just some way to make them understand! If she could only 
remember what was wrong . . . 
"Minus three . . . two . . ." 
It was no use. 
She stopped fighting, caught her breath, stood still, and saw Tim's approving 
smile, as the word and the flare went off together: 
"Mark!" 
Then, in a dead calm, she looked around and saw Sue. "Where's Toby?" she asked. 
She was looking in the reserved grandstand seats for Mrs. Kruger, when she heard 
the crowd sigh, and looked up and saw it happening. 
 
VII
 
The crash fire did not damage the inside of the rocket at all. The cause of the 
crash was self-evident, as soon as they found Toby Kruger's body wedged into the 
empty space between the outer hull of the third stage, and the inner hull of the 
second. 
The headlines were not as bad as might have been expected. Whether it was the 
tired and unholy calm on Ruth Kruger's face that restrained them, or Tim 
O'Heyer's emergency-reserve supply of Irish whisky that convinced them, the 
newsmen took it easy on the story. All America couldn't attend the funeral, but 
a representative hundred thousand citizens mobbed the streets when the boy was 
buried; the other hundred and eighty million saw the ceremonies more intimately 
on their TV sets. 
Nobody who heard the quiet words spoken over the fresh gravea historic piece of 
poetry to which the author, O'Heyer, could never sign his namenobody who heard 
that simple speech remained entirely unmoved. Just where or when or with whom 
the movement started is still not known; probably it began spontaneously in a 
thousand different homes during the brief ceremony; maybe O'Heyer had something 
to do with that part of it, too. Whichever way, the money started coming in, by 
wire, twenty minutes afterwards; and by the end of the week "Bring Jock Back" 
was denting more paychecks than the numbers racket and the nylon industry 
combined. 
The KIM-IX was finished in a month. They didn't have Ruth Kruger to design this 
time, but they didn't need her: the KIM-VIII plans were still good. O'Heyer 
managed to keep the sleeping-pill story down to a tiny back-page notice in most 
of the papers, and the funeral was not televised. 
Later, they brought back the perfectly preserved, emaciated body of Jock Kruger, 
and laid him to rest next to his wife and son. He had been a good pilot and an 
ingenious man. The moon couldn't kill him; it took starvation to do that. 
They made an international shrine of the house, and the garden where the three 
graves lay. 
Now they are talking of making an interplanetary shrine of the lonely rocket on 
the wrong side of the moon. 
 