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Read Ebook: Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters Volume 3 by Various Whittelsey Abigail Goodrich Editor
Font size: Background color: Text color: Add to tbrJar First Page Next PageEbook has 1364 lines and 145795 words, and 28 pagesTouch the SKY The sign said: RIDE THE ROCKET! TWICE AROUND THE UNIVERSE FOR 25?! Which was cheap enough, Pete Moore thought. Cheap enough at twice the fare. Glory giggled and pulled at his arm. "Let's ride, Pete. Let's see what you're in for." He smiled down at her thinly, because it wasn't really anything for her to giggle about, but that was Glory for you. She was young enough, gay enough, to be able to make a joke of it, and that was good and he shouldn't spoil it. Not many other wives would feel like that. Not many other wives would want to spend his last night home on the midway, for that matter. But then again, that was Glory. He listened to the tinny carousel music and the babble of the crowd, the laughter and the mingled drone of barkers. He smelled the tang of roasting popcorn and the hot-doggy stink of the lunchcounters. He looked at the ferris wheel and the crazy swoop of lights that was the scenic railway and the people crowding along the boardwalk with kewpie dolls and spun-sugar candy cones in their hands. Question! his mind demanded: Is this reality? Answer: Of course. What else? I've been too long away from cities, he thought. Too many silent nights in the desert, too many high flights in cold blue air. Too long away from Glory? He felt guilty and depressed at the thought. It wasn't the way for a man to feel. Not before the great adventure. Still, he couldn't avoid an almost homesick longing for the deep darkness of the desert and the silver ship waiting there. Soon, he thought. Three days; three days and a few hours. He felt a tug at his arm. "Pete!" Glory was smiling up at him, half-aggrieved, half-loving. He looked again at the garishly painted sign. RIDE THE ROCKET! "Let's ride it, Pete," Glory said. "Let's!" She thinks no one else could do it, he told himself. That's love. There were a dozen qualified men, and yet-- The moonshot was his. RIDE THE ROCKET! "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! "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-m?ch? 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-m?ch? 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. Glory was laughing with delight. "Oh, it's wonderful!" With an effort, he got hold of himself. I've been working too hard. I'm jittery thinking about the moonshot, and all this seedy burlesque just irritates me. There's nothing to get heated up about. Calm down. But why am I suddenly afraid? He looked again at the ridiculous moon with its smirking face. He saw that plaster had fallen from the wall in places, peeling away, leaving the bare hexagons of wire and laths. My God, he thought. A chickenwire sky. He thought again of the girl in the ticket booth, and of the tired, frightened people all laughing too much and shoving and running outside. The bullet started down at last, toward the hinged door. On this side it was painted to look like Earth, with a distorted map of North America. All wrong, somehow. Pete felt ill. It was as though someone were making ill-tempered fun of the dreams and the tall silver ship waiting out on the desert. Cheapening it. Laughing nastily. 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