One Against the Moon (2 page)

So—he had six weeks with nothing to do. He walked on, beyond the town now, alongside the highway, the morning sun shining down, the blue sky beaming overhead, and he began to feel himself swelling with energy, glowing with ambition.

Six weeks ... six weeks. He was young, he had no ties. Maybe he could hitchhike to White Sands in time to look around, maybe spot a rocket go winging off into the sky, then hitchhike back in time for the factory's reopening.

The idea blazed into his mind, he felt his pulse beating uncontrollably. Maybe, maybe, his mind added to the picture, maybe you could get a job in White Sands, near the field. Maybe they hire civilian workers? Or—maybe if you enlist there they'll let you serve there?

Abruptly he turned around, started walking rapidly back to the city. He'd do it, he told himself excitedly. He'd do it. He'd go back to the Y now, today, collect what he needed, take the few dollars he'd saved up, and go.

His mind repeated a rhythm as he walked. Do it now, if you don't do it now, you'll never do it. This is your chance. Go. The West is calling. The rockets are calling. Make a break for yourself. Go!

He reached the end of the bus line, hopped on the bus, vibrated in tune to his racing thoughts all the way back.

But an hour and a half later, when he was standing in the bus terminal, the first flush of excitement had drained away. Now he felt a cold chill running through him. He had made the break, packed a few necessities, drew his small reserve of cash from the bank, paid his room rent six weeks in advance, and bought a ticket on the bus going westward.

He couldn't afford the entire trip to New Mexico, so he bought passage for a few hundred miles. After that he'd hike and thumb rides the rest of the way. He didn't want to resort to charity so he had kept enough funds to keep him in food and lodgings if necessary and maybe take him part way home again.

For a moment before boarding the bus, Robin hesitated. Was it after all but a daydream that he was pursuing? Was the cold reality to prove too indifferent to the hopes of just an ordinary young fellow? Would White Sands prove a disappointment? Was this a mistake he would regret?

For just a second he hesitated and then, shaking his head angrily as if to drive out such thoughts, he stepped aboard the bus, slung his lightly packed valise onto the rack over an empty seat, and sat down. He would refuse to give up his vision. He would see this through.

The horn honked, two or three more passengers swung aboard, the driver threw in the clutch, and the bus drove out of the terminal, along the long, dusty road west.

From Missouri where the bus ride had ended, the time had passed with difficulty. There had been two hot days through Kansas, standing by lonely roadsides while cars whizzed by without stopping, the strong sun beating down over the flat green plains, the insects alive with the fever of the endless wheat. Robin had to keep heading south, south and west always, driving down when cars were going that way. Down through Oklahoma, thumbing his way, sometimes with an Eastern tourist on his way to California, sometimes with a tired rancher or oil worker on a short haul to his home or town, sometimes with a bored truck driver anxious to have someone to talk to on the long trip.

The closer he drew to his objective, the more excited he became. When the oil fields and gray lands of Oklahoma began to turn to the green flatness of the Texas Panhandle he grew silent, more intense. And finally, one morning when he sped out of Amarillo sharing the high front seat of a giant trailer truck bound for El Paso, he was almost speechless for miles and miles. Then, suddenly, as the road clicked across the invisible border of New Mexico, he began to talk. A sudden calm invaded his nerves. He talked with the driver about things back home, exchanged comments on the affairs in the news, his eyes taking stock of this land all the time.

It was barren—for vast stretches dry desert and flat rock with only sparse clumps of desert green—now and then a stretch of good grasslands where cattle could be seen grazing. In the distance, gaunt mountain chains rose and fell; and the air was getting clear and thin as the road gradually rose in altitude.

After a bite in Roswell, when he piled back into the truck, Robin knew he was on his last stretch. After the next stop, Alamogordo, he would reach his destination, Las Cruces. Mention of Alamogordo, though, set the driver talking about the atom bomb, for that had been the town that had first seen the birth of that eerie fire which seemed so destined to transform the world.

"Did you ever see one of those blasts?" asked Robin quietly.

"Yeah," said the driver slowly. "Guess you could say so. Didn't actually see the thing itself, but I seen the glare one morning while putting over in Alamogordo. Quite a sight. You know the blast was plenty far away too; they don't fire them things off anywhere near where they can hurt anybody. Wisht I'd get to see one of them rockets go up they're always firing off at White Sands too. But I guess you gotta be on the grounds for that, and they don't let visitors hang around."

"No visitors?" asked Robin, a little uneasily.

"Nope. That's all top-secret stuff out there. Now that they got those man-made satellite projects in operation, it's even more so. Maybe they let a few reporters in on special occasions, or some high brass with clearance from Washington, but nobody else can get in. Can't even get the GI's who are out there to talk much about it. You'll see a lot of them around Las Cruces Saturday nights on furlough but they just don't discuss it."

"How far is White Sands from Las Cruces?" asked Robin.

"Oh, not too far, maybe thirty miles. The proving grounds are out on the desert though, part of the Holloman Air Development Center that is taking up a lot of this here Tularosa Basin these years. Without a pass, you can't even get in sight of it. But, heck, you wouldn't want to, I hope. Might get conked when one of those whacking big rockets come down. They're always shooting 'em up on tests, making them bigger and bigger. You can't tell me they always know where they're going to come down!"

They passed Alamogordo, drove an hour more through the stillness of the desert, and suddenly they were in Las Cruces. The truck drew to a halt, and Robin dropped off, his valise in his hand. The city didn't seem aware of its unique position on the map of world history.

Robin trudged along the main street until he found a small hotel within his means. He got a room, washed from the trip, brushed his clothes. He had not taken any pants to spare, having put on a strong pair of khaki work trousers, figuring correctly that they were more the thing for hitchhiking than his one good Sunday suit. By the time he went downstairs night had fallen.

He got a bite to eat, walked around the town a bit, went back and to bed. He was dog-tired from the long day's ride.

Next day he walked the town, looking it over, asking questions about how to get to White Sands. He found that the truck driver's advice had been right. There simply was no way a visitor could just go and watch. It was all top-secret stuff, barred to any but legitimate personnel.

He found an Air Force recruiting office, went in, and talked with the sergeant in charge. Robin had begun to dread the thought that in the end he might have to go back to his home city and back to work in the factory. He had so fixed his mind on the rockets, he couldn't bring himself to admit defeat now.

The Air Force man confirmed the usual information. Robin pressed him to say whether if he signed up for the service in Las Cruces he wouldn't stand a good chance of being assigned there. The sergeant laughed.

"Well, it's possible, but it might take a little doing. You get in the Air Force, let us train you for a good job, say you work to be a mechanic for jets and rockets, then maybe you might be assigned here. But there are lots of stations for men, and you might not. Still, if you were to work for it, say after a year in service, you might apply for a transfer to White Sands; it could be that you could get it. But there's no guarantee, none at all. If the force needs you more somewhere else, that'll have to be it. Why not sign up and try for it?"

But Robin shook his head. "Not yet. I want to see if maybe I can get a civilian job there first, or maybe just visit it once."

The sergeant nodded. "You can try. After that, come around and see me again." Robin nodded, and left.

He thought about that as he walked the streets. It might be a good alternative. It did offer at least a chance at the work he dreamed of, at being near the rockets. Yet—to be so near
now
and be stopped. A year, even in the Air Force, still seemed a mighty long time to wait.

He found the civilian employment office for the White Sands Proving Grounds, but it was not only closed, it being Saturday afternoon, but there was a sign saying,
No Help Wanted
.

That night he began to notice men in Air Force dress blues, others in GI khaki, and even some in ordinary olive-drab fatigues appearing in the streets. He realized it was Saturday night and the streets were beginning to show the signs of life for the men's one night a week in town. Ranchers were driving in, their cars lining the curbs. Buses bearing the name of White Sands would come in, unload their pleasure-hungry men, and park somewhere or else go back. White-capped MP's were appearing at corners to augment the local police.

Nevertheless, there was mighty little disturbance. There weren't the noisy carryings-on that usually marked towns near army bases when soldiers had a night off. These were picked men, and they behaved themselves.

Robin was not a drinker and not a roisterer, yet that evening he wondered if he oughtn't to have been. For if he could have learned to hang around some of the livelier bars, he might have been able to strike up conversations with the men of White Sands. After a while, he did indeed enter one, sat nursing a lone beer while listening to the men.

But they did not talk business. They talked the talk that soldiers on leave talk everywhere. Their girl friends, their pals, their latest jokes, gossip, but never a word about rockets, never a word about satellites, never a whisper about their work.

Robin drifted with the crowd in the streets for several hours, finally again found another corner in a dim tavern where he sat, by this time a little tired, a little confused, wondering whether he had not made a mistake in coming here at all. The whole day had been frustration and his spirits were at low ebb.

Two men in fatigue denims were seated near him, arguing. One was plainly far gone under the influence of liquor. He was bleary-eyed, nodding and mumbling. The other, trying to hold him, shaking him, was actually almost as far gone. He was mumbling something about getting up and going; they had to make the last truck to camp.

Finally the two got up, staggered to the men's room, and disappeared inside. Robin resumed his meditations, noting that the place was nearly empty now, that the streets were silent. Obviously time had run out for the men, and they were on their way back to camp. Suddenly it occurred to him that the two soldiers had failed to come out of the lavatory.

Robin slipped out of his seat, opened the door of the washroom, and went in. The two men were there, together on the floor, sound asleep.

Hastily Robin knelt down, shook them. "Wake up, you got to go back to camp!" he called. But he couldn't budge them. One mumbled something without opening his eyes, slumped back, and began to snore. The other didn't even respond that much.

For a moment Robin stood beside them, thinking that he ought to go and tell the proprietor. Then he heard a voice call loudly outside in the bar:

"Any of youse guys going back tonight better step on it! Bus's leaving in two minutes!"

An MP rounding up the stragglers, Robin thought. And in that moment, a sudden chill ran through him, a sudden wild thought leaped into his head. He stood transfixed for an instant. For an instant which seemed to last an eternity, an instant in which all his training, all his instincts and ambitions fought and struggled together in a mad hysteria. Here was an opportunity, here was a chance—yet a trickery, an illegality.

If he borrowed one of the unconscious men's jackets, borrowed his pass, he could ride back to White Sands that very night, and in the dark and confusion, who would know?

Nobody, he felt sure. The next day—well, he'd be surely found, arrested. But—in the meantime, for a blessed hour or so, he would see the rockets in their gaunt glory, in their towering eminences, see an assault against the skies, watch the hissing blue flame ascend to the heavens, see a sight he would remember with joy the rest of his life.

What then if he spent some bad hours under arrest? What even if he went to jail? Actually what could they do to him? He was no spy, he was no saboteur. No matter how exhaustive the investigation, it would prove nothing evil against him.

He remembered a sermon that had once been given at the orphanage. He remembered the minister dwelling on the opportunities of life. He remembered that which had sparked his imagination then, the minister's depiction of the various roads each man must choose. "There comes a time," the speaker had said, "in every man's life when various roads open out before him, each leading in a different direction. If, at that moment, he makes his choice, then his entire life may be forever set upon a channel, and the other possible lives will vanish."

Was not this then such a crossroads? Robin could go back, be a factory hand, be a contented mechanic or carpenter, marry, settle down, and live his life without ever seeing rockets. Or he could take the road that now, for a brief flicker, seemed open to him.

He bent down, removed the khaki work jacket the smaller of the two men was wearing, shrugged his own shoulders into it, felt in its pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, glanced at it.
Pass
, it read.
Seven hours. Red Sands Station.

He shoved it into his pocket, pushed open the washroom door, and walked rapidly to the street, his head down.

As he emerged onto the street, he was grabbed roughly by an MP. "Hurry, feller," the man said. "What station?"