On the television screen Walt Dangerfield was wise-cracking in his adult way, a sort of Voltaire and Will Rogers combined. “Oh yeah,” he was saying to a lady reporter who wore a funny large hat. “We expect to uncover a lot of strange life forms on Mars.” And he eyed her hat, as if saying, “There’s one now, I think.” And again, the reporters all laughed. “I think it moved,” Dangerfield said, indicating the hat to his quiet, cool-eyed wife. “It’s coming for us, honey.”
He really loves her, Bonny realized, watching the two of them. I wonder if George ever felt toward me the way Walt Dangerfield feels toward his wife; I doubt it, frankly. If he did, he never would have allowed me to have those two therapeutic abortions. She felt even more sad, now, and she got up’ and walked away from the TV set, her back to it.
They ought to send George to Mars, she thought with bitterness. Or better yet, send us all, George and me and the Dangerfields; George can have an affair with Lydia Dangerfield—if he’s able—and I can bed down with Walt; I’d be a fair to adequate partner in the great adventure. Why not?
I wish something would happen, she said to herself. I wish Bruno would call and say Doctor Stockstill had cured him, or I wish Dangerfield would suddenly back out of going, or the Chinese would start World War Three, or George would really hand the school board back that awful contract as he’s been saying he’s going to. Something, anyhow. Maybe, she thought, I ought to get out my potter’s wheel and pot; back to so-called creativity, or– anal play or whatever it is. I could make a lewd pot. Design it, fire it in Violet Clatt’s kiln, sell it down in San Anselmo at Creative Artworks, Inc., that society ladies’ place that rejected my welded jewelry last year. I know they’d accept a lewd pot if it was a good lewd pot.
At Modern TV, a small crowd had collected in the front of the store to watch the large stereo color TV set, the Dangerfields’ flight being shown to all Americans everywhere, in their homes and at their places of work. Stuart McConchie stood with his arms folded, back of the crowd, also watching.
“The ghost of John L. Lewis,” Walt Dangerfield was saying in his dry way, “would appreciate the true meaning of portal to portal pay… if it hadn’t been for him, they’d probably be paying me about five dollars to make this trip, on the grounds that my job doesn’t actually begin until I get there.” He had a sobered expression, now; it was almost time for him and Lydia to enter the cubicle of the ship. “Just remember this… if something happens to us, if we get lost, don’t come out looking for us. Stay home and I’m sure Lydia and I will turn up somewhere.”
“Good luck,” the’ reporters were murmuring, as officials and technicians of NASA appeared and began bundling the Dangerfields off, out of view of the TV cameras.
“Won’t be long,” Stuart said to Lightheiser, who now stood beside him, also watching.
“He’s a sap to go,” Lightheiser said, chewing on a toothpick. “He’ll never come back; they make no bones about that.”
“Why should he want to come back?” Stuart said. “What’s so great about it here?” ‘He felt envious of Walt Dangerfield; he wished it was he, Stuart McConchie, up there before the TV cameras, in the eyes of the entire world.
Up the stairs from the basement came Hoppy Harrington on his cart, wheeling eagerly forward. “Have they shot him off?” he asked Stuart in a nervous, quick voice, peering at the screen. “He’ll be burned up; it’ll be like that time in ‘65; I don’t remember it, naturally, but—”
“Shut up, will you,” Lightheiser said softly, and the phocomelus, flushing, became silent. They all watched, then, each with his own private thoughts and reactions as on the TV screen the last inspection team was lifted by an overhead boom from the nose cone of the rocket. The countdown would soon begin; the rocket was fueled. checked over, and now the two people were entering it. The small group around the TV set stirred and murmured.
Sometime later today, sometime in the afternoon, their waiting would be rewarded, because Dutchman IV would take off; it would orbit the Earth for an hour or so, and the people would stand at the TV screen watching that, seeing the rocket go around and around, and then finally the decision would be made and someone below in the blockhouse would fire off the final stage and the orbiting rocket would change trajectory and leave the world. They had seen it before; it was much like this every time, but this was new because the people in this one this time would never be returning. It was well worth spending a day in front of the set; the crowd of people was ready for the wait.
Stuart McConchie thought about lunch and then after that he would come back here and watch again; he would station himself here once more, with the others. He would get little or no work done today, would sell no TV sets to anybody. But this was more important. He could not miss this. That might be me up there someday, he said to himself; maybe I’ll emigrate later on when I’m earning enough to get married, take my wife and kids and start a new life up there on Mars, when they get a really good colony going, not just machines.
He thought of himself in the nose cone, like Walt Dangerfield, strapped next to a woman of great physical attractiveness. Pioneers, he and her, founding a new civilization on a new planet. But then his stomach rumbled and he realized how hungry he was; he could not postpone lunch much longer.
Even as he stood watching the great upright rocket on the TV screen, his thoughts turned toward soup and rolls and beef, stew and apple pie with ice cream on it, up at Fred’s Fine Foods.
III
Almost every day Stuart McConchie ate lunch at the coffee shop up the street from Modern TV. Today, as he entered Fred’s Fine Foods, he saw to his irritation that Hoppy Harrington’s cart was parked in the back, and there was Hoppy eating his lunch in a perfectly natural and easygoing manner, as if he were used to coming here. Goddam, Stuart thought. He’s taking over; the phoces are taking over. And I didn’t even see him leave the store.
However, Stuart seated himself in a booth and picked up the menu. He can’t drive me off, he said to himself as he looked to see what the special of the day was, and how much it cost. The end of the month had arrived, and Stuart was nearly broke. He looked ahead constantly to his twice-monthly paycheck; it would be handed out personally by Fergesson at the end of the week.
The shrill sound of the phoce’s voice reached Stuart as he sipped his soup; Hoppy was telling a yarn of some sort, but to whom? To Connie, the waitress? Stuart turned his head and saw that both the waitress and Tony the frycook were standing near Hoppy’s cart, listening, and neither of them showed any revulsion toward the phoce.
Now Hoppy saw and recognized Stuart. “Hi!” he called.
Stuart nodded and turned away, concentrating on his soup.
The phoce was telling them all about an invention of his, some kind of electronic contraption he had either built or intended to build—Stuart could not tell which, and he certainly did not care. It did not matter to him what Hoppy built, what crazy ideas emanated from the little man’s brain. No doubt it’s something sick, Stuart said to himself. Some crank gadget, like a perpetual motion machine… maybe a perpetual motion cart for him to ride on. He laughed at that idea, pleased with it. I have to tell that to Lightheiser, he decided. Hoppy’s perpetual motion—and then he thought, His phocomobile. At that, Stuart laughed aloud.
Hoppy heard him laugh, and evidently thought he was laughing at something which he himself was saying. “Hey, Stuart,” he called, “come on over and join me and I’ll buy you a beer.”