John clapped me on the shoulder and said, “We’re in this to the end, Bert. Together.”
“I appreciate that, old man,” I told him.
I thought I saw a tear in John’s eye, but I wasn’t sure.
There were tears in mine, though, when the scientists delivered their reports.
Their spokesman sniffed the air like a beagle and then announced, “There can be no question. We have seen no specimens such as these on earth. Coupled with the photographs Mr. Donald was good enough to—”
“The what? What? What did you say?”
“Photographs,” the spokesman said. “The ones Mr. Donald took on the moon. He was good enough to send them to us directly. Figured they’d help us reach a fair decision. Unquestionably valid, too. Our most powerful telescopes could never have got such close-ups. Coupled with these photographs, as I was saying, there can be no reasonable doubt that Mr. Donald has indeed been to the moon.” The spokesman cleared his throat. “We... ah... have a suggestion to make, Mr. Merrian.”
“What’s that?”
“Pay the man his million dollars.”
Mr. Donald saved the spaceship for last. We insisted on seeing that privately, without the invasion of the press. He agreed because he was closer to the million dollars now. Besides, he wanted to put away the space suit and the assorted items that had served as exhibits. When he’d done that, hanging the space suit alongside the spare in a locker, and stowing the specimens, he showed us around the control room. “Only one of its kind in the world,” he said proudly. “Took me twenty years to build it. Ain’t another like it.”
“It looks complicated,” I said.
“Ain’t,” Mr. Donald answered. “Simplest thing in the world. Built an orbit calculator right into it, you see. Only wanted it to take me one place, and that was the moon. So all I got to do is set the year and the day of the month with these knobs here, and it automatically figures just where the moon is, and what the orbit to take the ship there would have to be. Then all I do is press that there firing stud, and the thing just goes up.” He lifted his forefinger. “Right to the moon.”
“It was easy then,” John said.
“Easy as pie. Be just as easy to get to all the planets with this baby. Anyone could figure it.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess he gets the million bucks.”
“I guess so,” John agreed wearily.
“We’d better get back to the office, John. If you’ll contact us tomorrow, Mr. Donald, we’ll have your check waiting for you.”
“You’re sure now?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. I grinned feebly. “Why not? You’ve convinced us.”
Mr. Donald seemed happy now. He led us out of the control room and down the ramp. The rocket site was deserted, and blackness covered the sky as we walked toward the company’s automobile.
“Sure lonely out here,” John said.
“Has to be,” Mr. Donald answered. “Blast-off, you know. Can’t have people injured by the jet trail.”
“Naturally not,” I said.
“Uhm,” John agreed.
We rode back to the city in silence.
At the office Mr. Donald stepped out of the car. “Hope you fellows have that check tomorrow,” he said. “I aim to make another trip up there. Figure maybe I’ll hop to Mars from the moon. Need supplies, though. Plenty. Part of the check will go for that.”
“What about fuel?” John asked.
“Oh, got my tanks full already. I can make that next trip soon as I get the money to stock up.”
I thought of the $21,456.31 in our paltry bank account, and I wondered how much supplies that would buy for Mr. Donald. John looked at me, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.
“Well, good night, Mr. Donald,” I said.
“Night, fellas. See you tomorrow.”
“Sure,” John called after him.
John’s eyes met mine for an instant, and we grinned at each other.
“But are we doing the right thing?” John asked two days later.
“Have we got a million bucks?”
“After the spending we did? Hell, we’re lucky if we have a thousand.”
“Then we’re doing the right thing,” I said simply.
“I guess so.”
“When in doubt, run.”
“Suppose he catches up.”
“Never,” I said. “He’s an old man, more or less. Besides, we can go to a great many places.”
“And we can always start another magazine,” John said hopefully. “Somewhere.”
“Sure. Nothing to worry about.”
We sat back in the seats and stretched luxuriously.
There was a hold full of supplies, and tanks full of fuel, and Mr. Donald’s space ship handled like a dream.
We sat back and watched the stars and the approaching moon.
Happy New Year, Herbie
We were living on North Brother Island at the time.
It was, and is, a tiny island in the middle of the East River, adjacent to a miniscule uninhabited island called South Brother. When we lived there, and I suppose the same is true of it now, the Riker’s Island prison was visible in the distance from one end of the island, and from the opposite end, the Bronx mainland. There was a lot of river traffic passing North Brother. From our windows in one of the converted buildings we could see tugs and barges and transports and tankers and once even a Swedish luxury liner.
The buildings we lived in had once been part of a hospital for tuberculars, the hospital rooms converted into apartments shortly after the war. When Joan and I were first married, we lived in McCloskey Hall, which was on the end of the island opposite the tennis courts and the handball court and a sort of outdoor teahouse overlooking the edge of the river and Hell’s Gate on the horizon. Later, just before our first son was born, we applied for and moved to a larger apartment on the other end of the island in a building called Finley Hall. If all of the buildings sounded like part of a college campus, it was with good reason. The island had initially been leased by Columbia, N.Y.U., and Fordham, I think, and was euphemistically called Riverside Campus or Riverside Extension or some such, the idea being to provide housing for World War II veterans who were attending these colleges. The unmarried students lived in a dormitory in the center of the island, the old administration building. The married veterans and their wives lived in the converted hospital buildings. Later, the accommodations were extended to include veterans from other colleges in the city and, toward the end, the island accepted veterans who were attending any school approved by the Veterans Administration — which is how Herbie came to live on North Brother. I say “toward the end” not because the island went up in smoke or anything like that, but simply because the buildings eventually reverted to what they’d been originally: a hospital. In the old days, before the students invaded it, the island had housed such medical phenomena as Typhoid Mary. After we left, it became the Riverside Hospital for drug addicts. We, the interim students, were only a part of its brief, non-medical history.
Our apartment in Finley Hall was at the end of a long corridor on the fourth floor. The original hospital rooms had been revamped so that there were five apartments on each floor, the apartments varying in size according to the families occupying them. The smallest apartment on each floor was a single rectangular room that had once been the old hospital elevator shaft. On our floor it was shared by Peter, who was a dental student, and his wife Gerry, who listened to the radio wearing earphones so as not to disturb her husband while he studied.
Our own apartment was slightly larger than the converted elevator shaft. It consisted of two rooms and a John. The door opened on an enormous living room-dining room-kitchen combined, with windows facing the river north and south. Joan and I slept in the living room on a bed that doubled as a sofa during the day. The other room was smaller, with windows facing the river on the west, and Timmy — our newborn son — slept in that room. The bathroom was tacked onto one end of Timmy’s room. We decorated the bathroom with covers from Collier’s Magazine pasted to the wallboard, even though someone told us we’d lose our original security deposit if we papered the walls. But aside from this single effort, there wasn’t much else we could do to improve the apartment. It had been hastily reconstructed in a time when new housing was practically nonexistent in New York. The paint was thin; the plasterboard showed through in uneven patches, and even the nails holding plasterboard to stud were clearly visible. The floors were presumably the original asphalt tile that had run through the old hospital. You could still see marks on the tile where entire walls had been ripped out in the transformation. The river moisture kept the apartment constantly damp, and the closed cupboards over the sink were a haven for cockroaches, no matter how many forays Joan and I made into their territory with insecticide powders and sprays. The view was magnificent, of course, and perhaps if we’d had any money we could have framed the view elegantly. But we were students living on my G.I. allotment and on what Joan and I could earn with part-time jobs. Joan had dropped out of school just before Timmy was born, and I was in my senior year and working after school each day at the World Student Service Fund on West Fortieth Street and on Sundays at the Y as a counselor. On Saturdays, Joan went to her job in the music department at Macy’s while I stayed home to wash and wax the old asphalt-tile floor, change Timmy’s diapers, and continue my sworn and unceasing guerrilla warfare against the goddamn cockroaches. Joan had been a music major at Hunter College, which is how she’d got the job at Macy’s. We’d been engaged for two years when we heard about North Brother Island and decided to get married immediately. I guess we’d both thought of marriage as having friends in for coffee, or of putting our laundry into a washing machine together, or of planning menus for the week. At least, our idea was to continue living in McCloskey Hall until we were both graduated and then go to Paris for a year where I would learn to write and Joan would continue with her studies at the Conservatory or someplace. But we were married in October, and on New Year’s Eve of that first year on the island Timmy was conceived. And suddenly we were married in earnest and not on an extended honeymoon, and shortly after that we were parents to boot. It was our second New Year’s Eve on the island, when we were living in Finley, that the thing happened with Herbie.