`It would be a privilege, dear lady, But -‘
`- you are needed elsewhere. Where is the best view? If you weren’t busy, where
would you watch it?’
`Have you visited the Broadmoor Zoo?’
`Not yet. I expect to. After the lift-off.’
`Maureen, there is a parking lot at the zoo. From it you would have a dear view to
the east from the spot about fifteen hundred feet higher than Peterson Field. Mr
Montgomery has arranged with the Hotel to place some folding chairs there. And a
radio link. Television. Coffee. If I weren’t busy, that’s where I would be.’
‘So that’s where I will be.’
Later that day I ran across my son Woodrow in the lobby of the Broadmoor. ‘Hi, Mom!
They got me working.’
`How did they manage that?’
`I didn’t read my contract carefully enough. This is “educational and public
communication activity associated with the Moonship” – meaning I have to set this
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thing up to show people how the ship works, where it will go, and where the diamonds
are on the Moon.’
`Are there diamonds on the Moon?’
‘We’ll let you know later. Come here a sec.’ He led me away from the crowd in the
lobby into a side hall by the barber shop. ‘Mom,’ he said quietly, `if you want to
do it, I think I have enough bulge around here to get you into the blockhouse for
the lift-off’
Is that the best place to sec it?’
No, it’s probably the worst. It’ll be hot as a June bride, because the air
conditioning isn’t all that good. But it’s the safest place and it’s where the high
brass will be. Visiting royalty. Party chairmen. Mafia chiefs.’
‘Woodrow, where is the best place to watch? Not the safest ‘
‘I would drive up Cheyenne Mountain. There is a big paved parking lot outside the
zoo. Come back into the lobby; I want to show you something.’
On a giant (four-foot) globe that made my mouth water, Woodrow showed me the
projected path of the Pioneer.
‘Why doesn’t it go straight up?’
`Doesn’t work that way. She goes cast and makes use of the Earth’s rotation… and
unloads all those extra steps. The bottom one, the biggest one, number five, drops
in Kansas.’
‘What if it landed on the Prairie Roadway?’
‘I’d join the Foreign Legion… right behind Bob Coster and Mr Ferguson. Honest, it
can’t, Mom. We start out here, fifty miles south of the road, and where it lands,
over here, near Dodge City, is over a hundred miles south of it’
`What about Dodge City?’
‘There’s a little man with a switch, hired solely to push that switch and bring step
five down in open country. If he makes a mistake, they tie him to a tree and let
wild dogs tear him to pieces. Don’t worry, Mom. Step four lands around here, off the
coast of South Carolina. Step three lands in the Atlantic north of this narrowest
plane where the nose of South America faces the bulge of Africa. Step two lands in
the South Atlantic near Capetown. If it goes too far, we’ll hear some interesting
cussing in Afrikaans. Step one – ah, that’s the one. With luck it lands on the Moon.
If Bob Coster made a mistake, why, it’s back to the old drawing-board.’
It will be no news to anyone that Pioneer lifted off to plan and that Captain Leslie
LeCroix landed on Luna and returned safely. I watched from Cheyenne Mountain, the
zoo parking lot, with such a fine, horizon-wide view to the east that it seemed to
me that I could stand on my tip-toes and sec Kansas City.
I’m glad that I got to sec one of the great rockets while they were still in use – I
know of no planet in any patrolled universe where the big rockets are still used –
too expensive, too wasteful, too dangerous.
But, oh, so magnificent!
It was just dark when I got up there. The full Moon was rising in the east. The
Pioneer was seven miles away (I heard someone say) but the ship was easy to see,