Chapter I: Front Matter

FIRST MAN

By CLYDE BROWN

Illustrated by WOOD

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _He obstinately wanted no part in achieving the goal of generations--but the goal with equal obstinacy wanted all of him!_]

To keep the record straight: Orville Close was first man on the Moon. Harold Ferguson was second. They never talk about it.

It started on that October morning when the piece came out in the Parkville _News_. Harold grumbled that they'd gotten the story all wrong, calling his ship a rocket ship, and treating him like a flagpole sitter or a man going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. His wife took their sad, thin little girl and went to live with her brother. The city police blocked off Elm Street, letting no one through except the residents. The neighbors were getting up a petition. But Orville refused to become excited.

What was going to happen?

Why, nothing.

Harold would probably crack up completely, but this evening that thing would still be standing there, solid as the Washington Monument.

Nevertheless, Orville's wife Polly was going to her sister's, across town. _She_ wasn't going to stay there and be blown up! While she was getting ready, Orville picked up a package by the sink and carried it outside to the alley and dropped it in the garbage can. He wore his double-breasted fall suit. He strolled to the boundary fence and leaned against a post.

A reporter was taking angle shots of the spaceship. Flashbulbs were scattered over Harold's garden.

It really does catch the eye, Orville thought. Smarten the ship up a little, put some stripes running down from the nose, a few pieces of chrome around over the body....

* * * * *

Poor old Harold came off his back porch carrying a thermos jug and six loaves of bread.

"Morning, Harold," said Orville.

"Oh--morning, Orville." Harold flinched. Another reporter had come out of the shed and taken their picture.

"What's your name, mister?" the reporter asked Orville.

"I'd rather you left me out of this," Orville said.

A loaf of bread had broken open and slices were falling out. Harold put down the thermos jug and picked up the slices and stuffed them back into the wrapper. The first reporter came over.

"It's got Vitamin D." Harold grinned wretchedly. "Costs two cents more a loaf, but I thought, what the heck--"

"How about a shot of you and the missus saying good-by?" the first reporter said.

"Why--she left me," Harold blurted. He tried to get away, but the reporters hemmed him in.

"Was she scared?" the second reporter asked.

"Look, boys!" Orville put his hands on the top rail of the fence and climbed across. He was getting his shoes wet in the weeds in Harold's garden, but he didn't care. "The man has work to do. Can't you leave him alone?"

* * * * *

He picked up the jug and took Harold by the elbow and led him into the shed.

There, resting on some concrete blocks on the dirt floor, was the base of the ship. In the semi-darkness, it looked harmless enough: like a tank, six or eight feet across, reaching up through a jagged hole in the roof.

"Harold, you could make a good thing out of this," Orville said. "All this publicity."

Harold was climbing a rickety ladder to the roof. Orville followed.

"Mount this thing on a trailer. Take her around to fairs and carnivals."

Orville waited on the roof while Harold climbed another ladder to the small oval door in the side of the ship. Harold called down: "You never saw the inside. Want to look around?"

"Well...." Orville glanced into his back yard. Polly wasn't ready yet. He climbed up and handed the jug to Harold and stuck his head in.

"Huh!" There wasn't much to see. Just a small compartment with some pipes leading from below into the nose. "You got to fix this up," he said. "Some Rube Goldberg contraptions."

"The works are all up here." Harold climbed a ladder and disappeared through a hole overhead. "C'mon up, I'd like you to see this!"

Orville looked down again into his yard. "It'll take her forever! Polly, I mean. Okay, I guess I got time for a look." He stepped in and climbed until his waist was through the hole.

* * * * *

The nose of the ship was dark. Harold was shining an extension lamp around. There were parts of a junked car and some old plumbing fixtures and Orville recognized the wheels of a lawnmower he'd left by the alley for the trash men to pick up. This didn't look like the inside of a spaceship. It looked exactly like a corner in Harold's basement.

"Oh, Lord," Orville said.

"I call this my scope." Harold was shining the light on a shaving mirror, on a long arm that could be swung and tilted about. "How about that? Pretty neat, huh?"

Neat was hardly the word for it. "Look here, Harold! The neighbors are getting an injunction. Why don't you play it smart? Fight it out in the courts. There'll be a lot of publicity--"

"They are?" Harold was hurt. He was shining the lamp in Orville's eyes.

"Yeah. Now while you're fighting it out in the courts--"

"Do you call that neighborly?"

"They're scared. They're afraid you'll blow the whole neighborhood to pieces."

"Well, hell with them!"

"While we're on that subject, ain't that my trouble lamp you're holding?"

"Yeah. Guess it is. Need it right away?"

"Just want you to remember where it came from."

"Actually, it'll be no use on the trip. I got her fixed so when I take off, the cord down at the base will come unplugged and--"

"Well, Polly must be ready by now." Orville gave up. Polly was right. Harold was insane.

Orville tried to turn on the ladder so that he could climb back down. His foot slipped. He spread his arms to keep from falling through the hole and knocked over the pile of bread.

"Watch out!" Harold yelped.

"I'm all right." Orville felt a slight tingle.

"Yes, but you--" Harold's voice trailed off with dismay. The light in his hand had gone out, but Orville didn't think of what this meant at the time.

There was light coming through the door below and Orville climbed down. Darn! He pulled out his handkerchief and tried to brush the dust off his lapels. He'd have to change suits, and that meant changing his socks and tie, and he was supposed to meet those people about that deal on Maplehurst Extension at nine. Well, he'd be late. He leaned out of the door.

"Orville!" shouted Harold. "Come back! Don't step out there!"

* * * * *

A lot of fog was blowing down past the nose of the ship. Orville wondered where it came from. He stuck his foot out, reaching for the ladder. He heard Harold scrambling down from above and he wanted to get away from that madman. He reached farther. Harold grabbed his arm.

Then the fog cleared away and Orville swayed dizzily, gaping at where he had almost stepped. They had been going through a cloud. Now he looked down at dazzling clouds in the bright October sun and between them he saw the streets of Parkville, very neat, just like the map hanging in the office.

He dropped back inside and lay weakly on the floor. He grabbed one of the pipes and shakily clung to it.

"What happened?" he stammered.

"Hit the main switch." Harold was reaching out for the door handle. He banged the door shut with a concussion that burst inside Orville's head. "We took off."

* * * * *

It was dark in there, at first; then Orville saw a dim violet light that filled the inside of the ship.

He followed Harold up the ladder into the nose of the ship and sank to the floor. Harold was twiddling with some knobs mounted on the dashboard of the junked car.

"Boy!" Orville pulled out his handkerchief again and swabbed his forehead. He tried to wipe the grime from his hands. "And I've never even been in an airplane!"

"Me either." Harold pounded on the dashboard. A meter didn't seem to be working. "There ... guess I can open her up a little."

"Hey, wait! Take me back!"

Harold moved a knob an eighth of a turn. He switched on the scope and waited for it to warm up. He took off his glasses and wiped them, squinting at Orville with that one bad eye.

"Turn it around and take me back!"

"But I can't, Orville." Harold put on the glasses and looked into the scope. "It's working!"

"I demand it! You've made me late for the office as it is!"

"Sure looks different from the map," Harold said. "Must be the East Coast. There's Florida sticking out there."

He snapped off the scope and sat opposite Orville. He opened the thermos and poured coffee into the cap.

"Been so busy, didn't have my breakfast." He held out the cap to Orville. "I take mine without sugar."

Orville shook his head. "Do I understand--"

"Ugh! It's hot!" Harold put down the coffee and rummaged in some brown paper bags. "Should be some glazed doughnuts.... Shoot! Bet I left them in the kitchen!"

* * * * *

Orville faced him firmly. "You've shown me it'll fly. I believe you. Now I give you one more chance--take me back!"

"But I can't!" Harold protested.

"There are laws about this sort of thing, my friend. This is abduction. Kidnapping. You know what the penalty is for that?"

"Well, gee, I didn't mean to take you along, Orville. You hit that switch--"

"It's criminal negligence, leaving a switch out there like that where it could be hit by accident!"

"Had to put it there so I could reach up from below and work it."

Orville balled his fists and stood squarely. Funny--it was no trouble at all, standing and walking around. If he hadn't seen those clouds, and the landscape sinking away, he'd swear the two of them were still in Harold's back yard.

"Do you take me back," he said, "or do I have to break every--"

"But I can't!" Harold grasped his wrist pleadingly. "I got her set up in a sequence. If I tried to change the sequence now, why--" He shuddered. "I haven't got any idea what might happen!"

Orville sat back down.

"I'm sorry." The weak way Harold said it made Orville feel worse than ever.

"Me! Trapped up here in this thing with you!" Orville said bitterly. "You can't even drive a car! You're just about the worst driver I know!"

"I know," Harold admitted. "But this is safer than a car. Besides, out where we're going, there'll be no traffic problem." He gave his inane giggle. "Far as I know, there's no one else at all!"

"And the neighborhood back there. Probably all blown to pieces. Polly. The house. My car! I got complete coverage on it, but who ever heard of a car wrecked by a spaceship? When we get back, if my insurance doesn't cover it, I'll sue you!"

"There's nothing hurt at all," Harold said. "Unless someone had his hand on the ship when we took off. I'd planned to have 'em stand back."

* * * * *

Orville closed his eyes. Something was crossing and crisscrossing inside him like two rings tossed back and forth by jugglers. It was not painful, but it was disturbing. Something must be going wrong. He didn't trust Harold's mechanical ability. In the past ten years, Harold had been fired from a couple of filling station jobs because of blunders, once for leaving the plug out of a crank case, and once for botching up a flat tire repair.

"Running kind of rough, isn't she?" Orville said. "What makes this little--" He circled his hands sickly in front of his stomach.

Harold closed his eyes and made similar circles. "Oh, that's this counter-grav of mine. You see, the gravitation of the Earth--"

"Can't you do anything about it?" Orville was in no mood to listen to one of Harold's lectures.

"I could move her over so we couldn't feel it, but it would be shaking the ship then. Might tear it apart."

"Won't it tear us apart?"

"I don't think so. We got more give to us than the ship has." Harold was able to drink the coffee now. "No, I don't think I've done a bad job on this. First time a machine is built, you're bound to run into a few bugs. But this is working, so far, even better than I expected."

"Yeah," Orville had to admit, "it ain't bad--for a guy with no mechanical ability whatever."