Far enough to touch

By STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW
Illustrated by SCHELLING
Rene Duport was the quiet member of the moonship's crew. So quiet that it took several minutes before anyone noticed that he jumped overboard—into space.
The ship had a crew of six, and Rene Duport was the youngest. The pilot, who held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and Master Pilot in the United Nations Space Corps, was one of the two Americans aboard. The co-pilot was Russian, the navigator a Finn, the engineer an African, and the research observer was the other American. Rene Duport was a Belgian, and he was the radioman, and the youngest ever to go to the Moon.
It had been a routine flight since the ship had lifted from the lunar surface. In a little less than six hours they were due to enter parking orbit. Twelve hours later, with a minimum of luck, the ferry ship would dive to its landing area near the Marianas, and the six crew members would be once again on Ground. Rather, they would be floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but that was far more solid than space. All the Earth was sacred Ground to them, including the sea. Each of them anticipated the moment when they would scoop salt water up in their hands and fling their oxygen masks into the depths and raise their faces to the burning ocean sun, yet they tried not to think of the moment, they kept it in the backs of their minds, as if thinking of it consciously could bring bad luck.
All except Rene Duport, who was nineteen years old, and the youngest ever to enter space. He had loved it out there, on the Moon, and he loved being here in the ship. He wanted to go back out again, and he was the only one of the six who was reluctant to return to Ground. Perhaps if the spacemedics had known of this unnatural—almost inhuman—state of Rene Duport's mind, they would never have let him go out. Then again, perhaps he was one of a new breed of men, born under new signs in the Zodiac, the signs of Gagarin and Glenn, equipped with a kind of mind and soul never known before. He was the only one of the six who did not want to go Home.