My sweetheart's the Man in the Moon

Illustrated by STALLMAN
Not everyone will think of the first moon-flight as the first glorious step on the road to space. There will always, for instance, be the fast-buck boys like Lubrano....
Jeanne turned off the radio and went downstairs slowly, watching how the gold-shot curtains on the landing window caught the sunlight in a multitude of brilliant flecks. She shuddered slightly. Up there , the sun would scorch and sear.
When she entered the living room, Aunt Anna looked up from her magazine, and Pop puffed on his calabash pipe, occasionally grunting with satisfaction. Mom looked at Jeanne hopefully, but soon turned away in confusion. She could not tell whether Jeanne wanted her to laugh or cry.
Well, said Jeanne, instantly hating the flippant way she tried to speak, he got there. She never quite knew why, but whenever emotions threatened to choke her up she would slip on the mask, the carefree attitude, the what-do-I-care voice she was using now.
All the way— there ? Aunt Anna fluttered her eyebrows, allowing herself a rare display of emotion.
Mom smiled, laughed briefly and nervously. She touched Jeanne's cheek tentatively with a trembling hand, hugged her daughter quickly and drew back. I didn't know, she said. None of us knew. We were afraid to listen. I mean, it's so far.
Knew he'd make it, said Pop, tamping his pipe full with another load of tobacco from the humidor. Tom's got good stuff in him. Smokes a pipe, you know.
Not up there, said Jeanne practically. It would waste oxygen.
It says here in this magazine the moon is 240,000 miles away, Aunt Anna told them.
Did the announcer say how Tom felt? Mom wanted to know.
Just imagine how it will be, Aunt Anna said, when we get Tom back here and he speaks to the Women's League. We'll have to make arrangements—