Glory was laughing with delight. "Oh, it's wonderful!"
Shut up! Pete thought savagely. Shut up, shut up!
With an effort, he got hold of himself.
I've been working too hard. I'm jittery thinking about the moonshot, and all this seedy burlesque just irritates me. There's nothing to get heated up about. Calm down.
But why am I suddenly afraid?
He looked again at the ridiculous moon with its smirking face. He saw that plaster had fallen from the wall in places, peeling away, leaving the bare hexagons of wire and laths.
My God, he thought. A chickenwire sky.
He thought again of the girl in the ticket booth, and of the tired, frightened people all laughing too much and shoving and running outside.
The bullet started down at last, toward the hinged door. On this side it was painted to look like Earth, with a distorted map of North America. All wrong, somehow.
Pete felt ill. It was as though someone were making ill-tempered fun of the dreams and the tall silver ship waiting out on the desert. Cheapening it. Laughing nastily.