One Against the Moon

by Donald A. Wollheim

He jumped off and headed for the main gates. He noticed a large crowd of men standing in front of them. Why were they standing, he thought, why didn't they go on in, punch their cards? He came up to them, saw them standing around talking uneasily, some milling around, holding their lunch pails idly in their hands. Robin pushed through to the main gate. He saw a knot of men staring at a sign tacked on the post. He got closer and read it.

It was a statement from the management. It seemed that the plant was closed for six weeks, due to a combination of circumstances. There was a shortage in the raw materials because of the heavy floods in the mining areas that spring, and so the management had decided to take advantage of that shortage to retool and recondition the works. Men in several departments would be called in during the next few days, the rest would be laid off temporarily. Another notice tacked below that stated that the company had arranged with the union for compensation during the period.

Robin stared at the notice numbly for a minute. He himself had not yet been admitted to the union, for he was only a learning apprentice. For him there would possibly be only a period of six barren, workless weeks. He wandered away from the gates, drifted around idly, listening to the groups of men talking.

Most of them seemed to be taking it calmly enough. Several of them were talking with growing enthusiasm of organizing a hunting-and-fishing trip upstate for the next week or so. One was talking of going home to visit the old folks back at the farm. Most of them seemed to be looking forward more or less to a period of loafing around at home with their families.

Suddenly Robin felt more alone than usual. For him, there was no family. Even at its best an orphanage has a certain coldness, a certain impersonal precision that can never make up for the warmth of family life. He had friends there, but surely by this time they, too, had left, having gone into business or into the armed forces.

The cold halls of the Y offered no particular relaxation. Even utilizing the city library to burrow deep into his favorite imaginative studies of science seemed a barren prospect for six whole weeks.

He wandered away from the men, walked along the great factory wall, hands in his pockets, strolling slowly away from the city, along the road to the open country, beyond the end of the bus lines. He thought about himself. He took stock of himself.

Nearly twenty now, he was a good mechanic, a pretty good carpenter, handy. He'd always be able to get a job somewhere in which he could work with his hands. He'd never thought too much though about the future. He would be taken sooner or later by the armed forces. They hadn't needed him and he hadn't thought about volunteering first. He was always a little sensitive about his height, for he was short for his age. This had probably operated subconsciously to keep him from joining up.

I could sign up now, he thought. This might be the time. Besides, he went on in his reasoning, if I volunteered I could pick my own branch of the service. I could pick the Air Force and maybe get to see some rockets and jets in action. I couldn't rate a pilot's commission because I'm no college man, but I bet I could qualify as a mechanic, get to work on the rocket planes. Why, maybe I could even manage to get sent to White Sands, work on the Space Platform and the Artificial Satellites. Maybe someday I'll be one of the guys who help tool up the first rocket to the moon!

He found himself growing excited at the thought. But, he reminded himself, my chances are slim of getting what I want. There are so many good guys in the Air Force, my own chance of being sent to one particular place is small, really small.