The illusion of being outdoors at night was most persuasive. The lighted walls and floor at the level at which people walked and talked and hurried seemed no more than a little band of light, a circle of warmth and comfort, against the awful depth of space, like prairie schooners drawn up for the night under a sharp desert sky.
The boys caught their breaths, as did everyone who saw it for the first time. But they could not stop to wonder as something else demanded their attention. The floor of the rotunda was sunk many feet below the level at which they entered; they stood on a balcony which extended around the great room to enclose a huge, shallow, circular pit. In this pit a battered spaceship lurched on a bed of rock and sand as if it had crash-landed from the mimic sky above.
"It's the Kilroy-" Tex said, almost as if he doubted it.
"It must be," Matt agreed in a whisper. -
They moved to the balcony railing and read a plaque posted there:
USSF Rocket Ship Kilroy Was Here
FIRST INTERPLANETARY SHIP
From Terra to Mars and return-Lieut. Colonel Robert deFries Sims, Commanding; Captain Saul S. Abrams; Master Sergeant Malcolm MacGregor. None survived the return landing. Rest in Peace.
They crowded next to two other boys and stared at the Kilroy. Tex nudged Matt. "See the gash in the dirt, where she skidded? Say, do you suppose they just built right over her, where she lays'
One of the other two-a big-boned six-footer with tawny hair-answered, "No, the Kilroy landed in North Africa."