[Illustration] Four-Billion Dollar Door by Michael Shaara _Old Sam Button devoted his life to being the first man on the Moon--in one way, he was._ I see, by the latest history books my boy brings home from school, that they are already beginning to rewrite the incredible tale of Sam Button and the door. And I can see their point. Sam Button was a great hero, first man to reach the Moon and all that, and it was a rare moment in history when he made it. But still, they haven’t got any right to hush up about the door. Because, even if that was one of the great moments in history, it was also undoubtedly one of the funniest. Anything that funny ought to be handed on to posterity. So, since nobody else had taken on the chore I guess I’ll have to take it on myself. Old Sam Button was a long lean man with blonde hair that looked like it had been stuck on with glue. Old Sam was a rare man, as well as a lean one. For as far back as I can remember, Old Sam lived with one great dream, to get from Earth to the Moon. There are a lot of people like that nowadays, but there weren’t so many then. We used to kid him about it. “Old Onward and Upward Button”, we used to call him, and it was a standing joke that his mother had been frightened by a flying saucer. Kidding never stopped Old Sam--not even when he was Young Sam. He knew exactly where he was going. He kept at it all through school, up to a Ph.D. in physics, and then went right to work on guided missiles. He planned it from the very beginning, so that, when the chance came, he would be ready. When it finally came, Old Sam was readier than any man in the country. Which shows you what a deeply dedicated man he was. It also makes it kind of peculiar that such a comedy finish should finally wind up his dream. Old Sam had faith every step of the way--I mean faith in science. He was absolutely certain men would get to the Moon, and Mars, and all the other places, and he was pretty sure that most of it would be within his lifetime. So he traveled around the country, making speeches. In his spare time, Old Sam wrote science articles, speculating on the amazing things we would find when we got wherever we were going. I guess he had more to do with the first big rocket being built than any man in the country. It cost four billion dollars, you see, which even now will go a good long way in the right hands, and Congress naturally had to be practically dynamited before they’d hand it over. But Old Sam never gave up. He bribed them, he warned them, he sweetened them, he promised them everything. He claimed that the Moon was an invaluable military base, that whoever got there first would rule the world, that the scientific information we would receive would be enormous. He even hinted seriously that there might be loose diamonds, lying around on the Moon’s surface--caused, he said, by meteors striking rock with great speed and pressure.