On the train coming down I’d bought a newspaper out of sheer habit, and, preoccupied, hadn’t even opened it. It lay now on the table, and Grandma picked it up to glance at the headlines. Suddenly I realized she’d been standing motionless, staring at the paper, for a remarkably long time. There was a look I’d never seen before on her wrinkled face. I heard her whisper to herself, “_The Moon!_” But that didn’t make any sense until I looked over her shoulder and read: _Air Force Rocket Lands on Moon_ Still I didn’t understand Grandma’s agitation. I said banally, “Well, we’ve known for quite a while they were going to try it.” “The Moon!” Grandma repeated. She went on wanderingly, “You know, that just reminds me of one night in a buggy....” Her voice trailed off, and she brooded darkly, which was strange indeed in her. Then she let the paper fall, and said briskly, “I’ve changed my mind, Oliver.” “You mean--” “Yes. You can have the lie soap. I’ll write the recipe out and give it to you for a birthday present.” I said stupidly, “It’s not my birthday, though.” “No, it’s mine.” She cackled with a return of the old merriment. She found a stub of pencil, tore off a corner of newspaper, and began writing in a crabbed hand. As she wrote she muttered, only half to me: “Evening of the day they dropped the Bomb, your Uncle Henry told me: ‘Ma, the time’s come.’ But I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘People may be crazy, but they’re not crazy enough to blow the whole world up and them on it.’ “But now.... If there’s a Man in the Moon, and he’s got a Bomb in his hand and all he’s got to do is fling it, what’s to stop him? _Him_. He’s safe in the Moon.... _There!_” She held out the scrap of paper. “Go on, boy, do what you like with it, and I hope you like what you do! I held back, I never thought I’d live to see times like these, But there’s some duties you just can’t shirk, boy, I don’t have to tell you that.” III Bill, Jerry and I slipped into a booth at the tavern near the plant. Looking across the table at Jerry, I marveled at how well he was keeping up the act, the casual off-hours good-fellowship. As for me, I felt sure my tense nerves were showing. While Jerry called Bill’s attention to the waitress’ walk, I droрped a little, fast-dissolving white tablet into Bill’s drink. As he picked it up and sipped, I felt a qualm which I ruthlessly stifled. This test _had_ to be made. We--Jerry and I, since I’d taken him into my confidence as a man I could trust and a wizard at organic chemistry--had studied the lie soap formula backward and forward. We’d analyzed samples of it I’d obtained from Grandma, and isolated--or so we thought--the active ingredients. But we had to know, and we could hardly experiment on animals.