Touch the SKY By ALFRED COPPEL [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Startling Stories Summer 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The sign said: RIDE THE ROCKET! TWICE AROUND THE UNIVERSE FOR 25¢! Which was cheap enough, Pete Moore thought. Cheap enough at twice the fare. Glory giggled and pulled at his arm. "Let's ride, Pete. Let's see what you're in for." He smiled down at her thinly, because it wasn't really anything for her to giggle about, but that was Glory for you. She was young enough, gay enough, to be able to make a joke of it, and that was good and he shouldn't spoil it. Not many other wives would feel like that. Not many other wives would want to spend his last night home on the midway, for that matter. But then again, that was Glory. He listened to the tinny carousel music and the babble of the crowd, the laughter and the mingled drone of barkers. He smelled the tang of roasting popcorn and the hot-doggy stink of the lunchcounters. He looked at the ferris wheel and the crazy swoop of lights that was the scenic railway and the people crowding along the boardwalk with kewpie dolls and spun-sugar candy cones in their hands. Question! his mind demanded: Is this reality? Answer: Of course. What else? I've been too long away from cities, he thought. Too many silent nights in the desert, too many high flights in cold blue air. Too long away from Glory? He felt guilty and depressed at the thought. It wasn't the way for a man to feel. Not before the great adventure. Still, he couldn't avoid an almost homesick longing for the deep darkness of the desert and the silver ship waiting there. Soon, he thought. Three days; three days and a few hours. He felt a tug at his arm. "Pete!" Glory was smiling up at him, half-aggrieved, half-loving. He looked again at the garishly painted sign. RIDE THE ROCKET! "Let's ride it, Pete," Glory said. "Let's!" There was something in her smile that touched him. Pride? That, and love and youth. To her, he was _the_ man. For her, and for all the world. The one who was going to reach out beyond the far horizon and touch the sky and bring back a pot of gold for everyone. She thinks no one else could do it, he told himself. That's love. There were a dozen qualified men, and yet-- The moonshot was his. RIDE THE ROCKET! "All right, baby," he said. As he paid their fare for the rocket-ride, Pete found himself looking at the girl in the booth. Tired eyes and stringy hennaed hair. No dreams there. He had an impulse to tell her that soon he'd really be riding the rocket and that from then on things would be different. New frontiers and new dreams for everybody. Up and up. * * * * *