He looked again at the ridiculous moon with its smirking face. He saw that plaster had fallen from the wall in places, peeling away, leaving the bare hexagons of wire and laths. My God, he thought. A chickenwire sky. He thought again of the girl in the ticket booth, and of the tired, frightened people all laughing too much and shoving and running outside. The bullet started down at last, toward the hinged door. On this side it was painted to look like Earth, with a distorted map of North America. All wrong, somehow. Pete felt ill. It was as though someone were making ill-tempered fun of the dreams and the tall silver ship waiting out on the desert. Cheapening it. Laughing nastily. The little bullet bumped through the seedy, scruffy Earth and out into the night of the midway, out into the crowd-sounds and music and hot-doggy smells. "It was fun, Pete," Glory said. He helped her out onto the rickety platform. He had the insane notion that the girl in the ticket booth and the lounging attendant were laughing at him. "It sure was, honey," he said wearily, still feeling the illogical fear of he-knew-not-what inside himself. "Real fun." Glory looked up at him, eyes alight and almost feverishly gay. "I did what you are going to do. I touched the sky!" * * * * * New frontiers. New lands in the sky. New hope. It was quiet. The jet was still and no sound was anywhere in the ship. Now a soft tick from the timer. A whisper from the questing radarscope. And again, the stillness. We've done it, Pete thought. We've really done it. The hard part is over. Ride the rocket! He remembered the pain of the takeoff and the absolute panic that had welled up in him when the irrevocability of his action came home. He remembered riding a tail of red fire up out of the hot desert air of New Mexico into the still blue, and then the silence and the almost unnerving thrill of the realization that the moonshot was going to succeed. The radio hissed at him with the voice of the desert base half around the world. "Hello moonshot. This is Base. All's okay. Stage one landed in the Gulf. Stage two just reported floating off the Azores. Good show." Pete lifted himself from the acceleration couch and felt a moment of nausea and panic as he floated toward the ceiling of the tiny cell. Free flight. He steadied himself and checked the flow of telemetered information binding the ship to the glowing curve far below. All okay. Except that-- Except that you're still afraid, he told himself. Not just the normal fear-of-falling-afraid that the psychs told you about. Afraid like before--in that silly damn carnival ride thing. Afraid of the dark? No, not quite that. More a closed in, cheated feeling. Premonition? Nonsense.