First Man.

by Clyde Brown.

[Sidenote: _He obstinately wanted no part in achieving the goal of generations--but the goal with equal obstinacy wanted all of him!_]

To keep the record straight: Orville Close was first man on the Moon.

Harold Ferguson was second. They never talk about it.

It started on that October morning when the piece came out in the Parkville _News_. Harold grumbled that they'd gotten the story all wrong, calling his ship a rocket ship, and treating him like a flagpole sitter or a man going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. His wife took their sad, thin little girl and went to live with her brother. The city police blocked off Elm Street, letting no one through except the residents. The neighbors were getting up a pet.i.tion. But Orville refused to become excited.

What was going to happen?

Why, nothing.

Harold would probably crack up completely, but this evening that thing would still be standing there, solid as the Washington Monument.

Nevertheless, Orville's wife Polly was going to her sister's, across town. _She_ wasn't going to stay there and be blown up! While she was getting ready, Orville picked up a package by the sink and carried it outside to the alley and dropped it in the garbage can. He wore his double-breasted fall suit. He strolled to the boundary fence and leaned against a post.

A reporter was taking angle shots of the s.p.a.ceship. Flashbulbs were scattered over Harold's garden.

It really does catch the eye, Orville thought. Smarten the ship up a little, put some stripes running down from the nose, a few pieces of chrome around over the body....

Poor old Harold came off his back porch carrying a thermos jug and six loaves of bread.

"Morning, Harold," said Orville.

"Oh--morning, Orville." Harold flinched. Another reporter had come out of the shed and taken their picture.

"What's your name, mister?" the reporter asked Orville.

"I'd rather you left me out of this," Orville said.

A loaf of bread had broken open and slices were falling out. Harold put down the thermos jug and picked up the slices and stuffed them back into the wrapper. The first reporter came over.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"It's got Vitamin D." Harold grinned wretchedly. "Costs two cents more a loaf, but I thought, what the heck--"

"How about a shot of you and the missus saying good-by?" the first reporter said.

"Why--she left me," Harold blurted. He tried to get away, but the reporters hemmed him in.

"Was she scared?" the second reporter asked.

"Look, boys!" Orville put his hands on the top rail of the fence and climbed across. He was getting his shoes wet in the weeds in Harold's garden, but he didn't care. "The man has work to do. Can't you leave him alone?"

He picked up the jug and took Harold by the elbow and led him into the shed.

There, resting on some concrete blocks on the dirt floor, was the base of the ship. In the semi-darkness, it looked harmless enough: like a tank, six or eight feet across, reaching up through a jagged hole in the roof.

"Harold, you could make a good thing out of this," Orville said. "All this publicity."

Harold was climbing a rickety ladder to the roof. Orville followed.

"Mount this thing on a trailer. Take her around to fairs and carnivals."

Orville waited on the roof while Harold climbed another ladder to the small oval door in the side of the ship. Harold called down: "You never saw the inside. Want to look around?"

"Well...." Orville glanced into his back yard. Polly wasn't ready yet.

He climbed up and handed the jug to Harold and stuck his head in.

"Huh!" There wasn't much to see. Just a small compartment with some pipes leading from below into the nose. "You got to fix this up," he said. "Some Rube Goldberg contraptions."

"The works are all up here." Harold climbed a ladder and disappeared through a hole overhead. "C'mon up, I'd like you to see this!"

Orville looked down again into his yard. "It'll take her forever! Polly, I mean. Okay, I guess I got time for a look." He stepped in and climbed until his waist was through the hole.

The nose of the ship was dark. Harold was shining an extension lamp around. There were parts of a junked car and some old plumbing fixtures and Orville recognized the wheels of a lawnmower he'd left by the alley for the trash men to pick up. This didn't look like the inside of a s.p.a.ceship. It looked exactly like a corner in Harold's bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, Lord," Orville said.

"I call this my scope." Harold was shining the light on a shaving mirror, on a long arm that could be swung and tilted about. "How about that? Pretty neat, huh?"

Neat was hardly the word for it. "Look here, Harold! The neighbors are getting an injunction. Why don't you play it smart? Fight it out in the courts. There'll be a lot of publicity--"

"They are?" Harold was hurt. He was shining the lamp in Orville's eyes.

"Yeah. Now while you're fighting it out in the courts--"

"Do you call that neighborly?"

"They're scared. They're afraid you'll blow the whole neighborhood to pieces."

"Well, h.e.l.l with them!"

"While we're on that subject, ain't that my trouble lamp you're holding?"

"Yeah. Guess it is. Need it right away?"

"Just want you to remember where it came from."