Then, we went to bed, and I kept thinking in the hour before I lolled off, about how this was the last night with Jhene and Ralph. The very last night.
Only a kid of fifteen—me.
And then, in the darkness, just before I went to sleep, Priory twisted softly on his cushion, turned his solemn face to me, and whispered, “Chris?” A pause. “Chris. You still awake?” It was like a faint echo.
“Yes,” I said.
“Thinking?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
He said, “You’re—You’re not waiting any more, are you, Chris?”
I knew what he meant. I couldn’t answer.
I said, “I’m awfully tired, Ralph.”
He twisted back and settled down and said, “That’s what I thought. You’re not waiting any more. Gosh, but that’s good, Chris. That’s good.”
He reached out and punched me in the arm-muscle, lightly.
Then we both went to sleep.
It was Saturday morning. The kids were yelling outside. Their voices filled the seven o’clock fog. I heard Old Man Wickard’s ventilator flip open and the zip of his para-gun, playfully touching around the kids.
“Shut up!” I heard him cry, but he didn’t sound grouchy. It was a regular Saturday game with him. And I heard the kids giggle.
Priory woke up and said, “Shall I tell them, Chris, you’re not going with them today?”
“Tell them nothing of the sort.” Jhene moved from the door. She bent out the window, her hair all light against a ribbon of fog. “Hi, gang! Ralph and Chris will be right down. Hold gravity!”
“Jhene!” I cried.
She came over to both of us. “You’re going to spend your Saturday the way you always spend it—with the gang!”
“I planned on sticking with you, Jhene.”
“What sort of holiday would that be, now?”
She ran us through our breakfast, kissed us on the cheeks, and forced us out the door into the gang’s arms.
“Let’s not go out to the Rocket Port today, guys.”
“Aw, Chris—why not?”
Their faces did a lot of changes. This was the first time in history I hadn’t wanted to go. “You’re kidding, Chris.”
“Sure he is.”
“No, he’s not. He means it,” said Priory. “And I don’t want to go either. We go every Saturday. It gets tiresome. We can go next week instead.”
“Aw …”
They didn’t like it, but they didn’t go off by themselves. It was no fun, they said, without us.
“What the heck—we’ll go next week.”
“Sure we will. What do you want to do, Chris?”
I told them.
We spent the morning playing Kick the Can and some games we’d given up a long time ago, and we hiked out along some old rusty and abandoned railroad tracks and walked in a small woods outside town and photographed some birds and went swimming raw, and all the time I kept thinking—this is the last day.
We did everything we had ever done before on Saturday. All the silly crazy things, and nobody knew I was going away except Ralph, and five o’clock kept getting nearer and nearer.
At four, I said good-bye to the kids.
“Leaving so soon, Chris? What about tonight?”
“Call for me at eight,” I said. “We’ll go see the new Sally Gibberts picture!”
“Swell.”
“Cut gravity!”
And Ralph and I went home.
Mother wasn’t there, but she had left part of herself, her smile and her voice and her words on a spool of audio-film on my bed. I inserted it in the viewer and threw the picture on the wall. Soft yellow hair, her white face and her quiet words:
“I hate good-byes, Chris. I’ve gone to the laboratory to do some extra work. Good luck. All of my love. When I see you again—you’ll be a man.”
That was all.
Priory waited outside while I saw it over four times. “I hate good-byes, Chris. I’ve gone … work.… luck. All … my love.…”
I had made a film-spool myself the night before. I spotted it in the viewer and left it there. It only said good-bye.
Priory walked halfway with me. I wouldn’t let him get on the Rocket Port monorail with me. I just shook his hand, tight, and said, “It was fun today, Ralph.”
“Yeah. Well, see you next Saturday, huh, Chris?”
“I wish I could say yes.”
“Say yes anyway. Next Saturday—the woods, the gang, the rockets, and Old Man Wickard and his trusty para-gun.”
We laughed. “Sure. Next Saturday, early. Take—Take care of our mother, will you, Priory?”
“That’s a silly question, you nut,” he said.
“It is, isn’t it?”
He swallowed. “Chris.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll be waiting. Just like you waited and don’t have to wait any more. I’ll wait.”
“Maybe it won’t be long, Priory. I hope not.”
I jabbed him, once, in the arm. He jabbed back.
The monorail door sealed. The car hurled itself away, and Priory was left behind.
I stepped out at the Port. It was a five-hundred-yard walk down to the Administration building. It took me ten years to walk it.
“Next time I see you you’ll be a man—”
“Don’t tell anybody—”
“I’ll wait, Chris—”
It was all choked in my heart and it wouldn’t go away and it swam around in my eyes.
I thought about my dreams. The Moon Rocket. It won’t be part of me, part of my dream any longer. I’ll be part of it.
I felt small there, walking, walking, walking.
The afternoon rocket to London was just taking off as I went down the ramp to the office. It shivered the ground and it shivered and thrilled my heart.
I was beginning to grow up awfully fast.
I stood watching the rocket until someone snapped their heels, cracked me a quick salute.
I was numb.
“C. M. Christopher?”
“Yes, sir. Reporting, sir.”
“This way, Christopher. Through that gate.”
Through that gate and beyond the fence …
This fence where we had pressed our faces and felt the wind turn warm and held to the fence and forgot who we were or where we came from but dreamed of who we might be and where we might go …
This fence where had stood the boys who liked being boys who lived in a town and liked the town and fairly liked school and liked football and liked their fathers and mothers …
The