*
Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them.
“Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they’ve left there yet?” Klein asked.
“I talked to them on the last call,” Chapman said. “The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here”—he looked at his watch—“in about six and a half hours.”
“Chap, you know, I’ve been thinking,” Donley said quietly. “You’ve been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What’s the first thing you’re going to do once you get back?”
It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly.
“I don’t know,” Chapman said slowly. “I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We’ve been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can’t believe it when it’s finally Christmas Eve.”
Klein nodded in agreement. “I haven’t been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean.” He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. “Just what the hell are you going to do?”
“Nothing very spectacular,” Chapman said, smiling. “I’m going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I’ll see somebody.”
“Who’s the somebody?” Donley asked.
Chapman grinned. “Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?”
“Well, I’m going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I’m going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I’ll get drunk!”
Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein.
“How about you, Julius?”
Klein looked solemn. “Like Dick, I’ll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I’ll go home and see my wife.”
They were quiet. “I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single,” Donley said.
“They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?”
“If I had to do it all over again? Me,” said Donley promptly.
They laughed. Somebody said: “Go play your record, Chap. Today’s the day for it.”
The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good.
Way Back Home by Al Lewis.
*
They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in.
“You know, Chap,” Donley said, “it won’t seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we’ll look at it when we’re out spooning or something and it just won’t have the same old appeal.”
“Like they say in the army,” Bening said, “you never had it so good. You found a home here.”
The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn’t have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much.
The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate.
And the time went faster when you kept busy.
Chapman stopped them at the lock. “Remember to check your suits for leaks,” he warned. “And check the valves of your oxygen tanks.”
Donley looked sour. “I’ve gone out at least five hundred times,” he said, “and you check me each time.”
“And I’d check you five hundred more,” Chapman said. “It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that’s it, brother.”
Donley sighed. “Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we’re not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you’d blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you’re gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!”
But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left.
Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens.
“I never knew you were married,” Chapman said.
Klein didn’t look up. “There wasn’t much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there’s nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse.”
“She let you go without any fuss, huh?”
“No, she didn’t make any fuss. But I don’t think she liked to see me go, either.” He laughed a little. “At least I hope she didn’t.”
*
They were silent for a while. “What do you miss most, Chap?” Klein asked. “Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously.”
Chapman thought a minute. “I think I miss the sky,” he said quietly. “The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I’d like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin.”
He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein’s expression was encouraging. “And then I think I’d like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark.”
He studied his hands. “I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can’t understand. People who wouldn’t know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn’t give a damn. We’re a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything.”
“Got a girl back home?” Klein asked almost casually.
“Yes.”
“You’re not like Dahl. You’ve never mentioned it.”
“Same reason you didn’t mention your wife. You get to thinking about it.”
Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. “Going to get married when you get back?”
Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. “We hope to.”
“Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?”
Chapman nodded.
“That’s the only future,” Klein said.
He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out.
“Chap.”