Now that the historians have finally recorded everything that happened, and most people have stopped laughing, I think it’s time somebody said something for old Doc Kleinschmidt. It wasn’t his fault. After all, the thing worked just like he said it would, it got there and it got back, and what they should have done was build a monument to him. Instead, they laughed him right out of the country. And, doggone it, some mechanic did it, not Kleinschmidt, it was some blame mechanic with a few cents worth of grease…

The day the first rocket took off for the Moon, old Doc Kleinschmidt was in his glory. The fact that most people didn’t think it would get there made no difference to him. He was, you know, not only an expert astrophysicist and mathematician, but one of the world’s top-flight engineers as well; just a good old-fashioned, all-around genius. The rocket was his life work, and he was as sure of it as only an expert can be. And so the gibes of us ordinary people didn’t bother him in the least.

“George,” he said to me that day, grinning happily from his bush of a mustache and pointing upwards at the smoking trail of the rockets, “we are seeing the beginning of the greatest era of Man. This day”—he smote me violently on the back—“we have gone out to the stars! It will be remembered forever in the chronicles of mankind!”

“Right,” I said, and right there I took those words down and made sure they got into the papers, and you’ve probably seen ‘em, at one time or another. Well, that day will certainly be remembered, but not quite the way old Doc Kleinschmidt figured.

Well, while the rocket was gone Kleinschmidt began his well-earned rest, but I worked harder than ever before. It was my job, you see, to handle all the press releases, to publicize the whole business and try to make the trip palatable to the American public. And the job wasn’t as easy as you might think.

In the first place, several billion dollars’ worth of the taxpayers’ money had gone into that rocket, and so naturally we had to make it clear that the money was well spent. That meant coddling Senators, economists, newspapermen, practically everybody.

And then there were the people who would ask: “Well, what’s on the Moon anyway, that we should spent billions to get there?”

By this time I had the answer to that long since learned by heart. First, there was the strategic value of the Moon as a military base; second, there might be uranium there; third, scientific knowledge such as the composition of the Moon’s crush, experiments in a vacuum, and so on; and fourth, there would probably be diamonds all over the Moon—as some scientists had said—due to meteors or something.

That part about the diamonds, that and the military base reason, made most of them happy. I was counting on the actual pictures and things Captain Henderson would bring back to satisfy the rest.

So there I worked while everybody sat around and watched the skies, and all I can remember of those days, except for the anxiety, was the voice of an indignant Senator:

“Young man!” he said, grabbing me by the lapel, “if the good Lord had wanted us to go the stars he wouldn’t have made the durn things so blame fur apart!” Which, when you came to think of it, isn’t bad reasoning.

We didn’t get any news from the rocket. They’d left the radio behind in order to keep the weight down and conserve on fuel. Thinking of all the things that could go wrong, I began to chew my nails. Kleinschmidt tried to reassure me.

“Nothing big can go wrong,” he boomed, grinning as usual, “everything is accounted for. Of course, there could be one or two minor accidents—there always are—but nothing important.”

“Right,” I said, but I chewed my nails anyway.

And finally, with every telescope on Earth tracking it all the way, the rocket came back.

Everybody was at the landing base; everybody, that is, that could get a pass into the landing area. And it meant all the top scientists, generals, the cream of the country’s technical men.

Kleinschmidt and I were right up front; the doctor was the first to greet Captain Henderson when he stepped through the airlock. The rest of the crew came out behind Henderson, all looking haggard and worn. It struck me right away that they didn’t look happy, but then the flashbulbs started going off and the crowd let loose a tremendous cheer, and I forgot about their faces trying to keep from being trampled in the rush.

The police cordon broke even while Kleinschmidt was saying something profound and historic, and the crowd poured in and lifted the whole crew up on its shoulders. It was a very impressive sight, all those important people, and the photographers had a field day.

Back in Kleinschmidt’s room, the first time we got Henderson alone, I knew right away that something was wrong. Henderson sat there gazing silently at us out of two of the most dismal eyes I’ve ever seen.

“Tell me quick,” I chattered, “what went wrong? Did you get there?”

“Oh sure, we got there,” Henderson said miserably, as if that were nothing.

I sighed with relief, but Kleinschmidt snorted.

“Wrong? Pah! Nothing went wrong! What could go wrong?”

Henderson gazed gloomily at the doctor, didn’t answer for a long moment. Then he said, surprisingly:

“Who greased the ship?”

Kleinschmidt looked blank.

“You know, greased it,” said Henderson accusingly, “lubricated it, oiled the moving parts.”

Kleinschmidt faltered. “I don’t know. Some mechanic…”

“Well,” Henderson went on, “whoever did the job apparently didn’t know that in outer space the temperature is absolute zero. Everything freezes. Everything. And the damn fool greased the airlock.”

Kleinschmidt and I both stared.

“So we didn’t get pictures, or diamonds, or anything.” Henderson glared at me. “I suppose you think it’s funny.”

I didn’t, because I didn’t get it. But Kleinschmidt began to make gasping noises, and then I got it, and I began to make noises too.

Because what happened was this: after they spent years of labor and billions of dollars to build the ship, finally took it out across a quarter of a million miles and landed on the Moon, they had to turn right around and come back. Because the airlock stuck—

And they couldn’t get the door open.

Previously Unpublished

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