On a giant (four-foot) globe that made my mouth water, Woodrow showed me the projected path of the Pioneer.

‘Why doesn't it go straight up?'

‘Doesn't work that way. She goes cast and makes use of the Earth's rotation... and unloads all those extra steps. The bottom one, the biggest one, number five, drops in Kansas.'

‘What if it landed on the Prairie Roadway?'

‘I'd join the Foreign Legion... right behind Bob Coster and Mr Ferguson. Honest, it can't, Mom. We start out here, fifty miles south of the road, and where it lands, over here, near Dodge City, is over a hundred miles south of it'

‘What about Dodge City?'

‘There's a little man with a switch, hired solely to push that switch and bring step five down in open country. If he makes a mistake, they tie him to a tree and let wild dogs tear him to pieces. Don't worry, Mom. Step four lands around here, off the coast of South Carolina. Step three lands in the Atlantic north of this narrowest plane where the nose of South America faces the bulge of Africa. Step two lands in the South Atlantic near Capetown. If it goes too far, we'll hear some interesting cussing in Afrikaans. Step one - ah, that's the one. With luck it lands on the Moon. If Bob Coster made a mistake, why, it's back to the old drawing-board.'

It will be no news to anyone that Pioneer lifted off to plan and that Captain Leslie LeCroix landed on Luna and returned safely. I watched from Cheyenne Mountain, the zoo parking lot, with such a fine, horizon-wide view to the east that it seemed to me that I could stand on my tip-toes and sec Kansas City.

I'm glad that I got to sec one of the great rockets while they were still in use - I know of no planet in any patrolled universe where the big rockets are still used - too expensive, too wasteful, too dangerous.

But, oh, so magnificent!

It was just dark when I got up there. The full Moon was rising in the east. The Pioneer was seven miles away (I heard someone say) but the ship was easy to see, bathed in floodlights and standing tall and proud.

I looked at my chrono, then watched the blockhouse through binoculars. A white flare burst from its top, right on time.

Another flare split into red and green fireball. Five minutes.

That five minutes was at least a half-hour long. I was beginning to think that the launching was going to abort - and I felt unbearable grief.

White fire lapped out of the base of the ship and slowly, lumberingly, it lifted off the pad... and climbed faster and faster and faster and the whole landscape, miles and miles, was suddenly in bright sunlight!

Up, up, and up, to apparent zenith and it seemed to have bent back to the west and I thought it was falling on us - and then the light was not quite as bright and now we could see that this ‘sun' overhead was moving east... and was a moving bright star. It seemed to break up and a voice from a radio said, ‘Step five has separated.' I remembered to breathe.

And the sound reached us. How many seconds does it take sound to go seven miles? I've forgotten and, anyhow, they weren't using ordinary seconds that night.

It was ‘white' noise, almost unbearable even at that distance. It rumbled on and on... and at last the turbulence reached us, whipping skirts and knocking over chairs. Someone fell, down, cursed, and said, ‘I'm going to sue somebody!'

Man was on his way to the Moon. His first step to his Only Home -

George died in 1971. He lived to see every cent paid back, Pikes Peak Space Catapult operational, Luna City a going concern with over six hundred inhabitants, more than a hundred of them women, and some babies born there - and Harriman Industries richer than ever. I think he was happy. I know I miss him, still.

I'm not sure Mr Harriman was happy. He was not looking for billions; he simply wanted to go to the Moon - and Daniel Dixon euchred him out of it.

In the complex manoeuvrings that got a man to the Moon Dixon wound up controlling more shares of voting stock than Mr Harriman controlled, and Mr Harriman lost control of Harriman Industries.

On top of that, in lobbying manoeuvres in Washington and in the United Nations, a Harriman daughter firm, Spaceways Ltd, became the ‘chosen instrument' for the early development of space, with a rule, The Space Precautionary Act, under which the company controlled who could go into space. I heard that Mr Harriman had been turned down physically, under this rule. I'm not certain what went on behind the scenes; I was eased off the board of directors once Mr Dixon was in control. I didn't mind; I didn't like Dixon.

In Boondock, centuries later or about sixty-odd years ago on my personal time line, I listened to a cube Myths, Legends, and Traditions - The Romantic Side of History. There was a tale in it concerning time line two that asserted that the legendary D. D. Harriman had managed, many years later, when he was very old and almost forgotten, to buy a pirate rocket, in which he finally made it to the Moon... there to die in a bad landing. But on the Moon, where he longed to be.

I asked Lazarus about this. He said that he did not know. ‘But it's possible. God knows the Old Man was stubborn.'

I hope he made it.

Chapter 24 - Decline and Fall

I am not certain that my situation was improved when these ghouls grabbed me away from those spooks. I suppose that almost everybody has fantasies about making the punishment fit the crime or about some scoundrel who would look his best in the leading role at a funeral. It is a harmless way to kill time during a sleepless night.

But these weirdos mean it.

Murder is all they think about. The first night I was here they listed fifty-odd people who needed to be killed, itemised their crimes, and offered me the honour of being the next member to count coup - pick a client, do! One whose crimes are particularly offensive to you, Milady Johnson -

I admit that the listed miscreants were a scrofulous bunch over whom even their own mothers would not be likely to weep but, like Mr Clemens' favourite son, Huckleberry Finn, I am not much interested in killing strangers. I am not opposed to the death penalty - I voted for it every time the matter came to a vote, which was frequently during the decline and fall of the United States - but in killing pour le sport I need to be emotionally involved. Oh, forced to a choice I would rather shoot a man than a deer; I can't see the ‘sport' in shooting a gentle vegetarian that can't shoot back.

But, given full choice, I would rather watch television than kill a stranger. Some, at least.

I said, ‘I don't see anyone on that list who is to my taste. Do you happen to have in your file of better-deads someone who abandons kittens?'

The fat chairman smiled at me under his dark glasses. Now that's a delicious idea! No, I think no unless by chance there is someone nominated for other reasons who also abandons kittens. I will have Research set up an inquiry at once. Madam, what would be an appropriate termination for such a client? Have you studied it?'

‘No, I haven't. But his death should involve homesickness... and loneliness... and cold... and hunger... and fear... and utter despair.'

‘Artistic. But perhaps not practical. Such a death might stretch out over months... and we really do not have the facilities to permit a deletion to last more than a few days. Ah, Bluebeard! - you have something to add?'

‘Do what our sister suggests for as many days as we can afford the space. Then surround the client by a halo of enormous trucks, giant holos, the way traffic must look to a kitten. Have the images bear down on him, with overpowering sound effects. Then hit him with a real truck - a glancing blow to maim him. Let him die slowly, as is often the case with a road-killed animal.'