Of a Fire on the Moon (9780553390629) by Norman Mailer Read Free Book Online Page B

would they leave messages for their family, or would they send back information on the moon? Such were the alternatives seen by the questioner.
    Aldrin had the happy look of a linebacker who is standing right in the center of a hole in the line as the runner tries to come through. “I’d probably spend it working on the availability of the ascent engine.”
    That brought a laugh, and there would be others to follow, but the twenty or so magazine writers had the leisure to ask their questions out of a small group, and so there was not the itch of the newspaperman to look for a quick lead and therefore ask brutal or leading or tendentious questions. Indeed there was no need to ask any question whatever just so that the journalist and his newspaper could be identified as present at the conference. (Such identifications give smaller newspapers and their reporters a cumulative status over the years with public relations men.) No, here the magazine writers could take their time, they could pursue a question, even keep after the astronaut. Covertly, the mood of a hunt was on. Since they would have more time to write their pieces, by severer standards would they be judged. So they had to make the astronauts come to life whether the astronauts wished to exhibit themselves or not.
    Will you take personal mementos? Armstrong was asked.
    “If I had a choice, I guess I’d take more fuel,” he said with a smile for the frustration this might cause the questioner.
    The magazine writers kept pushing for personal admission, disclosure of emotion, admission of unruly fear—the astronauts looked to give replies as proper and well-insulated as the plate glass which separated them. So Armstrong replied to a question about his intuition by making a short disclaimer, which concluded, “Interpretthe problem properly, then attack it.” Logical positivism all the way was what he would purvey. Don’t make predictions without properly weighted and adequate inventories of knowledge. Surely he trusted his intuitions, the questioner persisted. “It has never been a strong suit,” said Armstrong in a mild and honest voice. Obviously, the natural aim of technology was to make intuition obsolescent, and Armstrong was a shining knight of technology. But, in fact, he had to be lying. A man who had never had strong intuitions would never have known enough about the sensation to disclaim its presence in himself.
    Would he at least recognize that his endeavor was equal in magnitude to Columbus’ adventure?
    He disclaimed large reactions, large ideas. “Our concern has been directed mainly to doing the job.” He virtually said, “If not me, another.” If they would insist on making him a hero, he would be a hero on terms he alone would make clear. There had been only one Columbus—there were ten astronauts at least who could do the job, and hundreds of men to back them up. He was the representative of a collective will.
    Sitting in his drab gray-green suit, a suit as close to no color as possible, his shirt pale blue, his tie nondescript dark gray-blue, a blue-green wall behind him (perhaps to hint at empyreans of sky), his neck seemed subtly separated from his collar, as if—no matter how neatly he was dressed—his clothes felt like a tent to him, like a canvas drop out of which his head protruded through the hole of his collar. They were popping baseballs at him, he was dodging.
    “Will you keep a piece of the moon for yourself?” asked a questioner. It was a beautiful question. If he admitted desire, one could ask if the Armstrong house would sleep on nights of full moon when the piece of rock bayed silently to its distant mistress, and emanations wandered down the stairs. But Armstrong said stiffly, “At this time, no plans have been made” … (Would he ever have the desire to steal a rock, Aquarius asked silently.) “No,” Armstrong went on, “that’s not a prerogative we have available to us.”He could of course have said, “We