The Science Fiction Hall of Fame

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The look his remote grey eyes was haunted, terrified, beaten, as he came running in from the Projectorium. His shoulders were slumped; I had never before seen him betray the slightest surrender to despair, but now I was chilled by the completeness of his capitulation. With a shaking hand he thrust at me a slender yellow data slip, marked in red with the arcane symbols of cosmic computation. “No use,” he muttered. “There’s absolutely no use trying to fight any longer!”

“You mean—”

“Tonight,” he said huskily, “the universe irrevocably enters the penumbra of the null point!”

The day Armstrong and Aldrin stepped out onto the surface of the moon—it was Sunday, July 20, 1969, remember?—I stayed home, planning to watch the whole thing on television. But it happened that I met an interesting woman at Leon and Helene’s party the night before, and she came home with me. Her name is gone from my mind, if I ever knew it, but I remember how she looked: long soft golden hair, heart-shaped face with prominent ruddy cheeks, gentle gray-blue eyes, plump breasts, slender legs. I remember, too, how she wandered around my apartment, studying the crowded shelves of old paperbacks and magazines. “You’re really into sci-fi, aren’t you?” she said at last. And laughed and said, “I guess this must be your big weekend, then! Wow, the moon!” But it was all a big joke to her, that men should be cavorting around up there when there was still so much work left to do on earth.

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