You see, I had this space suite. How it happened was this way: "Dad," I said, "I want to go to the Moon." "Certainly," he answered and looked back at his book. It was =JeromeKJerome's Three Men in a Boat, which he must know by heart. I said, "Dad, please! I'm serious." This time he closed the book on a finger and said gently, "I said it was all right. Go ahead." "Yes but how?" "Eh?" He looked mildly surprised. "Why that's your problem, =Clifford." Dad was like that. The time I told him I wanted to buy a bicycle he said, "Go right ahead," without even glancing up -- so I had gone to the money basket in the dining room, intending to take enough for a bicycle. But there had been only eleven dollars and forty three cents in it, so about a thousand miles of mowed lawns later I bought a bicycle. First I went sky high with excitement then as far down with depression. I didn't win contests -- why, if I bought a box of Cracker Jack, I'd get one they forgot to put a prize in. I had been cured of matching pennies. If I ever. "Stop it," said Dad. I shut up. "There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe. Do you intend to enter this?" "Do I!" "I assume that to be affirmative. Very well, make a systematic effort." I did and Dad wasn't just helpful -- he didn't just offer me more meat loaf. But he saw to it I didn't go to pieces; I finished school and sent off applications for college and kept my job -- I was working after school that semester at =Charton's Pharmacy -- soda jerk, but also learning about pharmacy. "Hold it, =Kip!" Dad snapped. "Stop it." Mother said, "Oh, dear!" I heard the =MC saying, " - present the lucky winner, Mrs =XeniaDonahue, of =GreatFalls, =Montana Mrs =Donahue!" To a fanfare a little dumpy woman teetered out. I read the cards again. They still matched the one in my hand. I said, "Dad, what happened? That's my slogan." "You didn't listen." "They've cheated me!" "Be quiet and listen." "- as we explained earlier, in the event of duplicate entries, priority goes to the one postmarked first. Any remaining tie is settled by the time of arrival at the contest office. Our winning slogan was submitted by eleven contestants. To them go the first eleven prizes. Tonight we have with us the six top winners -- for the trip to the Moon, the weekend in a satellite space station, the jet flight around the world, the flight to Antarctica, the -." I said "space ship," not "rocket ship." It made no noise but a whoosh and there weren't any flaming jets -- i seemed to move by clean living and righteous thoughts. I was too busy keeping from being squashed to worry about details. A space suit in one gravity is no track suit; it's a good thing I had practiced. The ship sat down where I had just been, occupying more than its share of pasture, a big black shape. The other one whooshed down, too, just as a door opened in the first. Light poured through the door; two figures spilled out and started to run. One moved like a cat; the other moved clumsily and slowly -- handicapped by a space suit. S'help me, a person in a space suite does look silly. This one was less than five feet tall and looked like the Gingerbread Man. When I was a kid, we used to pretend we were making the first landing on the Moon. Then I gave up romantic notions and realized that I would have to go about it another way. But I never thought I would get there penned up, unable to see out, like a mouse in a shoe box. The only thing that proved I was on the Moon was my weight. High gravity can be managed anywhere, with centrifuges. Low gravity is another matter; on Earth the most you can squeeze out is a few seconds going off a high board, or by parachute delay, or stunts in a plane. If low gravity goes on and on, wherever you are, you are not on Earth. Well, I wasn't on Mars; it had to be the Moon. On the Moon I should weigh a little over twenty five pounds. It felt about so -- I felt light enough to walk on a lawn and not bend the grass. I should have relished the weird, romantic experience, but I was as busy as =Eliza crossing the ice and the things snapping at my heels were worse than bloodhounds. I wanted to look back but I was too busy trying to stay on my feet. I couldn't see my feet; I had to watch ahead and try to pick my footing -- it kept me as busy as a lumberjack in a logrolling contest. I didn't skid as the ground was rough --- dust or fine sand over raw rock -- and fifty pounds weight was enough for footing. But I had over three hundred pounds mass not a whit reduced by lowered weight; this does things to lifelong reflex habits. I had to lean heavily for the slightest turn, lean back and dig in to slow down, lean far forward to speed up. I don't know if they took us all the way back in the crawler, or if =Wormface sent a ship. I woke up being slapped and was inside, lying down. The skinny one was slapping me -- the man the fat one called "Tim." I tried to fight back and found that I couldn't. I was in a straitjacket thing that held me snugly as a wrapped mummy. I let out a yelp. Skinny grabbed my hair, jerked my head up, tried to put a big capsule in my mouth. I tried to bite him. He slapped me harder and offered me the capsule again. His expression didn't change -- it stayed mean. I heard, "Take it, boy," and turned my eyes. The fat one was on the other side. "Better swallow it," he said. "You got five bad days ahead." I was jarred out of useless brain cudgeling by an explosion, a sharp crack - a bass rumble - then a whoosh of reduced pressure. I bounced to my feet -- anyone who has ever depended on a space suite is never again indifferent to a drop in pressure. I gasped, "What the deuce!" Then I added, "Whoever is on watch had better get on the ball -- or we'll all be breathing thin cold stuff." No oxygen outside, I was sure -- or rather the astronomers were and I didn't want to test it. Then I said, "Somebody bombing us? I hope. Or was it an earthquake?" This was not an idle remark. That Scientific American article concerning "summer" on =Pluto had predicted "sharp isostatic readjustments" as the temperature rose -- which is a polite way of saying, "Hold your hats! Here comes the chimney!" I had been dreaming that I was home; this awoke me with a jerk. "Mother Thing!" "Good morning, my son. I am happy to see that you are feeling better." "Oh, I feel fine. I've had a good night's rest --" I stared, then blurted: " -- you're dead!" I couldn't stop it. Her answer sounded warmly, gently humorous, the way you correct a child who has made a natural mistake. "No dear, I was merely frozen. I am not as frail as you seem to think me." I blinked and looked again. "Then it wasn't a dream?" "No, it was not a dream." "I thought I was home and --" I tried to sit up, managed only to raise my hand. "I am home!" My room! Clothes closet on the left -- hall door behind the Mother Thing -- my desk on the right, piled with books and with a =Centerville High pennant on it -- window beyond it, with the old elm almost filling it -- sun speckled leaves stirring in the breeze. I didn't put up a fight -- a hundred and sixty trillion miles from nowhere, I mean. But I didn't speak to the Mother Thing as I got into her ship. It was shaped like an old fashioned beehive and it looked barely big enough to jump us to the space port. =Peewee and I crowded together on the floor, the Mother Thing curled up in front and twiddled a shiny rack like an abacus; we took off, straight up. In a few minutes my anger grew from sullenness to a reckless need to settle it. "Mother Thing!" "One moment, dear. Let me get us out of the atmosphere." She pushed something, the ship quivered and steadied.