Rude Astronauts Read Online Free Page A

before, while the stores had been open, when Dick committed a heresy.
    “Don’t you sometimes wish you were back there?” he said.
    Happy Howie looked at him with his habitual deadpan expression. “Back where?” he asked. “Oh, you mean Cincinnati … no, no, I never really wanted to go back. Why?”
    “I don’t mean your home town. I mean …” Dick tipped his beer bottle toward the Moon. “Don’t you find yourself thinking about that sometimes?”
    “Oh, that. Sure. I love beer. Can’t get enough of it.”
    Roy chuckled. Dick glared at Howie. “You know what I’m talking about. The Moon. It’s been more than twenty years now. Don’t you … y’know … ever wish you could go back?”
    “Jesus, Dick.” Howard sighed. “Y’know, once each term, I get a kid in my office at the university, some sophomore from the campus paper who thinks he’s made the biggest discovery … one of the engineering profs used to be a real, live astronaut, he once walked on the Moon. This kid sits there wide-eyed, just like one of the newshounds who used to hang around the Cape, and he always asks me in this solemn voice …”
    Roy picked it up, from long familiarity with the same tired question. “‘Don’t you wish you could go back to the Moooooooooon?’”
    All three of them laughed; post-flight press conferences had made them all irreverent about the press. “And I look across my desk at this future Pulitzer winner,” Howard continued, “and I say, ‘Hell no, now ask me another question!’”
    “And they always get flustered after that,” snickered Roy, “because that’s usually their best shot.” He shook his head. “I don’t miss talking to reporters, not one bit.”
    “Amen, brother,” Howie said.
    Dick took a swig from his beer and settled his feet on the deck’s railing. “Well, I’m no news hack, and I want a straight answer from you guys. Do you ever wish you could go back to the Moon?”
    Howie balanced his beer on his stomach and stared into the foamed amber glass. “Straight answer, huh?” he said slowly, and paused to think it over. “Yes. No. What day of the week is it? Monday? Okay, the answer’s yes. Tomorrow’s Tuesday, so the answer then is going to be no.”
    Dick blew out his cheeks. “What kind of swabbie answer is that?” Howie was a former Navy man. “Are you trying to tell me you never thought about it?”
    “Of course, I’ve thought about it,” Howie replied. “Jeez, I wanted to go back the minute the capsule splashed down. Even after going without water for two days and living in the same underwear for a week, I wanted to go back that minute. Going up was the greatest thrill of my life.”
    He sloshed the beer around in the bottle, laughed and nodded his head. “When Spiro Agnew said the next goal was going to Mars, I was all set to sign up. Just back from the Moon, and I was ready to volunteer for the Mars shot in 1976. I’d make my name bigger than Neil’s. Gimme more, gimme more.”
    “Uh-huh. So what happened?”
    Howie coughed, grew sober. “You know what happened. The program went into the friggin’ toilet. Proxmire, Mondale, even damn Nixon … they got their wish. By the time the shuttle got things moving again, I was over the hill.”
    “You know what can happen if you think about it too much,” Roy said. “I mean, look at Buzz. He had a lot of problems after he got back and it took him a long while to get over it.”
    Howie nodded vigorously, pointing his finger at Roy. “That’s exactly what I mean. It’s kinda depressing, if you let it get to you. Besides … hell, when you’re over the hill, there ain’t no turning back.”
    But Dick shook his head. “Bullshit. Young’s gone up in the shuttle, and we were with him back during Gemini. You’re no more over the hill than he is.”
    “Yeah, well …” Howie picked up his beer. “Space is a young man’s game, my friend, and I’m not young anymore.”
    “No pun intended, of course,”