Ray Bradbury. The End of the Beginning

                Ray Bradbury
                http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal

                The End of the Beginning
                1956

     He  stopped  the lawn mower in the middle of the yard, because he felt that
the  sun  at  just  that  moment  had  gone down and the stars had come out. The
fresh-cut  grass  that had showered his face and body died softly away. Yes, the
stars  were  there,  faint at first, but brightening in the clear desert sky. He
heard  the  porch  screen  door  tap  shut  and felt his wife watching him as he
watched the night.
     'Almost time,' she said.
     He  nodded;  he  did not have to check his watch. In the passing moments he
felt  very  old, then very young, very cold, then very warm, now this, now that.
Suddenly  he  was  miles  away. He imagined he was his own son talking steadily,
moving  briskly  to cover his pounding heart and the resurgent panics as he felt
himself  slip  into  fresh uniform, check food supplies, oxygen flasks, pressure
helmet, space-suiting, and turn as every man on Earth tonight turned, to gaze at
the swiftly filling sky.
     Then,  quickly, he was back, once more the father of the son, hands gripped
to the lawn-mower handle. His wife called, 'Come sit on the porch.'
     'I've got to keep busy!'
     She  came  down  the  steps and across the lawn. 'Don't worry about Robert;
he'll be all right.'
     'But  it's all so new,' he heard himself say. 'It's never been done before.
Think of it - a manned rocket going up tonight to build the first space station.
Good  Lord,  it  can't  be done, it doesn't exist, there's no rocket, no proving
ground,  no  take-off time, no technicians. For that matter, I don't even have a
son named Bob. The whole thing's too much for me!'
     'Then what are you doing out here, staring?'
     He shook his head. 'Well, late this morning, walking to the office, I heard
someone  laugh  out loud. It shocked me, so I froze in the middle of the street.
It was me, laughing! Why? Because finally I really knew what Bob was going to do
tonight;  at  last I believed it. "Holy" is a word I never use, but that's how I
felt  stranded  in  all  that  traffic.  Then, middle of the afternoon, I caught
myself humming. You know the song. "A wheel in a wheel. Way in the middle of the
air." laughed again. The space station, of course, I thought. The big wheel with
hollow spokes where Bob'll live six or eight months, then get along to the Moon.
Walking  home,  I  remembered  more of the song. "Little wheel run by faith, big
wheel run by the grace of God." I wanted to jump, yell, and flame-out myself!'
     His  wife  touched  his  arm.  'If  we  stay  out  here,  let's at least be
comfortable.'
     They placed two wicker rockers in the center of the lawn and sat quietly as
the  stars  dissolved out to darkness in pale crushings of rock salt strewn from
horizon to horizon.
     'Why,'  said  his  wife,  at  last, 'it's like waiting for the fireworks at
Sisley Field every year.'
     'Bigger crowd tonight...'
     'I  keep  thinking  -  a  billion  people watching the sky right now, their
mouths all open at the same time.'
     They waited, feeling the earth move under their chairs.
     'What time is it now?'
     'Eleven minutes to eight.'
     'You're always right; there must be a clock in your head.'
     'I can't go wrong, tonight. I'll be able to tell you one second before they
blast off. Look! The ten-minute warning!'
     On  the western sky they saw four crimson flares open out, float shimmering
down the wind above the desert, then sink silently to the extinguishing earth.
     In the new darkness the husband and wife did not rock in their chairs.
     After  a  while  he  said,  'Eight minutes.' A pause. 'Seven minutes.' What
seemed a much longer pause. 'Six...'
     His  wife,  her  head  back,  studied  the  stars immediately above her and
murmured,  'Why?'  She  closed  her eyes. 'Why the rockets, why tonight? Why all
this? I'd like to know.'
     He examined her face, pale in the vast powdering light of the Milky Way. He
felt the stirring of an answer, but let his wife continue.
     'I  mean  it's  not  that old thing again, is it, when people asked why men
climbed  Mt.  Everest  and  they said, "Because it's there"? I never understood.
That was no answer to me.'
     Five  minutes,  he  thought. Time ticking... his wristwatch... a wheel in a
wheel... little wheel run by... big wheel run by... way in the middle of... four
minutes!...  The  men  snug  in  the  rocket by now, the hive, the control board
flickering with light...
     His lips moved.
     'All  I know is it's really the end of the beginning. The Stone Age, Bronze
Age,  Iron Age; from now on we'll lump all those together under one big name for
when  we  walked  on  Earth  and heard the birds at morning and cried with envy.
Maybe  we'll  call  it  the  Earth Age, or maybe the Age of Gravity. Millions of
years  we  fought gravity. When we were amoebas and fish we struggled to get out
of  the  sea  without  gravity  crushing us. Once safe on the shore we fought to
stand  upright  without  gravity breaking our new invention, the spine, tried to
walk  without  stumbling,  run  without falling. A billion years Gravity kept us
home,  mocked  us with wind and clouds, cabbage moths and locusts. That's what's
so  awfully  big  about  tonight...  it's the end of old man Gravity and the age
we'll  remember  him by, for once and all. I don't know where they'll divide the
ages,  at  the  Persians,  who dreamt of flying carpets, or the Chinese, who all
unknowing  celebrated  birthdays  and New Years with strung ladyfingers and high
skyrockets,  or  some minute, some incredible second in the next hour. But we're
in  at  the  end  of a billion years trying, the end of something long and to us
humans, anyway, honorable.'
     Three  minutes... two minutes fifty-nine seconds... two minutes fifty-eight
seconds...
     'But,' said his wife, 'I still don't know why.'
     Two  minutes, he thought. Ready? Ready? Ready? The far radio voice calling.
Ready!  Ready!  Ready!  The quick, faint replies from the humming rocket. Check!
Check! Check!
     Tonight,  he  thought,  even if we fail with the first, we'll send a second
and  a  third  ship and move on out to all the planets and later, all the stars.
We'll  just keep going until the big words like 'immortal' and 'forever' take on
meaning.  Big  words,  yes,  that's  what we want. Continuity. Since our tongues
first  moved in our mouths we've asked, What does it all mean? No other question
made  sense,  with  death breathing down our necks. But just let us settle in on
ten  thousand  worlds  spinning  around ten thousand alien suns and the question
will  fade  away. Man will be endless and infinite, even as space is endless and
infinite.  Man  will  go  on, as space goes on, forever. Individuals will die as
always,  but  our  history  will reach as far as we'll ever need to see into the
future,  and with the knowledge of our survival for all time to come, we'll know
security  and  thus  the answer we've always searched for. Gifted with life, the
least  we  can  do  is  preserve and pass on the gift to infinity. That's a goal
worth shooting for.
     The wicker chairs whispered ever so softly on the grass.
     One minute.
     'One minute,' he said aloud.
     'Oh!' His wife moved suddenly to seize his hands. 'I hope that Bob...'
     'He'll be all right!'
     'Oh, God, take care...'
     Thirty seconds.
     'Watch now.'
     Fifteen, ten, five...
     'Watch!'
     Four, three, two, one.
     'There! There! Oh, there, there!'
     They both cried out. They both stood. The chairs toppled back, fell flat on
the lawn. The man and his wife swayed, their hands struggled to find each other,
grip,  hold.  They  saw the brightening color in the sky and, ten seconds later,
the  great uprising comet burn the air, put out the stars, and rush away in fire
flight  to  become another star in the returning profusion of the Milky Way. The
man and wife held each other as if they had stumbled on the rim of an incredible
cliff  that  faced  an abyss so deep and dark there seemed no end to it. Staring
up,  they  heard themselves sobbing and crying. Only after a long time were they
able to speak.
     'It got away, it did, didn't it?'
     'Yes...'
     'It's all right, isn't it?'
     'Yes... yes...'
     'It didn't fall back...?'
     'No, no, it's all right, Bob's all right, it's all right.'
     They stood away from each other at last.
     He  touched  his face with his hand and looked at his wet fingers. 'I'll be
damned,' he said. 'I'll be damned.'
     They  waited  another five and then ten minutes until the darkness in their
heads,  the  retina, ached with a million specks of fiery salt. Then they had to
close their eyes.
     'Well,' she said, 'now let's go in.'
     He  could  not move. Only his hand reached a long way out by itself to find
the  lawn-mower  handle. He saw what his hand had done and said, 'There's just a
little more to do...'
     'But you can't see.'
     'Well  enough,'  he  said. 'I must finish this. Then we'll sit on the porch
awhile before we turn in.'
     He  helped her put the chairs on the porch and sat her down and then walked
back  out to put his hands on the guide bar of the lawn mower. The lawn mower. A
wheel  in a wheel. A simple machine which you held in your hands, which you sent
on  ahead  with  a  rush  and  a clatter while you walked behind with your quiet
philosophy. Racket, followed by warm silence. Whirling wheel, then soft footfall
of thought.
     I'm a billion years old, he told himself; I'm one minute old. I'm one inch,
no  ten  thousand  miles, tall. I look down and can't see my feet they're so far
off and gone away below.
     He  moved the lawn mower. The grass showering up fell softly around him; he
relished and savoured it and felt that he was all mankind bathing at last in the
fresh waters of the fountain of youth.
     Thus bathed, he remembered the song again about the wheel and the faith and
the  grace  of God being way up there in the middle of the sky where that single
star, among a million motionless stars, dared to move and keep on moving.
     Then he finished cutting the grass.