His mission first commandment was simple: Thou shalt not screw up.Gemini 10 had been a practice run for Apollo, a local thing, but now the world’s eyes were on the Moon and on them.The commemorative stamps were already printed, the medals struck; he had sketched the patch-image himself, an American bald eagle with olive branches in its claws.Columbia carried a plaque to be left on the Moon, “We came in peace for all mankind”. The weight of expectation could not have been heavier.Yet it came from a planet that seemed to weigh nothing at all.If he stretched out his arm to the window of Columbia, Earth was covered by his thumbnail.It floated in a black void, blue with seas, white with clouds, a tiny gem sparkling and shining.The word that kept surprising him was “fragile”.He had known Earth all his life as solid, heavy, terrifyingly hard as he fell towards it once when his f-86 was on fire.Now he wanted to take care of it. He wished its bickering politicians could see it from that distance.What would their arguments matter then?Ever since some gruesome dental work in childhood, he had been able to detach his mind from his body when he needed to.At the dentist’s, he hovered near the ceiling. As a test pilot, he found secret spaces in cumulus clouds.In later life, if he needed solace, he would relive what he had seen from Columbia.
