First Man by Clyde Brown

Harold had said the landing would be as gentle as laying a baby in its cradle. It wasn't exactly.

He said: "There!"

"Are we down?"

Harold nodded. Orville let go of the railing he'd been hanging onto. Harold unplugged something.

The ship went dark and started rolling. It was a slow, drunken roll and as noisy as an oil drum going down the court house steps. There was a final hard blow; then the ship rocked and lay still.

Orville sat up. He could hear Harold scrambling about, and then a flashlight came on.

"What happened?"

"Must have landed on the side of a mountain. Rolled down when I turned off our counter-grav. Shoot!" Harold held up something. "Broke a lens in my glasses. There's another trip to the eye-doctor's."

Orville rescued a couple of bottles that were spilling water. Everything else seemed to be all right. The ship lay on its side now and Harold was crawling through the hole leading to the other compartment. When Orville got through, Harold was hauling something from the other end of the ship.

"What we waiting for?" Orville put his hand on the handle of the outer door. "Last one out is a -- "

"Wait a minute! You gotta wear this thing." Harold was laying out a spacesuit. He explained how it worked. He didn't object a great deal when Orville volunteered to go out first.

"We can take turns." Harold helped Orville slide his feet into the thing and pull it on. It fitted Orville rather tightly in places, but it seemed to be all right.

"Be careful now." Harold squinted at him through the one lens of his glasses. "Don't tear her on a rock or anything. You'd pop like a kid's balloon."

"Wait a minute!"

Harold paused, holding the helmet.

"I can't go through with it," Orville said. "I was planning a mean trick on you. I was going to be the first man."

"What difference does that make? We're both in on it together." Harold clapped the helmet down on Orville's shoulders. He tightened some clamps and leaned close and said something which Orville could not hear. Then Orville saw that he wanted to shake hands, so Orville shook his hand.

Harold squirmed back through the hole into the nose, waved and shut the door.

Orville aimed the flashlight at the outer door. He turned the valve beside the door, feeling the suit puff out around him, and when the pressure in the compartment was gone, he reached toward the handle. His eyes were watering. He had to use all of his strength to move the handle; then the door popped open, swinging out and down, and he was looking out at the Moon.

There was glaring light and a kind of fog. He laid down the flashlight and, groping, found the soup carton in which he'd put the refuse accumulated during the trip, and flung the box into the fog.