The last class was under way, a hush had settled over the building, and I was leaning over to put a few things into my briefcase preparatory to going home for the night, when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed the slender figure of a man who seemed to glide up to the counter, slip deftly through the gate in the railing, and move noiselessly to the desk around the corner, just out of sight to my right, where the last secretary on duty--a rather timid girl--was putting her desk in order. Usually I could hear any conversation that took place in the adjoining room, but I didn't hear this particular visitor say anything, although his heels were plainly visible as he stood in front of the desk and leaned forward, apparently engaged in a long, whispered discussion with the secretary. Several times I heard her say something, each time with increasing emphasis in her tone.

Suddenly the conversation stopped, and the secretary came hurriedly into my office, leaned over the desk, and whispered: "There's a fellow in my office who says he's in direct contact with the moon, and he's telling all kinds of wild things about how the people live up there. I think he's crazy, and we ought to get him out of here."

Naturally I was quite concerned, since it would indeed be awkward to have a crazy man loose in the corridors mingling with our 800 students when the next bell rang, so I instructed her to bring him in to see "el señor Director," adding facetiously that I was "in charge of all matters pertaining to communications with the moon."

In he came--a slender, dark-complexioned fellow about middle age, with big, black, staring eyes, a wrinkled, droopy suit, and some sort of pin on the lapel which looked like a piano keyboard, or an artist's palette, or a harp. He gave his name as Mauricio Blanco, address at Such and Such Street. "But no telephone or radio," he hastened to add. "I don't need them. You see, I am in direct contact with the people on the moon. I can be reached at the office of the "X" Broadcasting Company."

Didn't have any special place in the building where he worked, or any special duties. "However," he added as an afterthought, with a faraway gleam in his eyes, "I do work on the novel called Rebellious Soul."

Here a tingle ran up my spine, for "Rebellions Soul" was a radio serial depicting the life story of the communist poet Ledesma who only a few days ago had been found dead in a closet, hanging by his neck, with his hands tied together with a red necktie. ("Suicide," the authorities had ruled.)

"What time does your program go on the air?" I inquired, groping for some pretext to get him out of the building.

"At 7:30."

"Then you had better hurry back to the studio, or you'll be late for work," I urged, starting to accompany him to the door.

"Oh, no," he replied craftily, slowing down and starting back into the office, "we've already got it all on tape."

"I want to tell you about my messages from the moon," he went on. "For about three days now I've been getting messages from this fellow who landed on the moon in a rocket. He says that the people there don't have any feet, and that they lead a very sad life."

("I can well imagine," I muttered under my breath. "Notwithstanding.")

"But he told me that I was going to do something great for all humanity."

"Do they have radios on the moon," I wondered.

"No. They don't have any radios. They have "teeptoes" . . . "teeptoes." He said it twice so that I wouldn't forget it. I never did.

"By the way," I said, "since you have this direct connection and don't have to use any apparatus, don't you think that we had better go out into the street where we can get away from all these steel girders. That way we'll have a lot better reception."

So out we went, chatting glibly about the queer little types on the moon, and leaving Abelardo, the janitor, with his mouth agape as we passed him in the hall.

At the head of the stairs the lunar contact suddenly braced himself and sat back, like a coon in a barrel, exclaiming "I'm not crazy. No. I'm not crazy." Ant he pulled out his identification card with his picture and fingerprints to prove it. Sure enough, it didn't say that he was crazy: it said that he was Mauricio Blanco.

Down the stairs we went, and up to the corner . . ., walking faster and faster . . . skirting the pools of water where the "turcos" were scrubbing out their shops, thence down the next street, weaving in and out under the arcades in a vain attempt to lose him. Suddenly I paused at the curb, flashed him a big smile, stuck out my hand, and exclaimed from the depths of my heart: "May God go with you."

But, instead of that, the man came with me.

I dashed across the street, crossing against the light, between the honking cars with screeching brakes, the peddlers of plastic toys, the fresh boxes of Chilean apples, and the stamp-sellers' booths that fringed the postoffice. Finally he dropped slightly behind and glanced off for an instant, whereupon I ducked into the postoffice corridor, hid until he was far down into the next block, then grabbed a phone and told the secretary to lock up the Cultural Center and hurry home before the madman had time to get back there. Then I caught a fast taxi to my apartment and collapsed for the night.

Next morning (May 5, 1961), at about a quarter to eleven, the phone on my desk rang, and the crisp voice of my boss, the Branch Public Affairs Officer of the U. S. Information Service, came swiftly over the wire:

"Mac, it seems that the United States has a man in space, and the "X" Broadcasting Company here in town has a tape recording of the Voice of America broadcast in English, but they can't figure out what he's saying. I have a car on the way over there to pick you up. Get down there as fast as you can and see if you can work out a Spanish translation for them."

Josê was waiting for me with the car by the time that I got to the foot of the stairs. Settling back to catch my breath as the car picked up speed, I suddenly realized that the "X" Broadcasting Company was the same place that my weird visitor had mentioned the night before. Since José was well acquainted in radio circles, I ventured to inquire:

"José, do you know a Mr. Blanco? I met him last night, and he said that he worked at the "X" Broadcasting Company."

"Oh, sure," José replied helpfully. "He owns the station."

"Mauricio Blanco," I exclaimed incredulously.

"Oh, no. Not Mauricio. It's Enrique Blanco, his brother, who owns the station. Poor Mauricio, he hangs around the place, but he hasn't been quite right in the head since his mother died last year."

"Oh . . ." I exhaled, mopping my brow in relief, thankful that my boss hadn't been taken in by one of Mauricio's wild tales.

Everybody was waiting, tense with excitement, as we hurried upstairs and directly to the recording room, where they sat me down at a table with a stubby soft-lead pencil and a few odd scraps of copy paper. While an assistant played back the Voice of America tape, a few phrases at a time, I scribbled madly on Spanish translation, for I knew that the entire city of 500,000 people was waiting hungrily for some reassurance that the United States was narrowing the margin held by Russia in the exploration of outer space.

No sooner had I reached the bottom of the first page, when a messenger snatched up the sheet and raced to the broadcasting booth, where the announcer, in his shirtsleeves and perspiring copiously under the pressure of this supreme moment when the United States was about to cross the threshold into outer space, had been improvising until he could get a Spanish translation.

And so it went page after page, with my translation bogging down occasionally while I groped for the Spanish equivalent of such unheard of terms as "weightlessness," "nose cone," and "escape hatch."

"What's more," the assistant muttered over my shoulder, "there are four other radio stations in this same chain standing by to rebroadcast this program as soon as you finish your translation. Please hurry!"

When the announcer came to the bottom of the page where Commander Shepard said "What a beautiful view," he notice that I was way, way behind with my translation, so he filled in by saying: "This information, ladies and gentlemen, is coming to you through the courtesy of Dr. Malcolm D. McLean, Director of the Ecuadorean-U. S. Cultural Center in Guayaquil."

One of my friends, who had just tuned in on his car radio as he drove down the street in Guayaquil, exclaimed:

"Oh my God! Mac's in outer space. And I saw him on the street here just this morning."

Eventually I completed the translation, the pressure was relaxed, and José and I started commenting excitedly to each other about the wonderful event as we descended the stairs and crossed the sidewalk to get in the car.

"Yes," I exclaimed, somewhat louder than necessary, no doubt, because of my exhilaration at having had a small part in such a great event, "I could hear his voice very clearly from outer space. He even said he could see the curvature of the earth."

Just then I happened to glance back over my shoulder and saw Mauricio lounging against the wall with his hands in his pockets. Shrugging his shoulders, he shook his head slowly from side to side, gazed hopelessly at me, and muttered to himself: "¡Está loco! ¡Completamente loco!"

Malcolm D.McLean 1-512-869-0166

206 Golden Oaks Drive mdmclean@texas.net

Georgetown, Texas 78628-3320 HTTP://lonestar.texas.net/~mdmclean