It’s true, the Professor never forgave Buzz Aldrin for flubbing that line. He chaired the committee that crafted that elegant, deeply meaningful statement for the annals of history, and that arrogant flyboy didn’t even bother to write it down, claiming he’ll “be able to remember one friggin’ line”. Funny how that turned out. Although the Professor always suspected Aldrin of flubbing the line on purpose, out of petty annoyance that the lengthy sessions of the line-crafting committee came at somewhat of a cost to some of Aldrin’s own pet issues, like life support or sanitary facilities. As if the annals of history weren’t more important than some shit floating in space. It simply took some time to get it right – the first two sessions were completely wasted on lame Star Trek references, for example. Then the committee decided to disallow any suggestions to include any references to Kirk or Spock. After careful deliberation, two sessions later they also disallowed McCoy and Scotty. Then James Jesus Angelton forbade any reference to Chekov, as well. The ones with Sulu and Uhura remained in the running until close to the finish, though – but, ultimately, the one about the steps was considered the best nearly unanimously. But even that one only get there afer a lot of work – it originated with a story one of his colleagues told of his weekend, and originally went: “It was just a small step for a man, but my son had left his legos lying around everywhere…”
But now that historical wrong is fully righted, at least, so the expedition has already achieved one of its main goals! And within minutes, the scientific goal of the expedition is fulfilled, as well – a full bin of Uranian soil-sample, good for at least half a metric shit-ton of science. That should make it lots easier for the Dean to hide the expense of the expedition somewhere in his budget. But, not being Meatloaf, two out of three isn’t good enough for our friends, so they’ll at least try to rescue Busty, as well.
Tying Gregory to the luggage rack for the whole trip seems pretty callous, but the Professor had no plans to run for President of the U.S., anyway. And it did save a lot of space inside of the cramped cabin. And while it left poor Gregory dead, it left him no worse off than before.
More on Monday