distances which separated the stellar bodies. ‘So men go to the moon in rockets the way you two came from England in rocket planes?’ someone asked. ‘Why go to the moon?’ Tasman enquired. ‘Did the Queen go to the moon?’ asked Amir. ‘What’s on the moon to go there for?’ continued Tasman. Some of them turned to regard the sickle moon which was rising over the Banda Sea. ‘Are there still people living there?’ ‘Well, if no one lives there and there’s only stones to bring back, why go there?’ Tasman persisted. Answering these questions taxed our ideologies as much as our grasp of Indonesian,
