The Right Stuff

by Tom Wolfe

Joe starts in with a little Yeager-style country-boy banter about how Gus and his pals had better hurry up or him and his boys would pass them on the way up. Oh, yeah, says Gus, how’s that? Well, says Joe Walker, we’ve got a 57,000-pound rocket engine now, and the Redstone that shoots your little peapod up there only puts out 78,000, so we’re almost up with you—and we fly the damn thing. We actually fly it and we land it. Joe Walker meant to keep it light and just rag Grissom a little bit, but he couldn’t hold back a note in his voice concerning where things actually stood in the true scheme of things, on the real pyramid of flying competition. Everybody is looking at Grissom, the astronaut, to see what he’s going to say. Grissom, who is a tough little nut when he wants to be, stares at Walker … and then he breaks into a grin and starts a kind of gruff-gus chuckle. Oh, I’ll be looking over my shoulder the whole time, Joe, and if you come by, I swear I’ll wave.