‘Isn’t this exciting?’ Darren leant over and hissed in Daniel’s ear.

‘Yes, very.’ Daniel whispered back.

They were sat together on a battered old sofa in the recreation room of Darren’s dorm, Darren seated, Daniel perched on the arm. The room was filled to bursting point with people, everyone’s attention firmly focused on the T.V. set that had been raised on a table at one end.

The curtains had been drawn and taped together so that no sunlight could spill through and interrupt what they were about to witness.

Gradually the picture on the set cleared and a collective breath was held as they all waited for the great moment.

Unobserved in the half-light Daniel reached down and took Darren’s hand in his, giving it a tight little squeeze. Without removing his eyes from the T.V. Darren smiled and squeezed back.

This was it. Man was finally going to walk on the moon.

They both watched spellbound as Neil Armstrong jumped backwards down the ladder of the lunar module and landed in a small cloud of dust on the surface.

Darren’s grip on Daniel’s hand tightened.

A hiss of static was heard followed by a disembodied voice… "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

At these words the whole room erupted. A huge cheer went up and people started hugging each other in their exuberance.

Darren pulled Daniel into an ecstatic bear hug, causing the younger man to topple over and fall into his lap.

‘Hey careful there man.’ Daniel cautioned.

Grinning Darren released him and Daniel slid down to sit on the floor at Darren’s feet. Darren gave his hair an affectionate mess-up and then returned his hands to the more acceptable position of resting on his own legs.

After another twenty minutes or so of transmission the link with the astronauts was severed and gradually people began to drift back to the remainder of their Sunday afternoon.

‘So what do you want to go and do now? Daniel asked levering himself to standing and stamping his feet to rid them of the pins and needles that had decided to take up residence there.

‘Sundaes.’ A cheerful voice said behind them.

Turning round they were greeted by the beaming face of Darren’s friend Matt. ‘We were going to head down to ‘Papa Joe’s’ and grab something to eat, wanna join us?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Darren replied, ‘Dan?’

‘Sure, whatever.’

‘Cool, I’ll go round up the others.’

‘Er, Matt,’ Darren said as his friend made to leave, ‘we’ll meet you down there.’

‘Darren.’ Dan reluctantly tore his lips from Darren’s

‘Mmmmm, what?’ Darren recaptured them.

This time Daniel drew back a little more forcefully. ‘We really should get going, go meet your friends, they’ll wonder where we’ve got to.’

Darren looked a little sad. ‘I guess you’re right.’

They were sat on Darren’s bed in his dorm, his room-mates mercifully elsewhere at that moment.

‘Come on.’ Daniel stood up and held out a hand to pull Darren to his feet.

Taking it Darren also stood, tucking his shirt in as he did so. He looked at Dan and blushed like a teenager.

Daniel returned his grin unable to resist pulling the dark-haired beauty to him for one final kiss before they exited the dorm and made their way across the moonlit campus.

‘You know it’s incredible,’ Darren remarked as he craned his neck to look up at the milky orb. ‘the same government who has just spent trillions of dollars putting a man on some faraway planet is the same one who is spending trillions of dollars getting it’s young men blown to pieces in some faraway country.’

Daniel nodded in silent agreement.

‘There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

‘Huh?’

‘Shakespeare.’ Darren explained. ‘It means, awwll shit, I forget what it exactly means but roughly translated it means that there are some things that we are just never going to understand.’

‘You know what I don’t understand?’ Daniel said quietly as he brushed his fingers against Darren’s.

‘No, what’s that?’ Darren asked, toying with the notion of taking Dan’s hand in his but chickening out at the last moment as they were passed on the path by a group of his fellow students.

‘Exactly that.’ And he up-nodded in the direction of the departing students.

Now it was Darren’s turn to look confused.

‘Why,’ Daniel went on to explain. ‘why you couldn’t do what you wanted to just then, why I couldn’t have done it either.’

‘Oh,’ Darren sighed deeply then shrugged. ‘I guess you can’t change the whole world at once. But one day eh? One day we’ll be able to walk down main street holding hands without getting arrested or having our heads kicked in.'

Daniel simply smiled and shook his head indulgently. ‘You really are a dreamer aren’t you Darren?’

Darren stuck his tongue out in indignant response as he bounded up the steps of the small family diner that was their destination.

Waving as he spotted the others, he and Dan squashed in on opposite sides of the booth where much fierce debate was going on…over which sundaes should be ordered.

Ice-creams ordered, served and all but consumed the conversation inevitably turned to the events of the day.

‘Our leaders have the intelligence to launch rocket ships thousands of miles into space and yet are still stupid enough not to see what is happening right in their own backyard.’ Lisa proclaimed angrily, echoing Darren’s earlier thoughts.

The others agreed and they were off.

During the ensuing discussion Daniel noticed that Josh was becoming more and more withdrawn from the group, offering fewer comments on the situation and looking distinctly uneasy.

Eventually Darren also noticed and enquired as to whether everything was alright with his friend.

Josh paled even more and his silence brought about that of the rest of the table’s.

‘Oh fuck it.’

Daniel held his breath as Josh nervously licked his lips. He had an uncanny feeling that he knew what was coming next. He had seen it happen among his own friends.

‘I wasn’t going to say anything,’ from his back pocket the young man brought forth a folded brown envelope, ‘but this came this morning.’ Contemptuously he threw it onto the formica topped table of the booth.

Wordlessly Sarah picked it up and turned it over and over in her hands. None of them needed to see the contents to know what it was.

‘What you gonna do?’

Josh just shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Two days later they all found out what he had decided to do when Brad went to call for him on the way to a lecture and found Josh’s room empty, the bed stripped, all of his possessions gone. The only remnant of his occupancy his dart board, a crude hand drawn sketch of a moose affixed to it by means of a single dart right between the poor creature’s eyes.