In this chapter, the narrator explains that he was offered the fastest way to the moon, but turned it down because he didn't want to waste his life on something that wasn't going to make him any money. Instead, he's going to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, California, where they're developing a buggy for the astronauts to use on the moon. He's not the only one there, though: Peter Ames-Hill has worked on the rovers and the spider, among other things. The narrator wonders why they don't hire more women to work on these machines, since they've been using men for so long. He wonders if a girl would make a better engineer than a man, since the moon is a barren place with no fresh snow and no fresh air.