Pages 468-472

This page-by-page annotation is organized by sections, as delineated by the seven squares (sprockets) which separate each section. The page numbers for this page-by-page annotation are for the original Viking edition (760 pages). Editions by other publishers vary in pagination — the newer Penguin editions are 776 pages; the Bantam edition is 886 pages.

Contributors: Please use a 760-page edition (either the original Viking edition with the orange cover or the Penguin USA edition with the blue cover and rocket diagram — there are plenty on Ebay for around $10) or search the Google edition for the correct page number. Readers: To calculate the Bantam edition use this formula: Bantam page # x 1.165. Before p.50 it's about a page earlier; as you get later in the book, add a page.

Finally, profound thanks to Prof. Don Larsson for providing the foundation for this page-by-page annotation.

Page 468

White Rabbit Statue, Llandudno

The Welsh resort town is supposed to be where Carroll first told young Alice Liddell the stories that would become Alice in Wonderland (although most scholars doubt that Carroll ever was in the town). A statue of the White Rabbit was dedicated by David Lloyd George in 1933.

Page 470

470.18 "[ . . . ] out the eye at tower's summit [ . . . ]"
Correspondent Stephen Remato offers the following commentary: " "This reference "must" be to Rocket 00000, with Gottfried's little window cut into the top of it, according to SW. However, Horst Achtfaden, under interrogation aboard the Rucksichtslos, states that the Schwarzgerat was installed in the tail section. He cannot recall station numbers, which would provide a precise location, but he gives enough information to give us a good idea. "Horst says that the S-gerat was "in the tail section", that it was "asymmetrical about the longitudinal axis. Towards Vane III". This tells us that Gottfried was installed sideways in relation to the skin of the rocket, as opposed to facing outwards, and installed between two of the tail fins with his back to vane III; if he had his back to vane III, he was either between fins II and III facing left, or between fins III and IV facing right. "As a further indication of Gottfried's location as V2 passenger, in the section "Pre-Launch" his limbs are said to "writhe among" (inter alia) live steam lines, compressed air battery, exhaust elbow, decomposer; none of these could be described as being in the nose, or anywhere but the tail section."

Page 471

471.24 Moxie
Slothrop does not imagine but recalls billboards he had seen in the Berkshires, of a favorite American soft drink.

471.30 drowned Becket
Not the Martyr of Canterbury but a town in Massachusetts nearly destroyed by a flood in 1927. This is another reference from The Berkshire Hills.