The black man smiled at her. «Look at the time! No wonder I’m hungry! Can I take you down to the dining room for some supper?»
«The dining room in the full-gravity area?»
«Yes, of course.»
«Won’t you be uncomfortable there? Isn’t there a dining area in the low-gravity section?»
«Sure, but won’t you be uncomfortable there?»
She laughed. «I think I can handle it.»
«Really?»
«Certainly. And maybe you can tell me how Sam got himself into the advertising business.»
«All right. I’ll do that.»
As she turned, she caught sight of the immense beauty of Earth sliding past the observation dome; the Indian Ocean a breathtaking swirl of deep blues and greens, the subcontinent of India decked with purest white clouds.
But she looked at Malone, then asked in a whisper, «Don’t you miss being home, being on Earth? Don’t you feel isolated here, away from—»
His booming laughter shocked her. «Isolated? Up here?» Malone pitched himself forward into a weightless somersault, then pirouetted in midair. He pointed toward the ponderous bulk of the planet and said, «They’re the ones who’re isolated. Up here, I’m free!»
He offered her his arm and they floated together toward the gleaming metal hatch, their feet a good eight inches above the chamber’s floor.
THE LIEUTENANT AND THE FOLKSINGER
Here is Chet Kinsman again. This is the last short story I wrote about him. Paradoxically enough, it depicts a key event at the very beginning of his adult life, when he was (is?) eighteen years old.
From the rear seat of the T-38 jet, San Francisco Bay was a sun-glittering mirror set among the brown California hills. Fog was still swirling around the stately towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, but the rest of the Bay was clear and brilliant, the late morning sky brazen, the city on the hills far enough below them so that it looked shining white and clean.
«Like it?» asked the pilot.
Chet Kinsman heard his voice as a disembodied crackle in his helmet earphones over the shrill whine of the turbojet engines.
«Love it!» he answered to the bulbous white helmet in the seat in front of him.
The cockpit was narrow and cramped; Kinsman could barely move in his seat without bumping his own helmet into the plexiglass canopy that covered them both. The straps of his safety harness cut into his shoulders. He had tugged the harness on too tightly. But he felt no discomfort.
This is flying! he said to himself. Five hundred knots at the touch of a throttle.
«How high can we go?» he asked into his helmet microphone.
A pause. Then, «Oh, she’ll do fifty thousand feet easy enough.»
Kinsman grinned. «A lot better than hang gliders.»
«I like hang gliding,» the pilot said.
«Yeah, but it doesn’t compare to this. This is power, man.»
«Right enough.»
It had been a disappointing week. Kinsman had flown to California on impulse. Life at the Air Force Academy was rigid, cold, and a first-year man was expected to obey everyone’s orders rather than make friends. So when the first week-long break in the semester came, he dashed to La Jolla with his roommate.
While his fellow cadet was engulfed by his family, Kinsman wandered alone through the beautiful but friendless La Jolla area. His own family was a continent away and would have no part of a son of theirs stooping to the military life, no matter what his reason. Finally Kinsman rented a car and drove north along the spectacular coast highway, up into the Bay area. Alone.
Then on Friday night, at a topless bar in North Beach, where he had to wear his uniform to avoid the hassle of I.D. checks, he bumped into a Navy flier in the midst of the naked dancers and their bouncing, jiggling breasts.
Now he was flying. And happy.
Suddenly the plane’s nose dropped, and Kinsman’s stomach disappeared somewhere over his right shoulder. The pilot rolled the plane, wingtips making full circles in the empty air, as they dived toward the water—which now looked hard as steel. Kinsman swallowed hard and felt his pulse racing in every part of his body.
«Try a low-level run. Get a real sensation of speed,» the pilot said.
Kinsman nodded, then realized he couldn’t be seen. «Okay. Great.»
In less than a minute they were skimming across the water, engines howling, going so fast that Kinsman could not see individual waves on the choppy Bay, only a blur of blue-gray whizzing just below them. The roar of the engines filled his helmet and the whole plane was shaking, bucking, as if eager to get back up into the thinner air where it was designed to fly.
He thought he saw the International Airport along the blur of hills and buildings off to his left. He knew the Bay Bridge was somewhere up ahead.
«Whoops! Freighter!»
The control stick between Kinsman’s knees yanked back toward his crotch. The plane stood on her tail, afterburners screaming, and a microsecond’s flicker of a ship’s masts zipped past the corner of his eye. He felt the weight of death pressing on his chest, flattening him into the contoured seat, turning it into an invalid’s couch. He couldn’t lift his arms from his lap or even cry out. It was enough to try to breathe.
They leveled off at last, and Kinsman sucked in a great sighing gulp of oxygen.
«Damned sun glare does that sometimes,» the pilot was saying, sounding half-annoyed and half-apologetic. «Damned water looks clear, but there’s a whole friggin’ fleet hidden by the glare off the water. That’s why I’d rather fly under a high overcast—over water, anyway.»
«That was a helluva ride,» Kinsman said at last.
The pilot chuckled. «I’ll bet there’s some damned pissed sailors down there. Probably on the horn now, trying to get our tail number.»
They headed back to Moffett Field. The pilot let Kinsman take the controls for a few minutes, directing him toward the Navy base where the airfield and the NASA research station were.
«You got a nice steady touch, kid. Make a good pilot.»
«Thanks. I used to fly my father’s plane. Even the business jet, once.»
«Got your license?»
«Not yet. I figure I’ll qualify at the Academy.»
The pilot said nothing.
«I’m going in for astronaut training as soon as I qualify,» Kinsman went on.
«Astronaut, huh? Well, I’d rather fly a plane. Damned astronauts are like robots. Everything’s done by remote control for those rocket jockeys.»
«Not everything,» Kinsman said.
He could sense the pilot shaking his head in disagreement. «Hell, I’ll bet they have machines to do their screwing for them.»
They called it a coffee shop, but the bar served mainly liquor. Irish coffee is what they mean, Kinsman told himself as he hunched over a cold beer and listened to the girl with the guitar singing.
Through the coffee shop’s big front window, Kinsman could see the evening shadows settling over the Berkeley streets. Students, loungers, street people eased along the sidewalks, most of them looking shabby in denims and faded Army fatigues. Kinsman felt out of place in his sky-blue uniform; he had worn it to the Navy base to help get past the security guards for his meeting with the pilot.
But now as he sat in the coffee shop and watched the night come across the clapboard buildings, and the lights on the Bay Bridge form a twinkling arch that led back to San Francisco, he was just as alone as he had been at the Academy, or back home, or all week long here in California, except for that one hour’s flight in the jet.