_Avoiding It May Cost Your Life!_
"May I see your validation, please?"
Marcia McHenry stiffened. Had she read the sign aloud? She turned
startled eyes up to the smiling stewardess, who was holding out a
well-groomed hand. Marcia responded weakly to the smile, overcame a
sudden urge to blurt out that she had no validation--not her own,
anyway. But her stiff fingers were already holding out the pink card
with Nellie Foster's name on it.
"You're feeling well, Mrs. Foster?"
_Feeling well? Yes, of course. Except for the--usual sickness. But
that's so very normal_.... Her numb lips moved. "I'm fine," she said.
Miss Eagen (which, her neat lapel button attested, was her name) made
a penciled frown as lovely as her machined smile. "Some day," she told
Marcia, "we won't have to ask the passengers if they're well. It's so
easy to come aboard on someone else's validation, and people don't seem
to realize how dangerous that is."
As Miss Eagen moved to the next seat, Marcia shrank into a small
huddle, fumbling with the card until it was crammed shapeless into her
purse. Then from the depths of her guilt came rebellion. It was going
to be all right. She was doing the biggest thing she'd ever done, and
Jack would rise to the occasion, and it would be all right.
It _had_ to be all right....
After this--if this didn't work--there just would be nothing else she
could do. She wasn't a scheming woman. No one would ever know how
difficult it had been for her to think up the whole plan, to find
Nellie Foster (someone Jack had never met) and to persuade Nellie to
register for the trip and take the physical for her. She'd had to lie
to Nellie, to make Nellie think she was brave and adventurous, and that
she was just doing it to surprise Jack.
Oh, he'd be surprised, all right.
The flash walls on the field were being raised to keep the blow-by from
the ship's jets from searing the administration building and the area
beyond. Marcia realized with crushing suddenness that the ship was
about to blast off in seconds. She half-rose, then sank back, biting
her lip. Silly ... Jack had said that--her fear of space was silly.
He'd said it during the quarrel, and he'd roared at her, "And that's
why you want me to come back--ground myself, be an Earth-lubber--so I
can spare you the anguish of sitting home wondering if I'll come back
alive!"
* * * * *
And then he'd been sorry he'd shouted, and he sat by her, taking her
chin in his hand. "Marcia, Marcia," he'd said gently, "you're so
_silly_! It's been nineteen whole years since your father died in the
explosion of a Moon-rocket. Rocket motors just don't explode any more,
honey! Ships travel to the Moon and back on iron-clad, mathematical
orbits that are figured before the ship puffs a jet--"
"The _Elsinore_?" She'd said it viciously, to taunt him, and something
in her had been pleased at the dull flush that rose to his face.
Everyone knew about the _Elsinore_, the 500-foot Moon-ferry that almost
missed the Moon.
"That," he said bitterly, "was human damnfoolishness botching up the
equations. Too many lobbyists have holdings on the Moon and don't
want to risk not being able to go there in a hurry. So they haven't
passed legislation to keep physically unfit people off spaceships.
One of the passengers got aboard the _Elsinore_ on somebody else's
validation--which meant that nobody knew he was taking endocrine
treatments to put hair on his brainless head and restore his--Oh, the
_Jaywalker_!" Jack spat in disgust. "Anyway, he was the kind of idiot
who never realizes that certain glandular conditions are fatal in free
fall."
Even now she distinctly recalled the beginnings of the interplanetary
cold that always seeped into the warm house when he talked about space,
when he was about to leave her for it. And this time it was worse than
ever before.
He went on remorselessly, "Once the _Elsinore_ reached the free-fall
flight, where power could be shut off, the skipper had to put the
ferry into an axial spin under power, creating artificial gravity
to save the worthless life of that fool. So of course he lost his
trajectory, and had to warp her in as best he could, without passing
the Moon or crashing into it. And of course you're not listening."
"It's all so dull!" she had flared, and then, "How can I be interested
in what some blundering space-jockey did?"
"Blun--Marcia, you really don't realize what that skipper did was the
finest piece of shiphandling since mankind got off the ground."
"Was it?" she'd yawned. "Could you do it?"
"I--like to think I could," he said. "I'd hate to have to try."