"But _what_, for Pete's sake? What _is_ this crazy specialty that blinds
you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it
was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't
it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
The _Navion_ took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked
upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette
girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish
laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that
sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and
corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly
this low," she said, half-frightened.
"_Low?_ Call _this_ low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and
you'll _really_ get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the
wheel forward, and the _Navion_ dipped its nose in a shallow dive,
flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the
chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the
protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a
dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer,
anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank
with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set.
The _Navion_ went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as
it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased,
and no air to rock the wings--there were no wings. His face lost all
expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his
nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on
the wheel. "Up!"
The _Navion_ broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened
closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known.
He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the
aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands.
Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare
you--?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"Look," he told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain
a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew,
my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten
years ago. I _can't_ get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week?
You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only
smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying
to say. _Why_ do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't
you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained
pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense
from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he
relaxed--more--he slumped--and something began to die in his face, and
the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would
not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the
almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is
a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any
plant in the States--Douglas, North American, Boeing--_any_ of them--and
pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as
good as said so. After that--" His voice had regained some of its former
animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've
told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to
her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's
that _rocket_ pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that
_rocket_ pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm
the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and
fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math
than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like
brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of
_Colliers_, and I--" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged
again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job,
and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a
long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there _aren't_ any
man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with
a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
He brought the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings
around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of
the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and
in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and
huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And
he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands
moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an
impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the
personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years
ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now
on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the
press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a
technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he
mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his
shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't
see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as
rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away
the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You
trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the
shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to
stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to
break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose
candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. "_Rocket!_ Call that pile
of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody _machines_! If I thought roller-skating
would get me there, I would have gone to work in a _rink_ when I was
seventeen! It's _getting there_ that counts! Who gives a good goddam
_how_ it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came
and got her.
"Sit down, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
_They always begin that way_, Isherwood thought. The standard medical
opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything
he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as
he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder
of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen
hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The
realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual
response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh-_huh_." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look--you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he
said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they
wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The
Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force
insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them.
After all, it's _their_ beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the
cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure.
Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's--uh--he's in the next room. Okay to ask him
in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight
Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKenzie didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special
attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the
questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could
see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the
man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?"
MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the
recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After
I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements--he simply hunched in his chair,
seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his
stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man--only
a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired
strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations.
This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous--red-letter
dangerous--because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was
making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to
worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought.
MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression--but it still
passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife--no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung
toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed
between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his
temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst
was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed
genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go,
all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and
drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him--anger, and more
fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"