"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"_Academician_ Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him _Doc_?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
* * * * *
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."