by Algis Budrys
crew,my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged tenyears 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 onlysmart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been tryingto say. _Why_ do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can'tyou sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trainedpilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tensefrom the strain of trying to make her understand. Now herelaxed--more--he slumped--and something began to die in his face, andthe first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it wouldnot return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in thealmost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Isa means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into anyplant in the States--Douglas, North American, Boeing--_any_ of them--andpick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have asgood as said so. After that--" His voice had regained some of its formeranimation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I'vetold you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back toher, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it'sthat _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'mthe only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred andfifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and maththan anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words likebrennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of_Colliers_, and I--" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shruggedagain.
"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 along time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there _aren't_ anyman-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 witha 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 ringsaround the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out ofthe crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face andin his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, andhuskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. Andhe was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his handsmoved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave animpromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to thepersonnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four yearsago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent nowon throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of thepress section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past atechnician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" hemumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched hisshoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn'tsee how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke asrapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured awaythe guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. Youtrained 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 theshocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move tostop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying tobreak out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whosecandy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. "_Rocket!_ Call that pileof tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm."Who cares about the bloody _machines_! If I thought roller-skatingwould get me there, I would have gone to work in a _rink_ when I wasseventeen! 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 cameand got her.
"Sit down, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
_They always begin that way_, Isherwood thought. The standard medicalopening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anythinghe might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression ashe ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinderof a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteenhours, 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. Therealization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usualresponse-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 hesaid or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If theywanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." TheFlight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Forceinsisted 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 thecigarette 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 himin right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the FlightSurgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKenzie didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any specialattention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But thequestions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish couldsee the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under theman'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 therecorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. AfterI 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, hisstubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man--onlya step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tiredstrand 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-letterdangerous--because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father wasmaking good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need toworry 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 stillpassed 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 swungtoward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimedbetween Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in histemple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burstwas over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said.
