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The opening · free to read
Over the hubbub and chatter came the brief warning wail of a small siren. The noise died as the people in the vast waiting room stopped talking.
"Your attention, please!" boomed the loud-speaker. "Passengers for Spaceflight Seventy-nine, departing for Castor Three and Pollux Four, will proceed to Gate Seven for ground transportation to the take-off block. Spaceflight Seventy-nine, waiting for passengers at Gateway Seven!"
There was a moment of silence, then a loud racket burst out as everybody started talking at once. There was only a small flow of people toward Gate Seven, almost negligible, because Flight Seventy-nine was essentially a cargo hop. In fact, this morning less than a half-dozen headed for the gateway.
Among these was a tall man, impressive in his blue-black uniform. A space commodore, no less. He carried the light bag of the woman who was beside him, proud and happy and eager-looking. But traces of some internal storm clouded the man's features, and as they approached Gateway Seven, the man's perturbation worked closer and closer to the surface until finally it broke through.
"You could still back out," he said.
"No, I couldn't," she said. Her own face clouded a bit.
"Yes, you could," he snapped.
She stopped ten or fifteen feet from Gateway Seven and turned to face him. She was pert and pretty in a traveling suit of gray; brand-new for this occasion. Her name was Alice Hemingway, but she would have swapped it in a minute to become Mrs. Theodore Wilson, even on a commodore's salary.
"Look, Ted," she said slowly. "We've been back and forth over this argument for a couple of months now. Can't you forget it?"
"No, I can't," replied Ted Wilson. "I don't like the idea of you taking to space."
"I do," she said simply. "I want to see these places you are always telling me about. I want to see 'em before I'm sixty. It's no fun listening to your stories, then having you trot off for three or four months on another jaunt while I sit home alone and wonder where you are and what's doing."
"But we--" He paused, thinking. "Alice," he said suddenly, "will you marry me?"
A welling of tears came then, but Alice blinked them back. "If you'd asked me that a month ago I would have said 'Yes,' with no stipulations, but right now I'll say 'Yes, as soon as I come back, if you still want me.' Understand?"
"Not quite."
"I want you to be dead certain that the reason you want to marry me is not to keep me from taking this spaceflight."
Ted looked down at her. "I'd really like to know if you accepted this trip just to force me into asking you," he said slowly.
"You'll never know," she said with a bright smile.
He swore under his breath. "I still don't like the idea of you trotting off to Castor Three with that old goat."
"Mr. Andrews? Old goat? Why Ted! You're jealous."
"I am."
"Good. Stay jealous. But don't be an imbecile. Mr. Andrews is merely my boss, not my lover. He has never so much as watched me walk, let alone made a pass at me. I couldn't think of him as anything but a boss."
"But up there--"
Alice shook her head. "Forget it, Ted. I'm still your girl, and I intend to stay that way. Even though it's smart for a girl to have a lover or two before she marries, I'm the old-fashioned one-man type. Virgin. No hits, no runs, no errors, and no one left on first base."
"Okay," he said sullenly.
She smiled up at him again. "Ted," she said seriously, "don't you see I have to go a-space? You've ducked marriage because you can't see two people living on a commodore's salary, and also with you flitting off and leaving me home alone. So you want to wait until you get your next boost. But that will get you stationed on some planetary post. I'll get one flight to Base, then be set down for years. Well, until that time I'm going to travel and see the interstellar sights. I want to see the Dark Column on Procyon Five, I want to visit the Golden Rainbow on Castor Three, and toss a penny into the Bottomless Pit on Pollux Four, and.... Well, I can do these things so long as Mr. Andrews wants me to travel."
"But--"
"Oh, Ted--please!" she cried.
She clutched at him and buried her face in his shoulder. He held her, then put a hand under her chin and lifted her face. He kissed her, not tenderly, but with more of a frantic striving for something beyond reach.
The siren wail lifted again and the loud-speaker boomed:
"Last call for Spaceflight Seventy-nine at Gateway Seven. Will Miss Alice Hemingway please proceed to Gateway Seven!"
Reluctantly she withdrew herself from her sweetheart's arms and turned to the gateway. Ted picked up her small bag and followed her.
As they reached the gate a smallish, nervous, wiry man with a clipped gray mustache eyed Alice crisply.
"Ah, Miss Hemingway, you're just in time," he said. He smiled thinly as he looked at Ted Wilson. "However, I presume the delay was justified. Commodore, I think the use of your handkerchief is essential."
Before Ted could reply, Mr. Andrews had walked through the gateway to the waiting spaceport bus. Alice turned back to Ted and held up her face. This time their kiss was less frantic, but also less personal. It was chaste, and brief, and proper. It promised for the future, but it did not give any part of that future warmth or passion as a down payment.
Then Alice came out of his arms and went through the gateway to climb into the bus beside her boss.
As Commodore Wilson turned away, the bus drove off along the road to the waiting spacecraft.
Commodore Wilson entered the base commander's office and smiled glumly. The commander, Space Admiral Leonard F. Stone, a man of about forty-five and as lithe and as hard as a man of that age could be, looked expectant. His command was exacting and just, but he was also human.
He said, "What's troubling you, Wilson?"
"Admiral," Ted Wilson said, "I know it is against the unwritten rules to discuss the matter of increase in rank, but I wonder if we mightn't break them for a minute or two."
"We might if there were proper justification. Why?"
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