“Yes, that’s where we fly.”
“Oh, I want to see it!”
“OK. It first. . . or the city map?”
She decided to go to her hotel first. The regular route to the Zurich is to slide up the west through Gray’s Tunnel past the Martian Embassy, get off at the Mormon Temple, and take a pressure lock down to Diana Boulevard. But I know all the shortcuts; we got off at Macy-Gimbel Upper to go down their personnel hoist. I thought she would enjoy it.
But when I told her to grab a hand grip as it dropped past her, she peered down the shaft and edged back. “You’re joking.”
I was about to take her back the regular way when a neighbor of ours came down the hoist. I said, “Hello, Mrs. Greenberg,” and she called back, “Hi, Holly. How are your folks?”
Susie Greenberg is more than plump. She was hanging by one hand with young David tucked in her other arm and holding the _Daily Lunatic_, reading as she dropped. Miss Brentwood stared, bit her lip, and said, “How do I do it?”
I said, “Oh, use both hands; I’ll take the bags.” I tied the handles together with my hanky and went first.
She was shaking when we got to the bottom. “Goodness, Holly, how do you stand it? Don’t you get homesick?”
Tourist question number six . . . I said, “I’ve been to Earth,” and let it drop. Two years ago Mother made me visit my aunt in Omaha and I was _miserable_ — hot and cold and dirty and beset by creepy-crawlies. I weighed a ton and I ached and my aunt was always chivvying me to go outdoors and exercise when all I wanted was to crawl into a tub and be quietly wretched. And I had hay fever. Probably you’ve never heard of hay fever — you don’t die but you wish you could.
I was supposed to go to a girls’ boarding school but I phoned Daddy and told him I was desperate and he let me come home. What groundhogs can’t understand is that they live in savagery. But groundhogs are groundhogs and loonies are loonies and never the twain shall meet.
Like all the best hotels the Zurich is in Pressure One on the west side so that it can have a view of Earth. I helped Miss Brentwood register with the roboclerk and found her room; it had its own port. She went straight to it, began staring at Earth and going _ooh!_ and _ahh!_
I glanced past her and saw that it was a few minutes past thirteen; sunset sliced straight down the tip of India — early enough to snag another client. “Will that be all, Miss Brentwood?”
Instead of answering she said in an awed voice, “Holly, isn’t that the most beautiful sight you ever saw?”
“It’s nice,” I agreed. The view on that side is monotonous except for Earth hanging in the sky — but Earth is what tourists always look at even though they’ve just left it. Still, Earth is pretty. The changing weather is interesting if you don’t have to be in it. Did you ever endure a summer in Omaha?
“It’s gorgeous,” she whispered.
“Sure,” I agreed. “Do you want to go somewhere? Or will you sign my card?”
“What? Excuse me, I was daydreaming. No, not right now — yes, I do! Holly, I want to go out _there_! I must! Is there time? How much longer will it be light?”
“Huh? It’s two days to sunset.”
She looked startled. “How quaint. Holly, can you get us space suits? I’ve got to go outside.”
I didn’t wince — I’m used to tourist talk. I suppose a pressure suit looked like a space suit to them. I simply said, “We girls aren’t licensed outside. But I can phone a friend.”
Jeff Hardesty is my partner in spaceship designing, so I throw business his way. Jeff is eighteen and already in Goddard Institute, but I’m pushing hard to catch up so that we can set up offices for our firm: “Jones & Hardesty, Spaceship Engineers.” I’m very bright in mathematics, which is everything in space engineering, so I’ll get my degree pretty fast. Meanwhile we design ships anyhow.