paper the President had handed him. I knew he didn’t like what he was ordered to do, and I knew he would do it. They got me to Anacostia and put me on the President’s own transport; they stayed with me and fed me, and one of them played cards with me, as the jets flared outside the ports and we covered territory. All they would not do was talk to me. It was a long flight in that clumsy old luxury liner that “tradition” gave the President. Time had been wasted at the airport, and below us I could see the fuzzy band of the terminator creeping past. As we came down for a landing, it was full dark. And the waiting was not yet over, nor the wondering if Kathy had got out all right too and when I would see her again. The lieutenant left the ship alone; he was gone for a long, long time. I spent the time kicking questions around in my mind-questions that had occurred to me before, but which I had dismissed. Now, with all the time in the world, and a future full of ifs, I took them out and looked them over. For instance: Kathy and Matt Runstead and Jack O’Shea had plotted together to put me on ice literally. All right, that accounted for most of the things that puzzled me. But it didn’t account for Hester. And, when you stopped to think of it, it didn’t account for all of Runstead’s work, either. The Consies were in favor of space travel. But Runstead had sabotaged the Venus test in Cal-Mex. There was no doubt of that; I had as good as a confession from his fall-guy. Could it have been a double cross? Runstead posing as a Consie who was posing as a copysmith, and in reality what? I began wishing for Kathy for a completely new reason. When the lieutenant came back it was midnight. “All right,” he said to me. “A cab’s waiting for you outside. The runner knows where to go.” I climbed out and stretched. “Thanks,” I said awkwardly. The lieutenant spat neatly on the ground between my feet. The door slammed, and I scrambled out of the way of the take-off. The cab-runner was Mexican. I tried him on a question; no English. I tried again in my Chlorella U. Spanish; he gaped at me. There were fifty good reasons why I didn’t want to go along with him without a much better idea of what was up. But when I stopped to think of it, I had damnall choice. The lieutenant had followed his
orders. Now the orders were complied with, and I could see his active little military mind framing the report that would tip someone off to where they could find the notorious Consie, Mitchell Courte-nay. I would be a sitting duck; it would depend on whether Taunton or the police got to me first. It was not a choice worth spending much time over. I got in the cab. You’d think the fact that the runner was a Mexican would have tipped me off. It didn’t, though. It was not until I saw the glimmer of starlight on the massive projectile before me that I knew I was in Arizona, and knew what the President had done for me. A mixed squad of Pinkertons and our own plant protection men closed in on me and hustled me past the sentry-boxes, across the cleared land, up to the rocket itself. The OIC showed me the crescent he could make with thumb and forefinger and said: “You’re safe now, Mr. Courtenay.” “But I don’t want to go to Venus!” I said. He laughed out loud. Hurry up and wait; hurry up and wait. The long, dreary flight had been a stasis; everything at both ends of it had been too frantic with motion over which I had no control to permit thought. They gave me no chance to think here, either; I felt someone grabbing the seat of my pants, and I was hoisted inside. There I was dragged more than led to an acceleration hammock, strapped in and left. The hammock swung and jolted, and twelve titans brooded on my chest. Good-by, Kathy; good-by, Schocken Tower. Like it or not, I was on my way to Venus. But it wasn’t good-by to Kathy. It was she herself who came to unstrap me when the first blast was over. I got out of the hammock and tottered weightlessly, rubbing my back. I opened my mouth to make a casual greeting. What came out was a squeaky, “Kathy!” It wasn’t a brilliant speech, but I didn’t have time for a brilliant speech. Kathy’s lips and my lips were occupied. When we stopped for breath I said, “What alkaloids do you put into the product?” but it was wasted. She wanted to be kissed again. I kissed her.