FLY by NIGHT
By Arthur Dekker Savage
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of ScienceFiction May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The general introduced them in the ship's shadow, a trim lieutenant, aclean-cut major. "You probably already think of each other as Carol andKen. At any rate, there are no two people in the world who have heard asmuch about each other without previously meeting."
She offered her hand and he took it, held it for a long moment whiletheir eyes locked. "Hello, Carol," he said warmly. "I'd have known youfrom your pictures." And he realized as never before what a poorsubstitute were the hoarded scraps of paper.
"Hello—Ken." A smile made her face radiant. "I've sort of studied yourpictures too."
Ken turned his eyes to the crowd—a roaring, cheering multitudesurrounding the poised rocket ship here on the California desert in thiszero hour. To certain harried physicists and engineers, it was a momentpromising paramount achievement. To romanticists of 1966, watching theirvideo screens avidly, it was fulfillment of their most sensual dreams: abeautiful girl being given wholly and unreservedly to a handsome youngman; the flight around the moon was merely an added fillip. To a fewgaunt military psychologists it was the end of a long nightmare ofprotests by women's clubs, demonstrations by national female societiesand actual attempts at murder by fanatical blue-noses; and a merebeginning of the most crucial experiment ever undertaken—which had tobe a success.
Suddenly Ken was angry at the knowing looks from the throng's nearestranks. While the general continued his prepared speech into the mike,focus of the hollow, hungry eyes of the video cameras, Ken pulled Carolto his side and held her with an arm about her waist, glaring when thecrowd murmured and the cameras swung their way again. He had notquestioned the actions of the military, of the world, before. But now—apublic spectacle—
During the years of rigorous, specialized training almost from childhoodthey had kept him away from Carol, teasing him—it was the only wordthat now occurred to his mind—with the dangled promise of her presenceon the flight. They had let him see her pictures—intimate, almost-nudephotos harvested by the gossip columnists, snaps of her glory in bathingattire as she lounged by a swimming pool.
Swimming. Since he had been selected as a boy, every free afternoon hehad been made to swim, swim, swim—developing the long, smooth musclesthey wanted him to have. It had been, he knew, the same with Carol.
Had they taunted her with his pictures too? Had she responded by wantinghim, loving him, longing for him? How did she feel about their firstmoment together being shared by the greedy eyes of continents?
The President was speaking now, rolling sonorous sentences into themike, words which would officially sanction this unorthodox act of themilitary, which would justify the morally unprecedented dispensing ofmaid to man without benefit of—anything. Because the psychol