"Sir?" he asked, after a long thoughtful silence. "Do you honestly think that astronaut training would turn a man into a robot?"
He could see the featureless white curve of the pilot's helmet over the back of the seat. There was nothing human about it.
"Listen, son, all military training is aimed at turning you into a robot. That's what it's all about. You think a normal human being would rush toward guys who're shooting at him?"
"But . . ."
"Just don't let 'em get inside you," the pilot said, his languid drawl becoming more intense, almost passionate. "Hold on to yourself. The main thing is to get up here, away from 'em. Get flying. Up here they cain't really touch you. Up here you're free."
"They're pretty strict at the Academy," Kinsman said. "They like things done their own way."
"Tell me about it. I'm a West Point man, myself. But you can still hold on to your own soul, boy. You have t'do things 22 their way on the outside, but you be your own man inside. Ain't easy, but it can be done."
Nodding to himself, Kinsman looked up and through the plane's clear canopy. He caught sight of the Moon, hanging just above the rugged horizon. It looked bright and close in the darkening sky.
I can do it, he told himself. I can do it.
Age 25
HE WAS FLYING west again, with the sun at his back. Two years of "peacekeeping" in the volatile Middle East had gone by. He had flown a fighter plane without firing a shot, happy that he was not assigned to the real fighting that flared intermit- tently in Central America. It had taken almost another two years before he had finally been assigned to astronaut train- ing.
Two years of air patrols along the Gulf Coast, searching for smugglers' planes coming in from Latin America. Two years of watching the United States' economy slide disastrous- ly as the price of foreign oil skyrocketed once again. Even Houston was hit by the new recession; the revitalized OPEC, backed now by Soviet arms, quickly squeezed all American companies out of the nationalized oil industries of the Middle East, Indonesia, and South America.
Diane Lawrence was on her way to stardom. Her haunt- ing voice, singing of simpler, happier times, brought comfort to Americans who faced doubtful futures of unemployment and welfare. Kinsman dated her half a dozen times, flying to cities where she was appearing. He traveled on commercial airliners. New government austerity regulations prevented him from piloting an Air Force plane, except on official duty. He was shocked at the price of airline tickets; the cost of 23 energy was more than money, it was freedom of movement.
But now Kinsman was relaxed and happy as he held the controls of the supersonic twin-engine jet. Months of training in the elaborate mockups of the space shuttle were behind him. Orientation nights on the "Vomit Comet," the lumber- ing cargo jet that flew endless parabolic arcs to give the astronaut-trainees their first taste of weightlessness, had gone smoothly. Now he was heading for the real thing: spaceflight duty. The cares and problems of the groundlings' world were far below him, for the moment.
Kinsman was sitting in the right-hand seat of the jet's compact cockpit. The plane's ostensible pilot, Major Joseph Tenny, seemed half asleep in the pilot's seat.
Far below them the empty brown desert of New Mexico sprawled. They had left NASA's Johnson Space Center, outside Houston, at sunrise. They would be at Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California in time for breakfast.
The plane was as beautiful and responsive as a woman. More responsive than most, Kinsman thought. The slightest touch on the crescent-shaped control yoke made the plane move into a bank or a climb with such grace and smooth power that it sent a shudder of delight through Kinsman.
"Sweet little thing, ain't she?" Tenny murmured.
Kinsman shot a surprised glance at the Major. He was not asleep after all. Chunky, short-limbed, barrel-chested, Tenny looked completely out of place in a zippered flight suit and a visored gleaming plastic helmet. His dark-eyed swarthy face peeped out of the helmet like some ape who had gotten into the outfit by mistake.
But he grasped the controls in his thick-fingered hands and said, "Here . . . lemme show ya something, kid."
Kinsman reluctantly let go of the controls and watched Tenny push the yoke sharply forward. The plane's nose dropped and suddenly Kinsman was staring at the mottled gray-brown of the desert rushing up toward him.
"Shouldn't we get an okay from ground control before we . . ."
Tenny shot him a disgusted glance. "By the time those clowns make up their minds," he growled, breathing hard, "we could be having Mai Tais in Waikiki." 24
The altimeter needle wound down. The engines' whine was lost in the shrill of tortured air whistling past their canopy- The plane dived, screaming. The desert filled Kins- man's vision.
And then they zoomed upward. The yoke in front of Kinsman pulled smoothly back as his pressure suit hissed and clamped a pneumatic hold on his guts and legs to keep the blood from draining out of his head, to keep him alive and awake while the plane nosed up smoothly as an arrow, hurtling almost like a rocket, up, up, straight into the even emptier blue desert of the sky.
