"No, you don't understand," she said earnestly. Kins- man saw the intensity in her eyes, the devotion. Is she really worried that much about me? he wondered. Does she really care so much? And then a truly staggering thought hit him. My father! Is he worried about me? Is he frightened for my sake?
"Come with us, Chet," Diane was pleading. "Stand with us against the Power Structure. Just for one hour."
"In my uniform? Your friends would trash me."
"No, they won't. The uniform will be great! It'd make a terrific impact for somebody in uniform to show up with us! We've been trying to get some of the Vietnam vets to show themselves in uniform."
"I can't," Kinsman said. "I've got to go to the funeral, and then catch a ride back to the Academy."
"That's more important than freedom? More important than justice?"
He had no answer.
"Chet . . . please. For me. If you don't want to do it for yourself, or for the people, then do it for me. Please."
He looked away from her and glanced around the 18 shabby, unkempt room. At the stained sink. The faded wallpaper. The water bed, with its roiled sheet trailing onto the floor.
He thought of the Academy. The cold gray mountains and ranks of uniforms marching mechanically across the frozen parade ground. The starkly functional classrooms, the remorselessly efficient architecture devoid of all individual expression.
And he thought of his father: cold, implacable—was it pride and anger that moved him, or fear?
Then he turned back, looked past the earnest young woman across the table from him, and saw the sky once again. A pale ghost of a Moon was grinning lopsidedly at him.
"I can't go with you," he said quietly, finally. "Some- body's got to make sure that the nation's defended while you're out there demonstrating for your rights."
For a moment Diane said nothing. Then, "You're trying to make a joke out of something that's deadly serious."
"I'm being serious," he said. "You'll have plenty of demonstrators out there. Somebody's got to pay attention to the business of protecting you while you're exercising your freedoms."
"It's our own government that we need protection from!"
"You've got it. You just have to exercise it a little more carefully. I'd rather be flying. There aren't so many of us up there."
Diane shook her head. "You're hopeless."
He shrugged.
'T was going to let you stay here ... if you wanted to quit the Air Force."
