Kinsman wanted to let loose a wild cowboy's yell, but the weight on his chest made it hard even to breathe. Tenny said nothing, but the gleam in his devilishly dark eyes told Kinsman there was more to come. The afterburners were screeching now as the plane climbed higher, cleaving through the thinning air.

Kinsman grinned to himself as he realized what Tenny was going to do. Sure enough, the Major nosed the plane over again and suddenly Kinsman's arms floated up off his lap. His stomach seemed to be dropping away. He was falling, falling —yet strapped into his seat.

Weightlessness. Kinsman gulped once, twice. Despite everything his inner ear and stomach were telling him, he knew that he was not falling. He was floating. Free! Like a bird, like an angel. Free of gravity.

Tenny leveled the plane off and the feeling of normal weight returned. The Major eyed Kinsman craftily.

"Like the Vomit Comet," Kinsman said, grinning at him.

"You really like zero gee, dontcha?"

"It's great."

Tenny shook his head, a ponderous waddling with the bulky helmet. "You're the only guy in the whole group who didn't throw up once. Even Colt tossed his cookies a couple times. But not you. According to the reports."

"The reports weren't faked," Kinsman said.

Tenny grunted. "1 didn't think so. But I hadda see for myself."

He gave control of the plane back to Kinsman and they resumed their flight toward Vandenberg. 25

"Sir?" Kinsman asked. "What's Colonel Murdock like?"

"I never served under him before. Desk jockey, from what I hear."

"I don't see why they didn't put you in command. You're due for promotion to lieutenant colonel, aren't you?"

Tenny made a face that might have been either a smile or a scowl, "Due for promotion and getting promoted are two different things. Besides, there's two other majors who've been running programs for two other squads of trainees, same as me. So we get a light colonel to sit on top of the whole group. That's the Air Force way: solid brass, all the way up the shaft."

Kinsman laughed.

But Tenny grew more serious. "There's something else I wanted to talk to you about. Colt. None of you guys have gotten close to him ..."

"The black Napoleon? He's not easy to get close to."

"Maybe he needs a friend," said Tenny.

Kinsman thought of Frank Colt, the one night during training when the black man had joined the other guys in the squad for a game of pool. The intensity on Colt's face as he turned a friendly game into a gut-burning competition. How Colt had probed for the weakness in each of the other men; how he had finessed, angered, cajoled, or kidded each one of them into defeat.

"He's a loner," Kinsman said. "He's not looking for a friend."

"He's a black loner in an otherwise white outfit."

"That's got nothing to do with it."

"The hell it hasn't."

Kinsman started to reply, hesitated. There were a dozen arguments he could make, three dozen examples he could show of how Colt had deliberately rebuffed attempts at camaraderie. But one vision in Kinsman's mind kept his tongue silent: he recalled the squad's only black officer eating alone, day after day, night after night. He never tried to join the others at their tables in the mess hall, and no one ever sat down at his.