Why me? Kinsman wondered. Why is he buddying up to me?
"You're from Pennsylvania, aren't you?"
"Yessir. Philadelphia area ..."
"Main Line, I know. My people have relatives down there. I'm from the North Shore—Boston. You know, the cradle of liberty."
"Where the Cabots talk only to the Lodges."
"Right." Jakes nibbled at a chunk of thinly disguised soybean meal. "And neither of 'em talk to my folks. We were sort of the black sheep of the clan. My old man could build the yachts for them, all right, but they never let us sail 'em."
"Black sheep," Kinsman muttered. Welcome to the club, buddy. Try to imagine what a black sheep you become when you leave a Quaker family to join the Air Force.
"Did you really pick Colt for a partner?"
"Yes," Kinsman said, warily.
"I hear he's a troublemaker."
"He's a damned fine man."
"Maybe. I hear you're just as good a pilot. Colt's got a reputation, well . . ."
Kinsman could feel his back stiffening. "Sir," he said, "if I were in a tight situation there's no one I'd rather have beside me than Frank Colt. Present company included."
Jakes grinned at him. "Snotty little shavetail, eh? Yeah, that's what I heard. Well, you and Colt are two of a kind, all right. Full of piss and vinegar. I guess that's good, in a way. This isn't a game for marshmallows."
They finished their dinners quickly and stowed the dirty trays in the galley's cleaning unit, which Kinsman knew from 43 his inspection earlier that day was operating properly—after he had tightened a slightly leaky pipe fitting. Jakes swam back up to the flight deck, "officer country," and Kinsman was about to join Jill and Art Douglas in an argument about the Air Force's medical insurance plan for astronauts.
But Major Pierce and Captain Howard eased down the ladder and suddenly the mid-deck compartment was tense again.
"Mission control just sent us a change in schedule," Pierce said. "Meyers and Smith, you've got fifteen minutes before prelaunch inspection of Payload Number Two. Get rid of those trays and start suiting up for EVA. Captain Howard will brief you, starting now."
Howard was a dour, shriveled little man. Kinsman had never seen a crew cut manage to look messy before, but somehow Howard's did. He was gray-haired, old for a captain. Hell, he's old for a major or light colonel. Kinsman thought. But he must know his stuff.
Under Howard's direction, the O'Hara-Douglas team had operated the manipulator arm that had swung the mission's first payload—a small, laser-reflecting navigational satellite—out of the cargo bay and into orbit. And Captain Howard himself had gone EVA twice in the two days of the flight, once to check on a defunct observation satellite that had been orbited years earlier, and once to inspect a newly orbited Russian satellite.
Now Mutt and Jeff are going to go outside again while Frank and I sit around twiddling our thumbs, Kinsman grumbled to himself. They've already been EVA once!
