"We'll let them know we're here," Kinsman said, "after they've worked up enough of a sweat. I'm not dying for anyone's joke—not even my own."
They waited while the immense panorama of the Earth flowed beneath them and the distant stern stars watched silently. They waited and they talked.
"I thought she split because we were down in Houston and Huntsville and she couldn't take it," Colt was saying. "White woman with a black husband—the pressure was on her a lot more than on me."
"I didn't think Houston was that prejudiced," said Kinsman. "And Huntsville's pretty cosmopolitan ..."
"Yeah, sure. Try it with my color, man. You stuck around the base all the time, or you went into town with some of the other guys. Go try to buy some flesh-colored Band- Aids, you wanna see how cosmopolitan this country is."
"Guess I really don't know much about it," Kinsman admitted.
"But now that I think back on it, we were having our troubles in Ohio, too. I'm not an easy man to live with."
"Who the hell is?"
Colt chuckled. "You are, man. You're supercool. Never saw anybody so much in charge of himself. Like a bucket of ice water."
Ice water? Me? "You're mistaking slow reflexes for self-control."
"Yeah, I bet. Is it true you're a Quaker?"
"Used to be," he answered automatically, trying to shut 63 out the image of his father. "When I was a kid." Change the subject! "I was when that damned orbiter started moving away from us. A real Quaker."
With a laugh, Colt asked, "How come you ain't married? Good-looking, rich . . ."
"Too busy having fun. Flying, training for this . . . I've got no time for marriage. Besides, I like women too much to marry one of them."
"You wanna get laid but you don't wanna get screwed."
"Something like that. To quote the Bard, there's lots of chicks in the world."
"Yeah. Can't concentrate on a career and marriage at the same time. Leastwise, I can't."
"Not if you want to be really good at either one," Kinsman agreed. Oh, we are being so wise. And not looking at our watches. Cool, man. Supercool. But out beyond the curving bulk of the looming tanks the sky was empty except for the solemn stars.
"I don't just wanna be good," Colt was saying. "I got to be the best. I got to show these honkies that a black man is better than they are."
"You're not going to win many friends that way,"
