The rest of the flight was strictly routine. Jill and Kinsman did their jobs, speaking to each other only when they had to. Linda took a brief nap, then returned to snap a few last pictures. Finally they crawled back into the Manta, disengaged from the station, and started the long curving flight back to Earth.
Kinsman took a last look at the majestic beauty of the planet, serene and unique among the stars. Then they felt the surge of the rocket's retrofire and dipped into the atmo- sphere. Air heated beyond endurance blazed around them in a fiery grip as they buffeted through re-entry, their tiny craft a flaming falling star. Pressed down into his seat, his radio useless while the incandescent sheath of re-entry gases swathed them. Kinsman let the automatic controls bring them through the heat and pummeling turbulence, down to an altitude where the bat-winged craft smoothed out and began behaving like an airplane.
He took control and steered the Manta across the Pacific, checking the computer's programmed flight path against his actual position. Right on the money. The coast of California rose to meet him, brown and gray and white where the beaches met the ceaseless cadence of the surf. Gliding like a bird now. Kinsman brought the Manta back toward the dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base, back to the world of men, of weather, of cities and hierarchies and official regulations. He did this alone, silently, without the help of Jill or anyone else. He flew the craft with featherlight touches on the controls, from inside his buttoned-tight space suit, frowning at the 100 instrument panel displays through his helmet visor. But even in the heavy gloves, man and machine acted together like a single creature.
The voices from ground control rasped in his earphones. He saw the long concrete scar of the all-weather runway laid across the Mojave's rocky waste. The voices crackled with information about wind conditions, altitude checks, speed estimates. He knew, without looking, that a pair of jet fighters were trailing behind him, armed with cameras in place of guns. In case I crash, he knew.
They dipped through a thin layer of stratus clouds. Kinsman's eyes flickered to the radar screen slightly to his right. The Manta shuddered briefly as he lined it up with the long gray slash of the runway. He eased back slightly on the controls, hands and feet and mind working instinctively, flashed over scrubby brush and bare cracked lake bed, flared the craft onto the runway. The wheels touched down once, bounced them up momentarily, then touched again with a shrill screech. They rolled for almost a mile before stopping.
He leaned back in the seat and let out a deep breath. No matter how many flights, he still ended oozing sweat after the landing.
"Nice landing," Jill said.
"Thanks."
He turned off all the spacecraft's systems, hands moving automatically in response to long training. Then he slid the visor up, reached overhead, and popped the hatch open.
"End of the line," he said, feeling suddenly exhausted. "Everybody out."
He clambered up through the hatch, his own weight a sullen resentment to him, then helped Linda and finally Jill out of the Mania's cramped cockpit. They hopped down onto the concrete runway. Two vans, an ambulance, and two fire trucks were rolling from their standby stations at the end of the runway, nearly half a mile ahead.
Kinsman watched their blocky dark forms wavering in the heat haze. He slowly pulled off his helmet as he sat on the lip of the hatch. A helicopter thundered overhead, cutting across the clear blue sky, but when Kinsman looked up at it the glaring desert sunlight annoyed him, made him squint, started a headache back behind his eyes. 101
Jill began trudging away from the Manta, toward the approaching trucks. Kinsman clambered down to the con- crete and walked up to Linda. Her helmet was off, her sun-drenched hair shaking free. She carried a plastic bag of film rolls.
"I've been thinking," Kinsman said to her. "That busi- ness about having a lonely life. . . . You're not the only one. And it doesn't have to be that way. I can get to the East Coast, or . . ."
Her eyes widened with surprise. "Hey, who's taking things seriously now?" She looked calm again, cool, despite the baking heat.
"But I mean . . ."
"Chet, come on. We had our kicks. Now you can tell your pals about it and I can tell mine. We'll both get a lot of mileage out of it, won't we?"
"I never intended to tell anybody ..."
But she was already moving away from him, striding toward the men who were running up from the vans. One of them, a civilian, had a camera. He dropped to one knee and snapped a half-dozen pictures of Linda as she walked toward him, holding the plastic bag of film up in one hand and smiling broadly, like a fisherman who had just bagged a big one.
Kinsman stood there with his mouth open-
Jill came back to him. "Well? Did you get what you were after?"
"No," he said slowly. "I guess I didn't."
She started to put her hand out to him. "We never do, do we?"
Age 30
KINSMAN SNAPPED AWAKE when the phone went off. Before it could start a second ring he had the receiver off the cradle.
