Fly By Night

A young man and a young woman alone on the first over-the-moon ship. The world cheered them as the most romantic adventurers in all history. Do-gooders decried them as immoral stunters. Gaunt, serious militarists pronounced them part of the most crucial experiment ever undertaken....
The general introduced them in the ship's shadow, a trim lieutenant, a clean-cut major. You probably already think of each other as Carol and Ken. At any rate, there are no two people in the world who have heard as much about each other without previously meeting.
She offered her hand and he took it, held it for a long moment while their eyes locked. Hello, Carol, he said warmly. I'd have known you from your pictures. And he realized as never before what a poor substitute were the hoarded scraps of paper.
Hello—Ken. A smile made her face radiant. I've sort of studied your pictures too.
Ken turned his eyes to the crowd—a roaring, cheering multitude surrounding the poised rocket ship here on the California desert in this zero hour. To certain harried physicists and engineers, it was a moment promising paramount achievement. To romanticists of 1966, watching their video screens avidly, it was fulfillment of their most sensual dreams: a beautiful girl being given wholly and unreservedly to a handsome young man; the flight around the moon was merely an added fillip. To a few gaunt military psychologists it was the end of a long nightmare of protests by women's clubs, demonstrations by national female societies and actual attempts at murder by fanatical blue-noses; and a mere beginning of the most crucial experiment ever undertaken—which had to be a success.
Suddenly Ken was angry at the knowing looks from the throng's nearest ranks. While the general continued his prepared speech into the mike, focus of the hollow, hungry eyes of the video cameras, Ken pulled Carol to his side and held her with an arm about her waist, glaring when the crowd murmured and the cameras swung their way again. He had not questioned the actions of the military, of the world, before. But now—a public spectacle—