They buzzed across the Jersey Flats. He brought the skycab down on a flat slant landing that arrowed directly in and touched ground and skidded to a stop with all landing-gear brakes locked. They slid to within a few yards of the spacecraft.
Only then did the junior spaceman pause to speak to his passenger: "Sorry, but I'm in a jam. So long!"
He leaped out of the skycab, raced along the ground, went up the ladder on a dead run, flipped into the spacelock, snapped the "Close" switch as he passed the inner portal—and then, without waiting for any pre-flight checkout, Junior Spaceman Howard Reed resigned from the Space Force by slamming his controls into an emergency and unauthorized flight program that took him up and out of Earth's atmosphere in barely more than nothing flat.
When he was free and clear, he relaxed in his pilot's seat, swiveled it around ... and boggled, bug-eyed, at his passenger.
Gloria Hanford, still trim and shipshape in her white sharkskin suit, still carrying the overnight bag in her formal-for-travelling, white-gloved hand, sat in the spare seat.
She said: "I'm sorry about this, too, but it so happens that I'm also in a jam. Where do we go from here, Spaceman?"
He eyed her. "Where do you want to go?"
Gloria chuckled in a throaty voice. "Away," she said.
"Can you cook?" he demanded abruptly.
"Yes—why?"