The girl still didn't look at him. Her face under the transparent rainbow umbrella of the swooshing jet again was radiant with that strange smile which women preserve for their newly born after the pangs of birth or for their men when unseeing they lie in fever deliriums; the old, the knowing smile as she starts on the road to pain. Still smiling she gripped the controls with her firm, capable hands.
"From the first minute," she said, "we've been friends, Semper. Let's stay that way. This afternoon I made a fool of myself by telling you first to stay on and then to go away. I was a little unnerved; I'm sorry, Semper, it won't happen again. I, too, am living under a considerable strain. You won't leave, I can see that now; it's partly my fault and partly the perversity of the male. Promise me as a friend that you'll be careful, understand? Very, very careful in all matters concerning The Brain and above all: discreet. Will you do that?"
It buoyed Lee up no end.
"Of course, Oona," he said. "You know that I trust your judgment. You know that I think the world of you."
"That's wonderful," she exclaimed, "and now: look down; see the last act before the curtain falls."
Down in the canyon deeps the dream cities and castles which millions of years and the river built were changing contours and colors as the big fireball dived into the Sierra Mountains. And then the shadows raced like a ferocious hunt out of the deep, chasing away the last iridescence of that awesome beauty and drowning it in the rising tide of the night.
The girl had flicked on the dashboard lights; the radio started humming the tune of the Cephalon sound-beam, a deft turn of the wheel set the jetticopter upon its course. They were alone under the stars; all the other pleasure craft had returned before darkness from the fashionable sunset-cocktail hour over the Grand Canyon. Now it was Lee's arm which eased itself around the shoulder of the girl feeling with a delight in its every nerve the slight pressure by which she answered it.
"I'm going to kiss her now," he thought, "at last, at last!"
There was a buzz in the phone and Lee lost contact with her shoulder as suddenly she bent forward to take the receiver: