Darrel tottered and leaned against the airlock as the girl smiled at him sadly, wistfully, and then went off slowly, walking—backwards!
Darrel shook his head. Backwards! The girl strode along with uncanny confidence, not looking where she was going, until she stopped about twenty yards away and sat down on the ground facing him.
Darrel sat down too.
Hallucinations! He was space-happy! It had finally happened. Caroming around in space did things to people, mostly psychological things. The system's sanitariums were full of old space dogs who had cracked under the strain. They had seen and endured too much. But Darrel Bond ... he was still young. He couldn't be cracking up now! Why he ... hell!
This was no hallucination! The fragrance of the black-haired girl's lips was still on his mouth. It was heady.
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
There! A thin streak of violet across the veins of his hand. Lipstick! It was unmistakable. A violet shade of lipstick. He put his tongue to the streak tentatively.
It was lipstick all right.
He rose to his feet and stared across the intervening space at the girl. She seemed to blend with the pale and rolling surrealist landscape of Neptune. His brain was reeling. This sort of thing just didn't happen. You land on an unexplored planet and, wham! a girl kisses you! No, despite the lipstick, it must be a dream.
And that walking backward. That settled it. People walked backward only in dreams.