We spent my final night in New York before leaving for the Cape at Sweets, a real old fashioned seafood house down on Fulton street. After the obligatory oysters, we had broiled bluefish, and otherwise lived it up. They serve a good piece of apple pie, and we had that with our coffee.
"Are you scared?" Sylvia asked me.
"Of what?" I lied innocently.
"Of being out in space—just floating around?"
"Yes," I told her honestly. "I'm scared to death. What if I have a queasy stomach? They say a good half of the men who have been in orbit have chucked up or gotten dizzy or something. What if they go to all this trouble and I get spacesick?"
"What if you drift away and can't get back?" she said. "It isn't like swimming back to shore."
"There's always a way," I said, my stomach tightening as I thought of what she said.
That was the night she kissed me good night. It wasn't much of a kiss, because we were standing in the lobby of her apartment house, and she wasn't going to invite me up, because she never did. But she said: "Hurry back."
"Just you know it, Shouff," I said, bitter inside.
I'd have been a lot more bitter if I had known what was in store for me at the Cape. COMCORP flew me down in one of our private prop-jets, with only Paul Cleary for company. He introduced me to the brass, and we sat through a couple conferences while the idea was spelled out to a group of sure-enough spacemen. Then they turned that mob loose on me.