Norris lay on his cot, staring into the dark. He was thinking of the things Weyman and Crawley had just said, of their divergent reactions to the things he had said to them, and of Billy. He couldn’t sleep. Whether it was the heat or grief at the loss of his friend he did not know. He rather thought it must be the heat, because he had lost many friends in his time, and grieved, and slept for all his grieving. It would be cooler on the open airdrome. He decided to go out and have a smoke. He slipped into a soft white shirt, a pair of khaki slacks, and tennis slippers, and left the hut.
A great moon silvered the silent hangars and the sweep of the close-cropped grass across the broad field as Norris strolled with a cigarette in his lips. He was glad he had come out. It was cooler.
A sentry stopped on his beat and challenged sharply.
“Officer of the post,” said Norris and continued his stroll.
He came to the end of the hangar line. Beyond was the pilotage hut with the flaccid landing sock drooping at its staff by the door. Outside the last hangar stood an empty gasoline drum beside a girder. Norris sat down on the drum and leaned against the girder.
He had not thought it would be so cool out here. Decidedly this was pleasanter than the clammy sheets inside the torrid hut. He closed his eyes contentedly. His cigarette dropped to the ground and went out.
A little noise startled him. He must have been dozing. He opened his eyes to situate the noise. Somehow it sounded like a kiss. Then in wonderment he stared toward the near-by hut where the sock was stirring just a little in a vagrant draft.
Somebody was standing there in the moon-cast shadow. Somebody was moving. Not a sentry. A sentry would not move like that. Then Norris saw that there were two people in the shadow, not one. They walked together. At the edge of the shadow they paused. And he heard that little noise again, the noise that had startled him. It was such a noise as tokens the parting of close-pressed lips.
The two at the edge of the shadow stepped a little apart. They emerged reluctantly into the silver light beyond. Then, so close they passed that Norris might have reached a hand and touched them, Billy Cobb and Jennie Brent walked for the last time along the row of hangars and disappeared together, vanishing into the moon mist as a silver ship might fade into a cloud.
The moon, looking down, saw a sentry pacing the hangar line. The only other life in sight from end to end of Langstrom Field was a man in khaki slacks, a white shirt, and tennis slippers, perched on a gas drum, his head thrown back against a girder, who slept with a smile on his face.