"Well, we had a lot of laughs, anyway, you big ape!" Sophia was saying to Charlie, when Roy Harder, the mailman with broken-down feet, shuffled up, puffing.
"One for you, Reynolds," he said. "Also one for you, Nelsen. They just came—ordinarily I wouldn't deliver them till tomorrow morning. But you see how it is."
A long, white envelope was in Frank Nelsen's hands. In its upper left-hand corner was engraved:
UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE
RECRUITING SECTION
WASHINGTON, D.C.
"Jeez, Frankie—Charlie—you made it—open 'em, quick!" Two-and-Two said.
Frank was about to do so. But everybody knew exactly what was inside such an envelope—the only thing that was ever so enclosed, unless you were already in the Force. An official summons to report, on such and such a date and such and such a place, for examination.
For a minute Frank Nelsen suffered the awful anguish of indecision over a joke of circumstance. Like most of the others, he had tried to get into the Force. He had given it up as hopeless. Now, when he was ready to move out on his own, the chance came. Exquisite irony.
Frank felt the lift of maybe being one of—well—the Chosen. To wear the red, black and silver rocket emblem, to use the finest equipment, to carry out dangerous missions, to exercise authority in space, and yet to be pampered, as those who make a mark in life are pampered.
"Que milagro!—holy cow!" Ramos breathed. "Charlie—Frankie—congratulations!"
Frank saw the awed faces around them. They were looking up to him and Charlie in a friendly way, but already he felt that he had kind of lost them by being a little luckier. Or was [p. 39] this all goof ball sentiment in his own mind, to make himself feel real modest?