Having few tall tales to spellbind audiences with when they swooped back down on Home Base after their missions, the hype-pilots got around it by bragging up Terra itself, and how at least you could always depend upon good old Earth to come up with something to relax this Warp-Weary generation!
"Something, for example, such as we now hold in our hand, brothers!" Lance could hear them now. "Namely, one of these superbly-programmed cocktails, as only Casey can turn out."
(Casey was the Officers Club barkeep and much-beribboned mixologist.)
"A real 'Casey Special'—look at its pristine beauty! What better consolation can a man ask, for not having gotten to land at the apogee point of his orbit?"
"Besides"—this usually came out after two or three more tongue-loosening toasts had been quaffed to the beasts of Headquarters—"what's so blasted special about landing on some God-forsaken rock out there?
"Hell's bells! Earth is a planet too, isn't it? And when you've been cooped up in a parsec-gobbling pot for a very, very long two weeks, any planet looming in your viewscope cries to be set down upon. Your own prosaic hunk of mud is good as any!"
Lance Cooper's rambling thoughts broke off their aimless tracking to swing one hundred and eighty degrees in midspace and dart right back to Earth.
Here at this very moment—and less than a hundred yards away—came Terra's foremost attraction for him. His hammering heartbeat would have placed him on the "grounded" list immediately, had there been a medico with a stethoscope hanging about to detect it.
The attraction's name was Carolyn Sagen, and she was hurrying directly across the concrete apron.