Feeling well? Yes, of course. Except for the—usual sickness. But that's so very normal.... Her numb lips moved. "I'm fine," she said.
Miss Eagen (which, her neat lapel button attested, was her name) made a penciled frown as lovely as her machined smile. "Some day," she told Marcia, "we won't have to ask the passengers if they're well. It's so easy to come aboard on someone else's validation, and people don't seem to realize how dangerous that is."
As Miss Eagen moved to the next seat, Marcia shrank into a small huddle, fumbling with the card until it was crammed shapeless into her purse. Then from the depths of her guilt came rebellion. It was going to be all right. She was doing the biggest thing she'd ever done, and Jack would rise to the occasion, and it would be all right.
It had to be all right....
After this—if this didn't work—there just would be nothing else she could do. She wasn't a scheming woman. No one would ever know how difficult it had been for her to think up the whole plan, to find Nellie Foster (someone Jack had never met) and to persuade Nellie to register for the trip and take the physical for her. She'd had to lie to Nellie, to make Nellie think she was brave and adventurous, and that she was just doing it to surprise Jack.
Oh, he'd be surprised, all right.
The flash walls on the field were being raised to keep the blow-by from the ship's jets from searing the administration building and the area beyond. Marcia realized with crushing suddenness that the ship was about to blast off in seconds. She half-rose, then sank back, biting her lip. Silly ... Jack had said that—her fear of space was silly. He'd said it during the quarrel, and he'd roared at her, "And that's why you want me to come back—ground myself, be an Earth-lubber—so I can spare you the anguish of sitting home wondering if I'll come back alive!"
And then he'd been sorry he'd shouted, and he sat by her, taking her chin in his hand. "Marcia, Marcia," he'd said gently, "you're so silly! It's been nineteen whole years since your father died in the explosion of a Moon-rocket. Rocket motors just don't explode any more, honey! Ships travel to the Moon and back on iron-clad, mathematical orbits that are figured before the ship puffs a jet—"
"The Elsinore?" She'd said it viciously, to taunt him, and something in her had been pleased at the dull flush that rose to his face. Everyone knew about the Elsinore, the 500-foot Moon-ferry that almost missed the Moon.