He scuffled his feet. "Okay mom. Okay then. Okay."
Half an hour later he was legging it across the fields, keeping trees and shrubs between himself and the cottage, and three quarters of an hour later he was handing a crescent wrench to Murph Vanderpool, who had found a loose bolt in the rig of the doube-slung pilot's cradle. Weeding was forgotten. His nostrils were full of hexadrine, his eyes were full of dials and levers and words like "parsecs" and "off ram—on ram," and his head was full of dreams.
The Hester. Ever so slightly scored along her sides with the nailhead meteorites she had brushed rushingly aside. An imperceptible waver in her hull where a Panasia heat shell had nearly downed her. Glamorous witch of space. Cleopatra's needle of outer gulfs.
He knew about her. The Federation had won the war when they began casting rockets of the new, light, tough glass, mass-producing swarms to oust Panasia in the battles fought in the black deeps beyond the bounds of earth with weapons that would have destroyed both sides if used on the home planet. And after the war thousands of the rockets had been sold, and many had gone to the young men like Murph whom the war had made into spacemen before they had a chance at any other business and who did not want now, ever, to be anything but spacemen, rocketmen. They went about the country selling rocket rides. Tradition had given them a name from another postwar epoch: barnstormers.
Pete handed the wrench to the barnstormer. "Which are the dark-light controls?"
"Holy tubes," grinned Murph, pushing the black hair from his eyes, "If you weren't such a handy kid you'd be a nuisance. Here." He pushed a button, and the dark hull grew clear, letting in the sunlight. Murph pushed deeper and the hull darkened. He twirled and a long, clear porthole appeared along the rows of seats.
"Polaroid can keep radion or light—sunlight can be enough to kill you. Or you can clear a place to look through."
"Can I work it, huh?"
"Just once."