"At nineteen hundred, ramp eighty-seven. Kindly pick up your ticket at Booth sixty-two." The screen went blank.
The ticket wasn't really though the name had persisted. The 'ticket' was a coin. Doak looked in his refrigerator and there was nothing worthwhile in there. He'd eat at the airport.
He looked at the phone and decided against it. He went into the bedroom and threw some shirts and socks and a pair of clean pajamas into his durapelt bag.
Dubbinville—and June out looking around. What a lousy deal!
II
The great ship lay sleekly quiet under the slanting sun, the passengers like ants measured against its giant hull. Clink, clink, clink went the coins into the counting box, the light over each seat going on with the clink of the coin.
Then they were seated, the lights all on, and the tractor was pulling the giant to the channelled runway, guarded by the blast walls.
Milwaukee, here I come.
The whirr of the rolling wheels, the reverberations from the blast walls, a crescendo of sound, and they were free of earth. An accelerating, effortless flight, a faint tremor as they passed the sonic barrier, then no sensory impressions at all.
Flight as free as the wind's passage but more silent. Through the visacrys windows a blur of blue-green. Speed without strain, power without tumult.