"Uh-huh. Is it true this particular ship is supposed to carry a pilot this time?" "Where do they dig up all this old stuff?" I growled. "Hell, I knew all about that way way back this afternoon already." "Uh-huh, Is it also true they've asked a flyboy named Eddie Anders to take it up the first time? This flyboy named Eddie Anders being my Baby?" I got bored with the highball. I tossed it down the hole in my head and put the glass on a table. "You're psychic," I said. She shrugged. "Good looking, maybe. Nice shape, maybe. Peachy disposition, maybe. Psychic, unh-unhh. But who else would they ask to do it?" "A point," I conceded. "Fork in the road coming up," the Doll said. "Huh?" "Fork--look. It'll be voluntary, won't it? You don't have to do it? They won't think the worse of you if you refuse?" "_Huh?_" I gawked at her. "I'm scared, Baby." Her eyes weren't blue anymore. They'd been blue before but not now. Now they were violet balls that were laying me like somebody taking a last long look at the thing down inside the nice white satin before they close the cover on it for the final time. "Have a drink, Doll," I said. I got up, went to the liquor wagon. "Seltzer? There isn't any mixer left." "Asked you something, Baby." I took her glass over. I handed it to her. My own drink I poured down that same hole in my head. I said finally, "Nice smooth bourbon but I like scotch better." "They've already crashed four of this new type on tests, haven't they?" I nearly choked. _That_ was supposed to be the very pinnacle of the top secret stuff. But she was right of course. Four of the earlier models had cracked up. No pilots in them at the time--radio controlled. But jobs designed to carry pilots nevertheless. "Some pitchers have great big ugly-looking ears," I said. She didn't seem to mind. She said, "Or maybe I'm really psychic as you said. Or maybe my Dad's being Chief at Airtech has something to do with it." "Somebody oughta stitch a zipper across his big fat yap," I said. "And weld the damn thing shut." "He told only me," she said softly. "And then only because of you. You see, Baby, he isn't like us. He's got old fashioned notions you and I've got strings tied around each other already just because you gave me a ring." I stared at her. "Crazy, isn't it? He isn't sensible like us." "Can the gag lines, Doll," I said sourly. "The old bird's okay." And that fetched a few moments of silence in the room--thick pervading silence. A silence to be broken at any fractional second and heavy--supercharged--because of it. I said finally, "Somebody has to take it up. It might as well be me. And they've already asked me." "You could refuse, Baby." "Sure I could. It's voluntary. They don't horsewhip a guy into it."