es you willing to wait
for the crane to lift you from your seat. All at once I almost wanted
to be back in space again, where I didn't weigh anything at all.
Almost.

* * * * *

They flew us back to Canaveral for the de-briefing, both asleep. The
whole mob was there to greet us, Paul Cleary, Fred Stone, and even
Sylvia. They met us at the plane and Sylvia was the first to grab me
as I came down the steps.

"Mike!" she squealed. "Are you all right?"

"Better now," I said, kind of untangling from her. "How did you manage
this?" I looked up. "Hi, Paul," I said to his sleepy old grin, and
knew how.

"Dinner tonight?" she insisted.

"I don't know," I said, looking over at Paul. "I think there's a
de-briefing or something before they turn me loose."

"Don't be silly," Sylvia said. "It's not as if you were an astronaut
or something."

I was back on the ground, all right.

Well, there was sort of a de-briefing. Cleary and Stone got me alone
for a moment in somebody's office.

"Well, Mike," Paul said, "that was a great performance. What was the
trouble up there?"

I laughed at both of them. "Go jump in the lake," I said. "I'm out of
the middle."

"What do you mean, Mike?" Doc Stone asked, holding his young-man's
pipe at arm's length.

"It wasn't design--because the solenoid worked. And it wasn't
installation. It was materials." I told them about the no-good
insulation.

"Lucky it's only used in a couple points," Paul said, scowling. "I
guess any other point where it broke up wasn't as critical in
dimension and no short resulted."

"Not yet," I grinned. "It may. And I couldn't care less."

"You're a big winner, then, Mike," Paul grinned. "Fred and I have kind
of made up anyway, and you're in solid with Sylvia."

"Not with that noise," I said. "No dame was worth that ride. Let Sid
have her."

* * * * *

End of Project Gutenberg's The Trouble with Telstar, by John Berryman

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