an. A
brunette with vivid blue eyes came into view.

"A priority to Dubbinville, Wisconsin, first trip possible," Doak said
and gave her Security's code number.

"Dubbinville?" she said and frowned. She consulted a station box out
of his view and looked up again. "You'll have to take surface
transportation from Milwaukee. It's only about twenty miles from there
in Waukesha County."

"Good enough. And when's the first to Milwaukee?"

"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.

Doak relaxed and for the first time since the Chief's summons he
wasn't thinking of June. He was thinking of Man, from the cave to
Venus, from the wheel to free flight. And something out of his
childhood memory came to mind.

_Studious let me sit_
_And hold high converse with the mighty dead_

Where had he heard that? Some Scotch poet, it must have been, for his
mother recited only the Scotch poets. _Studious let me sit_--in front
of a video set, to watch the wrestling?

_And hold high converse with the mighty dead_--not in this world where
there was only tomorrow, not in this world of no books. There were no
writers on television--they had no need to attract an audience.