The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fly By Night, by Arthur Dekker Savage

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Title: Fly By Night

Author: Arthur Dekker Savage

Illustrator: Ed Emsh

Release Date: June 7, 2010 [EBook #32734]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FLY by NIGHT

By Arthur Dekker Savage

Illustrated by Ed Emsh

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science
Fiction May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _A young man and a young woman alone on the first
over-the-moon ship. The world cheered them as the most romantic
adventurers in all history. Do-gooders decried them as immoral stunters.
Gaunt, serious militarists pronounced them part of the most crucial
experiment ever undertaken...._]

The general introduced them in the ship's shadow, a trim lieutenant, a
clean-cut major. "You probably already think of each other as Carol and
Ken. At any rate, there are no two people in the world who have heard as
much about each other without previously meeting."

She offered her hand and he took it, held it for a long moment while
their eyes locked. "Hello, Carol," he said warmly. "I'd have known you
from your pictures." And he realized as never before what a poor
substitute were the hoarded scraps of paper.

"Hello--Ken." A smile made her face radiant. "I've sort of studied your
pictures too."

Ken turned his eyes to the crowd--a roaring, cheering multitude
surrounding the poised rocket ship here on the California desert in this
zero hour. To certain harried physicists and engineers, it was a moment
promising paramount achievement. To romanticists of 1966, watching their
video screens avidly, it was fulfillment of their most sensual dreams: a
beautiful girl being given wholly and unreservedly to a handsome young
man; the flight around the moon was merely an added fillip. To a few
gaunt military psycholog