Card Sharks

had really wanted was to save herself from becoming a farm wife. It was enough for her to have a child and be in the big city.

I don't know that I was ever in love with Deborah. I don't know that she was ever really in love with me. But, all in all, we had more good times than bad. Until the day I drove into Muroc.

***

'He likes you.' Those were Margaret's first words to me. (I was never able to call her Peggy; that was one thing that separated me from the others.)

'Who?'

'Rowe.'

'We just met.'

'He knows all about you, or you wouldn't be here.'

'That doesn't mean he likes me.'

'He doesn't give tours of the X-11 to everyone he hires.' She reached out and stroked the leading edge of the spacecraft, her red nails and pale fingers in stark contrast to the black titanium.

'You're keeping track.'

'I keep my eyes open. Part of my job.'

'Which is?'

'Flight nurse.'

'I think I'm going to faint.'

'Don't do it now. She walked past me, so close that I caught a wisp of her perfume. 'I'm off-duty.'

The big question around the office, I learned later that day, concerned the pilot who would be selected for the first X-11 launch. All four candidates had been given the same training and told they would all remain at some mental and physical peak.

In fact, the strain was driving them crazy. I got my first hint the next morning, when I went through suiting with Enloe and Guinan prior to a test flight. (Sampson and Dearborn had done theirs the day before I arrived.)

I later learned that it was Enloe who insisted on my presence: he had very firm ideas about who he wanted making decisions involving his life or death. He wanted to size me up.

I didn't know whether to admire Enloe, or write him off as some kind of obsessive freak. He made this run- through as realistic as possible, right down to paying forty cents for his low-residue breakfast from the officer's club. (I asked one of the chase pilots, a Major Meadows, why the program didn't pay for breakfast. He just stared at me and said, 'Tradition.' By which he meant, I realized, 'superstition.')

The surgeon, Dr. Lawrence, had checked Enloe out prior to breakfast. So it was just Enloe, Guan, Meadows and me. The moment the coffee had been cleared away, Enloe put on his long-johns and flight helmet. (He had to pre-breathe for two hours, since the X-11A was pressurized with pure oxygen at five pounds per square inch, much less than sea level.)

While the suit techs periodically checked Enloe's helmet, I did the weather briefing and Meadows went over the flight conditions — ground track, call signs, abort points. Enloe absorbed it all without a trace of emotion. He was like an actor doing Hamlet, and it was impossible to tell whether for the fourth — or four hundredth — time.

Guinan was more of a mystery, eating a double breakfast while seemingly paying absolutely no attention to what was going on. He could have been some truck driver having ham and eggs between oil changes.

By now a second chase pilot, Captain Grissom, had joined us. He and Meadows donned regular flight suits, then helped Guinan with what looked like a brand new one, right out of its paper bag. I didn't learn why until later.

Then it was into the pressure suit for Enloe: lacing the heavy boots, connecting the pressure hoses and electrical leads. 'I want you to ride in the tank this morning.'

'I'm supposed to be in flight control.'

'They'll survive without you for one more day.'

I wouldn't have dared to ask, but Enloe, as senior test pilot, had almost as much clout as Rowe himself. I stepped out the back door to use a phone, got through to Rowe and explained Enloe's request. Rowe's answer was brief: 'Do as he says.'

Outside the suiting room I saw two very strange sights:

First was Woody Enloe … all buttoned up in his orange pressure suit … bowing his head in prayer. Then lifting off the ground … hovering briefly … flying, one arm extended like Black Eagle, toward the flight line.

Enloe was an ace.

Second, in the hallway, just inside the door, was Casey Guinan … passionately kissing Margaret Durand. I almost ran into them. Guinan didn't even look at me. He merely patted Margaret on the behind and went out. Margaret's glance met mine.

'Everyone likes me, Thayer.'

Guinan's tank — I never heard the NACA-modified KC-135 called anything else — was already in flight … orbiting in a racetrack pattern, when Enloe took off, the stubby wings of the X-11A biting the desert air. I barely paid attention, so appalled was I at the tank's cockpit.

The controls had been specially modified so that there were almost no displays … just open panels. I could only think of them as wounds. Gone were the traditional pilot's chairs — gone, for that matter, was the co-pilot. In place was a couch of sorts.

And squatting on that couch was what was left of Guinan … he had literally flowed into the controls. His head was pressed up to the windshield, one arm was wrapped around the control yoke, the other splayed across the throttles. Mercifully, I couldn't quite see what had happened to his lower torso and legs. His flight suit had exploded.

Guinan was an ace, too.

I tried to put it out of my mind, concentrating instead on listening to Jack Ridley, the navigator sitting next to me. He noticed my alarm. 'Don't worry, Ed. I've got backup controls, if anything happens to Casey. But he actually gets into the hydraulics. Told me once he could feel the breeze on the wings.'

'But he's an ace! Is that even legal?'

Ridley just smiled.

We weren't able to observe the climbout to altitude. My imagination might have failed me where Guinan was concerned, but one thing I could imagine was the shattering roar of the 11A's Pratt and Whitney … a big brute designed only for one thing: thrust. To hell with fuel efficiency.

Enloe took the 11A off runway 22 and headed straight toward Death Valley. He would circle back and intercept us at 31,000 feet, in the heart of the Tomlin Test Range. I glanced through some of Ridley's charts and noticed that the rendezvous would take place while we were almost directly over over the concrete hangar where the Takisian ship Baby was entombed.

I was plugged in throughout our takeoff and Enloe's, noting the sequence of test events on my kneepad. As rendezvous approached, Ridley indicated I was to go to the boom station in the rear of the tanker.

I had expected the tank to be cramped with extra insulating equipment — it wasn't just carrying room temperature jet fuel, as designed, but a liquid oxygen slurry that had to be kept at minus 400 degrees. In fact, there were tons of additional equipment, in addition to special pumps and a bigger boom. But there was still room to move around: Guinan's tank only had to refuel one relatively small spacecraft, not a dozen jet fighters.

Flopping onto the observer's couch, one of three at the boom station, I tried to keep out of the way as Sergeant Vidrine, the boomer — who must have been a joker, since he had three arms — dumped a few pounds of LOX and kerosene through the twin nozzles, clearing them as the 11A crawled up behind us. Then the boomer and Enloe began talking.

My briefing had told me that this was to be a full-load refueling, with Enloe dropping away to fire the 11A's rocket motor for twenty seconds … enough to test the system and, incidentally, to propel him higher than any human had ever flown.

Enloe and the X-11A approached … the boom was toggled into place … the fuel dumped in less than four