'What are you, Greta Garbo?'
'I'm serious.'
'You need me to look out for you. You can't make it on your own. Hell, you can't even remember how old you are.'
Pete had a desperate look in his eyes, but Luke was unmoved. 'I appreciate your concern, but you're not helping me find out who I am.'
After a moment Pete shrugged. 'You got a right' He turned to the door again. 'See you around, maybe.'
'Maybe.'
Pete went out. Luke shook Pastor Lonegan's hand. 'Thank you for everything,' he said.
'I hope you find what you're looking for,' said the pastor.
Luke went up the stairs and out into the street. Pete was on the next block, speaking to a man in a green gabardine raincoat with a matching cap - begging the price of a beer, Luke guessed. He walked in the opposite direction and turned around the first corner.
It was still dark, Luke's feet were cold, and he realized he was not wearing socks under his boots. As he hurried on, a light flurry of snow fell. After a few minutes, he eased his pace. He had no reason to rush. It made no difference whether he walked fast or slow. He stopped, and took shelter in a doorway. , He had nowhere to go.
.
6 A. M.
The rocket is surrounded on three sides by a service gantry that holds it in a steel embrace. The gantry, actually a converted oilfield derrick, is mounted on two sets of wheels that run on wide-gauge rails. The entire service structure, bigger than a town house, will be rolled back three hundred feet before the launch.
Elspeth woke up worrying about Luke.
She lay in bed for a few moments, her heart heavy with concern for the man she loved. Then she switched on the bedside lamp and sat upright Her motel room was decorated with a space-programme theme. The floor lamp was shaped like a rocket, and the pictures on the walls showed planets, crescent moons and orbital paths in a wildly unrealistic night sky. The Starlite was one of a cluster of new motels that had sprouted among the sand dunes in the area of Cocoa Beach, Florida, eight miles south of Cape Canaveral, to accommodate the influx of visitors. The decorator had obviously thought the outer-space theme appropriate, but it made Elspeth feel as if she were borrowing the bedroom of a ten-year-old boy.
She picked up the bedside phone and dialed Anthony Carroll's office in Washington, D. C. At the other end, the phone rang unanswered. She tried his home number with the same result. Had something gone wrong? She felt sick with fear. She told herself that Anthony must be on his way to the office. She would call again in half an hour. It could not take him longer than thirty minutes to drive to work.
As she showered, she thought about Luke and Anthony when she had first known them. They were at Harvard when she was at Radcliffe, before the war. The boys were in the Harvard glee Club: Luke had a nice baritone voice and Anthony a wonderful tenor. Elspeth had been the conductor of the Radcliffe Choral Society and had organized a joint concert with the Glee Club.
Best friends, Luke and Anthony had made an odd couple. Both were tall and athletic, but there the resemblance ended. The Radcliffe girls had called them Beauty and the Beast Luke was Beauty, with his wavy black hair and elegant clothes. Anthony was not handsome, with his big nose and long chin, and he always looked as if he were wearing someone else's suit, but girls were attracted to his energy and enthusiasm.
Elspeth showered quickly. In her bathrobe, she sat at the dressing table to do her make-up. She put her wristwatch beside the eyeliner so that she would know when thirty minutes was up.
She had been sitting at a dressing table wearing a bathrobe the first time she ever spoke to Luke. It was during a panty raid. A group of Harvard boys, some drunk, had climbed into the dormitory building through; a ground-floor window late one evening. Now, almost twenty years later, it seemed incredible to her that she and the other girls had feared nothing worse than having their underwear stolen. Had the world been more innocent then?
By chance, Luke had come to her room. He was a math major, like her. Although he was wearing a mask, she recognized his clothes, a pale grey 'Irish tweed jacket with a red spotted cotton handkerchief in the breast pocket Once alone with her, Luke had seemed embarrassed, as if it had just occurred to him that what he was doing was foolish. She had smiled, pointed to the closet, and said: 'Top drawer.' He had taken a pair of pretty white panties with a lace edging, and Elspeth felt a pang of regret - they had been expensive. But the next day he asked her for a date.
She tried to concentrate on her make-up. The job was more difficult than usual this morning, because she had slept badly. Foundation smoothed her cheeks and salmon-pink lipstick brightened her mouth. She had a math degree from Radcliffe, but still she was expected to look like a mannequin at work.
She brushed her hair. It was reddish brown, and cut in the fashionable style: chin-length and turned under at the back. She dressed quickly in a sleeveless shirtwaist dress of green-and-tan striped cotton with a wide dark brown patent-leather belt Twenty-nine minutes had elapsed since she had tried to call Anthony.
To pass the last minute, she thought about the number 29. It was a prime number - it could not be divided by any number except itself and 1 - but otherwise it was not very interesting. The only unusual thing about it was that 29 plus 2x2 was a prime number for every value of x up to 28. She calculated the series in her head: 29, 31, 37, 47, 61, 79, 101, 127 ...
She picked up the phone and dialed Anthony's office again.
There was no reply.
.
1941
Elspeth Twomey fell in love with Luke the first time he kissed her.
Most Harvard boys had no idea how to kiss. They either bruised your lips with a brutal smackeroo, or opened their mouths so wide you felt like a dentist. When Luke kissed her, at five minutes to midnight in the shadows of the Radcliffe Dormitory Quad, he was passionate yet tender. His lips moved all the time, not just on her mouth but on her cheeks and her eyelids and her throat The tip of his tongue probed gently between her lips, politely asking permission to come in, and she did not even pretend to hesitate. Afterwards, sitting in her room, she had looked into the mirror and whispered to her reflection: 'I think I love him.'
That had been six months ago, and the feeling had grown stronger since. Now she was seeing Luke almost every day. They were both in their senior year. Every day they either met for lunch or studied together for a couple of hours. Weekends they spent almost all their time together.
It was not uncommon for Radcliffe girls to get engaged in their final year, to a Harvard boy or a young professor. They would marry in the summer, go on a long honeymoon, then move into an apartment when they returned. They would start work, and a year or so later have their first baby.
But Luke had never spoken about marriage.
She looked at him now, sitting in a booth at the back of Flanagan's bar, arguing with Bern Rothsten, a tall graduate student with a bushy black moustache and a hard-bitten look. Luke's dark hair kept falling forward over his eyes, and he pushed it back with his left hand, a familiar gesture. When he was older, and had a responsible job, he would put goop on his hair to make it stay in place, and then he would not be quite so sexy, she thought Bern was a communist, like many Harvard students and professors. 'Your father's a banker,' he said to Luke with disdain. You'll be a banker, too. Of course you think capitalism is great'
Elspeth saw a flush rise at Luke's throat. His father had recently been featured in a Time magazine article as one of ten men who had become millionaires since the Depression. However, she guessed he was blushing not because he was a rich kid, but because he was fond of his family, and resented the implied criticism of his father. She felt angry for him, and said indignantly: 'We don't judge people by their parents, Bern!'
Luke said: 'Anyway, banking is an honourable job. Bankers help people to start businesses and provide employment'
'like they did in 1929.'
'They make mistakes. Sometimes they help the wrong people. Soldiers make mistakes - they shoot the wrong people - but I don't accuse you of being a murderer.'
It was Bern's turn to look wounded. He had fought in the Spanish Civil War - he was older than the rest of
