The trumpet stopped suddenly. Then he knew it had been for him.
A brief hush--then thunder came from the blast-station two miles to the west. First the low reverberation, rattling the windows, then the rising growl as the sleek beast knifed skyward on a column of blue-white h.e.l.l.
It grew and grew until it drowned the distant traffic sounds and dominated the silence outside.
_Quit crying, you old fool, you maudlin a.s.s ..._
"My boots," he whispered, "my boots ... please ..."
"You"ve got them on, Donny."
He sank quietly then. He closed his eyes and let his heart go up with the beast, and he sank into the gravity padding of the blastroom, and Caid was with him, and Oley. And when Ronald Keith, III, instructed the orchestra to play Blastroom Man, after the beast"s rumble had waned, Old Donegal was on his last moon-run, and he was grinning. He"d had a good day.
Martha went to the window to stare out at the thin black trail that curled starward above the blast-station through the twilight sky. Guests on the terrace were watching it too.
The doorbell rang. That would be Ken, too late. She closed the window against the chill breeze, and went back to the bed. The boots, the heavy, clumsy boots--they clung to the bedframe, with his feet half out of them. She took them off gently and set them out of company"s sight.
Then she went to answer the door.