There had been very little conversation. Ground crewmen had helped him into a G suit, hooked him up, explained the two switches he was permitted to touch, pointed out the ejection system which he was not permitted to touch except in obvious circumstances and climbed out. The pilot had, if anything, less to say.

“Can I ask who you are?” the pilot, a lieutenant colonel, said when they reached cruising altitude and the bone crushing acceleration had eased off.

“I’m an academic egghead,” Bill said, glorying in the view out the window. The sun was down in the west on the ground but they were still in sunlight at altitude. Despite that they were high enough that the sky was purple and he could see stars. It was as close as he’d ever been to space, the one place he’d wanted to go since he was a kid.

“Pull the other one,” the pilot said.

“No, really, they’re sending me down to look at this thing in Orlando. I’m a physicist.”

“I figured that they weren’t sending you to Disney World, but you don’t look like any academic I’ve ever seen.”

“You need to hang out at the Hooters in Huntsville more often.”

Bill had heard it before. If you had a Southern accent and looked like a track and field coach everyone assumed you were a jock. But at the level of physics which was his specialty, you could get as much “work” done working out, or mountain biking, or SCUBA diving, or rock climbing, as you could sitting in a darkened office with the door looked and your clothes off contemplating your navel. Which was what one academic of his acquaintance swore by. It was all in the head until it came time to sit down and start drawing equations, which if you’d done the head work in advance practically drew themselves. And if you grew up with a body that only required two hours of sleep a night, a mind like an adding machine and the energy level of a ferret on a pixie stick, you had to find some way to burn off the energy, physical and mental.