[10] 44 enter: The Ares Seven were all grinning like fools. Cliff Raddison held one hand out in the aisle, palm up. That took strength at 2.4 gees. Across the aisle, Lee Welles took up the challenge, reached out and slapped Raddison’s palm. Then they got their arms back as the gee forces continued to mount.

39 enter: I saw four globular objects in a line. Two were very dark, the other two a much lighter brown.

What the hell? Camera 39 was supposed to be aft-looking, mounted on the ship’s tail. It was one of my favorite angles, looking back to see light-spattered Florida shrink and vanish over the horizon…

“Dak!” I shouted. “You bastard!”

I jumped down from the high tailgate, raced around the pickup, and was just in time to see Dak and Alicia straightening and pulling up their pants. I gave Dak a shove and he was laughing so hard he simply fell over onto the sand. Dak’s laugh was a high-pitched giggle; Alicia had more of what I would call a belly laugh, and she was not in much better shape than Dak, leaning against the truck, holding her pants up with one hand. I turned away; I didn’t want Dak to see me smile.

Kelly came around to the front of the truck in time to see Alicia collapse in the sand beside Dak.

“Can somebody tell me what’s going on?”

I went to the front of the truck and pointed to the o in Dodge.

“There’s a camera in there,” I told her. “It’s about the size of a postage stamp.” Kelly bent to study it, but couldn’t see anything.

“Television camera?”

“Just in case,” Dak said, sitting up with tears streaming from his eyes. “Bad things can happen to a Nee-gro in the deep south. If the cops ever do a Rodney King on my nappy head, I’m not going to cross my fingers and hope somebody has a camcorder.”

“I still don’t get it,” Kelly said.

I showed her the flatscreen, thumbed the backup button until I had the image Dak had pirated into the NASA data stream.