Jack lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head. They had made it to his bedroom, and done some more exploring, but right now he didn't think he would be able to move a muscle. Ever again. So he concentrated on studying the ceiling and grinning.
He heard the shower stop in the bathroom, and moments later Rhea came through the bedroom door, fresh-scrubbed and towelless. The ceiling could wait, he decided. It was a rare moment, at least he hoped it was rare, when he could admire her without any tinge of lust, and appreciate fully life's ten-billion-year journey from the first protocell to evolution's ultimate culmination: the naked human female. Or at least this naked human female; he could overlook some of the journey's little detours like Bella Abzug and Rosanne Arnold.
Rhea poked him in the ribs. "Scoot over," she said. He did, and she eased down into his outstretched arms.
She was still damp and smelled faintly of sunshine and roses. Jack pulled her close, and savored a long, uncomplicated moment of silence. It ended with a suddenly-vivid memory of the last hour's activity. "Where did you get those feathers?" he asked.
Rhea laughed softly. "Remember the scout motto," she said. " 'Be Prepared.' "
"That's the Boy Scout motto," Jack said, "and I think we've just established that you would flunk the physical."
"Well, maybe I gave the physicals to all the little Boy Scouts." She smiled and ran a finger across his chest. "It would sure beat selling cookies." She grew serious for a second, "Jack, I'm not going to pretend you're the first man I've slept with. Nor am I going to apologize. I am what I am."
He nodded. "Likewise," he said. Then, thinking of something he hadn't really considered in a long time, he laughed.
"What?" Rhea asked.
"This is a lot drier than my first time, anyway," he explained, remembering.
After a minute, Rhea pinched him. "Are you going to elaborate on that or just lie there wearing nothing but a big grin?" she asked.
"Well, they say a gentleman never tells."
Rhea made a face at him.
"But I'm no gentleman," he continued. "Besides, I know Natsu wouldn't mind. You remember I grew up in Myrtle Beach?"
Rhea nodded.
"Well, at the time, there was an Air Force base in town, and they got in lots of new families regularly—the Air Force likes to keep moving the troops around. Most of the kids went to school on post, but some of them ended up in public school. I met Natsu Forrester in sixth grade."
"Natsu? That's a Japanese name?" Rhea asked.
"It's an American name," Jack said. "As American as Kate or Shamika. But, yes, her ancestors did come from Japan. Anyway," he continued, "she was the only girl in school who would talk to me about science fiction and astronomy. When we moved up to middle school, we were the only two kids in the model rocketry club and we put together the first computer network at school with old IBM-PC Jrs. and doorbell wire."
"So you saw a lot of each other," Rhea prompted.
"Yeah, just buddies, you know? Then one day I noticed her shirt didn't hang straight down anymore—when you're a fourteen-year-old guy, something like that can suddenly become the most important thing in the world."
"It works both ways," Rhea said. "Or so I hear."
"Biology is a strange and wonderful thing," Jack agreed. "So it was springtime, and we sure didn't want to stay inside any more than we had to. So we cooked up this scheme and sold it to our science teacher. We'd take a model rocket with a little 8mm movie camera in it out onto Murrel's Inlet and take aerial pictures of the marsh. I think we were going to look for the effects of boat wakes on the Spartina or something—it didn't matter, just anything to get out of the classroom. So there was some kind of scheduling fiasco, and the teacher wasn't there, but we had the boat rented anyway so we took it out."
"And made another kind of launch," Rhea hazarded.
"Well, yes. I mean, we did make our launch. It wasn't according to the model rocketry association safety standards, but we had a big piece of sheet tin we raised at the stern of the boat, and huddled behind for the firing. We weren't real sure of the balance with that camera on it, but the rocket went up like a charm, and while we were celebrating, we suddenly noticed we were squinched close together, and not wearing a heck of a lot."
"And so you attacked her virtue," Rhea accused.
"Madame, you wound me," Jack said. " 'Twas the lady that ravished my tender virtue; though as I recall, by that point it wasn't all that tender, and perhaps not very virtuous either. At any rate, things escalated quickly from there, and somehow our flat-bottomed, ultra-stable john boat ended up upside down with us underneath it. We lost the tin sheet, the rocket launcher, Natsu's bikini top, the reserve gas can and half the seat cushions. Luckily the outboard was bolted on, and still ran when we finally managed to turn the thing back over. We even managed to recover the rocket.
"I gave Natsu my shirt and we thought up a cover story for everything else."
"And the teacher bought it?"
"Well, until he developed the film."
Rhea laughed out loud. When she stopped, she tilted her head back at him, and asked, "So what happened?"
"Well, we didn't get any class credit on that project, I'm afraid—but the teacher was a nice guy, just out of college himself. We got a lecture on responsibility and birth control, but I think he really wanted to say 'Go for it, kids.' Anyway, he didn't tell our folks. Not that it would have been the end of the world for either of us, but there are things you want to protect your folks from having to be understanding about, you know?"
Rhea nodded. "But obviously you're not still together."
"Yeah, well, we were joined at the hip for about a year, then her father got transferred. We kept in touch regularly for a while. She went into AFROTC and pilot training, then took fighters when they opened that up to women. Last I heard, she was a captain stationed in Korea. Even saw some action in the Hong Kong fiasco."
"Sounds like quite a woman," Rhea said quietly. "We're lucky to have people like that looking out for us."
Jack stretched and put his arms behind his head. "Yeah," he said after a moment, "that's our blessing, I think. America's blessing. No matter how hard the system works against it, we have enough good ones to pull us through." He was silent for a second. "Rhea?"
"Yes?"
"I want us to be the good ones. NASA's got cataracts and the rest of the world is blind. If we don't make this work, I don't think there'll be another chance. It may not matter in our lifetimes, or our kids'. But if we don't get off Earth, that's it for America. That's it for humanity."
Rhea took his hand and squeezed. "It'll work," she said fiercely. "We are the good guys, and we are going to make it work."