Midway shrank and vanished behind the Warning Star. The ocean was … ocean. Jerry spent the flight being bored and deafened. He tried to doze, but the racket defeated him. Steve did sleep for a little while. Jerry didn’t know how he could, but envied him.

Jets flew so high, they got above most of the weather. The EC-121 couldn’t, so the journey was bouncy as well as noisy. Once or twice, the bounces made Jerry glad for his seat belt.

He couldn’t complain about the landing, though. He didn’t think he’d ever felt a smoother one. In the airport, he checked his suitcase at the Hawaiian Air counter after extracting Have Space Suit—Will Travel to re-rereread on the way back to Los Angeles. He carried the hydrophone through the terminal. He’d stow it in the overhead bin; he didn’t want to expose it to the slings and arrows of outrageous baggage handlers.

A place in the airport sold saimin: Japanese noodle soup with pork and herbs and odd, interesting vegetables. Jerry bought a big Styrofoam cupful. It made an outstanding lunch. He knew they’d feed him dinner on the plane to L.A.

Steve got a burger and fries, which left Jerry obscurely disappointed. They found the gate where their flight to Los Angeles would leave, then settled down to wait. Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, Jerry suddenly laughed. “What’s funny?” Steve asked.

“I probably told you, Anna and I are going to Maui for our honeymoon.”

“Yes, I think you did.”

“And the Glomar Explorer was gonna go there, too, after it caught Humpty Dumpty. I was all worried about how I’d have to lie to her and make like I’d never seen Maui before. But the Explorer never got there, so I won’t have that on my conscience, anyway.”

“Good. Lying to people who matter to you chops holes in what you feel about each other. Lying to anybody is bad. Lying to someone who matters to you is worse.”

“I was thinking the same thing. Don’t have to worry about it now, though.”

Half an hour before the scheduled boarding time, a woman’s voice came over the PA system: “I’m very sorry, but Hawaiian Flight three six one will experience a small delay. The plane is having some minor mechanical issues, and we want to be absolutely sure everything is all right before we take off. Your safety is our foremost concern. Thank you for your patience.”

The “small delay” stretched to an hour and a half. As Jerry finally filed on to the airliner, what kept going through his head was Anna will kill me. Picking him up at midnight was bad enough. If he came in at one thirty or two …