: The jet jockeys by Stockheker R W Kiemle H W Henry William Illustrator - Science fiction; Short stories; Man-woman relationships Fiction; Racing Fiction; Scars Fiction

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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THE JET JOCKEYS

There was something in the way that little Venusian fire dancer looked at me when I passed her on my way down the ramp to the rocket racks to get Suvia Jalmin's shiny Space Midget that started me thinking.

This jet burn I picked up the time I pinwheeled into the force fence on the big Zeta socket track on Mars hadn't exactly left me looking like a glamor flash from the telecolor screens. Only up until now I had never let that worry me because the way I figure it you don't race rockets with your face anyhow.

The way I figure it, it's nerve not profile that slams the big sizzle sticks around the magnet bends.

Still, when I caught the look in that little space dame's eyes--as though I'm some kind of slime mutant fresh out of a spore bog--I got to wondering. I remembered a dozen other girls I had met suddenly in a dozen other dark corners.

I remembered why from one end of the Great Galaxy Circuit to the other I'm billed as "Death" Benton, and it's not because of the chances I take. And I remembered, finally, that in the last two years I've been making about as much headway with Suvia Jalmin as a hay-burning burro on a star lane.

Suvia was waiting in front of the grandstand when I rolled her rocket off the pneumatic lift. The kid does a stunt act in between races that is considered tops in the Galaxy circuit. The Samson arcs, focusing on her, hit her curly, spun-honey hair, setting up a glow that put a gleaming nimbus around her crash helmet.

Suvia is one quarter Martian, a combination that makes her twice as gorgeous as anything else in curves on either Mars or Earth. Up in the stands the crowd was giving the usual big hand of appreciation at her appearance. Even the track robots were maybe doing a bit of applauding, too.

In her translucent sennilite suit with the airplast gliding wings folded at her sides, Suvia made a picture most men would joyfully have missed a parade of comets to see.

A hundred times I've told myself it's sheer blasphemy for such a luscious bit of femininity to be risking her neck like this, day after day. Yet tough stunting is in the kid's blood. Ever since her grandfather rode the first space ship to Mars there has been a Jalmin somewhere, risking life and limb just for the devil of it.

When she picked up the sound of her rocket on the platform, she turned what was left of her audience smile my way. For a moment I almost forgot the crash scars. Only not quite.

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