The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

I picked up maps and baggage, checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the airport. It will be nice to see my. Florida ladies again. I suppose it will be nice.

Baggage stowed in the airplane, gun-bay doors double-locked and safetied, I climbed the ladder to the cockpit, took my helmet from its bag and hung it on the canopy bow. Hard to believe. In twenty minutes this airplane and I will

be climbing up through four miles high, closing on the Arizona border.

"RICHARD!" Ted yelled from the office door. "TELEPHONE! YOU WANT TO TAKE IT?"

"NO! TELL 'EM I'M GONE!" And then from curiosity, "WHO IS IT?"

He asked the phone and shouted back. "LESLIE PAR-RISH!"

"TELL HER JUST A MINUTE!" I left the helmet and oxygen mask hanging and ran to answer.

By the time she picked me up at the airport, the airplane's ground-safety pins were pushed back in place; intake and tailpipe covers on; canopy closed, locked and covered and the big machine rolled back into the hangar for another night.

That's why I couldn't visualize myself landing, I thought, I couldn't visualize that future because it wasn't going to happen!

Baggage in the trunk, I slid into the seat next to her. "Hi, little tiny wookie just like all the other wookies only an awful lot smaller," I said, "I'm glad to see you! How come your schedule got cleared up?"

Leslie drove a sand-colored fluff-velvet luxury car. After we had seen the film with the wookie in it, the car got renamed Bantha, after a fluffy-mammoth sand-creature in the same picture. It pulled smoothly away from the curb, carrying us into a river of different-color Banthas migrating everywhere at once.

"For as little time as we have together, I thought I could shift things around a bit. I do have to pick up some things at the Academy, and then I'm free. Where would you like to take me for lunch?"

"Anywhere. Magic Pan, if it's not crowded. It has a no-smoke place, didn't you say?"

"It'll be an hour waiting, at lunchtime."

"How much time do we have?"

"How much do you want?" she said. "Dinner? Movie? Chess? Talk?"

"Oh, you sweetie! Did you cancel your whole day for me? You don't know how much that means."

"It means that I'd rather be with a visiting wookie than with anyone else. But no more hot-fudge and no more cookies and no more nothing bad! You can eat bad things if you want, but I am back on a diet to pay for my sins!"

As we drove, I told her about the curious experience of the morning, about my extrasensory aircraft and flight checks, about strange times in the past when they had been remarkably accurate.

She listened courteously, carefully, as she did whenever I talked about experiments with the paranormal. I sensed behind the courtesy, though, that she listened to find explain-ings for events and interests she dared not consider before. Listened as though I were some friendly Leif Ericson, returned with snapshots of a land she'd heard about but not explored.

Car parked near the offices of the Motion Picture Academy, she said, "I won't be a minute. You want to wait or come in?"

"Ill wait. Take your time."

I watched her from a distance, in a noontime crowd of sidewalkers in the sun. Modestly dressed, she was, a white summer blouse over a white skirt, but my, how heads did turn! Every male in a moving hundred-foot circle about her slowed to watch. The honey-wheat hair flew loose and

bright as she hurried to catch the last seconds of the walk signal. She waved thank-you to a driver who waited for her, and he waved back, well rewarded.

What a captivating woman, I thought. Too bad we aren't more alike.

She disappeared into the building, and I stretched out across the seat, yawned. To use this time, I thought, why not get a full night's sleep? That will require an autohypnotic rest of about five minutes.

I closed my eyes, took one deep breath. My body is completely relaxed: now. Another breath. My mind is completely relaxed: now. Another. / am in a deep sleep: now. I shall waken the instant Leslie returns; as refreshed as from eight hours of deep, normal sleep.

Autohypnosis for rest is especially powerful when one hasn't slept but two hours the night before. My mind plunged into darkness; sound in the streets faded away. Caught in deep black tar, time stopped. Then in the midst of that charcoal dark,

ULIGHTl!

As if a star fell on me, ten times ten brighter than the sun, and the blast from the light of it knocked me deaf.