Spartan, were not only gratified by the world-wide acceptance of these lies, but they announced that the ceremony would be included as part of the countdown proceedings prior to the launching of the big Saturn that would carry us all to the plasma ship, already in orbit around the earth.

The bride and groom and all of the members of the wedding party, with the exception of a federal judge who was to perform the rites, would be wearing spacesuits. The only charitable thing the officials did was to forbid interviews with either the bride-to-be or her intended. There just wasn't time, they said. Actually they didn't trust us to conceal the real reason behind the marriage. The project's publicity team, however, issued handouts of purported interviews, a fictional history of our love affair, and pictures.

On the day before the launching, I received two mail sacks full of letters from the panting shopgirls mentioned by Gail and a United States post-office truck delivered a full cargo of gifts to Gail. I didn't read the mail, and the gifts were stored in a government warehouse, pending our return from Mars. I don't know how much mail and parcel post came the fourth day. We were too busy to find out.

I developed a monumental guilty feeling when I realized the magnitude of our deception. I was sick of the whole business. There had been many marriages of convenience, of course, and some had turned out better than marriages for love, but this was pure fraud. The only consolation was that through it we had acquired a full crew. Still, I couldn't help feeling that a quiet, secret ceremony would have accomplished the same purpose. Why compound a fraud with a spectacle?

Twelve precious minutes were squeezed out of the countdown for the ceremony. We marched in spacesuits, sans helmets, to the launching pad—five male astronauts and one female, accompanied by a federal judge named Lockhart who had no part in the conspiracy but who had been asked to perform the rites because he was a friend of some governor.

No ring was used, since it would have been impossible to slip it over the spacesuit glove Gail wore. We joined hands while the judge spoke into a microphone and the words were carried, via radio and television, to the far reaches of our planet, even to the fur-clad outposts at Thule and Antarctica.

Nearby were photographers to record the lie for posterity.

A conventional bridegroom is in a state of shock and he scarcely realizes what 

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