The terminal at Long Beach International Airport was packed, but they’d found a small table in a bar near her departure gate. LBI was LA’s only facility for suborbitals and transcontinentals, built on a swamp in Long Beach, floating on giant pontoons so that it swayed and rocked whenever a heavy suborbital touched down. It was strange to be motion sick in an airport, but a necessary evil ever since LAX was destroyed in the ’28 quake.