I fell through starry space, balanced like an inbound comet on a tail of fluorescent gas, concentrating on keeping my spine straight and my knees and ankles locked. It helped me forget how nervous I was.
"Five," Raoul chanted steadily, "four, three, two, now," and a ring of his bright orange "flame" flared soundlessly all around me. I threaded it like a needle.
"Beautiful," Norrey whispered in my ear, from her vantage point a kilometer away. At once I lifted my arms straight over my head and bit down hard on a contact. As I passed through the ring of orange "flame," my "tail" turned a rich, deep purple, expanding lazily and symmetrically behind me. Within the purple wake, tiny novae sparkled and died at irregular intervals: Raoul magic. Just before the dye canisters on my calves emptied, I fired my belly thruster and let it warp me "upward" in an ever-increasing curve while I counted seconds.
"Light it up, Harry," I said sharply. "I can't see you." The red lights winked into being above my imaginary horizon and I relaxed, cutting the ventral thrust in plenty of time. I was not heading precisely for the camera, but the necessary corrections were minor and would not visibly spoil the curve. Orienting myself by a method I can only call informed writhing, I cut main drive and selected my point.
On Earth you can turn forever without getting dizzy if you select a point and keep your eyes locked on it, whipping your head around at the last possible second for each rotation. In space the technique is unnecessary: once out of a gravity well, your semicirculars fill up and your whole balance system shuts down; you can't get dizzy. But old habit dies hard. Once I had my point star I tumbled, and when I had counted ten rotations the camera was close enough to see and coming up fast. At once I came out of my spin, oriented, and braked sharply—maybe three gees—with all thrusters. I had cut it fine: I came to rest relative to the camera barely fifty meters away. I cut all power instantly, went from the natural contraction of high acceleration to full release, giving it everything I had left, held it for a five-count and whispered, "Cut!"
The red lights winked out, and Norrey, Raoul, Tom, and Linda cheered softly (nobody does anything loudly in a p-suit).
"Okay, Harry, let's see the playback."
"Coming up, boss."
There was a pause while he rewound, and then a large square section of distant space lit up around the edges. The stars within it rearranged themselves and took on motion. My image came into frame, went through the maneuver I had just finished. I was pleased. I had hit the ring of orange "flame" dead center and triggered the purple smoke at just the right instant. The peelout curve was a little ragged, but it would do. The sudden growth of my oncoming image was so startling that I actually flinched—which is pretty silly. The deceleration was nearly as breathtaking to watch as it had been to do, the pullout was fine, and the final triumphant extension was frankly terrific.
"That's a take," I said contentedly. "Which way's the bar?"
"Just up the street," Raoul answered. "I'm buying."
"Always a pleasure to meet a patron of the arts. How much did you say your name was?"
Harry's massive construction-man's spacesuit, festooned with tools, appeared from behind and "beneath" the camera. "Hey," he said, "not yet. Gotta at least run through the second scene."
"Oh hell," I protested. "My air's low, my belly's empty, and I'm swimming around in this overgrown galosh."
"Deadline's coming," was all Harry said.
I wanted to shower so bad I could taste it. Dancers are all different; the only thing we all have in common is that we all sweat—and in a p-suit there's nowhere for it to go. "My thrusters're shot," I said weakly.
"You don't need 'em much for Scene Two," Norrey reminded me. "Monkey Bars, remember? Brute muscle stuff." She paused. "And we are pushing deadline, Charlie."
Dammit, a voice on stereo earphones seems to come from the same place that the voice of your conscience does.
"They're right, Charlie," Raoul said. "I spoke too soon. Come on, the night is young."
I stared around me at an immense sphere of starry emptiness, Earth a beachball to my left and the Sun a brilliant softball beyond it. "Night don't come any older than this," I grumbled, and gave in. "Okay, I guess you're right. Harry, you and Raoul strike that set and get the next one in place, okay? The rest of you warm up in place. Get sweaty."
Raoul and Harry, as practiced and efficient as a pair of old beat cops, took the Family Car out to vacuum up the vacuum. I sat on nothing and brooded about the damned deadline. It was getting time to go dirtside again, which meant it was time to get this segment rehearsed and shot, but I didn't have to like it. No artist likes time pressure, even those who can't produce without it. So I brooded.
The show must go on. The show must always go on, and if you are one of those millions who have always wondered exactly why, I will tell you. The tickets have already been sold.
But it's uniquely hard (as well as foolish) to brood in space. You hang suspended within the Big Deep, infinity in all directions, an emptiness so immense that although you know that you're falling through it at high speed, you make no slightest visible progress. Space is God's Throne Room, and so vasty a hall is it that no human problem has significance within it for long.
Have you ever lived by the sea? If so, you know how difficult it is to retain a griping mood while contemplating the ocean. Space is like that, only more so.
Much more so.
By the time the Monkey Bars were assembled, I was nearly in a dancing mood again. The Bars were a kind of three-dimensional gymnast's jungle, a huge partial icosahedron composed of transparent tubes inside which neon fluoresced green and red. It enclosed an area of about 14,000 cubic meters, within which were scattered a great many tiny liquid droplets that hung like motionless dust motes, gleaming in laserlight. Apple juice.
When Raoul and Harry had first shown me the model for the Monkey Bars, I had been struck by the aesthetic beauty of the structure. By now, after endless simulations and individual rehearsals, I saw it only as a complex collection of fulcrums and pivots for Tom, Linda, Norrey and me to dance on, an array of vector-changers designed for maximal movement with minimal thruster use. Scene Two relied almost entirely on muscle power, a paradox considering the technology implicit in its creation. We would pivot with all four limbs on the Bars and on each other, borrowing some moves from the vocabulary of trapeze acrobatics and some from our own growing experience with free-fall lovemaking, constantly forming and dissolving strange geometries that were new even to dance. (We were using choreography rather than improv techniques: the Bars and their concept were too big for the Goldfish Bowl, and you can't afford mistakes in free space.)
Though I had taught individual dancers their parts and rehearsed some of the trickier clinches with the group, this would be our first full run-through together. I found I was anxious to assure myself that it would actually work. All the computer simulation in the world is no substitute for actually doing it; things that look lovely in compsim can dislocate shoulders in practice.
I was about to call places when Norrey left her position and jetted my way. Of course there's only one possible reason for that, so I turned off my radio too and waited. She decelerated neatly, came to rest beside me, and touched her hood to mine.
"Charlie, I didn't mean to crowd you. We can come back in eleven hours and—"
"No, that's okay, hon," I assured her. "You're right: 'Deadline don't care.' I just hope the choreography's right."
"It's just the first run-through. And the simulations were great."
"That's not what I mean. Hell, I know it's correct. By this point I can think spherically just fine. I just don't know if it's any good."
"How do you mean?"
"It's exactly the kind of choreography Shara would have loathed. Rigid, precisely timed, like a set of tracks."
She locked a leg around my waist to arrest a slight drift and looked thoughtful. "She'd have loathed it for herself," she said finally, "but I think she'd really have enjoyed watching us do it. It's a good piece, Charlie—and you know how the critics love anything abstract."
"Yeah, you're right—again," I said, and put on my best Cheerful Charlie grin. It's not fair to have a bummer at curtain time; it brings the other dancers down. "In fact, you may have just given me a better title for this whole mess: Synapstract."
There was relief in her answering grin. "If it's got to be a pun, I like ImMerced better."
"Yeah, it does have a kind of Cunningham flavor to it. Bet the old boy takes the next elevator up after he sees it." I squeezed her arm through the p-suit, added "Thanks, hon," cut in my radio again. "All right, boys and girls, —let's shoot this turkey.' Watch out for leg-breakers and widowmakers. Harry, those cameras locked in?"
"Program running," he announced. "Blow a gasket." It's the Stardancer's equivalent of "Break a leg."
Norrey scooted back into position, I corrected my own, the lights came up hellbright on cameras 2 and 4, and we took our stage, while on all sides of us an enormous universe went about its business.
You can't fake cheerfulness well enough to fool a wife like Norrey without there being something real to it; and, like I said, it's hard to brood in space. It really was exhilarating to hurl my body around within the red and green Bars, interacting with the energy of the other dancers I happened to love, concentrating on split-second timing and perfect body placement. But an artist is capable of self-criticism even in the midst of the most involving performance. It's the same perpetual self-scrutiny that makes so many of us so hard to get along with for any length of time—and that makes us artists in the first place. The last words Shara Drummond ever said to me were, "Do it right."
And even in the whirling midst of a piece that demanded all my attention, there was still room for a little whispering voice that said that this was only the best I had been able to do and still meet my deadline.
I tried to comfort myself with the notion that every artist who ever worked feels exactly the same way, about nearly every piece they ever do—and it didn't help me any more than it ever does any of us. And so I made the one small error of placement, and tried to correct with thrusters in too much of a hurry and triggered the wrong one and smacked backward hard into Tom. His back was to me as well, and our air tanks clanged and one of mine blew. A horse kicked me between the shoulder blades and the Bars came up fast and caught me across the thighs, tumbling me end over end. I was more than twenty meters from the set, heading for forever, before I had time to black out.
Happening to smack into the Bars off center was a break. It put me into an acrobat's tumble, which centrifuged air into my hood and boots, and blood to my head and feet, bringing me out of blackout quicker. Even so, precious seconds ticked by while I groggily deduced my problem, picked my point and began to spin correctly. With the perspective that gave me I oriented myself, still groggy, figured out intuitively which thrusters would kill the spin, and used them.
That done, it was easy to locate the Bars, a bright cubist's Christmas tree growing perceptibly smaller as I watched. It was between me and the blue beachball I'd been born on. At least life would not be corny enough to award me Shara's death. But Bryce Carrington's didn't appeal to me much more.
My thighs ached like hell, the right one especially, but my spine hadn't begun to hurt yet—I hadn't yet worked out that it ought to. There were voices in my headphones, urgent ones, but I was still too fuzzy to make any sense out of what they were saying. Later I could spare time to retune my ears; right now figures were clicking away in my mind and the answers kept getting worse. There's much more pressure in an air tank than in a thruster. On the other hand, I had ten aimable thrusters with which to cancel the velocity imparted by that one diffused burst. On the third hand, I had started this with badly depleted thrusters. . . .
Even as I concluded that I was dead I was doing what I could to save my life: one by one I lined up my thrusters on the far side of my center of mass and fired them to exhaustion. Left foot, fore and aft. Right foot, likewise. Belly thruster. My back began to moan, then cry, then shriek with agony; not the localized knifing I'd expected but a general ache. I couldn't decide if that was a good sign or bad. Back thruster, clamping my teeth against a whimper. Left hand, fore and aft—
—Save a little. I reserved my right hand pair for last minute maneuvers, and looked to see if I'd done any good.
The Monkey Bars were still shrinking, fairly rapidly.
I was almost fully conscious now, feeling that my brains were just catching up with me. The voices in my headphones began to make sense at last. The first one that I identified, of course, was Norrey's— but she wasn't saying anything, only crying and swearing.
"Hey, honey," I said as calmly as I could, and she cut off instantly. So did the others. Then—"Hang on, darling. I'm coming!"
"That's right, boss," Harry agreed. "I've been tracking you with the radar gun since you left, and the computer's doing the piloting."
"She'll get you," Raoul cried. "The machine says 'yes.' With available fuel, it can get her to you and then back here, Charlie, it says 'yes.'"
Sure enough, just to the side of the Bars I could see the Family Car, nose-on to me. It was not shrinking as fast as the Bars were— but it did appear to be shrinking. That had been a hell of a clout that can of air fetched me.
"Boss," Harry said urgently, "is your suit honest?"
"Yeah, sure, the force of the blast was outwards, didn't even damage the other can." My back throbbed just thinking about it, and yes, damn it, the Car's visible disk was definitely shrinking, not a whole lot but certainly not growing, and at that moment of moments I recalled that the warranty on that computer's software had expired three days ago.
Say something heroic before you moan.
"Well, that's settled," I said cheerfully. "Remind me to sue the bas—hey! How's Tom?"
"We got it patched," Harry said briefly. "He's out, but telemetry says he's alive and okay."
No wonder Linda was silent. She was praying.
"Is there a doctor in the house?" I asked rhetorically.
"I called Skyfac. Panzella's on his way. We're proceeding home on thrusters to get Tom indoors now."
"Go, all three of you. Nothing you can do out here. Raoul, take care of Linda."
"Yah."
Silence fell, except of course for the by-now unheard constants of breathing and rustling cloth. Norrey began to cry again, briefly, but controlled it. The disc that was her and the Car was growing now, I had to stare and measure with my thumb but yes, it was growing.
"Attaway, Norrey, you're gaining on me," I said, trying to keep it light.
"That I am," she agreed, and when the rate of the Car's growth had just reached a visibly perceptible crawl, the corona of her drive flame winked out. "What the—?"
Visualize the geometry. I leave the Monkey Bars at a hell of a clip. Maybe a full thirty seconds elapse before Norrey is in the saddle and blasting. Ideally the computer has her blast to a velocity higher than mine, hold it, then turnover and begin decelerating so that she will begin to return toward the Bars just as our courses intersect. A bit tricky to work out in your head, but no problem for a ballistic computer half as good as ours.
The kicker was fuel.
Norrey had to cut thrust precisely halfway through projected total fuel consumption. She had used up half the content of her fuel tanks; the computer saw that at these rates of travel rendezvous could be accomplished eventually; it cut thrust with a computer's equivalent of a smile of triumph. I did primitive mental arithmetic, based on guesswork and with enormous margins for errors, and went pale and cold inside my plastic bag.
The second kicker was air.
"Harry," I rapped, "run that projection through again for me, but include the following air supply data—"
"Oh Jesus God," he said, stunned, and then repeated back the figures I gave him. "Hold on."
"Charlie," Norrey began worriedly. "Oh my God, Charlie!"
"Wait, baby. Wait. Maybe it's okay."
Harry's voice was final. "No good, boss. You'll be out of air when she gets there. She'll be damn low when she gets back."
"Then turn around and start back now, hon," I said as gently as I could.
"Hell no," she cried.
"Why risk your neck, darling? I'm already buried—buried in space. Come on now—"
"No."
I tried brutality. "You want my corpse that bad?"
"Yes."
"Why, to have it hanging around the Closet?"
"No. To ride with."
"Huh?"
"Harry, plot me a course that'll get me to him before his air runs out. Forget the round trip: Give me a minimum-time rendezvous."
"No!" I thundered.
"Norrey," Harry said earnestly, "there's nothing else to come get you with. There's not a ship in the sky. You blast any more and you'll never even get started back here, and you'll never even stop leaving. You've got more air than him, but both your air combined wouldn't last one of you 'til help could arrive, even if we could keep tracking you that long." It was the longest speech I'd ever heard Harry make.
"I'm damned if I want to be a widow," she blazed, and cut in acceleration on manual override.
She was dead as me, now.
"Goddammit," Harry and I roared together, and then, "Help her, Harry!" I screamed and "I am!" he screamed back and an endless time later he said sadly, "Okay, Norrey, let go. The new course is locked in." She was still dead, had been from the moment she overrode the computer. But at least now we'd go together.
"All right, then," she said, still angry but mollified. "Twenty-five years I wanted to be your wife, Armstead. I will be damned if I'll be your widow."
"Harry," I said, knowing it was hopeless but refusing to accept, "refigure, assuming that we leave the Car when it runs out of juice and use all of Norrey's suit thrusters together. Hers aren't as low as mine were."
It must have been damned awkward for Harry, using two fingers to keep himself headed for home at max thrust, holding the big computer terminal and pushing keys with the rest. It must have been even more awkward for Raoul and Linda, towing the unconscious Tom between them, watching their patch job leak.
"Forget it, boss," Harry said almost at once. "There's two of you."
"Well then," I said desperately, "can we trade off breathing air for thrust?"
He must have been just as desperate; he actually worked the problem. "Sure. You could start returning, get back here in less than a day. But it'd take all your air to do it. You're dead, boss."
I nodded, a silly habit I'd thought I'd outgrown. "That's what I thought. Thanks, Harry. Good luck with Tom."
Norrey said not a word. Presently the computer shut down her drive again, having done its level best to get her to me quickly with the fuel available. The glow around the Car (now plainly growing) winked out, and still she was silent. We were all silent. There was either nothing to say or too much, no in-between. Presently Harry reported docking at home. He gave Norrey her turnover data, gave her back manual control, and then he and the others went off the air.
Two people breathing makes hardly any noise at all.
She was a long long time coming, long enough for the pain in my back to diminish to the merely incredible. When she was near enough to see, it took all my discipline to keep from using the last of my jump-juice to try and match up with her. Not that I had anything to save it for. But matching in free space is like high-speed highway merging—one of you had better maintain a constant velocity, two variables are too many. Norrey did a textbook job, coming to a dead stop relative to me at the extreme edge of lifeline range.
The precision was wasted. But you don't stop trying to live just because a computer says you can't.
At the same split second that she stopped decelerating she fired the lifeline. The weight at the end tapped me gently on the chest: very impressive shooting, even with the magnet to help. I embraced it fiercely, and it took me several seconds of concentrated effort to let go and clip it to my belt. I hadn't realized how lonely and scared I was.
As soon as she was sure I was secure, she cut the drag and let the Car reel me in.
"Who says you can never get a cab when you need one?" I said, but my teeth were chattering and it spoiled the effect.
She grinned anyhow, and helped me into the rear saddle. "Where to, Mac?"
All of a sudden I couldn't think of anything funny to say. If the Car's fuselage hadn't been reinforced, I'd have crushed it between my knees. "Wherever you're going," I said simply, and she spun around in her saddle and gave it the gun.
It takes a really sensitive hand to pilot a tractor like the Family Car accurately, especially with a load on. It's quite difficult to keep the target bubble centered, and the controls are mushy—you have to sort of outguess her or you'll end up oscillating and throw your gyro. A dancer is, of course, better at seat-of-the-pants mass balancing than any but the most experienced of Space Command pilots, and Norrey was the best of the six of us. At that she outdid herself.
She even outdid the computer. Which is not too astonishing— there's always more gas than it says on the gauge—and of course it wasn't nearly enough to matter. We were still dead. But after a time the distant red and green spheroid that was the Bars stopped shrinking; instruments confirmed it. After a longer time I was able to convince myself that it was actually growing some. It was, naturally, at that moment that the vibration between my thighs ceased.
All the time we'd been accelerating I'd been boiling over with the need to talk, and had kept my mouth shut for fear of distracting Norrey's attention. Now we had done all we could do. Now we had nothing left to do in our lives but talk, and I was wordless again. It was Norrey who broke the silence, her tone just precisely right.
"Uh, you're not going to believe this . . . but we're out of gas."
"The hell you say. Let me out of this car; I'm not that kind of boy." Thank you, hon.
"Aw, take it easy. It's downhill from here. I'll just put her in neutral and we'll coast home."
"Hey listen," I said, "when you navigate by the seat of your pants like that, is that what they call a bum steer?"
"Oh Charlie, I don't want to die."
"Well, then don't."
"I wasn't finished yet."
"Norrey!" I grabbed her shoulder from behind. Fortunately I used my left hand, triggering only empty thrusters.
There was a silence.
"I'm sorry," she said at last, still facing away from me. "I made my choice. These last minutes with you are worth what I paid for them. That just slipped out." She snorted at herself. "Wasting air."
"I can't think of anything I'd rather spend air on than talking with you. That you can do in p-suits, I mean. I don't want to die either—but if I've got to go, I'm glad I've got your company. Isn't that selfish?"
"Nope. I'm glad you're here too, Charlie."
"Hell, I called this meeting. If I wasn't here, nobody would be." I broke off then, and scowled. "That's the part that bothers me the most, I think. I used to try and guess, sometimes, what it would be that would finally kill me. Sure enough, I was right: my own damn stupidity. Spacing out. Taking my finger off the number. Oh dammit, Norrey—"
"Charlie, it was an accident."
"I spaced out. I wasn't paying attention. I was thinking about the god damned deadline, and I blew it." (I was very close to something, then; something bigger than my death.)
"Charlie, that's cheating. At least half of that guilt you're hogging belongs to the crook that inspected that air tank at the factory. Not to mention the flaming idiot who forgot to gas the Car this morning."
It's a rotating duty. "Who was that idiot?" I asked, before I could think better of it.
"Same idiot who took off without grabbing extra air. Me."
That produced an uncomfortable silence. Which started me trying to think of something meaningful or useful to say. Or do. Let's see, I had less than an eighth of a can of air. Norrey maybe a can and a quarter: she hadn't used up as much in exercise. (Space Command armor, like the NASA Standard suits before them, hold about six hours' air. A Stardancer's p-suit is good for only half as much—but they're prettier. And we always have plenty of air bottles—strapped to every camera we use.) I reached forward and unshipped her full tank, passed it silently over her shoulder. She took it, as silently, and got the first-aid kit out of the glove compartment. She took a Y-joint from it, made sure both male ends were sealed, and snapped it onto the air bottle. She got extension hoses from the kit and mated them to the ends of the Y. She clipped the whole assembly to the flank of the Car until we needed it, an air soda with two straws. Then she reversed herself in the saddle, awkwardly, until she was facing me.
"I love you, Charlie."
"I love you, Norrey."
Don't ever let anybody tell you that hugging in p-suits is a waste of time. Hugging is never a waste of time. It hurt my back a lot, but I paid no attention.
The headphones crackled with another carrier wave: Raoul calling from Tom and Linda's place. "Norrey? Charlie? Tom's okay. The doctor's on his way, Charlie, but he's not going to get here in time to do you any good. I called the Space Command, there's no scheduled traffic near here, there's just nothing in the neighborhood, Charlie, just nothing at all what the hell are we going to do?" Harry must have been very busy with Tom, or he'd have grabbed the mike by now.
"Here's what you're going to do, buddy," I said calmly, spacing my words to slow him down. "Push the 'record' button. Okay? Now put the speakers on so Harry and Linda can witness. Ready? Okay. 'I, Charles Armstead, being of sound mind and body—'"
"Charlie!"
"Don't spoil the tape, buddy. I haven't got time for too many retakes, and I've got better things to do. 'I, Charles Armstead—'"
It didn't take very long. I left everything to the Company—and I made Fat Humphrey a full partner. Le Maintenant had closed the month before, strangled by bureaucracy. Then it was Norrey's turn, and she echoed me almost verbatim.
What was there to do then? We said our good-byes to Raoul, to Linda, and to Harry, making it as short as possible. Then we switched off our radios. Sitting backwards in the saddle was uncomfortable for Norrey; she turned around again and I hugged her from behind like a motorcycle passenger. Our hoods touched. What we said then is really none of your damned business.
An hour went by, the fullest hour I had ever known. All infinity stretched around us. Both of us being ignorant of astronomy, we had given names of our own to the constellations on our honeymoon. The Banjo. The Leering Gerbil. Orion's Truss. The Big Pot Pipe and the Little Hash Pipe. One triplet near the Milky Way quite naturally became the Three Musketeers. Like that. We renamed them all, now, re-evoking that honeymoon. We talked of our lost plans and hopes. In turns, we freaked out and comforted each other, and then we both freaked out together and both comforted each other. We told each other those last few secrets even happily-marrieds hold out. Twice, we agreed to take off our p-suits and get it over with. Twice, we changed our minds. We talked about the children we didn't have, and how lucky it was for them that we didn't have them. We sucked sugar water from our hood nipples. We talked about God, about death, about how uncomfortable we were and how absurd it was to die uncomfortable—about how absurd it was to die at all.
"It was the deadline pressure killed us," I said finally, "stupid damned deadline pressure. In a big hurry. Why? So we wouldn't get marooned in space by our metabolisms. What was so wrong about that?" (I was very close, now.) "What were we so scared of? What has Earth got, that we were risking our necks to keep?"
"People," Norrey answered seriously. "Places. There aren't many of either up here."
"Yeah, places. New York. Toronto. Cesspools."
"Not fair. Prince Edward Island."
"Yeah, and how much time did we get to spend there? And how long before it's a bloody city?"
"People, Charlie. Good people."
"Seven billion of 'em, squatting on the same disintegrating anthill."
"Charlie, look out there." She pointed to the Earth. "Do you see an 'oasis hanging in space'? Does that look crowded to you?"
She had me there. From space, one's overwhelming impression of our home planet is of one vast, godforsaken wilderness. Desert is by far the most common sight, and only occasionally does a twinkle or a miniature mosaic give evidence of human works. Man may have polluted hell out of his atmosphere—seen edge-on at sunset it looks no thicker than the skin of an apple—but he has as yet made next to no visible mark on the face of his planet.
"No. But it is, and you know it. My leg hurts all the time. There's never a moment of real silence. It stinks. It's filthy and germ-ridden and riddled with evil and steeped in contagious insanity and hip-deep in despair. I don't know what the hell I ever wanted to go back there for."
"Charlie!" I only realized how high my volume had become when I discovered how loud she had to be to out-shout me. I broke off, furious with myself. Again you want to freak out? The last time wasn't bad enough?
I'm sorry, I answered myself, I've never died before. I understand it's been done worse. "I'm sorry, hon," I said aloud. "I guess I just haven't cared much for Earth since Le Maintenant closed." It started out to be a wisecrack, but it didn't come out funny.
"Charlie," she said, her voice strange.
You see? There she goes now, and we're off and running again. "Yeah?"
"Why are the Monkey Bars blinking on and off?"
At once I rechecked the air bottle, then the Y-joint, hoses, and joins. No, she was getting air. I looked then, and sure as hell the Monkey Bars were blinking on and off in the far distance, a Christmas-tree bulb on a flasher circuit. I checked the air again, carefully, to make sure we weren't both hallucinating, and returned to our spoon embrace.
"Funny," I said, "I can't think of a circuit malf that'd behave that way."
"Something must have struck the sunpower screen and set it spinning."
"I guess. But what?"
"The hell with it, Charlie. Maybe it's Raoul trying to signal us."
"If it is, to hell with him indeed. There's nothing more I want to say, and I'm damned if there's anything I want to hear. Leave the damn phone off the hook. Where were we?"
"Deciding Earth sucks."
"It certainly does—hard. Why does anybody live there, Norrey? Oh, the hell with that too."
"Yeah. It can't be such a bad place. We met there."
"That's true." I hugged her a little tighter. "I guess we're lucky people. We each found our Other Half. And before we died, too. How many are that lucky?"
"Tom and Linda, I think. Diane and Howard in Toronto. I can't think of anybody else I know of, for sure."
"Me either. There used to be more happy marriages around when I was a kid." The Bars began blinking twice as fast. A second improbable meteor? Or a chunk of the panel breaking loose, putting the rest in a tighter spin? It was an annoying distraction; I moved until I couldn't see it. "I guess I never realized just how incredibly lucky we are. A life with you in it is a square deal."
"Oh, Charlie," she cried, moving in my arms. Despite the awkwardness she worked around in her saddle to hug me again. My p-suit dug into my neck, the earphone on that side notched my ear, and her strong dancer's arms raised hell with my throbbing back, but I made no complaint. Until her grip suddenly convulsed even tighter.
"Charlie!"
"Nnngh."
She relaxed her clutch some, but held on. "What the hell is that?"
I caught my breath. "What the hell is what?" I twisted in my seat to look. "What the hell is that?" We both lost our seats on the Car and drifted to the ends of our hoses, stunned limp.
It was practically on top of us, within a hundred meters, so impossibly enormous and foreshortened that it took us seconds to recognize, identify it as a ship. My first thought was that a whale had come to visit.
Champion, said the bold red letters across the prow. And beneath, United Nations Space Command.
I glanced back at Norrey, then checked the air line one more time. "'No scheduled traffic,' " I said hollowly, and switched on my radio.
The voice was incredibly loud, but the static was so much louder that I knew it was off-mike, talking to someone in the same room. I remember every syllable.
"—pid fucking idiots are too God damned dumb to turn on their radios, sir. Somebody's gonna have to tap 'em on the shoulder."
Further off-mike, a familiar voice began to laugh like hell, and after a moment the radioman joined in. Norrey and I listened to the laughter, speechless. A part of me considered laughing too, but decided I might never stop.
"Jesus Christ," I said finally. "How far does a man have to go to have a little privacy with his wife?"
Startled silence, and then the mike was seized and the familiar voice roared, "You son of a bitch!"
"But seeing you've come all this way, Major Cox," Norrey said magnificently, "we'll come in for a beer."
"You dumb son of a bitch," Harry's voice came from afar. "You dumb son of a bitch." The Monkey Bars had stopped winking. We had the message.
"After you, my love," I said, unshipping the air tank, and as I reached the airlock my last thruster died. Bill Cox met us at the air-lock with three beers, and mine was delicious.
The two sips I got before the fun started.
Like Phillip Nolan, I had renounced something out loud—and had been heard. I took those two sips right away, and made them last. Officers and crew were frankly gaping at Norrey and me. At first I naturally assumed they were awed by anyone dumb enough to turn off their radios in an emergency. Well, I hadn't thought of being dead as an emergency. But on the second sip I noticed a certain subtle classification of gaping. With one or two exceptions, all the female crew were gaping at me and all the male crew were gaping at Norrey. I had not exactly forgotten what we were wearing under our p-suits; there was almost nothing to forget. We were "decently" covered by sanitary arrangements, but just barely, and what is commonplace on a home video screen on Earth is not so in the ready room of a warship.
Bill, of course, was too much of a gentleman to notice. Or maybe he realized there was not one practical thing to do about the situation except ignore it. "So reports of your demise were exaggerated, eh?"
"On the contrary," I said, wiping my chin with my glove. "They omitted our resurrection. Which by me is the most important part. Thanks, Bill."
He grinned, and said a strange thing very quickly. "Don't ask any of the obvious questions." As he said it, his eyes flickered slightly. On Earth or under acceleration they would have flicked from side to side. In free fall, a new reflex controls, and he happened to be oriented out of phase to my local vertical: his pupils described twin circles, perhaps a centimeter in diameter, and returned to us. The message was plain. The answers to my obvious next questions were classified information. Wait.
Hmmm.
I squeezed Norrey's hand hard—unnecessarily, of course—and groped for a harmless response.
"We're at your disposal," is what I came up with.
He flinched. Then in a split second he decided that I didn't mean whatever he'd thought I meant, and his grin returned. "You'll want a shower and some food. Follow me to my quarters."
"For a shower," Norrey said, "I will follow you through hell." We kicked off.
There was my second chance to gawk like a tourist at the innards of a genuine warship—and again I was too busy to pay any attention. Did Bill really expect his crew to believe that he had just happened to pick us up hitchhiking? Whenever no one was visibly within earshot, I tried to pump him—but in Space Command warships the air pressure is so low that sounds travel poorly. He outflew my questions— and how much expression does a man wear on the soles of his feet?
At last we reached his quarters and swung inside. He backed up to a wall and hung facing us in the totally relaxed "spaceman's crouch," and tossed us a couple of odd widgets. I examined mine: it looked like a wristwatch with a miniature hair dryer attached. Then he tossed us a pair of cigarettes and I got it. Mass priorities in a military craft differ from those of essentially luxury operations like ours or Skyfac's: the Champion's air system was primitive, not only low-pressure but inefficient. The widgets were combination air-cleaner/ashtrays. I slipped mine over my wrist and lit up.
"Major William Cox," I said formally, "Norrey Armstead. Vice versa."
It is of course impossible to bow when your shoulders are velcro'd to the wall, but Bill managed to signify. Norrey gave him what we call the free-fall curtsy, a movement we worked out idly one day on the theory that we might someday give curtain calls to a live audience. It's indescribable but spectacular, as frankly sexual as a curtsy and as graceful.
Bill blinked, but recovered. "I am honored, Ms. Armstead. I've seen all the tapes you've released, and—well, this will be easy to misunderstand, but you're her sister."
Norrey smiled. "Thank you, Major—"
"Bill."
"—Bill. That's high praise. Charlie's told me a lot about you."
"Likewise, one drunken night when we met dirtside. Afterwards."
I remembered the night—weeks before I had consciously realized that I was in love with Norrey—but not the conversation. My subconscious tells me only what it thinks I ought to know.
"Now you must both forgive me," he went on, and I noticed for the first time that he was in a hurry. "I'd like nothing better than to chat, but I can't. Please get out of your p-suits, quickly."
"Even more than a shower, I'd like some answers, Bill," I said. "What the hell brings you out our way, just in the nicotine like that? I don't believe in miracles, not that kind anyway. And why the hush?"
"Yes," Norrey chimed in, "and why didn't your own Ground Control know you were in the area?"
Cox held up both hands. "Whoa. The answer to your questions run about twenty minutes minimum. In—" he glanced at his watch, "less than three we accelerate at two gravities. That's why I want you out of those suits—my bed will accommodate air tank fittings, but you'd be uncomfortable as hell."
"What? Bill, what the hell are you talking about? Accelerate where? Home is a couple o' dozen klicks that-away."
"Your friends will be picked up by the same shuttle that is fetching Dr. Panzella," Cox said. "They'll join us at Skyfac in a matter of hours. But you two can't wait."
"For what?" I hollered.
Bill arm-wrestled me with his eyes, and lost. "Damn it," he said, then paused. "I have specific orders not to tell you a thing." He glanced at his chronometer. "And I really do have to get back to the Worry Hole. Look, if you'll trust me and pay attention, I can give you the whole twenty minutes in two sentences, all right?"
"I—yeah. Okay."
"The aliens have been sighted again, in the close vicinity of Saturn. They're just sitting there. Think it through."
He left at once, but before he cleared the doorway I was halfway out of my p-suit, and Norrey was reaching for the straps on the right half of the Captain's couch.
And we were both beginning to be terrified. Again.
Think it through, Bill had said.
The aliens had come boldly knocking on our door once, and been met by a shotgun blast named Shara. They were learning country manners; this time they had stopped at the fence gate, shouted "hello the house," and waited prudently. (Saturn was just about our fence gate, too—as I recalled, a manned expedition to Saturn was being planned at that time, for the usual obscure scientific reasons.) Clearly, they wanted to parley.
Okay, then: if you were the Secretary General, who would you send to parley? The Space Commando? Prominent politicians? Noted scientists? A convention of used copter salesmen? You'd most likely send your most seasoned and flexible career diplomats, of course, as many as could go.
But would you omit the only artists in human space who have demonstrated a working knowledge of pidgin Alien?
I was drafted—at my age.
But that was only the first step in the logic chain. The reason that Saturn probe story had made enough of a media splash to attract even my attention was that it was a kind of kamikaze mission for the crew. Whose place we were assuming.
Think it through. Whatever they planned to send us to Saturn on, it was sure to take a long time. Six years was the figure I vaguely recalled hearing mentioned. And any transit over that kind of distance would have to be spent almost entirely in free fall. You could rotate the craft to provide gravity at either end—but one gee's worth of rotation of a space that small would create so much Coriolis differential that anyone who didn't want to puke or pass out would have to stay lying down for six years. Or hang like bolas from exercise lines on either end—not much more practical.
If we didn't dodge the draft, we would never walk Earth again. We would be free-fall exiles, marooned in space. Our reward for serving as mouthpieces between a bunch of diplomats and the things that had killed Shara.
Assuming that we survived the experience at all.
At any other time, the implications would have been too staggering for my brain to let itself comprehend; my mind would have run round in frightened circles. Unless I could talk my way out of this with whoever was waiting for us at Skyfac (why Skyfac?), Norrey and I had taken our last walk, seen our last beach, gone to our last concert. We would never again breathe uncanned air, eat with a fork, get rained on, or eat fresh food. We were dead to the world (S.I.C. TRANSIT: gloria mundi, whispered a phantom memory that had been funny enough the first time). And yet I faced it squarely, calmly.
Not more than an hour ago I had renounced all those things.
And resigned myself to the loss of a lot of more important things, that it looked like I was now going to be able to keep. Breathing. Eating. Sleeping. Thinking. Making love. Hurting. Scratching. Bowel movements. Bitching. Why, the list was endless—and I had all those things back, at least six years' worth! Hell, I told myself, there were damned few city dwellers any better off—few of them ever got walks, beaches, concerts, uncanned air or fresh food. What with airlocks and nostril filters, city folk might as well be in orbit for all the outdoors they could enjoy—and how many of them could feel confident of six more years? I couldn't begin to envision the trip to Saturn, let alone what lay at the end of it—but I knew that space held no muckers, no muggers, no mad strangers or crazed drivers, no tenement fires or fuel shortages or race riots or blackouts or gang wars or reactor meltdowns—
How does Norrey feel about it?
It had taken me a couple of minutes to get this far, and as I turned my head to see Norrey's face the acceleration warning sounded. She turned hers, too; our noses were scant centimeters apart, and I could see that she too had thought it through. But I couldn't read her reaction.
"I guess I don't mind much going," I said.
"I want to go," she said fervently.
I blinked. "Phillip Nolan was the Man Without A Country," I said, "and he didn't care for it. We'll be the Couple Without A Planet."
"I don't care, Charlie." Second warning sounded.
"You seemed to care back there on the Car, when I was bum-rapping Earth."
"You don't understand. Those fuckers killed my sister. I want to learn their language so I can cuss them out."
It didn't sound like a bad idea.
But thinking about it was. Two gees caught us both with our heads sideways, smacking our cheeks into the couch and wrenching our necks. An eternity later, turn-over gave us just enough time to pop them back into place, and then deceleration came for another eternity.
There were "minor" maneuvering accelerations, and the "acceleration over" sounded. We unstrapped, both borrowed robes from Bill's locker, and began trading neckrubs. By and by Bill returned. He glanced at the bruises we were raising on opposite sides of our faces and snorted. "Lovebirds. All right, all ashore. Powwow time." He produced off-duty fatigues in both our sizes, and a brush and comb.
"With who?" I asked, dressing hastily.
"The Security-General of the United Nations," he said simply.
"Jesus Christ."
"If he was available," Bill agreed.
"How about Tom?" Norrey asked. "Is he all right?"
"I spoke with Panzella," Bill answered. "McGillicuddy is all right. He'll look like strawberry yoghurt for a while, but no significant damage—"
"Thank God."
"—Panzella's bringing him here with the others, ETA—" he checked his chronometer pointedly "—five hours away."
"All of us?" I exclaimed. "How big is the bloody ship?" I slipped on the shoes.
"All I know is my orders," Bill said, turning to go. "I'm to see that the six of you are delivered to Skyfac, soonest. And, I trust you'll remember, to keep my damn mouth shut." Why Skyfac? I wondered again.
"Suppose the others don't volunteer?" Norrey asked.
Bill turned back, honestly dumbfounded. "Eh?"
"Well, they don't have the personal motivations Charlie and I have."
"They have their duty."
"But they're civilians."
He was still confused. "Aren't they humans?"
She gave up. "Lead us to the Secretary-General."
None of us realized at the time that Bill had asked a good question.
Tokugawa was in Tokyo. It was just as well; there was no room for him in his office. Seven civilians, six military officers. Three of the latter were Space Command, the other three national military; all thirteen were of high rank. It would have been obvious had they been naked. All of them were quiet, reserved; none of them spoke an unnecessary word. But there was enough authority in that room to sober a drunken lumberjack.
And it was agitated authority, nervous authority, faced not with an issue but a genuine crisis, all too aware that it was making history. Those who didn't look truculent looked extremely grave. A jester facing an audience of lords in this mood would have taken poison.
And then I saw that all of the military men and one of the civilians were trying heroically to watch everyone in the room at once without being conspicuous, and I put my fists on my hips and laughed.
The man in Carrington's—excuse me, in Tokugawa's chair looked genuinely startled. Not offended, not even annoyed—just surprised.
There's no point in describing the appearance or recounting the accomplishments of Siegbert Wertheimer. As of this writing he is still the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and his media photos, like his record, speak for themselves. I will add only that he was (inevitably) shorter than I had expected, and heavier. And one other, entirely subjective and apolitical impression: In those first seconds of appraisal I decided that his famous massive dignity, so beloved by political cartoonists, was intrinsic rather than acquired. It was the cause of his impressive track record, I was certain, and not the result of it. He did not seem like a humorless man—he was simply astounded that someone had found some humor in this mess. He looked unutterably weary.
"Why is it that you laugh, sir?" he asked mildly, with that faintest trace of accent.
I shook my head, still grinning uncontrollably. "I'm not sure I can make you see it, Mr. Secretary-General." Something about the set of his mouth made me decide to try. "From my point of view, I've just walked into a Hitchcock movie."
He considered it, momentarily imagining what it must be like to be an ordinary human thrust into the company of agitated lions, and grinned himself. "Then at least we shall try to make the dialogue fresh," he said. A good deal of his weariness seemed to be low-gee malaise, the discomfort of fluids rising to the upper body, the feeling of fullness in the head and the vertigo. But only his body noticed it. "Let us proceed. I am impressed by your record, Mr.—" He glanced down, and the paper he needed was not there. The American civilian had it, and the Russian general was looking over his shoulder. Before I could prompt him, he closed his eyes, jogged his memory, and continued, "—Armstead. I own three copies of the Stardance, and the first two are worn out. I have recently viewed your own recordings, and interviewed several of your former students. I have a job that needs doing, and I think you and your troupe are precisely the people for that job."
I didn't want to get Bill in trouble, so I hung a dumb look on my face and waited.
"The alien creatures you encountered with Shara Drummond have been seen again. They appear to be in a parking orbit around the planet Saturn. They have been there for approximately three weeks. They show no sign of any intention to move, nearer to or farther from us. Radio signals have been sent, but they have elicited no response. Will you kindly tell me when I come to information that is new to you?"
I knew I was caught, but I kept trying. In low gee, you chase spilled milk—and often catch it. "New to me? Christ, all of it's—"
He smiled again. "Mr. Armstead, there is a saying in the UN. We say, 'There are no secrets in space.'"
It is true that between all humans who choose to live in space, there is a unique and stronger bond than any of them and anyone who spends all his life on Earth. For all its immensity, space has always had a better grapevine than a small town. But I hadn't expected the Secretary-General to know that.
Norrey spoke while I was still reevaluating. "We know that we're going to Saturn, Mr. Secretary-General. We don't know how, or what will happen when we get there."
"Or for that matter," I added, "why this conference is taking place in Skyfac cubic."
"But we understand the personal implications of a space trip that long, as you must have known we would, and we know that we have to go."
"As I hoped you would," he finished, respectfully. "I will not sully your bravery with words. Shall I answer your questions, then?"
"One moment," I interjected. "I understand that you want our entire troupe. Won't Norrey and I do? We're the best dancers—why multiply your payload?"
"Payload mass is not a major consideration," Wertheimer said. "Your colleagues will be given their free choice—but if I can have them, I want them."
"Why?"
"There will be four diplomats. I want four interpreters. Mr. Stein's experience and proven expertise are invaluable—he is, from his record, unique. Mr. Brindle can help us learn the aliens' response to visual cues designed by computers which have seen the Stardance tapes—the same sort of augmentation he provides for you now. A sort of expanded vocabulary. He will also provide a peaceful excuse for us to judge the aliens' reaction to laser beams."
His answer raised several strong objections in my mind, but I decided to reserve them for later. "Go on."
"As to your other questions. We are guests of Skyfac Incorporated because of a series of coincidences that almost impels me to mysticism. A certain ballistic transfer is required in order to get a mission to Saturn at all expediently. This transfer, called Friesen's Transfer, is best begun from a 2:1 resonance orbit. Skyfac has such an orbit. It is a convenient outfitting base unequalled in space. And by chance Siegfried, the Saturn probe which was just nearing completion, is in a precessing ellipse orbit which brought it within the close vicinity of Skyfac at the right time. An incredible coincidence. On a par with the coincidence that the launch window for Saturn opened concurrent with the aliens' appearance there.
"I do not believe in good fortune of that magnitude. I suspect personally that this is some kind of intelligence and aptitudes test—but I have no evidence beyond what I have told you. My speculations are as worthless as anyone's—we must have more information."
"How long does that launch window remain open?" I asked.
Wertheimer's watch was as Swiss as he, exquisite and expensive but so old fashioned that he had to look at it. "Perhaps twenty hours."
Oof. Now for the painful one. "How long is the round trip?"
"Assuming zero time in negotiation, three years. Approximately one year out and two back."
I was pleasurably startled at first: three years instead of twelve to be cooped up in a canful of diplomats. But then I began to grasp the acceleration implied—in an untested ship built by a government on low-bid contracts. And it was still more than enough time for us all to adapt permanently to zero gee. Still, they obviously had something special and extraordinary up their sleeves.
I grinned again. "Are you going?"
A lesser man would have said, "I regret that I cannot," or something equally self-absolutory—and might have been completely honest at that. Secretary-Generals don't go chasing off to Saturn, even if they want to.
But all he said was, "No," and I was ashamed that I had asked the question.
"As to the question of compensation," he went on quietly, "there is of course none adequate to the sacrifice you are making. Nevertheless, should you, upon your return, elect to continue performing, all your operating costs will be covered in perpetuity by the United Nations. Should you be disinclined to continue your careers, you will be guaranteed unlimited lifetime transport to and from, and luxury accommodations at, any place within United Nations jurisdiction."
We were being given a paid-up lifetime plane ticket to anywhere in human space. If we survived to collect it.
"This is in no sense to be considered a payment; any attempt at payment would be laughable and grotesque. But you have chosen to serve; your species is grateful. Is this satisfactory to you?"
I thought about it, turned to Norrey. We exchanged a few paragraphs by facial telegraph. "We accept the blank check," she said. "We don't promise to cash it."
He nodded. "Perhaps the only sensible answer. All right, let us—"
"Sir," I said urgently, "I have something I have to say first."
"Yes?" He did me the honor of displaying patience.
"Norrey and I are willing to go, for our own reasons. I can't speak for the others. But I must tell you that I have no great confidence that any of us can do this job for you. I will try my best—but frankly I expect to fail."
The Chinese general's eyes locked onto me. "Why?" he snapped.
I continued to look at Wertheimer. "You assume that because we are Stardancers, we can interpret for you. I cannot guarantee that. I venture to say that I know the Stardance tapes, even the classified ones, better than any person here. I shot them. I've monkeyed with speed and image-field until I knew every frame by name and I will be damned if I understand their language. Oh, I get flashes, insights, but . . .
"Shara understood them—crudely, tentatively, and with great effort. I'm not half the choreographer she was, nor half the dancer. None of us is. No one I've ever seen is. She told me herself that what communication took place was more telepathy than choreography. I have no idea whether any of us can establish such a telepathic rapport through dance. I wasn't there; I was in this oversized donut, four bulkheads away from here, filming the show." I was getting agitated, all the pressure finding release. "I'm sorry, General," I said to the Chinese, "but this is not something you can order done."
Wertheimer was not fazed. "Have you used computers?"
"No," I admitted. "I always meant to when I got time."
"You did not think we would fail to do so? No more than you, do we have an alien/human dictionary—but we know much. You can choreograph by computer?"
"Sure."
"Your ship's computer memories should offer you a year's worth of study on the trip out. They will provide you with at least enough 'vocabulary' to begin the process of acquiring more, and they will provide extensive if hypothetical suggestions for doing so. The research has been done. You and your troupe may be the only humans alive capable of assessing the data and putting them to use. I have seen your performance tapes, and I believe you can do it if anyone can. You are all unique people, at least in your work. You think as well as a human . . . but not like a human."
It was the most extraordinary thing anyone had ever said to me; it stunned me more than anything else that was said that day.
"All of you, apparently," he went on. "Perhaps you will meet with failure. In that case you are the best imaginable teachers and guides for the diplomat team, of whom only one has even minimal experience with free-fall conditions. They will need people who are at home in space to help them, whatever happens."
He took out a cigarette, and the American civilian turned up the air for him unobstrusively. He lit it with a match, himself. It smoked an odd color: it was tobacco.
"I am confident that all of you will do your best. All of your company who choose to go. I hope that will be all of you. But we cannot wait until the arrival of your friends, Mr. Armstead; there are enormous constraints on us all. If you are to be introduced to the diplomatic mission before take-off, it must be now."
Wuh oh. Red alert. You're inspecting your housemates for the next two years—just before signing the lease. Pay attention: Harry and the others'll be interested.
I took Norrey's hand; she squeezed mine hard.
And to think I could have been an alcoholic, anonymous video man in New Brunswick.
"Go ahead, sir," I said firmly.
"You're shitting me," Raoul exclaimed.
"Honest to God," I assured him.
"It sounds like a Milton Berle joke," he insisted.
"You're too young to remember Milton Berle," Norrey said. She was lying down on the near bunk, nodding off in spite of herself.
"So don't I have a tape library?"
"I agree with you," I said, "but the fact remains. Our diplomatic team consists of a Spaniard, a Russian, a Chinaman, and a Jew."
"My god," Tom said from his reclining position on the other bed, where he had been since he arrived. He did indeed look like strawberry yoghurt, lightly stirred, and he complained of intermittent eye and ear pain. But he was shot full of don't-hurt and keep-going, and his hands were full of Linda's; his voice was strong and clear. "It even makes sense."
"Sure," I agreed. "If he's not going to send one delegate from each member nation, Wertheimer's only option is to keep it down to The Big Three. It's the only restriction most everybody can live with. It's got to be a multi-national team; that business about mankind uniting in the face of the alien menace is the bunk."
"Headed by the proverbial Man Above Reproach," Linda pointed out.
"Wertheimer himself would have been perfect," Raoul put in.
"Sure," I agreed drily, "but he had some pressing obligations elsewhere."
"Ezequiel DeLaTorre will do just fine," Tom said thoughtfully.
I nodded. "Even I've heard of him. Okay, I've told you all we know. Comments? Questions?"
"I want to know about this one-year trip-home business," Tom spoke up. "As far as I know, that's impossible."
"Me too," I agreed. "We've been in space a long time. I don't know if they can understand how little prolonged acceleration we can take at this point. What about it, Harry? Raoul? Can the deed be done?"
"I don't think so," Harry said.
"Why not? Can you explain?"
Guest privileges aboard Skyfac include computer access. Harry jaunted to the terminal, punched up a reference display.
The screen said:
"That's the simplest expression for a transfer time from planet to planet," he said.
"Jesus."
"And it's too simple for your problem."
"Uh—they said something about a freezing transfer."
"Got it," Raoul said. "Friesen's Transfer, on the tip of my mind. Sure, it'd work."
"How?" everyone said at once.
"I used to study all the papers on space colonization when I was a kid," Raoul bubbled. "Even when it was obvious that L-5 wasn't going to get off the ground, I never gave up hope—it seemed like the only way I might ever get to space. Lawrence Friesen presented a paper at Princeton once . . . sure, I remember, '80 or a little earlier. Wait a minute." He hopped rabbitlike to the terminal, used its calculator function.
Harry was working his own belt-buckle calculator. "How're you gonna get a characteristic velocity of 28 klicks a second?" he asked skeptically.
"Nuclear pulse job?" Tom suggested.
That was what I had been afraid of. I've read that there are people who seriously propose propelling themselves into deep space by goosing themselves with hydrogen bombs—but you'll never get me up in one of them things.
"Hell no," Raoul said—thank goodness. "You don't need that kind of thrust with a Friesen. Watch." He set the terminal for engineering display and began sketching the idea. "You wanna start from an orbit like this."
"A 2:1 resonance orbit?" I asked.
"That's right," he affirmed.
"Like Skyfac?" I asked.
"Yeah, sure, that'd—hey! Hey, yeah—we're just where we want to be. Gee, what a funny coincidence, huh?"
Harry, I could see, was beginning to smell the same rat Wertheimer had. Maybe Tom was, too; all that yoghurt got in the way. "So then?" I prompted.
Raoul cleared the screen and calculated some more. "Well, you'd want to make your ship lose, let's see, a little less than a kilometer per second. That's—well, nearly two minutes acceleration at one gravity. Hmmmm. Or a tenth-gee, say, about a seventeen-minute burn. Nothing.
"That starts us falling toward Earth. What we want to do then is slingshot around it. So we apply an extra . . . 5.44 klicksecs at just the right time. About nine minutes at one gravity, but they won't use one gravity because you need it fast. Might be, lemme see, 4.6 minutes at two gees, or it might be 2.3 at four."
"Oh, fine," I said cheerfully. "Only a couple of minutes at four gees. Our faces'll migrate around the back of our heads, and we'll be the only animals in the system with frontbones. Go on."
"So you get this," Raoul said, keying the drafting display again:
"And that gives us a year of free fall, in which to practice our choreography, throw up, listen to our bones rot, kill the diplomats and eat them, discuss Heinlein's effect on Proust, and bone up on Conversational Alien. Then we're at Saturn. Gee, that's another lucky break, the launch window for a one-year Freisen being open—"
"Yeah," Harry interrupted, looking up from his calculator, "that gets you to Saturn in a year—at twelve klicksecs relative. That's more'n escape velocity for Earth."
"We let the ship get captured by Titan," Raoul said triumphantly.
"Oh," Harry said. "Oh. Dump eight or nine klicksecs—"
"Sure," Raoul went on, punching keys. "Easy. A tenth gee for two-and-a-half hours. Or make it easy on ourselves, a hundredth of a gee for a little more than a day. Uh, twenty-five and a half hours. A hundredth gee isn't enough to make pee trickle down your leg, even if you're free-fall adapted."
I had actually managed to follow most of the salient points— computer display is a wondrous aid for the ignorant. "Okay then," I said sharply, in my "pay attention, here comes your blocking" voice, focusing everyone's attention by long habit. "Okay. This thing can be done. We've been talking it over ever since two hours before your shuttle docked here. I've told you what they want of us, and why they want all of us. My inclination is to tell you to have your answers ready along about next fall. But the bus is leaving soon. That launch window business you mentioned, Raoul." Harry's eyes flashed suspiciously, and yes, Tom too had picked up on the improbability of such luck. "So," I went on doggedly, "I have to ask for your final answers within the hour. I know that's preposterous, but there's no choice." I sighed. "I advise you to use the hour."
"Damn it, Charlie," Tom said in real anger, "is this a family or isn't it?"
"I—"
"What kind of shit is that?" Raoul agreed. "A man shouldn't insult his friends."
Linda and Harry also looked offended.
"Listen, you idiots," I said, giving it my very best shot, "this is forever. You'll never ski again, never swim, never walk around under even Lunar gravity. You'll never take a shit without technological assistance again."
"Where on Earth can you take a shit without technological assistance today?" Linda asked.
"Come on," I barked, "don't give me satire, think about it. Do I have to get personal? Harry—Raoul—how many women you figure you're going to date in space? How many would leave behind a whole world to stay with you? Seriously, now. Linda—Tom—do you know of any evidence at all to suggest that childbirth is possible in free fall? Do you want to bet two lives someday? Or had you planned to opt for sterilization? Now the four of you stop talking like comic book heroes and listen to me, God dammit." I discovered to my transient surprise that I genuinely was blazing mad; my tension was perfectly happy to find release as anger. I realized, for the first time, that a little histrionics can be a dangerous thing. "We have no way of knowing whether we can communicate with the goddam fireflies. On a gamble with odds that long, stakes this high, two lives is enough to risk. We don't need you guys anyway," I shouted, and then I caught myself.
"No," I went on finally, "that's a lie. I won't try to claim that. But we can do it without you if it can be done at all. Norrey and I have personal reasons for going—but what do you people want to throw away a planet for?"
There was a glutinous silence. I had done my best; Norrey had nothing to add. I watched four blank, expressionless faces and waited.
At last Linda stirred. "We'll solve zero-gee childbirth," she said with serene confidence, and added, "when we have to," a second later.
Tom had forgotten his discomfort. He looked long at Linda, smiling with puffy lips amid his burst capillaries, and said to her, "I was raised in New York. I've known cities all my life. I never realized how much tension was involved in city life until I stayed at your family's home for a week. And I never realized how much I hated that tension until I noticed how much I was getting to dread having to go dirtside again. You only realize how stiff your neck and shoulders were when someone rubs them out for you." He touched her cheek with blood-purple fingernails. "It will be a long time before we have to put a lock on our airlock. Sure, we'll have a child someday—and we won't have to teach it how to adapt to a jungle."
She smiled, and took his purple fingers in her own. "We won't have to teach it how to walk."
"In zero gee," Raoul said meditatively, "I'm taller." I thought he meant the few centimeters that every spine stretches in free fall, but then he said, "In zero gee nobody is short."
By golly, he was right. "Eye-level" is a meaningless term in space; consequently so is height.
But his voice was speculative; he had not committed himself yet.
Harry sucked beer from a bulb, belched, and studied the ceiling. "On my mind. For a long time. This adapting stuff. I could work all year insteada half. See a job through for once. Was thinking of doing it anyway." He looked at Raoul. "Don't figure I'll miss the ladies any."
Raoul met his eyes squarely. "Me either," he said, and this time his voice held commitment.
Light dawned in the cerebral caverns, and my jaw hung down. "Jesus Christ in a p-suit!"
"It's just a blind spot, Charlie," Linda said compassionately.
She was right. It has nothing to do with wisdom or maturity or how observant I am. It's just a personal quirk, a blind spot: I never will learn to notice love when it's under my nose.
"Norrey," I said accusingly. "You know I'm an idiot, why didn't you tell me? Norrey?"
She was sound asleep.
And all four of them were laughing like hell at me, and after a second I had to laugh too. Any man who does not know himself a fool is a damned fool; any man who tries to hide it is a double-damned fool, for he is alone. Together, we laughed, diminishing my foolishness to a shared thing, and Norrey stirred and half-smiled in her sleep.
"All right," I said when I could get my breath, "someone for all and all for someone. I won't try to fight the weather. I love you all, and will be glad of your company. Tom, you stretch out and get some sleep yourself; Raoul, get the light; the four of us'll go get briefed and come back for you and Norrey, Tom; we'll pack your comic books and your other tunic. You still mass around seventy-two, right?" I bent and kissed Norrey's forehead. "Let's roll it."