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Chapter 28

"Getting on close to two years, now," the director of the HIA mused, staring out the window. "I will say that this has been the smoothest operation you've ever run, Madeline."

She issued something that was a cross between a ladylike sniff of disdain and an outright snort. "That's because I'm working with a much higher class of clientele, so to speak. Compared to the usual run of lowlifes you stick me with."

He smiled, almost seraphically, and swiveled his chair back to face her. "I'm sure there's some saying regarding promises and rose gardens that applies here."

"It's helped—a great deal, I think—that A.J. Baker got involved with Helen Sutter."

Hughes cocked an eyebrow, inviting an elaboration.

"Helen's . . . Well, she's not happy about the security restrictions. Hard to blame her, since that's not something she's ever had to deal with in her profession. But she's a very level-headed sort of person, and I think she views the matter as not much different from the sort of practical limitations she's always faced. We're talking about a woman who'd make a damn good construction site foreman, if she ever had to start a new career."

Hughes grinned. "Is she still level-headed, after the blizzard of tabloid coverage?"

Madeline chuckled. "Oh, that's water off her back. She wouldn't pay any attention to it of any kind, if she didn't have to deal with the paparazzi. More precisely, if she didn't have to deal with Baker's reaction to them."

That brought an outright laugh from the director. A.J. Baker's scrapes with the paparazzi had become notorious. "But you think she's a good influence on him?"

"Certainly from our standpoint," Madeline replied. "Helen acts something like a coolant on a reactor, when it comes to A.J.'s public behavior. Well, leaving aside the paparazzi. Ever since they hooked up, I've had far fewer run-ins with him."

Hughes nodded. "Yes, I can see where she'd have that effect on the rambunctious young fellow. Part of the attraction she has for him, I imagine. I admit I can't quite figure out the flip side of that relationship."

"Why she's attracted to him?" Madeline shrugged. "I don't think that's hard to understand at all. Don't forget that almost all you ever hear about Baker from me are his . . . call them problem sides. But there are other things about the man—quite a few other things—that are very charming. I think that's especially important for someone like Helen, who's led a rather tightly regimented life because of the demands of her profession."

Hughes grunted softly. "Well. That's really none of our business, anyway. It's enough that she seems to have stifled his more anarchistic tendencies."

He sat up straight in his chair, placing his hands on the desk. "And . . . So. You'll be taking off day after tomorrow. Any last-minute issues we need to discuss?"

Madeline hesitated, for a moment. Then said: "Well, yes. Joe Buckley's become something of a problem."

The HIA director cocked an eyebrow. "How so? From the records, he's quite a bit less inclined toward the dramatic gesture than Baker. And that's your own assessment also, after eighteen months or so of working with him."

Madeline shook her head. "That's not what I meant. The problem is . . ." She took a slow breath and let it out. "The problem is that, as the months have gone by, I've found myself becoming attracted to him. Personally, I mean."

"Ah. Is the attraction reciprocated?"

"Yes. He's been very gentlemanly about it. No ogling—well, nothing obvious—and I think he's too intimidated by me to do anything beyond looking and thinking. He's a rather shy man when it comes to women, anyway. But . . . yes. It's pretty obvious."

"Obvious to you." Hughes' smile came back. "I think you often underestimate how much more perceptive you are about such things than most people, Madeline. Another by-product of your unfortunate childhood, I suspect."

Madeline shrugged. She was never comfortable talking about that subject, even with the very few people in the world who knew about it in the first place.

Hughes swiveled the chair and turned to look out the window. After a few seconds, he said softly: "One of the reasons I'm very good at what I do is that I've never romanticized this work. In the end, for all its importance—some of the time, at least—it's still just a job. I've known very few people in my life who could be satisfied simply with their work. And I don't think you're one of them, Madeline, for all that you've tried so hard these past many years. And you're thirty-five years old now. Right about the age when dedicated single professionals start wondering what the rest of their life will look like. At the age of thirty, being a bachelor suits people like you just fine. By the age of forty . . . it has lost a great deal of its charm."

"Sir, you're my boss," she said, almost harshly. "Not my shrink."

He chuckled. "And you think there's that much difference, in my job? You might be surprised, Madeline, at the subject of many of the conversations I've had in this room with my agents. Especially my top agents, who've been at it for a long time. It's often a stressful life; almost always a rather lonely one."

He swiveled back to look at her squarely. "And I don't know anyone who has as much right and cause as you do to feel lonely."

"Sir—"

"Oh, hush. And save the 'sirs' for someone who cares about such stuff. Madeline, all I'm trying to say is that you are not, actually, superwoman. So if you find yourself getting seriously involved with him at some point, don't think it's the end of the world. It's not as if either of us thinks Buckley is an enemy, after all. He's a security risk only in the narrow sense that he might want to be able to talk openly about subjects we feel need to remain restricted. Just be rational about it, that's all. As rational as possible, at least—which is never easy, dealing with that subject."

She found herself biting off the instinctive retort. "I'd find a clearer explanation of that useful."

He shrugged. "I shouldn't think it's complicated. My advice? Do nothing, until the voyage begins. Thereafter, if you find the attraction remains, consider the fact that you will be in isolation from the rest of the human race for a period of at least two years. Quite possibly longer, in your case, since you may well not be rotating back as soon as most others will. So don't be an idiot. Yes, an involvement would certainly add a complicated and difficult curlicue to your work. But I think someone as capable as you are can manage to handle that, well enough. What I'm sure of is that trying to suppress your feelings under those circumstances will make you very squirrelly—and I have yet to meet a squirrel who makes a good security agent."

Madeline couldn't help but laugh. "Why do I think your answer would be considered sheer heresy by the heads of any other intelligence agency in the government?"

He smiled. "I'm sure it would. What I'm even surer of, however, is that not one of them has a tenure in office more than a third of mine—and precious few last even that long. Part of the reason is because they do romanticize the work."

Madeline's eyes almost crossed. "'Romanticize'? That's hardly how I'd describe the way Davidson over at—"

"Of course, it is." The director's voice took on a very nasal tone. "'My agents will give one hundred percent at all times. Anyone not ready for that—there's the door.'"

Madeline laughed. "Good imitation."

"It should be. I've had to listen to him talk, often enough. He's especially prone to giving that little speech to congressmen every time one of his agents gets fired for personal peccadilloes like padding the expense account—and usually gives the speech while he's junketing the congressmen and himself around on the taxpayer's dime. 'Romanticization,' Madeline, is just a way of covering the fact that we're all human by pretending they are and we aren't. Very satisfying to the ego, and very deleterious to our work. Why? Because we wouldn't be in business in the first place if people weren't all at least somewhat fallible. So I follow the old precept of setting a fox to catch a fox—and I don't pretend my fox is a virtuous vegetarian unlike all the others. Nor do I need them to be. A rational, reasonably self-controlled carnivore will do well enough. Better, in fact."

He stood up. "Enough saws from the old man, I think. Go forth, Maid Madeline, and smite the dragons. But note that I said 'Maid,' not 'Maiden.'" His accent thickened noticeably. "That's 'cause my mama didn't raise no fools."

Helen stared out the port. Her suborbital flights had shown her the Earth's curvature, but this flight was the first one where she could really see the Earth below her. The blue-brown-white sphere was familiar from images, of course. But it looked so completely different when you were in microgravity, looking down on it in real life.

"What's that?" A.J. said from her other side. He was looking ahead, and had been for fifteen minutes. "Is that . . . ?"

"Yes," Major Irwin confirmed. "That's Nike."

The tiny point of light grew, and expanded into a great structure that looked as if it had been made by a giant metal spider with a love for sharp angles. But in the center of that structure was a long, sleek, familiar shape. The fourteen hundred feet of Nike shone in the sun with white and silver highlights that picked out the details of every ridge and window.

Helen felt gooseflesh spring out over her arms as it truly, finally hit her that she was getting into an honest-to-God spaceship, one that could have flown straight out of any of the science fiction movies of the past seventy or eighty years. For a moment, she thought she could almost hear theme music playing.

A.J. took her hand in his. The clasp was easy and relaxed, almost unthinking—as was the little squeeze she gave him in return. After a year and a half together—the last six months of it no longer bothering to maintain separate apartments—their relationship had settled into something quite comfortable. Amazingly comfortable, Helen sometimes thought.

She chuckled softly. A.J. glanced at her.

"What's so funny?"

"I was just . . . oh, marveling, I guess, at how well we get along.

Most of the time, anyway."

True love of his life or not—as A.J. insisted she was—his eyes were drawn back to Nike within two seconds.

Naturally. Helen didn't even sigh.

"Still pissed at me?" he asked.

By way of answer, she squeezed his hand again. "No. Not really. But I am glad we're not going to have to deal with paparazzi for a while."

Even as absorbed as he was in studying the Nike, A.J. had enough grace to flush. "Hey, look. I'm sorry I lost my temper, but even for paparazzi that guy—"

"I don't care. You should not have thrown him through a plate glass window. Especially that window."

A.J. winced. "Well, true enough. I still think the restaurant stiffed me on the cost of replacing it. But—ah—"

"But you weren't going to argue the point, seeing as how you were busy enough trying to keep criminal charges from being filed. Two days before takeoff."

A.J. would never flush for long. His grin was back. "Don't be silly." He jerked his chin forward, pointing to the Nike. "I knew I had a getaway. Talk about a fast horse out of Dodge!"

The surface-to-space shuttle Hurricane closed slowly with Nike. Very slowly, and very carefully. There'd be no slapdash or show-off approaches to what might be the most expensive object ever built by the hand of man, and was undoubtedly the most powerful vessel ever made. A.J. seemed constantly ready to jump out of his seat with impatience—a maneuver most strongly ill-advised in microgravity. But, finally, they could hear the transfer tunnel lock onto the external lock collar.

"We are docked with Nike," came the pilot's voice. "All you passengers can unstrap now. Just be careful making your way out. One person at a time through the lock."

A.J. let Helen go first, even though his first impulse was quite clearly to launch himself in a single leap through the connecting lock. She found his attempts to be courteous at once gratifying and amusing. A.J.'s single-mindedness generally made him semioblivious to other people, even Helen. But when he did focus that capacity for concentration on her, he was just as intense as he always was. If nothing else, she thought wryly as she went through the lock, it made for great sex.

Ahead she saw the other airlock door open, and someone visible on the other side. As she passed through that lock, she saw that it was Ken Hathaway, upside-down and hanging from the floor. Realizing that the captain of a ship probably knew the orientation better than she did, she used the convenient handholds to rotate around and match him.

"Permission to come aboard?" she asked, grinning, in imitation of who knew how many scenes in movies.

He grinned back. "Permission granted. Welcome aboard Nike, Dr. Sutter! And A.J.," he added, as the sensor specialist squeezed in behind her.

"So how do you feel about being called Captain?" A.J. immediately demanded. "I know that in the Air Force that's pretty far down the totem pole compared to brigadier general."

"Well, it was a concession to the Navy. My training twinges occasionally, but . . ." Ken's eyes flicked back and forth, as if searching for hidden spies. "Don't tell anyone," he half-whispered, "but the truth is I agree with the squids. Here, anyway. Someone commanding a spaceship just has to be called Captain."

"It's not customary for the captain to be present whenever crew arrives, though, is it?" Helen asked.

"When they're important civilian crew, of course. Politics, you know. And when they're good friends, you show up anyway. Besides, I want to be the one to show off my ship. No one else except Jackie and Gupta get to do tour guide duty. They're the only others that can really call it their ship."

"Most of the others are already here, right?"

"Almost all. The Japanese astrogeological specialist, Dr. Ryu Sakai, is coming in tomorrow. Madeline Fathom will be coming up with him."

"And we get moving a couple days after that?"

"If all the tests show positive, A.J." Hathaway's grin came back. "And if the cops don't arrive to haul you away for assault and battery."

A.J. flushed again. "Hey, look, the guy practically shoved his camera into Helen's soup. Goddammit—"

He broke off. Jackie Secord had entered the chamber.

She was an arresting sight. Partly because she was floating straight at them, her face leading the way; partly because she was oriented at a ninety-degree angle; but, mostly, because of her grin. She reminded Helen of a shark, nearing its prey.

Jackie was holding something in her hand, which she brought forward and extended toward A.J.

"Oh, puh-leeeeeeze, Mr. Baker, can I have your autograph?"

Helen looked down at the thing and burst into laughter. It was a copy of the front page of the tabloid in question. Half of it was a huge photograph of A.J., looking like an enraged skinny gorilla and glaring at the camera through the shattered window of a restaurant.

A.J. in a Fury!
His Love Nest With Helen Exposed!

"At least they finally dropped the headlines about you," she chortled.

Jackie rolled her eyes. "Thank God! Bad enough when I was trying to convince the people who knew me that A.J. wasn't my boyfriend. Convincing half the world, with headlines like Jackie Green-eyed With Jealousy . . ."

She shook her head. "I think they had me on the brink of suicide for eight months straight. And, A.J., I still want your autograph."

"I don't have a pen," he grumbled. "And that's a terrible picture of me, anyway."

"I think it's pretty good, myself," Hathaway chimed in. He ignored A.J.'s glare and waved his hand toward the lock Jackie had come through. "But now—the tour!"

Having had her joke, Jackie folded up the copy and stuffed it into a pocket of her jumpsuit. She then added her handwave to Ken's. "You first, A.J."

As Helen followed him, she and Jackie exchanged a smile.

"Who woulda guessed, huh?" Jackie asked. "Bless you, Helen, for being the flypaper for the rest of us."

I never would have guessed, that's for sure, Helen mused. To her astonishment, in the year and a half since Glendale's press conference had made the Phobos expedition front page news, the crew of the Nike had become as famous as movie or rock stars. And—alas— it hadn't taken the tabloids more than a month to figure out that A.J. and Helen were the ideal target for their attentions.

A.J. claimed that was because of Helen's good looks. Helen herself thought that only accounted for—at most—two percent of the paparazzi's interest. Measured by any standard criteria, both Jackie Secord and Madeline Fathom were better-looking than Helen. Not to mention much younger.

No, most of the interest was in A.J. More precisely, the fact that A.J. could be goaded into saying or doing something publicly that made splendid tabloid headlines. Which—

He had. Many times.

But it was all over now, thankfully. Whether or not the Nike was a fast horse out of Dodge, it was for sure and certain a refuge from the tabloids. And would be, for quite a long time.

So, Helen put aside all thoughts of smashed windows—not to mention an awkward photo of herself wearing, well, not much of anything—and concentrated on Ken's guided tour.

Hathaway was leading them down a long corridor, floating from handhold to handhold with a grace that Helen envied. She hoped she'd be able to get the hang of that soon. A.J. wasn't as good as Hathaway, but definitely better than she was.

"Here you're seeing some generic hallway," Hathaway said. "The habitat ring is made up of sixty sections a bit less than fifteen meters long, about ten meters thick, and thirty meters across. These sections come in two flavors: twenty of them have viewing areas, ports, on them—although they can be sealed off and shielded from behind— and the other forty have no such provisions. The sections all interlock together firmly and are connected to the main body by a sort of bicycle-spoke arrangement. At intervals there are also direct corridors connecting us to the main body."

It was a measure of A.J.'s excitement that he didn't make a single sarcastic remark to the effect that Hathaway was telling them stuff they already knew perfectly well. By now, Helen could have drawn a diagram of most sections of the ship, from memory alone. A.J. could probably draw a diagram and a schematic of the electrical system.

Somehow it didn't matter. Seeing the huge ship in person was a completely different experience than studying it in images and blueprints.

Hathaway snagged a handhold and brought himself to a halt before a door. Expertly, he evaded Helen and A.J. as they failed to grab other handholds and had to stop themselves some distance farther along and return.

"This is one of the cabins—the one we are assigning you, Helen, in fact. Or the two of you, if you want to share it. No paparazzi to pester you here, after all." His wide smile was replaced by a caricatured frown of disapproval. "Not that that stopped you, I noticed— harrumph—from living in sin back on Earth."

The "cabin" was actually a two-story apartment, with the bedroom and study upstairs, and living room and small dining room/kitchen downstairs. Multiple fastening loops, velcro pads, and other provisions were made for using the apartment in microgravity. But the construction was based on the fact that, most of the time, the ring would be providing one-third gravity, with "down" towards the outside of the ring.

"The furnishings can be moved around, partitions put in, and so on. The shapes aren't very variable—we only have two types of chairs, for instance—but we've tried to provide lots of options for layout. Basically, it's like very fancy Lego building blocks. You can turn and lock the units into standardized fasteners below, and there are utility hookups laid out in a standard grid pattern that you can take advantage of."

"Me?" Helen shook her head. "Not likely. I'm a paleontologist, not a plumber."

"Well, okay, one of the ship's engineers. You wouldn't want to try doing any of this without training—you hear that, A.J.?—and even with training you wouldn't do it alone. But within some pretty broad limits, you can have a custom living space. Before too long, I don't expect any two cabins to be the same. The engineers even set up mechanisms to make sure balance is maintained, if by some odd chance everyone on one side of the ring likes apartments crowded with lots of furnishings and everyone on the other side likes wide-open spaces."

Again, Helen ignored the fact that Ken was lecturing them on stuff they already knew. She just shook his head and murmured: "It's . . . huge. I never imagined it would seem this big. I mean, abstractly I knew the designs—but they didn't convey the sheer impact of the thing."

A.J. turned away from examining the kitchen setup. "We aren't Napoleonic-era sailors and we're not going to work well cramped into tiny living quarters for a year or more. We need space. And fortunately, space they could give us, since the ship had to be big anyway."

"Can we see the labs?" Helen asked.

Hathaway chuckled. "Have no fear, Dr. Sutter. About half the ring is living space. The other half is for working. We have everything on the ring from full networked information systems to paleontological, biological, chemical, nuclear, and engineering laboratories. Data is stored redundantly in another system in the main body, and we can send backups of critical data to Earth if we need to. We have integrated microfabrication setups for prototyping, tool design and repair, and so on."

Since Ken was clearly not going to be diverted from his determination to reiterate what they already knew, Helen decided it would be polite to indulge him.

"Main control is in the central body, right?"

"The bridge," Hathaway corrected her, clearly preferring the classic terminology. "Yes, it is indeed located in the forward section of Nike's central body. We'll be visiting there too. Shall we go on?"

"Wow."

A.J. was simply staring around, grinning so widely that it looked like his face might split in two. "This is so cool."

Ken tried to look professionally proud, but that comment broke through the feeble attempt. He grinned back like a kid finding his dad had built him a three-story treehouse. "Yeah, isn't it?"

Nike's bridge was arranged in a manner strongly reminiscent of many a fictional space vessel's. It was a long, egg-shaped compartment, with duty stations spaced around the perimeter, and a central dais with a command and control console and chair—a captain's chair, clearly—which could swivel to survey any of the duty stations.

Dominating the bridge, however, was the tremendous viewport, covering most of the "ceiling" area. A span of pure velvet blackness showed through in the dimmed interior lighting, sprinkled with stars and crisscrossed with the argent webwork of the dry dock facilities around Nike.

"That's . . . a hell of a window," Helen said finally. She realized she wasn't as familiar with this part of the ship's design. "Isn't that a weak point in the structure? At least for radiation shielding?"

"Not really. It looks like clear glass, but that's actually transparent composite. It's coated with artificial diamond, and insulated with a foot and a half of optical aerogel with a high radiation shielding coefficient. The back section is similar but coated with an active-crystal matrix which can black it out—makes it reflective on the outside. And of course can be used to enhance anything you see through the port, or override it as a display, like a viewscreen. You actually have similar windows in your cabins; they just aren't open right now, so to speak. Because of the heating effects and the potential danger of people blinding themselves looking at the sun, we're keeping the window controls mostly to ourselves. We'll leave them open in the cabins whenever it's safe, once we're under way. You can always shut them off, though."

Helen waved her hand around the spacious bridge. "Let me guess. More political and publicity design compromises."

Hathaway nodded. "Not so much compromises as just overkill again. You could really run Nike from a single enclosed room, if you had to, with nobody at the controls. We don't really need a crew to fly this ship, although having one certainly acts as a failsafe. But . . . well, it just looks better this way. The public feels like they're getting their money's worth, and they ponied up a lot of it.

"The design is completely functional, too. You could in fact fly this ship on manual from the bridge, not that I'd ever want to see anyone try it. A.J., your station is right there." He pointed to a console area in the front and to the right.

As A.J. floated himself over to the indicated area, Hathaway added: "The equipment isn't a waste, either. Like almost everything else in the ship, it can either be used right where it sits or unshipped and brought down to Phobos."

"Hey, this thing already ties right in with my VRD!"

"Of course it does, A.J. They took the coding straight from your personal station at NASA."

"Neat! I don't even have to tweak it!"

Helen took another slow, admiring turn to examine the whole bridge. "I agree with you, Ken. It might be silly theatrical overkill in some ways—but this really is a ship. You can feel it."

"Yes, you can." Hathaway's gaze was focused out the huge viewport. "And she's about ready to fly."

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