by Anthology
Kinsman grinned. “She’s been poisoning your mind against me.” But to himself he wondered, What the hell has Jill been telling her about me?
Jill drifted over to the control desk, picked up the clipboard with the mission log on it and tossed it lightly toward Kinsman.
“Ground control says the power pod checks out all green,” she said. “You did a good job.”
“Thanks.” He caught the clipboard. “Whose turn in the sack is it?”
“Mine,” Jill answered.
“Okay. Anything special cooking?”
“No. Everything’s on schedule. Next data transmission comes up in twelve minutes. Kodiak station.”
Kinsman nodded. “Sleep tight.”
Once Jill had shut the curtain to the bunkroom, Kinsman carried the mission log to the control desk and sat down. Linda stayed at the biology bench, about three paces away.
He checked the instrument board with a quick glance, then turned to Linda. “Well, now do you know what I meant about this being a way of life?”
“I think so. It’s so different . . .”
“It’s the real thing. Complete freedom. Brave new world. After ten minutes of EVA, everything else is just toothpaste.”
“It was certainly exciting.”
“More than that. It’s living. Being on the ground is a drag, even flying a plane is dull now. This is where the fun is . . . out here in orbit and on the Moon. It’s as close to heaven as anybody’s gotten.”
“You’re really serious?”
“Damned right. I’ve even been thinking of asking Murdock for a transfer to NASA duty. Air Force missions don’t include the Moon, and I’d like to walk around on the new world, see the sights.”
She smiled at him. “I’m afraid I’m not that enthusiastic.”
“Well, think about it for a minute. Up here, you’re free. Really free, for the first time in your life. All the laws and rules and prejudices they’ve been dumping on you all your life . . . they’re all down there. Up here it’s a new start. You can be yourself and do your own thing . . . and nobody can tell you different.”
“As long as somebody provides you with air and food and water and . . .”
“That’s the physical end of it, sure. We’re living in a microcosm, courtesy of the aerospace industry and AFSC. But there’re no strings on us. The brass can’t make us follow their rules. We’re writing the rule-books ourselves . . . For the first time since 1776, we’re writing new rules.”
Linda looked thoughtful now. Kinsman couldn’t tell if she was genuinely impressed by his line, or if she knew what he was trying to lead up to. He turned back to the control desk and studied the mission flight plan again.
He had carefully considered all the possible opportunities, and narrowed them down to two. Both of them tomorrow, over the Indian Ocean. Forty-fifty minutes between ground stations, and Jill’s asleep both times.
“AF-9, this is Kodiak.”
He reached for the radio switch. “AF-9 here, Kodiak. Go ahead.”
“We are receiving your automatic data transmission loud and clear.”
“Roger Kodiak. Everything normal here; mission profile unchanged.”
“Okay, Niner. We have nothing new for you. Oh wait . . . Chet, Lew Regneson is here and he says he’s betting on you to uphold the Air Force’s honor. Keep ‘em flying.”
Keeping his face as straight as possible, Kinsman answered, “Roger, Kodiak. Mission profile unchanged.”
“Good luck!”
Linda’s thoughtful expression had deepened. ‘What was that all about?”
He looked straight into those cool blue eyes and answered, “Damned if I know. Regneson’s one of the astronaut team; been assigned to Kodiak for the past six weeks. He must be going ice-happy. Thought it’d be best just to humor him.”
“Oh. I see.” But she looked unconvinced.
“Have you checked any of your pictures in the film processor?”
Shaking her head, Linda said, “No, I don’t want to risk them on your automatic equipment. I’ll process them myself when we get back.”
“Damned good equipment,” said Kinsman.
“I’m fussy.”
He shrugged and let it go.
“Chet?”
“What?”
“That power pod . . . what’s it for? Colonel Murdock got awfully coy when I asked him.”
“Nobody’s supposed to know until the announcement’s made in Washington . . . probably when we get back. I can’t tell you officially,” he grinned, “but generally reliable sources believe that it’s going to power a radar set that’ll be orbited next month. The radar will be part of our ABM; warning system.”
“Anti-Ballistic Missile?”
With a nod, Kinsman explained, “From orbit you can spot missile launches farther away, give the States a longer warning time.”
“So your brave new world is involved in war, too.”
“Sort of.” Kinsman frowned. “Radars won’t kill anybody, of course. They might save lives.”
“But this is a military satellite.”
“Unarmed. Two things this brave new world doesn’t have yet: death and love.”
“Men have died . . .”
“Not in orbit. On reentry. In ground or air accidents. No one’s died up here. And no one’s made love, either.”
Despite herself, it seemed to Kinsman, she smiled. “Have there been any chances for it?”
“Well, the Russians have had women cosmonauts. Jill’s been the first American girl in orbit. You’re the second.”
She thought it over for a moment. “This isn’t exactly the bridal suite of the Waldorf . . . in fact, I’ve seen better motel rooms along the Jersey Turnpike.”
“Pioneers have to rough it.”
“I’m a photographer, Chet, not a pioneer.”
Kinsman hunched his shoulders and spread his hands helplessly, a motion that made him bob slightly on the chair. “Strike three, I’m out.”
“Better luck next time.”
“Thanks.” He returned his attention to the mission flight plan. Next time will be in exactly sixteen hours, chickie.
When Jill came out of the sack it was Linda’s turn to sleep. Kinsman stayed at the control desk, sucking on a container of lukewarm coffee. All the panel lights were green. Jill was taking a blood specimen from one of the white mice.
“How’re they doing?”
Without looking up, she answered, “Fine. They’ve adapted to weightlessness beautifully. Calcium level’s evened off, muscle tone is good . . .”
“Then there’s hope for us two-legged types?”
Jill returned the mouse to the colony entrance and snapped the lid shut. It scampered through to rejoin its clan in the transparent plastic maze of tunnels.
“I can’t see any physical reason why humans can’t live in orbit indefinitely,” she answered.
Kinsman caught a slight but definite stress on the word physical. “You think there might be emotional problems over the long run?”
“Chet, I can see emotional problems on a three-day mission.” Jill forced the blood specimen into a stoppered test tube.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on,” she said, her face a mixture of disappointment and distaste. “It’s obvious what you’re trying to do. Your tail’s been wagging like a puppy’s whenever she’s in sight.”
“You haven’t been sleeping much, have you?”
“I haven’t been eavesdropping, if that’s what you mean. I’ve simply been watching you watching her. And some of the messages from the ground . . . is the whole Air Force in on this? How much money’s being bet?”
“I’m not involved in any betting. I’m just . . .”
“You’re just taking a risk on fouling up this mission and maybe killing the three of us, just to prove you’re Tarzan and she’s Jane.”
“Goddammit Jill, now you sound like Murdock.”
The sour look on her face deepened. “Okay. You’r
e a big boy. If you want to play Tarzan while you’re on duty, that’s your business. I won’t get in your way. I’ll take a sleeping pill and stay in the sack.”
“You will?”
“That’s right. You can have your blonde Barbie doll, and good luck to you. But I’ll tell you this . . . she’s a phony. I’ve talked to her long enough to dig that. You’re trying to use her, but she’s using us, too. She was pumping me about the power pod while you were sleeping. She’s here for her own reasons, Chet, and if she plays along with you it won’t be for the romance and adventure of it all.”
My God Almighty, Jill’s jealous!
It was tense and quiet when Linda returned from the bunkroom. The three of them worked separately: Jill fussing over the algae colony on the shelf above the biology bench; Kinsman methodically taking film from the observation cameras for return to Earth and reloading them; Linda efficiently clicking away at both of them.
Ground control called up to ask how things were going. Both Jill and Linda threw sharp glances at Kinsman. He replied merely:
“Following mission profile. All systems green.”
They shared a meal of pastes and squeeze tubes together, still mostly in silence, and then it was Kinsman’s turn in the sack. But not before he checked the mission flight plan. Jill goes in next, and we’ll have four hours alone, including a stretch over the Indian Ocean.
Once Jill retired, Kinsman immediately called Linda over to the control desk under the pretext of showing her the radar image of a Russian satellite.
“We’re coming close now.” They hunched side by side at the desk to peer at the orange-glowing radar screen, close enough for Kinsman to scent a hint of very feminine perfume. “Only a thousand kilometers away.”
‘Why don’t you blink our lights at them?”
“It’s unmanned.”
“Oh.”
“It is a little like World War I up here,” Kinsman realized, straightening up. “Just being here is more important than which nation you’re from.”
“Do the Russians feel that way too?”
Kinsman nodded. “I think so.”
She stood in front of him, so close that they were almost touching.
“You know,” Kinsman said, “when I first saw you on the base, I thought you were a photographer’s model . . . not the photographer.”
Gliding slightly away from him, she answered, “I started out as a model . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Don’t stop. What were you going to say?”
Something about her had changed, Kinsman realized. She was still coolly friendly, but alert now, wary, and . . . sad?
Shrugging, she said, “Modeling is a dead end. I finally figured out that there’s more of a future on the other side of the camera.”
“You had too much brains for modeling.”
“Don’t flatter me.”
“Why on earth should I flatter you?”
“We’re not on Earth.”
“Touche.”
She drifted over toward the galley. Kinsman followed her.
“How long have you been on the other side of the camera?” he asked.
Turning back toward him, “I’m supposed to be getting your life story, not vice versa.”
“Okay . . . ask me some questions.”
“How many people know you’re supposed to lay me up here?”
Kinsman felt his face smiling, an automatic delaying action. What the hell, he thought. Aloud, he replied, “I don’t know. It started as a little joke among a few of the guys . . . apparently the word has spread.”
“And how much money do you stand to win or lose?” She wasn’t smiling.
“Money?” Kinsman was genuinely surprised. “Money doesn’t enter into it.”
“Oh no?”
“No; not with me,” he insisted.
The tenseness in her body seemed to relax a little. “Then why . . . I mean . . . what’s it all about?”
Kinsman brought his smile back and pulled himself down into the nearest chair. “Why not? You’re damned pretty, neither one of us has any strings, nobody’s tried it in zero gee before . . . Why the hell not?”
“But why should I?”
“That’s the big question. That’s what makes an adventure out of it.”
She looked at him thoughtfully, leaning her tall frame against the galley paneling. “Just like that. An adventure. There’s nothing more to it than that?”
“Depends,” Kinsman answered. “Hard to tell ahead of time.”
“You live in a very simple world, Chet.”
“I try to. Don’t you?”
She shook her head. “No, my world’s very complex.”
“But it includes sex.”
Now she smiled, but there was no pleasure in it. “Does it?”
“You mean never?” Kinsman’s voice sounded incredulous, even to himself.
She didn’t answer.
“Never at all? I can’t believe that . . .”
“No,” she said, “not never at all. But never for . . . for an adventure. For job security, yes. For getting the good assignments; for teaching me how to use a camera, in the first place. But never for fun . . . at least, not for a long, long time has it been for fun.”
Kinsman looked into those ice-blue eyes and saw that they were completely dry and aimed straight back at him. His insides felt odd. He put a hand out toward her, but she didn’t move a muscle.
“That’s . . . that’s a damned lonely way to live,” he said.
“Yes it is.” Her voice was a steel knife-blade, without a trace of self-pity in it.
“But . . . how’d it happen? Why . . .”
She leaned her head back against the galley paneling, her eyes looking away, into the past. “I had a baby. He didn’t want it. I had to give it up for adoption—either that or have it aborted. The kid should be five years old now . . . I don’t know where she is.” She straightened up, looked back at Kinsman. “But I found out that sex is either for making babies or making careers; not for fun.”
Kinsman sat there, feeling like he had just taken a low blow. The only sound in the cabin was the faint hum of electrical machinery, the whisper of the air fans.
Linda broke into a grin. “I wish you could see your face . . . Tarzan the Ape Man, trying to figure out a nuclear reactor.”
“The only trouble with zero gee,” he mumbled, “is that you can’t hang yourself.”
Jill sensed something was wrong, it seemed to Kinsman. From the moment she came out of the sack, she sniffed around, giving quizzical looks. Finally, when Linda retired for her final rest period before their return, Jill asked him:
“How’re you two getting along?”
“Okay.”
“Really?”
“Really. We’re going to open a Playboy Club in here. Want to be a bunny?”
Her nose wrinkled. “You’ve got enough of those.”
For more than an hour they worked their separate tasks in silence. Kinsman was concentrating on recalibrating the radar mapper when Jill handed him a container of hot coffee.
He turned in the chair. She was standing beside him, not much taller than his own seated height.
“Thanks.”
Her face was very serious. “Something’s bothering you, Chet. What did she do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Really?”
“For Chrissake, don’t start that again! Nothing, absolutely nothing happened. Maybe that’s what’s bothering me.”
Shaking her head, “No, you’re worried about something, and it’s not about yourself.”
“Don’t be so damned dramatic, Jill.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Chet . . . I know this is all a game to you, but people can get hurt at this kind of game, and . . . well . . . nothing in life is ever as good as you expect it will be.”
Looking up at her intent brown eyes, Kinsman felt his irritation vanish. “Okay, kid. Thanks for the philosophy. I’m a big boy, though, a
nd I know what it’s all about . . .”
“You just think you do.”
Shrugging, “Okay, I think I do. Maybe nothing is as good as it ought to be, but a man’s innocent until proven guilty, and everything new is as good as gold until you find some tarnish on it. That’s my philosophy for the day!”
“All right slugger,” Jill smiled ruefully. “Be the ape man. Fight it out for yourself. I just don’t want to see her hurt you.”
“I won’t get hurt.”
Jill said, “You hope. Okay, if there’s anything I can do . . .”
“Yeah, there is something.”
“What?”
“When you sack in again, make sure Linda sees you take a sleeping pill. Will you do that?”
Jill’s face went expressionless. “Sure,” she answered flatly. “Anything for a fellow officer.”
She made a great show, several hours later, of taking a sleeping pill so that she could rest well on her final nap before reentry. It seemed to Kinsman that Jill deliberately laid it on too thickly.
“Do you always take sleeping pills on the final time around?” Linda asked, after Jill had gone into the bunkroom.
“Got to be fully alert and rested,” Kinsman replied, “for the return flight. Reentry’s the trickiest part of the operation.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Nothing to worry about, though,” Kinsman added.
He went to the control desk and busied himself with the tasks that the mission profile called for. Linda sat lightly in the next chair, within arm’s reach. Kinsman chatted briefly with Kodiak station, on schedule, and made an entry in the log.
Three more ground stations and then we’re over the Indian Ocean, with world enough and time.
But he didn’t look up from the control panel; he tested each system aboard the lab, fingers flicking over control buttons, eyes focused on the red, amber and green lights that told him how the laboratory’s mechanical and electrical machinery was functioning.
“Chet?”
“Yes.”
“Are you . . . sore at me?”
Still not looking at her, “No, I’m busy. Why should I be sore at you?”
“Well, not sore maybe, but . . .”
“Puzzled?”
“Puzzled, hurt, something like that.”
