Space Is Just a Starry Night

by Tanith Lee

  She wore a long shapeless tunic. Probably just as well. She would be nearly as shapeless underneath.

  “Will this do?” she said. “I didn’t know what —”

  “That’s fine. The filtered sun soaks through any material. The tan is all over, whatever you wear. I just like to get directly under the spotlight when I can.”

  They folded themselves out among the palms, which threw down coffee-green papers of shade. The warmth was honey. You felt it osmose into you. You never grew bored with, it. The walls of the bubble, sun-amber hiding the actual roaring face of the sun, pulsed very faintly, rhythmically, sensually, with Solarine ingestation. The Galleon was a child, given suck by a fiery breast. All this to fuel a ship. Man oh man.

  “It’s beautiful,” Apollonia said.

  She lay on palm-frond shadows. Her eyes were wide behind the spectacles. Her putty-colored hair was ambiguously tinged, almost gilded. Her lips were parted. He hadn’t noticed before, she had a nice mouth, the upper lip chiseled, the lower full and smooth, the teeth behind them even and white. He leaned over her and gently lifted the spectacles off the red groove in her nose. He was completely aware of the cliché — Oh, Miss Hartley, now I see you for the first without your glasses.…

  She made a futile panicky little gesture after the spectacles.

  “Relax,” he said.

  She relaxed, closing her eyes.

  “I can see. But not so well But I can see without them.”

  “I know you can.”

  “I never felt the sun, any sun, like this before,” she said presently. He saw it often, every journey in fact, how they grew drunken, wonderful solar drunks, with no morning after.

  An hour later, one-thirty earth time, he looked at her again. There was something changed. Already, her skin was altered. Long lashes lay like satin streaks against her face. The red groove had faded, become a thin rose crescent. OK Canna, so you’re Pygmalion. But the Solarina sun had got to him also, as it always did. He leaned over again, and this occasion he kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh.”

  “Baby,” he said. “I have to go back to my quarters and put on tape for my captain what 976 people find wrong with S.S.G. Pilgrim this trip.”

  She didn’t stir. He thought she’d gone to sleep, perhaps (fanciful) melodramatically passed out at the fragile kiss.

  He left her to the Solarina, and when he closed the door of his cabin he found himself carefully locking it, and the sweat between his shoulder blades had nothing to do with the sun.

  He didn’t see Miss Hartley next day-period. This was partly deliberate and partly luck. There were plenty of things to do, reports to make, two hours’ workout in the gym. Then some crazy dame lost a ruby pendant. He took a late dinner in the salon — as P.L., he had a place at the coordinators’ table, alongside his flock. The golden wash was spreading over them all, just as usual. Then he saw the girl.

  Something had happened to the girl.

  She was tanned, of course, enough tan that she must have been back to the Solarina during the day, or else she’d stayed there all night. Or maybe both. But it wasn’t only the tan. What the hell was it?

  He couldn’t stop staring, which was bad, because any moment she might look his way. But she didn’t look. She wasn’t even wearing her spectacles. She finished the tawny liqueur she was drinking, got to her feet, and walked unhurriedly out of the salon. She didn’t move the same way, either.

  “I don’t remember that girl,” said Fourth Officer Coordinator Jeans.

  “Apollonia Hartley.”

  “Not the right mixture for you, Canna.”

  “Help yourself,” said Canna.

  After dinner there was the report to make on the rediscovery of the lost pendant. It looked like it was going to be one of those runs with a lot of desk work. Around midnight there was cold beer and nothing much left to do except wonder if little Miss Hartley was on the sun deck.

  There were girls, and there were girls. Some girls you had to be wary of. Even birds of passage could turn around and fly straight back, and some had nest-building on their minds, and some had damn sharp claws. This girl now. She might be grateful. She might have taken it for what it was. Then again, she might not. And for godssakes anyway, what was there for him to be interested in?

  At one o’clock earth time, Canna went up to the Solarina. No robe and trunks now, but the rumpled uniform casuals he’d had on all day. The sun lounge was empty. Canna went to the entry-out and glanced through the gold-leaf tunnels of shine under the lizardia. Miss Hartley was lying face down on a recliner, about thirty meters away. Her hair poured over onto the ground. He couldn’t see her that well through the stripes of the palms, but enough to know that, aside from her hair, she was naked.

  He stepped away from the entry-out noiselessly and walked soft all the way back to his cabin. Oh boy, Canna.

  You’re beautiful! he said to the plain woman. Her face kindled, she opened her mouth and swallowed him whole.

  Ten o’clock next day-period, Jeans’s jowly face appeared on the cab-com.

  “Priority meeting, all officers non-Bridge personnel. Half an hour, Bridge annex.”

  “What’s going on?” Canna asked.

  “Search me.”

  “No thanks.”

  “OK, funny guy. Usual spiel to the mob, OK?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Usual spiel” was, as ever, necessary. Somehow, your passengers always knew when something was up, however mild, however closely guarded. Passing three groups on route topside, Canna was asked what emergency required a Bridge annex meeting. Usual spiel meant: “No emergency, Mr. Walters. Pilgrim always has an annex meeting third day of sun-parking.” “But surely, if everything is going smoothly?” “Nothing ever goes quite smoothly on a vessel this size, Miss Boenek.” “Then there is an emergency, Mr. Canna?” “Yes, Mr. Walters. We’re all out of duck pâté.”

  “Sit down, gentlemen, if you will,” said Andersen.

  He had been captain of the Pilgrim since Canna had started with the ship, and Canna guessed he respected the man about as much as he’d ever respected any extreme authority. At least Andersen didn’t think he was God, and at least he sometimes got off his tail.

  “Gentlemen,” said Andersen, “we have a slight problem. I’m afraid, Mr. Canna, yours, as ever, is going to be the delicate task.”

  “You mean it involves our passengers, sir?”

  “As ever, Mr. Canna.”

  “May I know what the problem is?”

  “We have some excess radiation, Mr. Canna.”

  There was the predictable explosion, followed by the predictable dumb show that greets the distant tolling of that bell, about which ask not for whom. Spake, Bridge Engineer Galleon Class, waited for the bell.

  “With your permission, sir? OK, gentlemen, it’s not big business. We have it under control. Every cubic centimeter of this tub is being checked.”

  “You mean,” said Jeans, “you don’t know the hell where it’s coming from.”

  Andersen said: “We know where it isn’t coming from. The meton is sound, and there’s no bleed-off from the casings. That’s our only source of internal radiation. Ergo, it can’t be us. Therefore, it’s coming in from outside. From the sun we’re parked over. As yet, we don’t know how or where, because every shield registers fully operational. According to topside computer there’s no way we can have a rad-bleed at all. So naturally, we’re double checking, triple checking until we pin the critter down. Even if we can’t figure it, and there’s no reason to suppose we eventually can’t, all we have to do is weigh anchor and move out of sun range. Meantime (and here, Mr. Canna, is the rub), the most obvious danger zone is the Solarina.”

  Canna groaned.

  “What you’re saying, sir, is that we’re going to put the Solarina off limits to the passengers, and I have to find some reason for it that won’t cause an immediate panic.”

  “You know what passen
gers are like when radiation is involved,” said Andersen.

  “Mention the word and they’re howling and clawing for the life launches,” said Jeans.

  “What’s the rad level?” Canna asked,

  Engineer Spake looked at the captain, got some invisible go-ahead, and answered: “At three o’clock this morning, point zero one zero. At nine o’clock, point zero two ten.”

  There was a second round of expletives.

  “In other words, it’s rising?”

  “It appears to be. But we have a long way to go before it reaches anything like an inimical level.”

  “I guess that’s topside’s hang-up, not mine,” said Canna. “My hang-up is what story I tell lower side.”

  “Just keep it simple, Mr. Canna, if you would.”

  “The simplicity isn’t what’s troubling me, sir.”

  “You’ll think of something, Mr. Canna.”

  At noon by the earth clock, when nine hundred odd persons were shooed from the Solarina, Canna guided them into the major lower-side salon, and told them about the free drinks, courtesy of Pilgrim. Then, standing on the rostrum with the hand mike, gazing out at the pebbled-beach effect of cluster on cluster of grim, belligerent, nervous faces, Canna found himself reviewing the half a dozen times he had been required to make similar overtures; the time the number twenty Solarine Ingestor caught fire, the time they hit the meteor swarm coming up from Alpheus. A couple of those, and a point zero two ten radiation reading was a candy bar. And then he remembered the girl, and for five seconds his eyes ran over the crowd, and when he couldn’t find her, he wondered why the mike was wet against his palm.

  They were making a lot of noise, but they quieted down when he lifted his hand. He explained, apologetically, humorously, that Pilgrim needed to make up a fuel loss, caused by a minor failure, now compensated, in one of the secondary ingestors. Due to that, the ship would be channeling off extra power through the ship’s main Solarine area, the sun deck. Hence the closure.

  “For which inconvenience, folks, we are truly sorry.”

  Now came the questions.

  A beefy male had commandeered one of the floor mikes.

  “OK, mister, how long’s this closure going to last?”

  “A day-period, sir. Maybe a couple of days, at most.”

  “I paid good cash for this voyage, mister. The Solarina’s the main attraction.”

  “The beneficial solar rays permeate every part of the ship, sir, not only the Solarina. The sun deck’s function is mostly ornamental. But the company will be happy to refund any loss you feel you’ve suffered, when we reach Lyra.”

  “If the goddam Solarina’s only ornamental, how can closing it affect the ship’s power?”

  “That’s kind of a technical query. The Solarine pipe ingestors run out over the hull, you recall, and the Solarina’s banks are the nearest to outer surface —”

  “OK, OK.”

  A pretty young woman miked from the other side of the room: “Is there any danger?”

  “Absolutely none, ma’am. We’re just tanking up on gas.”

  “Well, then, let’s tank up,” someone yelled, and the free drinking began in earnest.

  The Pilgrim had got off lightly, Canna thought.

  He met Jeans near the bar, downing a large double paint-stripper. Grinning broadly for passenger benefit, Jeans muttered: “Guess what the number game was ten minutes ago?”

  “Thrill me.” Canna also grinning.

  “Full point one.”

  “Great,” said Canna.

  “And you know what?” grinned Jeans. “Still climbing.”

  Far across the room there was a sort of eddy, a current of gold like a fish’s wake in sunset water. He thought of a woman baking in the yellow-green cradle of the palms, her arms and her hair poured on the floor.

  “The max is fifty, right?”

  “Right, Canna, right.”

  The woman with the ruby was approaching. Miss Keen? Kane? Kone? “I think it’s just lovely,” she giggled to Canna. “These marvelous ships, and they still get caught with their pants down.” She tried to buy him one of the free drinks.

  The golden current had settled, become a pool of molten air. Where the girl was. Apollonia. She’d dyed her hair, the color of Benedictine. He couldn’t be sure it was Apollonia, except there was nobody else who looked like her now, as none of them had looked like her before.

  When he escaped from his flock and got back to his cabin, a slim sealed envelope had come in at the chute with the lower-side stamp over it. Canna opened the envelope.

  I waited for you. That was all she had written, in rounded, over-disciplined letters. I waited for you.

  Sure you did, baby.

  He felt sorry for her, and disgusted. She’d improved herself. Perhaps he could palm her off on Jeans. No, he couldn’t do that. He’d understood she was trouble the first moment. He should have left her alone. God knew why he hadn’t been able to.

  At four, Spake came through on the cab-com.

  “Thought you’d like to hear it officially. The count is now point fifteen zero five.”

  “Jesus. Got a fix yet?”

  “Nothing. It’s everywhere lower side, from the Solarina to the milk bar.”

  “Not topside?”

  “Sifting through.”

  “Then the source has to be down here.”

  “According to the computer, nothing leaks, nothing’s bleeding off. Unless one of your sheep has a stash of plutonium tucked in his diapers…. It’s got to be coming in, but the shields are solid as a rock.”

  “Maybe you’re asking the computer the wrong questions.”

  “Could be. Know the right ones?”

  “What does Andersen say?”

  “He wants another meet, all available personnel, midnight plus three.”

  “Three in the morning?”

  “That’s it, Canna. Be there. And, Canna —”

  “What?”

  “Complete passenger drill tomorrow. Launches, suit-ups, the whole show.”

  “That’ll certainly lend an atmosphere of calm. I’ll get it organized.”

  Just then, the cabin lights faltered. The clear sheen of the Solarine lamps went white, then brown, steadied, and flashed clear again.

  “What the hell did that?” Canna demanded, but Spake was gone. Somewhere there had been a massive drain-off of power. That could mean several things, none of them pleasing. Already he was spinning a story for the passengers, a switchover of batteries as the fabricated weak ingestor was shut down. You stood there with the smoke billowing and the walls red-hot and screaming people everywhere, and you told them: It happens every trip. It’s nothing. And you made them believe it.

  Canna went out of the cabin, strolling toward the lower-side salon, taking in the three TV theaters on the way. The flock came to him like filings to a magnet. He was amazed they’d noticed the lights faltering. It was only the spare ingestor shutting down. They believed him. Makes you feel good, huh, Canna?

  But where was Canna when the lights went out? In the goddam dark.

  He opened his eyes. It was half past one, the cabin on quarter lamp. Over by the tape cabinet, fastened to its stanchions, the grotesque survival suit stood, blackly gleaming, like a monster from a comic rag. He’d been checking the suit for the demonstration tomorrow and then lain on the bunk to snatch an hour’s sleep before Andersen’s meeting. What had awakened him?

  The door buzzer sounded again. That was what had awakened him.

  Two thirds of the way to the door, he knew who it was, and hesitated. Then he opened the door.

  There in the corridor stood Apollonia Hartley. But it was not the Apollonia Hartley who had come aboard at Bel. The whole corridor seemed to shine, to throb and glow and shimmer. Maybe that was just the effect of full light after quarter lamp. Then she stepped by him into his cabin, and the throbbing, glowing, shimmering shine came in with her.

  “I waited,” she said quietly. “And then, whe
n you didn’t come, I realized you meant me to come here.”

  “Did I?”

  She turned and looked at him. Without her glasses, there was a slight film across her eyes, making them large, enigmatic. Not seeing him quite so well seemed to make it easier for her actually to look at him. Her Benedictine golden hair hung around her, all around her, and all of her was pure gold, traced over by the briefest swimsuit imaginable. And she was beautiful. Shaped out of gold by a master craftsman, Venus on a gold medallion.

  “You look fine,” he said. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “Nothing.” she said. “You’ve done this for me, Leon,.”

  He thought, Christ, no woman could make herself look like this in two days, not starting on the raw material Apollonia had started with. Not even with the Solarina.

  “You,” she said, “and the strange wonderful sun. No man ever looked at me before, ever kissed me. I’ve never been this close to a sun.”

  As she breathed, regularly and lightly, planes of fire slid across her waist, her breasts, her throat. And the cabin gathered to the indrawn breath, spilled away, gathered, spilled —

  “Can you let me into the Solarina, Leon?” she murmured. “I can do it this way, but it’s better there.”

  He tried to smile at her.

  “Sorry, the Solarina’s out of bounds, Apollonia — Miss Hartley — until —”

  “Leon,” she said.

  When she spoke, the room was full of amber dust and the scent of oranges, peaches, apricots; and volcanoes blazed somewhere. Then she put her hand against his chest, flat and still on the bare skin. Here he was, Leon Canna, with the best-looking lady he’d ever seen, and he was holding her at arm’s length. He stopped holding her that way and held her a better way and she came to him like flame running up a beach.