"But… "
Degler put his hand on Alex's thin shoulder. "Gabe and Rafe, of course, are the Pro GoH's."
Alex looked at him. "Now, wait a--"
"What do we have to do?" asked Gordon.
"Not much," Degler told him. Just mingle with the guests; talk to them. You get a "free con membership…"
"Spasebo."
"And you have to make a GoH speech later tonight."
Alex opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out.
"Tom," said Bob, "they aren't actually SF pros."
Dergler grinned. "They live science fiction. That's close enough."
"But I can't come up with a speech, just like that," Alex said. "Not that quickly." After the rescues of Peace and Freedom, when it was clear that the boosters had restabilized the orbits, and Lonny invited him to address the assembled Floaters from his hospital bed, he had been unable to say anything coherent. Lonny, damn his black heart, had probably known that.
"Don't worry," Degler said. "Just make it up as you go along. You're a spaceman! You could get up there in the pulpit and preach from the Albuquerque phone directory and still get a standing ovation."
Indeed, he could. As the fans milled around his chair, Alex discovered that anything he said was soaked up by his eager listeners. The little-orbit-to-orbit "broomsticks" that they rode between the stations? Fascinating. (And five minutes later he heard two fans blocking out a story about witches in space.) The details of hydroponic farming? Endlessly interesting. Especially the painstaking attention to detail that Ginjer Hu demanded.
Filkers were gearing up out by the pool; the laughter was louder than the singing.
Sherrine settled onto the narrow arm of his chair. "Comfy?"
"Very. Next best thing to floating."
"So let's float?"
He peered up at her elvish I've got-a-secret smile. He said, If you have antigravity, we've chased our tails a long way for your amusement."
She laughed like bubble-wrap popping. "Alex, it's possible to float in water. The Dinsby just took Gordon out to the spa--"
"Yeah, water."
"I forget how much water there is. We walked across a frozen river, I've seen the damn Mississippi, I don't know why it keeps hitting me like this--"
"But if Gordon and Barbara Dinsby are out there, every horny male and curious fan is going to be stripping down, too, so if you want to float--"
"Lead me."
It was turning chilly. There was a stack of towels on a webbed recliner. The pool had long been empty, but the spa was bubbling and steaming. It was eight feet across, circular, with people-sized indentations in the rim. Gordon and the red-haired woman were already in, and nestled comfortably close. In the dark around them, fans were stripping down.
Sherrine began to strip off her clothes, standing up. Awesome. Like a dancer, Alex thought, or a gymnast. He sat on one of the webwork recliners to get his shoes and pants off. Bare-assed fans were beginning to slide into the water. Two had kept their underwear on.
"The law speaks," Sherrine said, "as follows: you can wear anything you want in the spa after dark. Bob really did go in in the top part of a tuxedo once."
Barbara Dinsby was scratching Gordon's back in slow, luxurious circles, while Gordon twisted around to talk to her. Thurlow Helvetian was scratching Barbara's back. Tom Degler slid into the water behind Helvetian, and a short woman moved up behind him. A circle-scratch.
Sherrine, entirely naked and entirely lovely, slid into the water ahead of Gordon. Gordon's hands rose in the air; his fingers flexed like a pianist's. Sherrine waved imperiously to Alex, and Alex slid in ahead of her.
She spoke against his ear, a warm breath within the steam and roar of bubbles: "Scratch or massage?"
Decisions, decisions.
The huckster was a skinny gent with an unruly mop of salt-and-pepper hair; somewhat elderly, but with a twinkle in his eye. He wore a colorful, billowing shirt and stood behind a table stacked high with books from which he importuned passing fans. He wasn't getting much action. They were all wet from the spa, and the night was driving them in.
"Hi," he said to Alex, "I'm Thurlow Helvetian. May I shamelessly try to sell you a book?"
"You can try," Alex allowed as he paused at the table. He was bundled up now, and nearly dry, and still warm. "You'd have better luck with Gordon. I'm not much of a reader. Then again, Gordon's still in the spa."
Helvetian nodded to himself. "Start slow." He rummaged about on the table and emerged triumphantly with a cloth-bound volume. "Here. A Night on the Town. This is a fair sampler of my work. All short stories, so you get it in small doses."
Alex studied the book. The cover bore a stamp: Certified Elf-Free! "Fantasy."
"Rational fantasy," Helvetian assured him. "Fantasy with rivets. It means getting the details right, making sure it all hangs together logically."
"My matushka once said--" Alex turned and saw that Gordon had come up behind him. Gordon was surrounded by a group of five femmefans, including Barbara and Sherrine. "My matushka once said that the secret of realism was to describe the thumb so well that the reader thinks he has seen the entire hand."
Helvetian nodded. "That's right. It's got to be consistent and realistic or you lose the reader."
"What if it's a fantasy?" Alex asked.
"Especially in a fantasy," Helvetian replied.
"Yeah-da." Gordon's head bobbed vigorously. "A dragon you may believe in, or a time traveller, but a time-travelling dragon asks too much of the reader. H.G. Wells never used more than one-"
"Gordon? Save it," Barbara said. "It's time for your speech."
Gordon's mouth opened and closed, and he half-turned to run.
"Alex, isn't it? You're next. Or if Gordon freezes up, you're first. Work it out between you. Thurlow, you're not going to miss the GoH speeches, are you?"
"I didn't used to go to the program items…"
The Angels looked at each other. Neither had anything planned. Neither wanted to go first.
"Together," Gordon said.
"Mir was old. A tested, fully manned space station, more than the United States ever had, but old," Gordon said. "We had a Buryat shuttle up when everything stopped, but that was useless, not much more than a missile without guidance. We made it part of the habitat and rifled it for parts. There was not much on the moon, but we could work with what there was because of all that lovely working mass free for the taking--"
"And oxygen. There's infinite oxygen in lunar rock."
"So we had Moonbase. We even expanded a little. And in orbit, Mir and two shuttle tanks from which to make Freedom. One shuttle, ruined. And three NASPS."
The room was filled with rows of chairs. Behind them there was still standing room; the balcony doors were opened wide.
These thirty people were more than he could have gathered aboard Freedom, without leaving crucial functions untended. All these solemn eyes…
"Now, each of the NASPS is different," Alex said, "and neither of them could carry cargo, because each was an, experimental hypersonic ramjet airplane. Piranha couldn't even reach orbit without an auxiliary tank at takeoff!"
"And of course these were no longer available."
"You get a bubble for two and the rest is fuel tank and motors. So landing it and coming back to orbit--"
Gordon was really enjoying himself. Nobody in Mir or Freedom had ever looked at him like this. He said, "You would do only for the joy of it, and it would cost in hydrogen and wear. But we found we could convert all three to dive into the atmosphere and return without too much loss of delta-vee. Without that, we would not have nitrogen."