Another load in place. Back out, and down to ground level. Harry lit a cigarette. He was just about the only one on Thunder Ridge who smoked. He took two puffs and inched off the end, put the butt back in the package. "OK, do we want to glue the mat in now? Or wait?"
Bob didn't answer.
"Lighten up, Pins. Nobody thinks--" Harry looked up. "Hi, Sherry, C.C. Alex, they brought you an exercise mat."
"Hi, Harry." C.C. rubbed his hands together briskly. "Okay. What can we give up? Alex, those mice are gengineered to produce juvenile growth hormones. That'd let the Angels grow their bones back, right?"
"That's what I'm told," Alex said.
"You need the seeds a lot, the guinea pigs and guinea hens and rabbits not as much. The diet supplements, of course. No bull semen, to bowdlerize a phrase. Sausage packed in dry ice?"
"Sausage, no. Eat it before we take off, if it's that good and won't keep. Dry ice, hell no. Carbon we want, but oxygen comes almost free from lunar rock. Did anyone think of sending lamp black?"
C.C. ran his eyes down the list. "I don't think so. I'll see what we can get when. How badly do you want these metals? And the honeycomb blocks? They re heavy."
"It's not really my department, C.C."
"Alex, you and Gordon are the only ones who can make these choices. And five passengers… Where the hell is Gordon?"
Alex waved toward the shadows where he had seen Gordon with Jenny Trout. "I told him we needed him, but--"
Bob Needleton said, "I confess I do not see why the fifth wheel has to be me." His ears and nose were noticeably pink.
Alex said, "Gordon. Sherrine. Hudson. Me. You. Shall I take the exercise mat?"
Bob was having trouble pulling the words out. "We pulled you off the Ice. The rest are gone. There's only me and Sherrine left--"
Alex said, "Hold it."
"Hold it, my foot. You and Sherrine have been--"
"You wanted to know, Bob. Sherrine had the right to know. Sherrine has to go into space because I slept with the Commander's wife."
Needleton gaped, then, grinned. "We-ell. That's a better story than I expected."
'Well, it's true. Sherrine doesn't go, the Station Commander says he won't pick me up. Maybe you can live with that, but I won't volunteer to stay. I won't."
Bob looked at Sherrine. "All right--"
"He already told me."
"I didn't ask, Sherry. But why not six? Gordon's got a woman, too. What are we going to give up for Barbara? Dammit, where the hell is Gordon?"
Two voices echoed oddly, as if the entire hangar space had answered--"
"Wanted fan on Chthon and Sparta and the Hub's ten million stars,
Wanted fan for singing silly in a thousand spaceport bars.
If it's what we really want, we'll build a starship when we can;
If I could just make orbit then I'd be a wanted fan."
"Enough of this," Alex said. "Excuse me." He walked toward were Jenny and Gordon were leafing through notes, nodding, singing:
"Wanted fan for building spacecraft, wanted fan for dipping air,
Sending microwave transmissions, building habitats up there.
Oh the glacier caught us last time; next time we'll try to land!
And when Ice is conquered, it will be by wanted fans!"
Jenny said "Gordon, that's nice. A little premature, maybe, hi, Alex, even a little overoptimistic--"
"Hi, Jenny. Gordon, we're deciding your fate while you play. This is how you came here in the first place, remember?"
"And this is why I stay," Gordon said. "That verse I wrote for you, Alex. And when the stars are conquered, it will be by wanted fans!"
Alex became aware that the others had followed him. He said, "Gordon?"
"I am stilyagin, Alex. Nothing has changed. But there is room for poets here, and novelists, and I can always catch the next flight with Hudson's wife. My voice is needed here. I stay. Four seats, four passengers. Tell my family I kiss them from below. No, let me word that again," he said, while Sherrine and Bob and Gary Hudson looked at each other. "Wait, now--"
Sherrine took Alex's arm and led him into the shadows. She said, "Do you see what I see?"
"Oh, sure. If the Phoenix went up missing me and Gordon, it'd be a disaster. Lonny couldn't be voted dog catcher. So you don't have to come, but why don't you come anyway? Please?"
Sherrine smiled. "Okay."
"Stop toying with my affections and give me a straight answer."
"I'll come if I have to sit in your lap. Now we need to finish loading. Alex, didn't you say you didn't want the plastic corn?"
"Yeah. I appreciate the work that went into getting it, but we don't need plastic that much and we've got better use for the soil, and it doesn't even breed!"
"Well, it was here. Some dedicated fan sneaked it aboard."
"Damn. We'd better find it before it gets buried."
They climbed the scaffold. Sherrine asked, "How do you make love in free fall?"
Alex laughed. "Superbly. It takes a tether."
They eeled into the cabin. "Look inside things," Sherrine said.
"Yeah. Sherrine, this could be your last chance to make love in a gravity field."
"Mmm."
"We could even find a, what did we call those things, they were soft and you spread a sheet over them--" You're kidding, right? Bed."
"Bed."
Hudson laid out a map of the Dryden Research Center portion of Edwards Air Force Base and pointed to a building. "In there. Room G-44. There are three security containers in the room, and the IMU is in the lowest drawer of the middle one."
"And you're sure?" Bob Needleton asked.
"Yes, of course I'm sure. Actually, there are five of the damned things, but that's where they keep one of them, the one that's been tested most recently."
"And when was that?" Sherrine asked.
"About a year--no, more like two years. Twenty months ago. Major Beeson brought it over and we ran tests on the whole Phoenix electronics system. Worked like a charm, too. Then they took the IMU back, packed it in foam, and put it in the safe."
"And it hasn't been moved since?" C.C. Miller asked.
"Not that I know of," Hudson said. "And why would it? Its where it stayed between tests last time."
"When's the next test?" Needleton asked.
"Maybe never. Beeson was transferred. There's a civilian named Feeley in charge of technology studies at Dryden now."
"Feeley?"
"Yeah, the troops call him Touchy Feeley, of course. He's a Green."
"And brain dead, I suppose," Miller said.
"He's not brain dead, he's soul dead. Everything's kept in order, though, all the lab tools put away every day, all the reports filed on time."
"Hell of a way to run a lab," Needleton said. "But I suppose it's as well. Makes it likely your IMU will be right where it belongs." He studied the map. "Harry, it looks like we can go in from the hydrogen valve compound. Get inside there, and then open a new hole into the main base. Fang, you've been watching the base, did you ever see patrols at night?"
"Nothing," Fang said. "Guards at the gates, some people in the operations building, some night crew at the flight line. Nothing else."
"Not much to guard anymore," Hudson said. "One time, they had the hottest airplanes and pilots in the world here. Spaceships, too. Now--"
"Yeah," Needleton said. "OK, Harry, I guess we're set. Let's do it."