He had stared at the ring for many minutes in reverence and fear before daring to remove it from its carved niche and slip it on to his finger. The third finger of the left hand had been an instinctive choice. The platinum band had slid over the joints with ease, but on reaching the base of his finger the metal had stirred for an instant, coiling on his flesh and locking itself in place. There was no undue feeling of pressure, but Jerome knew better than to try removing the ring. He had become truly wedded, entered on a strange contract which was beyond his power to break.
In a way he had surrendered his status as a Terran, and yet did not regard himself as a traitor to his kind. As Conforden had once pointed out, the Dorrinian people were as one with the people of Earth, and it was unthinkable that they should be doomed to slow extinction under the surface of Mercury. There were also many people like Birkett, Thwaite and Starzynski who deserved the chance to return home. Jerome still had reservations about the method chosen for establishing a Dorrinian nation on Earth, but he acknowledged that a fait accompli could be the only practicable way.
It was ironic, Jerome thought, that his conscience should give him few qualms on such a vast and contentious issue, while at the same time he felt so guilty over lying to Buxton and Teinert about comparative trivia. They both had a fondness for jokes and wordplay, and were easy to make laugh, especially when they thought he had revealed a comic misunderstanding of all things American. It was something he had used more than once to divert a conversation away from a sensitive area…
“How come,” Buxton had said on one early occasion, “we didn’t know that Russia had a four-man ship with interplanetary capability?”
“It was a matter of national security. The ZR-12 had many military applications. No country advertises these things.”
Buxton had been dissatisfied. “Why was a military ship sent chasing off to Mercury?”
“What else could we have sent? Besides, if the object on Mercury really was the product of an advanced interstellar civilization the knowledge to be gained from it could have been useful in many spheres—including defence.”
Buxton had scowled and said, “I thought Krypton was only in the funny papers.”
“You have comics about rare gases?”
And at another time Buxton had turned away from the communications panel with an expression which hinted that something had revived his early antagonism towards Jerome.
“That was Allbright calling from the Cape,” he had said. “He told me the Soviets have issued a statement denying all knowledge of an interplanetary ship which was sent to Mercury.”
“It is an embarrassment,” Jerome had replied. “The first reaction is always to deny everything.”
“They also deny all knowledge of you.”
“How could they acknowledge my presence on Mercury after having disallowed my means of getting there? The statements will change. A story will evolve.”
“You know,” Teinert had come in, you speak really good English.”
“You are very kind.”
“Your accent doesn’t even sound Russian to me.”
Jerome had produced a rueful smile. “When you come from a place as remote as Okhotsk your Russian doesn’t even sound Russian.”
Once when they were discussing the riddle of the decoy Buxton had said, “Pavel, when you were hanging around waiting for us to show up, did you take a close look at that chunk of metal?”
“Not really,” Jerome had said. “I was too worried about dying.”
“It looked sort of…unused, and it was really soft. We were able to saw bits off like it was cardboard. It’s hard to imagine a thing like that being part of an operational ship.”
“It’s all very puzzling.”
“You’re telling me,” Buxton had said gloomily. “What do you think it is?”
“That’s outside my field of expertise. “
“What is your field of expertise?”
“I’m sorry,” Jerome had replied, lost for an answer he would be able to back up in a technical discussion. “I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.”
That was a formula he had used time after time when his knowledge of Russian geography, current affairs or space science had proved inadequate to deal with a question. As the journey had progressed and the Soviet news agency had persisted with the absolute denials of Jerome’s claims, he had feared that his attitude might cause stresses, but to his relief the two astronauts chose to make a joke of it.
“I’m not at liberty to divulge that information,” became a stock reply to queries about sexual attitudes, the time of day or the whereabouts of a pencil.
Other sources of amusement to Buxton and Teinert were Jerome’s height and his physical weakness on the exercise machines. When first starting to move around in the Precinct he had judged himself to be a few centimetres taller than in his previous incarnation. In the absence of any comparative measures, and while surrounded by slender Dorrinians, that had seemed a reasonable estimate. It was, however, part of the astronauts’ duties to check their own height regularly and chart the increase caused by zero gravity, and they had quickly brought it to Jerome’s notice that he was more than two metres tall.
“You must have been out here a hell of a long time, Pavel,” Teinert had said. “Did you lose your way?”
Jerome had taken the ribbing with good humour, responding with stories about having been a midget when he began astronaut training, but his lack of strength was a matter for genuine concern to him. His Dorrinian frame was the product of a gravity only four-tenths that of Earth, which meant that its natural weight would be more than doubled when Jerome set foot on his home world. How difficult was it going to be to walk, or even stand up? What about his heart? Would he ever adapt to the higher gravity?
The questions added to the already impenetrable screen which hid the near future. Throughout his life he had always been able to make a reasonable guess at what he would be doing in the following week, and even though events had sometimes proved him wrong it had not happened often enough to destroy the comforting illusion of control, of being able to steer a chosen course. But at this juncture he could see only a matter of hours ahead and the path was quickly lost in a fog of uncertainties.
In addition to all his old misgivings about world reaction to what might be seen as a Dorrinian invasion, he had acquired a new set of worries when he had decided to transport the Thabbren to its destination—and most of them were centred around the menacing figure of Belzor.
Assuming that Belzor had successfully evaded the Dorrinian agents in the Antarctic—and a deep instinct told him that was the case—what would the wayward superman do next? The news stories about the Quicksilver having rescued a stranded Russian cosmonaut would not have deceived him for a second. He would have understood at once that the passenger was either a true Dorrinian or a Terran transplant escaping to Earth, and he would certainly have considered the possibility of the Thabbren being on the returning ship. Jerome understood Belzor well enough to know that he would unhesitatingly slay everybody on the Quicksilver just as a precaution. It was perhaps surprising that there had been no telepathic attack such as the one which had killed Marmorc, but there were many aspects of telepathy which Jerome did not understand.