“If everybody is so convinced that I’m some kind of impostor,” he said, buying time in which to think, “why was the Quicksilver allowed to bring me back to Earth?”
“Because you’re going to be a real mine of information, big man. You don’t seem to think so, but you are going to blab everything about how you got to Mercury. The complete works. You’re going to name the country that put you there, and you’re going to…” Simm paused, apparently beginning to feel more at ease, and for a moment looked out at the phosphorescent whiteness of the space station which was now moving above and ahead of the falling shuttle. “Besides, it wouldn’t have been neighbourly to leave you out there—especially after Chuck Baumanis was considerate enough to make room on the ship.”
There it is again, Jerome thought. Instinct rushes in where logic fears to tread. It’s part of our nature to look for connections. We need them…
“I’m sorry about Baumanis,” he said. “I don’t suppose it’s much consolation to you that his death made it possible for another man to live.”
“Not much.” Simm ran a gloomily critical eye over Jerome. “You know, you’re a real mess. Are those the only clothes you’ve got? Apart from the Mickey Mouse space suit, that is.”
Jerome, who had lost the habit of thinking about standards of dress, abruptly realized that he had to be a strange spectacle to Terran eyes. His Dorrinian-made shirt and slacks were in a sack along with the cumbersome vacuum suit in which he had made his break from the tunnel. Aboard the Quicksilver he had been provided with disposable plastex coveralls which he had been forced to sever at the waist to accommodate his elongated frame, and the resultant two-piece garment—coupled with the grey socks which were his only footwear—was anything but elegant.
“I see what you mean,” he said, “but I guess I’m all right for Florida in January.”
“We’re not going into the Cape.”
“Why not?”
“Too much media interest in you. Too many people milling around. We don’t want that, so we’re going to an Air Force base in North Dakota.”
“I see.” Jerome considered the new information, wondering if the arrangement would make it difficult for the Dorrinians to contact him. “You might have picked a warmer spot.”
Simm was maliciously amused. “I thought you Russians were used to the cold.”
Jerome turned away from him, resolving to say as little as possible during the rest of the descent. Much sooner than he had anticipated the shuttle dipped into the upper levels of the atmosphere and the circles of sky he could see in the ports began to turn blue. Within the space of ten minutes the rush of air over the pressure skin and control surfaces had become audible and the shuttle, exchanging the characteristics of a ballistic missile for those of an aircraft, began to hint at having a mechanical personality of its own, expressed in occasional yaws and tilts and flirts of its tail.
As far as Jerome could determine from his fragmentary glimpses, much of central Canada and the USA was under cloud cover. The prospect of a buffeting descent through bad weather prompted him to tighten his safety harness, and it was while working with the connectors that he realized his arms were laden with invisible weight. He had allowed the problems of Earth’s gravity to drift out of his thoughts, hoping he had been unduly pessimistic about his ability to compensate, but this was an unpleasant foretaste of things to come.
Aware that his neck muscles were protesting about the extra strain, Jerome inclined his head forward and was shocked when his chin came down on his collar-bone with a tooth-clicking impact. He brought his head upright with an effort, feeling as though it were encased in a lead helmet, and found that Simm was looking at him in obvious concern.
“Say, are you all right?” Simm said, his gaze darting over Jerome’s face. “Do you need a medic?”
“Too long in zero gravity,” Jerome told him, trying to come to terms with the discovery that three months of weightlessness had seriously weakened his already inadequate Dorrinian musculature. “I’m not even sure I’ll be able to walk.”
“Just so long as you can talk.” Simm turned back to his study of the sculptured cloudscapes into which the shuttle was plunging.
Jerome swore silently at him and concentrated on keeping his neck straight and his head upright as the observation ports abruptly greyed out and the descent became rough. All the sensations of motion were enhanced by his weakness, and for him the flight became a continuous sequence of falls, twists and shimmies which made him feel that the unseen pilot was barely winning the battle for control. The reality of the return to his home world was at a far remove from the nostalgic visions which had made the long nights in the Precinct seem endless. Threatened by elemental dangers, feeble as an invalid, he was being thrust into a dark arena in whose shadows hid a malign and terrifying superman who wanted him dead. Belzor was a being who unhesitatingly killed those who obstructed the most minor of his interests—and as long as Jerome carried the Thabbren he embodied the threat of death itself to Belzor…
Feeling isolated and vulnerable, Jerome cupped his right hand over the opal ring and clenched it in a double fist as the shuttle dropped below the cloud ceiling. There were glimpses of barren snowfields stretching away into greyness, of thinly etched roads running sparsely from nowhere to nowhere. Earth was not in a welcoming mood. Turbines at the rear of the shuttle were spun into life for the final part of the flight and made a new contribution to the forces acting on Jerome’s body, drawing his head back each time they surged. Minutes later there was a blurring rush of lights outside, a lingering moment of near-silence and the shuttle clumped solidly on to concrete. Jerome sat still, gazing straight in front during a thunderous landing run, and only when the shuttle had come to a halt did he turn the precariously balanced weight of his head to look at Simm.
“Now that that’s over,” he said, “I demand to be taken to the Soviet Embassy in Washington.”
“Sure, sure,” Simm replied jovially, rising to his feet and clicking his fingers at the two watchful young men. “One of you guys is going to have to do without his overcoat here—we can’t risk our visitor catching cold.”
Interested in testing the extent of his disability, Jerome unfastened his harness and forced himself into a standing position. He was relieved to find that he could in fact stand alone, albeit with some circling of his knees, which showed there had been a real benefit from the exercise machine in the Quicksilver. It was unfortunate that he had not thought of trying to strengthen his neck, but at least he was going to be spared the indignity of having to be carried off the shuttle. Feeling as though he had been burdened with more than his own weight of sandbags, he advanced along the central aisle to the front of the compartment on quivering legs, with Simm following close behind.
One of Simm’s men, looking distinctly unhappy, helped him into a tweed overcoat he had taken from a locker. While he was buttoning the coat he became aware of uniformed flight crew at work in the airlock section which lay immediately forward of the passenger compartment. A few seconds later there was the thunk of a massive door settling into its open position and tendrils of chilly air invaded the warmth of the ship.