“OceanLab?” Excitement tinged his voice. “Is Oscar all right?”
Jeanette smiled to herself. Duke had never seen a live octopus, but he loved stories about Oscar.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “The control center in Seattle lost all video when the collision occurred. They’re only getting environmental status on the backup S-band. He should be OK so far, though; the lab is leaking, but it still has pressure.”
“How long ’til you get here?”
“Just a few minutes. I’m already on the tram.”
“I’ll have your suit ready. I’m recharging the oxygen tanks now.”
Jeanette followed the mixed scent of oily silicone grease and pungent disinfectants through the catacombs of Leroy’s Services. Duke’s boss could fix almost anything that flew in Earth orbit, working in a maze of rooms partitioned out of the structure next to Central Station’s airlocks. Her locker was one of dozens lining the robing room next to Duke’s workshop.
True to his word, Duke had already set up Jeanette’s space suit in the donning rack. Her long underwear, really a body suit interwoven with cooling and ventilation tubes, lay on his workbench. Bulky padding sewn into the garment adapted her personal topography to the interior of her secondhand space suit so she wouldn’t bang around inside. She caught him with his back to her, adjusting the long johns just so. He was proud of his work, and was obviously hoping to impress her. It worked; she was impressed.
“It looks wonderful!”
Duke jumped, startled. He turned and grinned at her. “Thanks, Jeanette. Everything’s ready to go. Need help?”
She really didn’t need help—the donning rack was efficiently designed to aid an astronaut even in the full gravity field—but she knew he would feel rewarded if she let him help her.
“Thank you for offering, Duke,” she said, answering his grin. She pulled the robing room door closed behind her and kicked off her shoes. “You know how difficult it is to handle the suit in full g, and I’m in a hurry.” She peeled off her sweater and hesitated just long enough to see Duke flush a charming shade of crimson before turning her back to him.
“Unhook my bra for me?” she requested sweetly. She knew she was teasing him, but the boy deserved some compensation for his interest in her. Besides, she rationalized to herself, she was wearing a long-line iron maiden of a bra, specially designed to help support her back until she got reconditioned. She could undo the hooks herself, but it was a trial.
Duke didn’t hesitate to reach for the fasteners, but she could feel the nervous shaking of his fingers transmitted through the bra as he worked. She was surprised that despite his nervousness he worked quickly and efficiently, demonstrating more familiarity with bra hooks than she would have expected. She looked over her shoulder and smiled.
“Do you do this for your girlfriend?”
“Big sister,” he stammered. His fingers suddenly seemed to become entangled with the last hook, but he got it undone. “But, uh, she’s not built like you, Jeanette.”
She wasn’t sure why, but it was reassuring to hear that Duke didn’t have a girlfriend. Holding the bra loosely in front of her, she turned back toward him and kissed his cheek. “Why thank you, Duke! I didn’t realize you’d noticed!”
“I notice; I notice,” he muttered.
“Good! Now turn around. Get my long johns for me?”
While his back was turned, she quickly dropped the bra and slipped off her panties along with her shorts. Duke held her undersuit out behind him. For a brief moment she regretted that teasing was as far as she ever went, but the vision of the solitude she would have once she was out in space again overwhelmed the thought. Solitude, far from the crowded space colony, away from the inscrutable wants and needs of others; she was eager to regain it.
With painstaking attention to each detail, she laced herself into the undergarment. This part of the donning process couldn’t be hurried. An overlooked maladjustment would later turn into a chafing point which would plague her for hours in transit to the laboratory.
“OK, you can look now,” she said as she pulled the final laces closed.
He looked. Padded out to conform to the interior contours of her space suit, she showed considerably less feminine curvature, but he didn’t seem to mind. His eyes scanned as if he were mentally erasing her bulky long johns. Her ambivalence returned; he was almost an adult now, only three years younger than her. She should stop thinking of him as the kid who used to follow her around in school. This was adult stuff, and the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to get away from it.
With Duke’s help, she stuffed herself into her suit. Torso first, then pants, boots, and gloves. She carried her helmet while he rolled a cart containing her backpack to the airlock.
“Will you take care of my clothes, Duke?” she requested.
“Sure. Aren’t you taking anything else with you on this trip? No baggage?”
“Don’t have time to pack. It’s just a few hours to OceanLab, and I have food there, in the safe-haven supplies.”
He stared over her shoulder for a moment, eyes unfocused, brows knitted in worry. When he didn’t say anything more, she moved toward the airlock. Finally, he blurted out, “When are you going to get a new scooter, Jeanette? I worry about you, going out in that bucket of bolts.”
“Three more tours.” She paused at the airlock’s inner door. “Then I’ll have enough saved up to buy a brand-new Harley; but I might just wait until I can afford a pressurized cabin, too.” In her suit, she was just a bit taller than Duke. She leaned down and kissed him, and was rewarded by a disarming look of surprise. He was obviously delighted. “If I get a pressure cab, maybe I can take you with me on tour some time,” she cooed.
Duke’s eyes widened. “Would you? I’d really like that!”
“Some day, I promise! But first I’d better get out there and protect my job, or there won’t be any income to make it happen!”
“But you have lots of labs to take care of. OceanLab is just one—”
“Uh huh,” she agreed. “But OceanLab pays the most, and it’s the most important. I’ve told you about the research they’re doing in Seattle.”
“Yeah, right.” Duke didn’t hesitate. She wondered if he ever thought of anything but her projects. That she might have so much influence over another person’s life both flattered and frightened her. “Zero-g deconditioning studies. Besides the fish studies, they’re investigating why humans lose their ability to process fatty acids in a weightless environment, and why mollusks don’t. That’s why Oscar is so important.”
“You got it. That octopus was born in zero g, yet he’s perfectly normal. He’s even fathered some children now. Hmm, what do you call a baby octopus?”
“Octopups?” Duke suggested.
“Octopuppies! I like it! The second generation of cephalopods bom without gravity, and they’re all doing fine. Fortunately, Oscar doesn’t seem to mind when I have to extract one of them for dissection.”
“He doesn’t like his children?”
“I’m not sure he realizes they’re his own children,” Jeanette said. “And there are so many of the little critters—hundreds—I don’t think an octopus could get into family values. He just ignores the octopuppies, pays more attention to other animals. There’s this one big grouper he seems to be friendly with, and he really likes the lobsters. Of course, he likes to eat lobsters, so that make sense. Actually, Oscar gets along pretty well with all the other animals in the aquarium, all but the jellyfish. He can’t stand jellyfish; he’s always stuffing them into the snailbots.”