Johnson raised an eyebrow. “I have to think that one over.”
“I hope nothing breaks,” Flynn said helpfully. “But if it will assist in your cogitations, let me remind you that he still more than half wants to see how long you’ll last if you go out the air lock without a suit.”
Since he was right yet again, Johnson did the only thing a sensible man could do: he changed the subject. “Well,” he said, “one of these days, the Lizards are going to get in an uproar about ginger that has something behind it.”
“How can they do that?” the other pilot replied. “Everybody knows there is no ginger aboard the Admiral Peary. ”
“Yeah, and then you wake up,” Johnson said scornfully. “Missiles with bombs in their noses are weapons. We brought plenty of those. Ginger is a weapon, too. You think we don’t have any?”
Flynn shrugged. “I know about missiles. I know where they fit on the plans for the ship. I know how to arm them. I know how to launch them. I know how to tell the ship to do all that automatically in about nothing flat, so we can get the missiles away even if we’re under attack. Nobody has briefed me about ginger, which is the sum total of what I know about it. I will also point out that it’s the sum total of what you know about it, too.”
He was right again, of course. That didn’t mean Johnson wasn’t also right, not this time. “We can addle half the scaly so-and-sos down on that planet,” he insisted. “There’s got to be a way to get the herb from hither to yon.”
“You are assuming what you want to prove,” Mickey Flynn said. “If you’d gone to the same sort of school I did, the nuns would have rapped your knuckles with a steel yardstick for a breach of logic like that.”
“If I’d gone to the kind of school you did, I’d have to drop my pants if I wanted to count to twenty-one,” Johnson retorted.
Flynn eyed him with mild astonishment. “You mean you don’t? Truly, you are a fount-or at least a drip-of knowledge.”
“Thank you so much.” Johnson suddenly snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it!”
“I hope you can take something for it,” Flynn said with well-simulated concern.
Johnson ignored him. “I know where I’d put the ginger if I were designing the Admiral Peary. ” He held up a hand. “If you make that particular suggestion, I’m going to be very annoyed at you.”
With dignity, the other pilot said, “Moi? Je ne comprende pas.”
“Of course you don’t,” Johnson said. “Listen, how many people in cold sleep is this ship carrying?”
“Seventeen,” Flynn answered. “Or was it forty-six thousand? I forget.”
“Heh,” Johnson said. “Funny. But the point is, you don’t know for sure. I don’t, either. And neither do the Lizards. What looks like space for people in cold sleep could be space for the herb just as easily.”
“You have a low, nasty, suspicious mind,” Flynn told him.
“Why, thank you,” Johnson said.
“I don’t know. Why not thank me?”
Johnson scowled. “I’d throw something at you, but I might miss you and hit something valuable instead.”
Flynn assumed a look of injured innocence. By his face, his innocence had suffered enough injuries to end up on the critical list. Then he said, “You know, if you keep speculating about all these things we haven’t got, you won’t make our esteemed and benevolent commandant very happy with you.”
“Who’s going to tell him?” Johnson asked. “You?”
“Certainly not,” Mickey Flynn replied. “But the walls have ears, the ceilings have eyes, and the floors probably have kidneys or livers or something else you wouldn’t want to eat unless your stomach were rubbing up against your backbone.”
Walls with ears were a cliche. Ceilings with eyes at least made sense. As for the rest… “Your mother dropped you on your head when you were little.”
“Only when I needed it,” Flynn said. “Of course, there were times when she needed to be retrained. Or was that restrained? Amazing how one’s entire childhood can revolve around a typographical error.”
“That’s not all that’s amazing,” Johnson said darkly, but Flynn took it for a compliment, which spoiled his fun.
Over the next few days, he wondered if the commandant would summon him to his office to give him a roasting. Then, when that didn’t happen, he wondered why it didn’t. Because the Admiral Peary carried no ginger, and the idea that it might was ridiculous? Or because the ship was full of ginger, and the less said about the herb, the better? The one thing that didn’t occur to Johnson was that Healey hadn’t heard his speculation. The floors did indeed have kidneys, or maybe livers.
Dr. Blanchard worked with grim intensity in the exercise chamber, doing her best to build up her strength for the trip down to the surface of Home. Johnson spent stretches on the exercise bicycle, too, but he didn’t get excited about them the way she did. He was in pretty good shape for a man who’d spent the last twenty years of his life weightless. He could exercise till everything turned blue and not be fit enough to face gravity.
He said, “I wish they’d send one of the other docs down, not you.”
“Why?” she demanded, working the bicycle harder than ever so that her sweaty hair plastered itself against the side of her face. “I’ll be damned if I want to go through all this crap for nothing.”
“Well, I can see that,” he said, pedaling along beside her at his own slower pace-one of the great advantages of a stationary bike. “But you’re a hell of a lot better looking than they are.”
“Not right now, I’m not,” she said, which wasn’t true, at least not to someone of the male persuasion. She added, “Besides, I must smell like an old goat,” which was.
Johnson denied it anyway, saying, “I’m the old goat.”
“What you are is a guy with too much time on his hands,” she said. “Exercise more. That’ll help some.”
“Thanks a lot,” he muttered. “Some problems, you know, you’re not really looking for a cure.”
“Well, you’d better be,” Dr. Blanchard said, and that was effectively that.
“I greet you, Ambassador,” Atvar told Sam Yeager when he met the Big Ugly in the hotel conference room. “And I am pleased to tell you congratulations are in order.”
“And I greet you. I also thank you. What kind of congratulations, Fleetlord?” the American Tosevite inquired.
“Your petition for an audience with the Emperor has been granted,” Atvar answered. “This news comes through me and not directly to you because I have been appointed your sponsor, so to speak.”
“That is excellent news. Excellent!” Sam Yeager not only used an emphatic cough, he also got out of his chair and bent into the posture of respect. “I am in your debt for the help you gave me. Ah… what does being a sponsor entail?”
He was pleased. Atvar knew that. But the wild Big Ugly was not overjoyed, as a proper citizen of the Empire would have been. He was just pleased-much too mild a reaction. His question, though, was reasonable enough. Atvar said, “A sponsor does about what you would expect. He trains his hatchling-that is the technical term-in responses and rituals required in the audience. If the hatchling disgraces himself, the sponsor is also disgraced. Not all those who win audiences have a sponsor. Getting one is most common among those least likely to have their petitions accepted and so least likely to be familiar with the rituals.”
“Among the poor and the ignorant, eh?” Sam Yeager laughed in the noisy fashion of his kind. “Which am I?”
“You are ignorant, of course, Ambassador. Will you deny it?” Atvar said. “I suppose I was chosen as your sponsor not only because I know you but because I am familiar with Tosevites in general and because I have had a recent audience with his Majesty. I will do my best to help you avoid the pitfalls.”
“Again, I thank you,” Sam Yeager said. “I do hope the Race will remember that I really am ignorant, that I am only a poor, stupid wild Big Ugly who knows no better. If I make a mistake, I will not be doing it on purpose.”