“Eleven-thirty, eastern time, the way things look now. We’ll have to make a pit stop in Amarillo. Gas up.”
Melissa nodded. “Beats the redeye.”
For a while neither of them said anything. Paul watched the shadows lengthening below as they flew over the mountains with the sun setting behind them.
“Lake Tahoe,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
Time went by in silence. Then he pointed out the Grand Canyon, barely visible off in the distance in the twilight haze.
Melissa stared out the window on her side of the cockpit until a cloud bank obscured the ground altogether.
Finally, Paul said hesitantly, “About last night—”
Melissa turned sharply toward him. “Forget it,” she said.
“Forget it?”
“It never happened.”
Paul felt puzzled. “What d’you mean?”
“You’re a married man and you’re worried I’m going to shoot my mouth off to Greg or somebody. Well, don’t worry about it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Shit, Mel, I wasn’t thinking you were a spy for Greg.”
“The hell you weren’t.”
“You told me you two had broken up.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
Paul’s befuddlement deepened. Melissa seemed irritable, almost angry.
“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have done it. I am a married man and—”
“Oh, Paul, it’s not your fault. I…” She seemed to want to say more, but stopped.
Paul didn’t know what to say. If anything. It was a stupid thing to do, he told himself. If Joanna finds out I’ll have hurt her just as bad as Gregory hurt her in the past.
“Do you know why Greg and I broke up?” Melissa asked, her voice so low Paul had to strain to hear her over the muted rumbling of the engines.
“You said it was because of Joanna.”
Melissa shook her head slowly. “That’s only part of it. I mentioned the magic word, and that drove him off the deep end.”
“The magic word?”
“Baby.”
Paul wasn’t certain he had heard her correctly.
“I told Greg that I wanted his baby,” Melissa said sorrowfully. “I told him that when a man and a woman love each other they make a baby together.”
“He didn’t like the idea.”
“I thought he was going to punch me out.”
“If he ever lays a hand on you—”
Melissa silenced Paul by laying a slender finger on his lips. “I can take care of myself,” she said. “You’ve got a wife to think about. You can’t go around fighting my battles.”
But Paul pictured Greg hitting Melissa. Just like the spoiled sonofabitch, he thought. He doesn’t love anybody except himself. If he ever touches her I’ll punch out his lights, but good.
After they stretched their legs in Amarillo and took off again, Melissa curled up in one of the capacious reclining seats in the plane’s cabin and fell asleep. Paul put the plane on autopilot, but flayed in the cockpit, awake, his mind churning with thoughts of Greg and Melissa and Joanna and the nanomachines that could make Moonbase a going proposition if only he could hammer the idea through the board of directors. But Greg was going to use the next meeting to accuse him of murder, or at least fornication. How can he attack me without attacking his mother? Then Paul realized that Greg was so furious with blind hate that he wanted to hurt Joanna, punish her for falling in love with a black man.
It was almost midnight when Paul finally put the twin-jet down on the company’s airstrip, a few miles from Savannah. He was tired, drained physically and emotionally. Gratefully, he saw that the limo was there at the apron in front of the hangar, waiting for him.
Paul helped Melissa down the little metal ladder to the concrete of the apron. When he turned back toward the limousine, he saw that Joanna was standing beside it, staring at them.
MARE NUBIUM
Do I have enough oxygen to make it? Paul asked himself that question again and again as he struggled across the rocky undulating lunar plain, trying to make up for the time and distance he had lost by straying so far off course.
He pushed himself harder. “Gotta get smokin’ now,” he told himself. “Gotta get there before the oxy runs out.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered an equation that showed how oxygen consumption is related to the amount of physical work the body is doing. From some aerobics class he had taken back when he was in astronaut training, a thousand years ago. Shaking his head inside his helmet, Paul tried to forget about the equation. Just keep pumping along, he told himself. Go, go, go.
At least he had the GPS signal to keep him company. Cheerful little chirp in his earphones, almost like a songbird but nowhere near as melodious. Just a monotonous steady set of peeps, repeating over and over again.
Hey, don’t knock it, he told himself. Long as you can hear that boring little song you’re on the right track. You can listen to Wynton Marsalis some other time.
Through his dust-smeared visor Paul could make out the bulky shape of a massive boulder rising up on the horizon ahead of him, like a ship coming in from some far-off land. Boulder big as a house, Paul thought. As he got closer to it he saw that it was as big as a shopping mall.
Got to go around it. Damn! Pissin’ chunk of rock’s gonna force me ten-twenty minutes outta my way.
Squinting through his dust-covered visor, Paul saw that the huge boulder was pitted and rough, with a fairly flat top. Maybe I can climb over it. Be faster than walking all the way around it.
But a voice in the back of his mind warned, You got enough troubles out here without rock-climbing. Stay on the flat ground and walk around the damned rock.
Still, Paul studied the boulder as he came closer to it. I could climb up this side. Looks easy enough.
And rip your suit? And how do you know what the othei side’s like? Once you get up on top of it, you gotta climb down again.
I can do it, he insisted silently.
Don’t.
“It’ll save me almost half an hour,” Paul said aloud, trying to convince himself.
The voice in his head reminded him, There are old astronauts and there are bold astronauts, but there are no old, bold astronauts.
Paul reached the rock. It towered over him as he put out a gloved hand and touched its rough surface. He took a deep breath, then started climbing.
SAVANNAH
Through the whole ride back to their house, Joanna stayed coldly silent. A perfunctory peck on the cheek as Paul got into the limo, then not a word. Paul could feel icicles growing from the roof of the car. She can’t be pissed off just because she saw Mel rode back here with me. Somebody’s told her about last night. Who? Who could possibly know? Unless it was all a setup! He felt his stomach go hollow, the way it does the first few minutes in weightlessness.
A setup. Melissa came on to me deliberately, and she must have reported right back to — who? Greg, most likely. Or maybe Brad; be just like the sneaky little sonofabitch to pull a trick like this.
Paul waited until they were in the bedroom. He flopped his travel bag on the king-sized bed as Joanna went around to her dresser and sat in front of its triple mirror.
“I did something I’m ashamed of,” he began, staying on his side of the bed.
Joanna looked at him in the mirror. Paul could see her face-on, and both profiles. She looked calm, unsmiling but not scowling either. If she was angry she wasn’t showing it on her face. Just sat there, the ice queen: regal and cold, staring at him through the mirror, her back to him.
“I went to bed with Melissa last night,” Paul said, hoping that confession would ease the tension.
Her chin went up; her eyes flared.
“It was a stupid thing to do,” he went on. “I had more to drink than I should have.” No, he commanded himself. Don’t hide behind an excuse.
“Did you enjoy it?” Joanna asked coldly.
“Not once I woke up.”