Garamond, sitting alone in the prismatic twilight at the entrance to his tent, was halfway through a bottle of whisky when he heard someone approaching. The nights never became truly dark under the striped canopy of Orbitsville’s sky, and he was able to recognize the compact figure of Denise Serra while she was still some distance away. His annoyance at being disturbed faded somewhat but he sat perfectly still, making no sign of welcome. The whisky was his guarantee of sleep and to bring about the desired effect it had to be taken in precise rhythmic doses, with no interruptions to the ritual. Denise reached the tent, stood without speaking for a moment while she assessed his mood, then sat in the grass at the opposite side of the entrance. Appreciating her silence, Garamond waited till his instincts prompted him to take another measure of the spirit’s cool fire. He raised the bottle to his lips.
“Drinking that can’t be good for you,” Denise said.
“On the contrary — it’s very good for me.”
“I never got to like whisky. Especially the stuff Burton makes.”
Garamond took his slightly delayed drink. “It’s all right if you know how to use it.”
“Use it? Aren’t you supposed to enjoy it?”
“It’s more important to me to know how to use it.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve heard about your wife being…”
“What did you want, Denise?”
“A child, I think.”
Garamond knew himself to have been rendered emotionally sterile by despair for his family, but he still retained enough contact with the mainstream of humanity to feel obliged to cap his bottle and set it aside.
“It’s a bad time,” he said.
“I know, but that’s the way I feel. It must be this place. It must be the Orbitsville syndrome that Cliff keeps talking about. We’re here, and it’s all around us, for ever, and things I used to think important now seem trivial. And, for the first time in my life, I want a child.”
Garamond stared at the girl through the veils of soft blue air, and a part of his mind — despite the pounding chaos of the rest — was intensely aware of her. It was difficult to pick out a single special attribute of Denise Serra, but the overall effect was right. She was a neat, complete package of femininity, intelligence and warmth, and he felt ashamed of having nothing to offer her.
“It’s still a bad time,” he repeated.
“I know. We all know that, but some of the other women are drinking untreated water. It’s only a matter of time till they become pregnant.” Her eyes watched him steadily and he remembered how, in that previous existence, it had given him pleasure to look at her.
“Haven’t you already got a partner, Denise?”
“You know I haven’t.”
That’s it into the open, he thought. For me to know that Denise Serra, among all the other female crew members, had no liaisons I would have to have been taking a special interest in her.
“I guess I did know.” Garamond hesitated. “Denise, I feel…” “Honoured?”
“I think that’s the word I would have used.”
“Say no more, Vance. I know what it means when somebody starts off by feeling honoured. I’ve done it myself.” She stood up in one easy movement.
Garamond tried for something less abrupt, and knew he was being clumsy. “Perhaps in a year, a few months…”
“The special unrepeatable offer will be closed before then,” Denise said with an uncharacteristic harshness in her voice. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do if we can’t get a bearing on Beachhead City, if your flight never gets off the ground?”
“I’m counting on your getting that bearing.”
“Don’t!” She turned quickly, walked away for a few paces, then came back and knelt close to him. “I’m sorry, Vance.”
“You haven’t done anything to apologize for.”
“I think I have. You see, we’ve pretty well solved the problem. Dennis O’Hagan didn’t want to say anything to you till he’d made a check on the math.”
“But…” Garamond’s attention was fully captured. “How is it going to be done?”
“Mike Moncaster, our particles man, came up with the idea. You know about delta particles?”
“I’ve heard of delta rays.”
“No, that’s historic stuff. Delta particles — deltons — are a component of cosmic rays discovered only a few years ago. During his last leave Mike got himself seconded on to the team investigating cosmic ray refraction by the force field which seals Beachhead City aperture. They were glad to have him because he’s pretty good on the Conservation of Strangeness and…”
“Denise! You started to tell me how you were going to get a bearing.”
“That’s what I’m doing. Deltons don’t interact much. That’s why it took so long to find them, but it also means they could travel ten or fifteen million kilometres through the air. Mike is fairly certain they get refracted by the force lens, just like other components of cosmic rays, so we’re going to build a big delton detector. Two of them, in fact. One behind the other to give us co-ordinates. All we need then is to pick up a delton, just one, and going back the way it came will give us a straight line home.”
“Do you think it’ll work?”
“I think so.” Denise’s voice was kind. “What we still have to determine is how long we’re likely to wait before a particle comes this way. It could be quite a while if things aren’t in our favour, but we can swing the odds by making the detectors as big as possible, or by erecting a whole bank of them.”
Garamond felt the distance between himself and Elizabeth Lindstrom shrink a little and the joyful sickness spurted within him. “This… is good news.”
“I know,” Denise said. “My dowry.”
“You’ll have to explain that one.” “The first time you ever noticed me was on board ship, when I gave the news you wanted to hear about going through the aperture.” She laughed ruefully. “Being a pragmatist, I must have decided that if it worked once it would work again.”
Garamond moved his hand uncertainly in the dimness and touched her cheek. “Denise, I…”
“Let’s not play games, Vance.” She pushed his hand away and stood up. “I was childish, that’s all.”
Later, while waiting for sleep to relieve him of the burden of identity, Garamond was acutely aware — for the first time in months — that the hard, angry vacuum of space began only a short distance beneath his cot. The feeling persisted into surrealistic dreams in which he had a sense of being poised, dangerously, on the rim of a precipice, with a kind of moral vertigo drawing him over the edge.
fifteen
On his way to the airstrip Garamond was surprised to notice one of his crewmen wearing what could only be described as a coolie hat. He eyed the young man curiously, received a halfhearted salute, and decided the unusual headgear must be a personal souvenir of a tourist trip to the Orient. A minute later, while passing the workshop area, he saw two more men wearing similar hats, which he now realized were woven from fresh silver-green straw. The ancient peasant-styling, with all that it symbolized in Earth’s history, was repugnant to Garamond and he hoped it would not become a full-blown fad such as occasionally swept through the crew levels. When he reached the test site, the glinting of flat green triangles in the distance told him that coolie hats were being worn by at least half the men who were clearing grass at the far end of the airstrip.