“How much time?”
“Two weeks. Possibly three, if you spend three separate hours a day at hard exercise in two gravities. We can arrange that by—”
“That’s ridiculous,” I burst out. “Don’t you understand about dancers’ spines? She could ruin herself in two gees.”
“I’ve got to have four weeks,” Shara said.
“Ms. Drummond, I am very sorry.”
“I’ve got to have four weeks.”
Panzella had that same look of helpless sorrow that McGillicuddy and I had had in our turn, and I was suddenly sick to death of a universe in which people had to keep looking at Shara that way. “Dammit,” I roared, “she needs four weeks.”
Panzella shook his shaggy head. “If she stays in zero gee for four working weeks, she may die.”
Shara sprang from her chair. “Then I’ll die,” she cried. “I’ll take that chance. I have to.”
Carrington coughed. “I’m afraid I can’t permit you to, darling.”
She whirled on him furiously.
“This dance of yours is excellent PR for Skyfac,” he said calmly, “but if it were to kill you it might boomerang, don’t you think?”
Her mouth worked, and she fought desperately for control. My own head whirled. Die? Shara?
“Besides,” he added, “I’ve grown quite fond of you.”
“Then I’ll stay up here in space,” she burst out.
“Where? The only areas of sustained weightlessness are factories, and you’re not qualified to work in one.”
“Then for God’s sake give me one of the new pods, the smaller spheres. Bryce, I’ll give you a higher return on your investment than a factory pod, and I’ll....” Her voice changed. “I’ll be available to you always.”
He smiled lazily. “Yes, but I might not want youalways, darling. My mother warned me strongly against making irrevocable decisions about women. Especially informal ones. Besides, I find zero-gee sex rather too exhausting as a steady diet.”
I had almost found my voice, and now I lost it again. I was glad Carrington was turning her down—but the way he did it made me yearn to drink his blood.
Shara too was speechless for a time. When she spoke, her voice was low, intense, almost pleading. “Bryce, it’s a matter of timing. If I broadcast two more dances in the next four weeks, I’ll have a world to return to. If I have to go Earthside and wait a year or two, that third dance will sink without a trace—no one’ll be looking, and they won’t have the memory of the first two. This is my only option, Bryce—let me take the chance. Panzella can’t guarantee four weeks will kill me.”
“I can’t guarantee your survival,” the doctor said.
“You can’t guarantee that any of us will live out the day,” she snapped. She whirled back to Carrington, held him with her eyes. “Bryce, let me risk it.” Her face underwent a massive effort, produced a smile that put a knife through my heart. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
Carrington savored that smile and the utter surrender in her voice like a man enjoying a fine claret. I wanted to slay him with my hands and teeth, and I prayed that he would add the final cruelty of turning her down. But I had underestimated his true capacity for cruelty.
“Go ahead with your rehearsal, my dear,” he said at last. “We’ll make a final decision when the time comes. I shall have to think about it.”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so hopeless, so… impotent in my life. Knowing it was futile, I said, “Shara, I can’t let you risk your life—”
“I’m going to do this, Charlie,” she cut me off, “with or without you. No one else knows my work well enough to tape it properly, but if you want out I can’t stop you.” Carrington watched me with a detached interest. “Well?” she prodded.
I said a filthy word. “You know the answer.”
“Then let’s get to work.”
Tyros are transported on the pregnant broomsticks. Old hands hang outside the airlock, dangling from handholds on the outer surface of the spinning Ring (not hard in less than half a gee). They face in the direction of their spin, and when their destination comes under the horizon, they just drop off. Thruster units built into gloves and boots supply the necessary course corrections. The distances involved are small. Still, there are very few old hands.
Shara and I were old hands, having spent more hours in weightlessness than some technicians who’d been working in Skyfac for years. We made scant and efficient use of our thrusters, chiefly in canceling the energy imparted to us by the spin of the Ring we left. We had throat mikes and hearing-aid-sized receivers, but there was no conversation on the way across the void. Being without a local vertical—a defined “up” and “down”—is more confusing and distressing than can possibly be imagined by anyone who has never left Earth. For that very reason, all Skyfac structures are aligned to the same imaginary “ecliptic,” but it doesn’t help very much. I wondered if I would ever get used to it—and even more I wondered whether I should ever get used to the cessation of pain in my leg. It even seemed to hurt less under spin these days.
We grounded, with much less force than a skydiver does, on the surface of the new studio. It was an enormous steel globe, studded with sunpower screens and heat losers, tethered to three more spheres in various stages of construction on which Harry Stein’s boys were even now working. McGillicuddy had told me that the complex when completed would be used for “controlled density processing,” and when I said, “How nice,” he added, “Dispersion foaming and variable density casting,” as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did. Right at the moment, it was Shara’s studio.
The airlock led to a rather small working space around a smaller interior sphere some fifty meters in diameter. It too was pressurized, intended to contain a vacuum, but its locks stood open. We removed our p-suits, and Shara unstrapped her thruster bracelets from a bracing strut and put them on, hanging by her ankles from the strut while she did so. The anklets went on next. As jewelry they were a shade bulky—but they had twenty minutes’ continuous use each, and their operation was not visible in normal atmosphere and lighting. Zero-gee dance without them would have been enormously more difficult.
As she was fastening the last strap I drifted over in front of her and grabbed the strut. “Shara....”
“Charlie, I can beat it. I’ll exercise in three gravities, and I’ll sleep in two, and I’ll make this body last. I know I can.”
“You could skip Mass Is A Verb and go right to the Stardance.”
She shook her head. “I’m not ready yet—and neither is the audience. I’ve got to lead myself and them through dance in a sphere first—in a contained space—before I’ll be ready to dance in empty space, or they to appreciate it. I have to free my mind, and theirs, from just about every preconception of dance, change all the postulates. Even two stages is too few—but it’s the irreducible minimum.” Her eyes softened. “Charlie—I must.”
“I know,” I said gruffly and turned away. Tears are a nuisance in free fall—they don’t go anywhere, just form silly-looking expanding spherical contact lenses, in which the world swims. I began hauling myself around the surface of the inner sphere toward the camera emplacement I was working on, and Shara entered the inner sphere to begin rehearsal.
I prayed as I worked on my equipment, snaking cables among the bracing struts and connecting them to drifting terminals. For the first time in years I prayed, prayed that Shara would make it. That we both would.