Shara simply let it bounce off her somehow, but I could see that the major was as aghast as I, controlling his features with a visible effort.
Suddenly welcoming a distraction from my horror and dismay, I studied him more closely, wondering for the first time what he was doing here. He was my age, lean and more hard-bitten than I am, with silver fuzz on top of his skull and an extremely tidy mustache on the front. I’d taken him for a crony of Carrington’s, but three things changed my mind. Something indefinable about his eyes told me that he was a military man of long combat experience. Something equally indefinable about his carriage told me that he was on duty at the moment. And something quite definable about the line his mouth made told me that he was disgusted with the duty he had drawn.
When Carrington went on, “What do you think, Major?” in polite tones, the man paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts and choosing his words. When he did speak, it was not to Carrington.
“Ms. Drummond,” he said quietly, “I am Major William Cox, commander of S.C. Champion, and I am honored to meet you. That was the most profoundly moving thing I have ever seen.”
Shara thanked him most gravely. “This is Charles Armstead, Major Cox. He made the tape.”
Cox regarded me with new respect. “A magnificent job, Mister Armstead.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it.
Carrington was beginning to understand that we three shared a thing which excluded him. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, Major,” he said with no visible trace of sincerity. “You can see it again on your television tomorrow night, if you chance to be off duty. And eventually, of course, cassettes will be made available. Now perhaps we can get to the matter at hand.”
Cox’s face closed as if it had been zippered up, became stiffly formal. “As you wish, sir.”
Puzzled, I began what I thought was the matter at hand. “I’d like your own Comm Chief to supervise the actual transmission this time, Mr. Carrington. Shara and I will be too busy to—”
“My Comm Chief will supervise the broadcast, Armstead,” Carrington interrupted, “but I don’t think you’ll be particularly busy.”
I was groggy from lack of sleep; my uptake was slow.
He touched his desk delicately. “McGillicuddy, report at once,” he said, and released it. “You see, Armstead, you and Shara are both returning to Earth. At once.”
“What?”
“Bryce, you can’t,” Shara cried. “You promised.”
“Did I? My dear, there were no witnesses present last night. Altogether for the best, don’t you agree?” I was speechless with rage.
McGillicuddy entered. “Hello, Tom,” Carrington said pleasantly. “You’re fired. You’ll be returning to Earth at once, with Ms. Drummond and Mr. Armstead, aboard Major Cox’s vessel. Departure in one hour, and don’t leave anything you’re fond of.” He glanced from McGillicuddy to me. “From Tom’s desk you can tap any vidphone in Skyfac. From my desk you can tap Tom’s desk.”
Shara’s voice was low. “Bryce, two days. God damn you, name your price.”
He smiled slightly. “I’m sorry, darling. When informed of your collapse, Dr. Panzella became most specific. Not even one more day. Alive you are a distinct plus for Skyfac’s image—you are my gift to the world.
Dead you are an albatross around my neck. I cannot allow you to die on my property. I anticipated that you might resist leaving, and so I spoke to a friend in the,” he glanced at Cox, “higher echelons of the Space Command, who was good enough to send the Major here to escort you home. You are not under arrest in the legal sense—but I assure you that you have no choice. Something like protective custody applies. Good-bye, Shara.” He reached for a stack of reports on his desk, and I surprised myself considerably.
I cleared the desk entirely, tucked head catching him squarely in the sternum. His chair was bolted to the deck and so it snapped clean. I recovered so well that I had time for one glorious right. Do you know how, if you punch a basketball squarely, it will bounce up from the floor? That’s what his head did, in low-gee slow motion.
Then Cox had hauled me to my feet and shoved me into the far corner of the room. “Don’t,” he said to me, and his voice must have held a lot of that “habit of command” they talk about because it stopped me cold. I stood breathing in great gasps while Cox helped Carrington to his feet.
The multibillionaire felt his smashed nose, examined the blood on his fingers, and looked at me with raw hatred. “You’ll never work in video again, Armstead. You’re through. Finished. Un-em-ployed, you got that?”
Cox tapped him on the shoulder, and Carrington spun on him. “What the hell do you want?” he barked.
Cox smiled. “Carrington, my late father once said, ‘Bill, make your enemies by choice, not by accident.’ Over the years I have found that to be excellent advice. You suck.”
“And not particularly well,” Shara agreed.
Carrington blinked. Then his absurdly broad shoulders swelled and he roared, “Out, all of you! Off my property at once!”
By unspoken consent, we waited for Tom, who knew his cue. “Mister Carrington, it is a rare privilege and a great honor to have been fired by you. I shall think of it always as a Pyrrhic defeat.” And he half-bowed and we left, each buoyed by a juvenile feeling of triumph that must have lasted ten seconds.
IV
The sensation of falling that you get when you first enter zero gee is literal truth—but it fades rapidly as your body learns to treat it as illusion. Now, in zero gee for the last time, for the half hour or so before I would be back in Earth’s gravitational field, I felt like I was falling. Plummeting into some bottomless gravity well, dragged down by the anvil that was my heart, the scraps of a dream that should have held me aloft fluttering overhead.
The Champion was three times the size of Carrington’s yacht, which childishly pleased me until I recalled that he had summoned it here without paying for either fuel or crew. A guard at the airlock saluted as we entered. Cox led us aft to the compartment where we were to strap in. He noticed along the way that I used only my left hand to pull myself along, and when we stopped, he said, “Mr. Armstead, my late father also told me, ‘Hit the soft parts with your hand. Hit the hard parts with a utensil.’ Otherwise I can find no fault with your technique. I wish I could shake your hand.”
I tried to smile, but I didn’t have it in me. “I admire your taste in enemies, Major.”
“A man can’t ask for more. I’m afraid I can’t spare time to have your hand looked at until we’ve grounded. We begin reentry immediately.”
“Forget it. Get Shara down, fast and easy.”
He bowed to Shara, did not tell her how deeply he was to et cetera, wished us all a comfortable journey, and left. We strapped into our acceleration couches to await ignition. There ensued a long and heavy silence, compounded of a mutual sadness that bravado could only have underlined. We did not look at each other, as though our combined sorrow might achieve some kind of critical mass. Grief struck us dumb, and I believe that remarkably little of it was self-pity.
But then a whole lot of time seemed to have gone by. Quite a bit of intercom chatter came faintly from the next compartment, but ours was not in circuit. At last we began to talk, desultorily, discussing the probable critical reaction to Mass Is A Verb, whether analysis was worthwhile or the theater really dead, anything at all except future plans. Eventually there was nothing else to talk about, so we shut up again. I guess I’d say we were in shock.