“Fine thanks, Tom. You remember Shara, of course. This is Charles Armstead. Tom McGillicuddy.” We both displayed our teeth and said we were delighted to meet one another. I could see that beneath the pleasantries, McGillicuddy was upset about something.
“Nils and Mr. Longmire are waiting in your office, sir. There’s… there’s been another sighting.”
“God damn it,” Carrington began, and cut himself off. I stared at him. The full force of my best sarcasm had failed to anger this man. “All right. Take care of my guests while I go hear what Longmire has to say.” He started for the door, moving like a beach ball in slow motion but under his own power. “Oh yes—the Step is loaded to the gun’ls with bulky equipment, Tom. Have her brought round to the cargo bays. Store the equipment in Six.” He left, looking worried. McGillicuddy activated his desk and gave the necessary orders.
“What’s going on, Tom?” Shara asked when he was through.
He looked at me before replying. “Pardon my asking, Mr. Armstead, but—are you a newsman?”
“Charlie. No, I’m not. I am a video man, but I work for Shara.”
“Mmmm. Well, you’ll hear about it sooner or later.
About two weeks ago an object appeared within the orbit of Neptune, just appeared out of nowhere. There were… certain other anomalies. It stayed put for half a day and then vanished again. The Space Command slapped a hush on it, but it’s common knowledge on board Skyfac.”
“And the thing has appeared again?” Shara asked. “Just beyond the orbit of Saturn.”
I was only mildly interested. No doubt there was an explanation for the phenomenon, and since Isaac Asimov wasn’t around I would doubtless never understand a word of it. Most of us gave up on intelligent nonhuman life when Project Ozma came up empty. “Little green men, I suppose. Can you show us the Lounge, Tom? I understand it’s just like the one we’ll be working in.”
He seemed to welcome the change of subject. “Sure thing.”
McGillicuddy led us through a p-door opposite the one Carrington had used, through long halls whose floors curved up ahead of and behind us. Each was outfitted differently, each was full of busy, purposeful people, and each reminded me somehow of the lobby of the New Age, or perhaps of the old movie 2001. Futuristic Opulence, so understated as to fairly shriek. Wall Street lifted bodily into orbit—the clocks were on Wall Street time. I tried to make myself believe that cold, empty space lay a short distance away in any direction, but it was impossible. I decided it was a good thing spacecraft didn’t have portholes—once he got used to the low gravity, a man might forget and open one to throw out a cigar.
I studied McGillicuddy as we walked. He was immaculate in every respect, from necktie knot to nail polish, and he wore no jewelry at all. His hair was short and black, his beard inhibited, and his eyes surprisingly warm in a professionally sterile face. I wondered what he had sold his soul for. I hoped he had gotten his price.
We had to descend two levels to get to the Lounge. The gravity on the upper level was kept at one-sixth normal, partly for the convenience of the Lunar personnel who were Skyfac’s only regular commuters, and mostly (of course) for the convenience of Carrington. But descending brought a subtle increase in weight, to perhaps a fifth or a quarter normal. My leg complained bitterly, but I found to my surprise that I preferred the pain to its absence. It’s a little scary when an old friend goes away like that.
The Lounge was a larger room than I had expected, quite big enough for our purposes. It encompassed all three levels; and one whole wall was an immense video screen, across which stars wheeled dizzily, joined with occasional regularity by a slice of mother Terra. The floor was crowded with chairs and tables in various groupings, but I could see that, stripped, it would provide Shara with entirely adequate room to dance. From long habit my feet began to report on the suitability of the floor as a dancing surface. Then I remembered how little use the floor was liable to get.
“Well,” Shara said to me with a smile, “this is what home will look like for the next six months. The Ring Two Lounge is identical to this one.”
“Six?” McGillicuddy said. “Not a chance.”
“What do you mean?” Shara and I said together.
He blinked at our combined volume. “Well, you’ll probably be good for that long, Charlie. But Shara’s already had a year of low gee, while she was in the typing pool.”
“So what?”
“Look, you expect to be in free fall for long periods of time, if I understand this correctly?”
“Twelve hours a day,” Shara agreed.
He grimaced. “Shara, I hate to say this… but I’ll be surprised if you last a month. A body designed for a one-gee environment doesn’t work properly in zero gee.”
“But it will adapt, won’t it?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “Sure. That’s why we rotate all personnel Earthside every fourteen months. Your body will adapt. One way. No return. Once you’ve fully adapted, returning to Earth will stop your heart—if some other major systemic failure doesn’t occur first. Look, you were just Earthside for three days—did you have any chest pains? Dizziness? Bowel trouble? Dropsickness on the way up?”
“All of the above,” she admitted.
“There you go. You were close to the nominal fourteen-month limit when you left. And your body will adapt even faster under no gravity at all. The successful free-fall endurance record of about eight months was set by a Skyfac construction gang with bad deadline problems—and they hadn’t spent a year in one-sixth gee first, and they weren’t straining their hearts the way you will be. Hell, there are four men in Luna now, from the original mining team, who will never see Earth again. Eight of their teammates tried. Don’t you two know anything about space? Didn’t Carrington tell you?”
I had wondered why Carrington had gone to the trouble of having our preflight physicals waived.
“But I’ve got to have at least four months. Four months of solid work, every day. I must.” She was dismayed, but fighting hard for control.
McGillicuddy started to shake his head, and then thought better of it. His warm eyes were studying Shara’s face. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and I liked him for it.
He was thinking, How to tell a lovely lady her dearest dream is hopeless?
He didn’t know the half of it. I knew how much Shara had already—irrevocably—invested in this dream, and something in me screamed.
And then I saw her jaw ripple and I dared to hope.
Doctor Panzella was a wiry old man with eyebrows like two fuzzy caterpillars. He wore a tight-fitting jumpsuit which would not foul a p-suit’s seals should he have to get into one in a hurry. His shoulder-length hair, which should have been a mane on that great skull, was clipped securely back against a sudden absence of gravity. A cautious man. To employ an obsolete metaphor, he was a suspender-and-belt type. He looked Shara over, ran tests on the spot, and gave her just under a month and a half. Shara said some things. I said some things. McGillicuddy said some things. Panzella shrugged, made further, very careful tests, and reluctantly cut loose of the suspenders. Two months. Not a day over. Possibly less, depending on subsequent monitoring of her body’s reactions to extended weightlessness. Then a year Earthside before risking it again. Shara seemed satisfied.