The faulty ingredient in this prescription, Lattimore thought, was his current companion, Marcel Gleet, the Second Navigation Officer. It would have constituted a major solecism, almost a solar solecism, to have laughed at what Gleet said. Gleet was wedded to seriousness, and the marriage was much like a funeral.
"... would seem a substantial possibility," he was saying, "that the star cluster, the co-ordinates of which I have just mentioned, may be the home of our alien species. There are six stars in the cluster having between them some fifteen orbiting planets. I was talking with Mellor of Geocred last watch, and he infers that as many as six of them are likely to prove Earth-type.”
One certainly couldn't laugh at that, Lattimore thought, though there were several crew about on the deck, not a few of them laughing - mainly at Mrs. Warhoon's notice, which was pinned conspicuously to the main notice board.
"Since all of these six Earth-type bodies," Gleet continued, "are within two to three light years of Clementina, they would seem to constitute a reasonable area in which to pursue our search. A further advantage is that the six bodies are all within light days of each other, an immense help with regard to flight promptitude.”
At least a chuckle of agreement might be inserted there.
Gleet continued his discourse, but the chime of a watch bell reminded him of the reason for his coming up to the Scanning Deck, and he moved away in the direction of the Navigation Bay. Lattimore turned to one of the deep oval ports, and gazed out through the hull of the ship while he listened to the comments of a group of three men behind him.
" 'Contribution to the future of mankind!' That I like!" one of them exclaimed, reading from the announcement.
"Yes, but you notice that after that appeal to your better nature, they cover themselves by offering you a pension for life," said one of his companions.
"It would have to be higher stakes than that to get me to maroon myself on an alien planet for five years," the third said.
"I'd chip in too, just to get rid of you," said the first Lattimore nodded to his ghostly reflection as the ancient form of badinage by insult ran its predictable course. He often wondered at that accepted method of verbal assault which passed for wit; no doubt it was a way of sublimating a man's hatred for his fellows; what else could it be? He was not at all perturbed at the comments passed on Mrs. Warhoon's notice; frigid she might be, but he thought she had a good idea there; because there were many varieties of men, her notice would eventually bear fruit.
He stared at the universe which the Gansas, in a Buzzardian way, was currently surrounding. Against a uterine blackness stood a number of close and fuzzy bars of light. It was like a drunken fly's close-up view of a comb, lacking definition and forming an affront to the optic nerve.
But, as the scientists pointed out, the human optic nerve was not adjusted to reality. Because the true nature of the universe could only be glimpsed through the transponential equations, it followed that this fuzzy grill (which made one feel, come to think of it, like a minor crustacean with the baleen of a blue whale grinning down at one) was what the stars "really" looked like. Plato, reflected Lattimore, thou shouldst be living at this hour! He swung away and contrived to turn his thoughts similarly away towards the thought of food.
Say what you liked, there was nothing like a good synthetic stew for calling armistice between a man and his universe.
"But, Mihaly," Enid Ainson was saying, "Mihaly, for years - since Bruce first introduced me to you, I've thought you were secretly attracted to me. I mean the way you looked at me. And when you consented to be Aylmer's godfather - I mean you've always led me to think. ..." She pressed her hands together. "And you were only amusing yourself....”
He was drawn up very formally, a cliff against the tide "of her pathos.
"Perhaps I have a naturally chivalrous attitude to ladies, Enid, but you have read too much into it. What can I do but thank you deeply for your flattering suggestion, but really....”
Suddenly she jerked her head up. She had eaten enough at the apple of humiliation; it was time to let anger have its turn. Imperiously she gestured at him.
"You need say no more. I will tell you only that the thought of you and your imagined fondness - how often I foolishly imagined that it was only your friendship with Bruce that kept you from making advances towards me! -your hollow fondness has been the only factor keeping me sane over these last few impossible years.”
"Come, I am certain you exaggerate -”
"I am talking! I see now that all your airs and graces, all this phony Hungarian glamour you put on, they ah* mean nothing. You are just a false front, Mihaly, a romantic who dislikes romances, a - a ladies' man who is afraid of ladies. Good-bye to you, Mihaly, and damn you! Through you I have lost both my husband and my son.”
The door slammed behind her.
They had been talking in the hall. Mihaly put his hands up to his burning cheeks. He was shaking. He averted his eyes from the sight of himself in the mirror.
The terrible thing was, that without having the least interest in Enid physically, he had admired her spirit and, knowing what a difficult man Bruce was behind the scenes, he had indeed encouraged her with warm glances and occasional pressures of the hand - purely to illustrate to her that someone was capable of seeing her virtues. Ah, beware, indeed beware of pity!
"Darling, has she gone?”
He heard the tiny summoning voice of his mistress from the living room. Doubtless she would have eavesdropped on the scene with Enid. Without eagerness, he went to hear what she had to say about it all. There was no doubt that the charming Ah Chi, after her painting holiday in the Persian Gulf or wherever she had been, would be horribly inquisitive over the whole incident.
It was only a watch after Bryant Lattimore had felt like a minor crustacean that Mrs. Warhoon got a volunteer. The discovery sent her in a flutter into the heart of the molybdenum crystal belt. Lattimore quickly took the chance to seize her by her fleshy upper arms.
"Steady now, Hilary! I hate to see a pretty cosmoclectician in a tizzy. So you wanted a volunteer, so you've got him; now go ahead and give him the pitch.”
Mrs. Warhoon freed herself, though not without getting appetizingly disarranged. What strong brutes men were! Heaven alone knew what this one would be like when he got metaphorically east of Suez at next planetfall. Well, at least a woman had her own defenses: she could always give in.
"This volunteer is rather special, Mr. Lattimore. Does the name Samuel Melmoth mean anything to you?”
"Not a thing. No, wait! Ye gods and little fishes! It's Ainson's son! You mean he's volunteered?”
"He has managed to make himself rather unpopular down on the messdeck, and in consequence feels rather anti-social. A friend of his called Quilter gave him a black eye.'1 "Quilter again, eh? Likely leader material there; I must speak to the captain about him.”
"I’d like you to come and stand by me while I brief this young Ainson, if you aren't too busy.”
"Hilary, I'd stand by you at any time.”
The Ur-Organic style (like all art movement labels, the name was inaccurate to the point of meaninglessness) had perpetrated a nasty whimsy in Mrs. Warhoon's office. She and Lattimore stepped into a popinjay's heart. Under a magnification of 200,000, the fibrous tissue ran and knotted in bas-relief over ceiling and floor as well as walls. In the middle of it, lonely, green about one eye, sat Aylmer Ainson, his head indistinct against a galaxy of striated aortal muscle. He stood when Mrs. Warhoon and Lattimore entered.