“I scent. No, you say ‘I see’ in English.” Uthg-a-K’thaq’s tone was indifferent. He turned and slap-slapped on webbed feet toward his cabin.
Vadász looked thoughtfully at his back until he had disappeared. I wonder how much of our interhuman quarrels and tensions come through to him, the Hungarian reflected. Perhaps none.
Surely he will think the business between Gunnar and Jocelyn is utter triviation, if he even notices.
And he may well be right. Thus far, at least, it has only amounted to Gunnar’s being often absent from our vessel. Which has done no harm at the present stage of things. The men gossip, but the tone I hear is simple good-natured envy. For myself, I am the last to begrudge a friend what scrap of happiness he can stumble upon. Therefore—why does it make me uneasy, this?
He threw off worry and pushed buttons on the radiophone extension. A middle-aged, scholarly-looking man glared from Quest’s saloon.
“Good day, Dr. Towne,” Vadász said cheerily. “Would you please remind Captain Heim that we’re leaving in half an hour?”
“Let him remind himself,” the glossanalyst snapped.
“Do you so strongly oppose our little enterprise over here that you will not even give a man an intercom call?” Vadász leered. “Then kindly remind Mme. Lawrie.”
Towne reddened and cut the circuit. He must have some very archaic mores indeed. Vadász chuckled and strolled off to complete his own preparations, whistling to himself:
—And aboard the Quest, Heim looked at a bulkhead clock, stretched, and said, “We’d better start.”
Jocelyn laid a hand on his roan hair, another beneath his chin, and brought the heavy-boned homely face around until it was close to hers. “Do we have to?” she asked.
The trouble in those eyes hurt him. He tried to laugh. “What, cancel this trip and lose Vie his data? He’d never forgive us.”
“He’d be nearly as happy as I. Because it’s far more important that… that you come out of this lunacy of yours, Gunnar.”
“My dear,” he said, “the only thing that’s marred an otherwise delightful time has been your trying and trying to wheedle me into giving up the raider project. You can’t. In the old Chinese advice, why don’t you relax and enjoy it?” He brushed his lips across hers.
She didn’t respond, but left the bed and walked across the cabin. “If I were young again,” she said bitterly, “I might have succeeded.”
“Huh? No, now, look—”
“I am looking.” She had stopped before a full-length optex beside her dresser. Slowly, she ran her hands down cheeks and breasts and flanks. “Oh, for forty-three I’m quite well preserved. But the crow’s feet are there, and the beginnings of the double chin, and without clothes I sag. You’ve been—good, kind—the last few days, Gunnar. But I noticed you never committed yourself to anything.”
He swung to his own feet, crossed the intervening distance in two strides, and towered over her; then didn’t know what to do next. “How could I?” he settled for saying. “I’ve no idea what may happen on the cruise. No right to make promises or—”
“You could make them conditionally,” she told him. The moment’s despair had left her, or been buried. Her expression was enigmatic, her tone impersonal. “ ‘If I come home alive,’ you might say, ‘I’ll do such and such, if you’re agreeable.’ ”
He had no words. After some seconds she breathed out and turned from him. Her head drooped. “Well, let’s get dressed,” she said.
He put on the one-piece garment which doubled as under-padding for an airsuit, his motions automatic, his mind awash. Okay, what do I want? How much of what I felt , (do I still feel it?) was genuine and how much was just a grab at the past when lonesomeness had me off balance? I plain don’t know.
His bewilderment didn’t last long, because he was the least self-analytical of men. He shoved his questions aside for later examination and, with them, most of the associated emotions.
Affection for Jocelyn remained in the forefront of his awareness, along’ with regret that she had been hurt and a puzzled wish to do something about it; but overriding all else was eagerness to be away. He’d cooled his heels long enough on this island. The flight to Trebogir’s would be a small unleashing.
“C’mon,” he said with reborn merriment. His hand slapped the woman playfully. “Should be quite a trip, you know.”
She turned about Grief dwelt in her eyes and on her lips. “Gunnar—” She must look down at her fingers, tensed against each other. “You really don’t think I’m… a fool at best, a traitor at worst… for not wanting a war… do you?”
“Hvad for pokker!” he exclaimed, rocked back. “When did I give you that idea?”
She swallowed and found no reply.
He took her by the forearms and shook her gently. “You are a fool if you think I ever thought so,” he said. “Joss, I don’t want war any more than you. I believe a show of force now—one warning snap of teeth—may head off a fatal showdown later. That’s all. Okay, you have a different opinion. I respect it, and I respect you. What’ve I done to make you suppose anything different?
Please tell me.”
“Nothing.” She straightened. “I’m being silly,” she said in a machine voice. “We’d better go.”
They went silently downhall. At the locker outside Boat-house Three, Victor Bragdon was donning his airsuit. “Hi, there,” he called. “I’d begun to wonder what was keeping you. One of your men delivered your stuff last watch, Gunnar. Good thing, too. You’d never fit into anybody else’s.”
Heim took the stiff fabric, zipped it shut around himself, and put on gloves and ankle-supporting boots with close attention to the fastenings. If the oxygen inside mingled with the hydrogen outside, he’d be a potential torch. Of course, in a flyer it was only a precaution to wear a full outfit; but he’d seen too often how little of the universe is designed for man to neglect any safety measure. Connecting the helmet to high-pressure air bottles and recycler tank, he hung the rig from his shoulders, but left the valves closed and the faceplate open. Now, the belt of food bars and medicines; canteen; waste unit; not the machine pistol, for you did not come armed into a Nest… He saw that Jocelyn was having some trouble with her gear and went to help.
“It’s so heavy,” she complained.
“Why, you wore much the same type on New Mars,” Heim said.
“Yes, but that was under half an Earth gravity.”
“Be glad we aren’t under the full Staurnian pull, then,” Bragdon said genially. He bent to pick up a carrying case.
“What’ve you got there?” Heim asked.
“Extra camera equipment. A last-minute thought. Don’t get alarmed, though. The field survival kit is aboard and double checked.” Bragdon was still grinning as he walked to the entry lock. His aquiline profile was rather carefully turned toward Jocelyn. Heim felt amused.
The boathouse seemed cavernous. The space auxiliary intended to rest here had been replaced by three atmospheric flyers built for work on subjovian planets; and one of them was out on a preliminary mapping flight. The humans wriggled through the lock of another bulky fuselage and strapped in, with Bragdon at the controls. He phonespoke to his dispatcher. The boathouse was evacuated, Staurn’s air was valved in, the outer doors were opened. With a whirr of power, the vehicle departed.