"Really?"
"Really. We"re going to open a Playboy Club in here. Want to be a bunny?"
Her nose wrinkled. "You"ve got enough of those."
For more than an hour they worked their separate tasks in silence. Kinsman was concentrating on recalibrating the radar mapper when Jill handed him a container of hot coffee.
He turned in the chair. She was standing beside him, not much taller than his own seated height.
"Thanks."
Her face was very serious. "Something"s bothering you, Chet. What did she do to you?"
"Nothing."
"Really?"
"For Chrissake, don"t start that again! Nothing, absolutely nothing happened. Maybe that"s what"s bothering me."
Shaking her head, "No, you"re worried about something, and it"s not about yourself."
"Don"t be so d.a.m.ned dramatic, Jill."
She put a hand on his shoulder. "Chet...I know this is all a game to you, but people can get hurt at this kind of game, and...well...nothing in life is ever as good as you expect it will be."
Looking up at her intent brown eyes, Kinsman felt his irritation vanish. "Okay, kid. Thanks for the philosophy. I"m a big boy, though, and I know what it"s all about..."
"You just think you do."
Shrugging, "Okay, I think I do. Maybe nothing is as good as it ought to be, but a man"s innocent until proven guilty, and everything new is as good as gold until you find some tarnish on it. That"s my my philosophy for the day!" philosophy for the day!"
"All right slugger," Jill smiled ruefully. "Be the ape man. Fight it out for yourself. I just don"t want to see her hurt you."
"I won"t get hurt."
Jill said, "You hope. Okay, if there"s anything I can do..."
"Yeah, there is something."
"What?"
"When you sack in again, make sure Linda sees you take a sleeping pill. Will you do that?"
Jill"s face went expressionless. "Sure," she answered flatly. "Anything for a fellow officer."
She made a great show, several hours later, of taking a sleeping pill so that she could rest well on her final nap before reentry. It seemed to Kinsman that Jill deliberately laid it on too thickly.
"Do you always take sleeping pills on the final time around?" Linda asked, after Jill had gone into the bunkroom.
"Got to be fully alert and rested," Kinsman replied, "for the return flight. Reentry"s the trickiest part of the operation."
"Oh. I see."
"Nothing to worry about, though," Kinsman added.
He went to the control desk and busied himself with the tasks that the mission profile called for. Linda sat lightly in the next chair, within arm"s reach. Kinsman chatted briefly with Kodiak station, on schedule, and made an entry in the log.
Three more ground stations and then we"re over the Indian Ocean, with world enough and time.
But he didn"t look up from the control panel; he tested each system aboard the lab, fingers flicking over control b.u.t.tons, eyes focused on the red, amber and green lights that told him how the laboratory"s mechanical and electrical machinery was functioning.
"Chet?"
"Yes."
"Are you...sore at me?"
Still not looking at her, "No, I"m busy. Why should I be sore at you?"
"Well, not sore maybe, but..."
"Puzzled?"
"Puzzled, hurt, something like that."
He punched an entry on the computer"s keyboard at his side, then turned to face her. "Linda, I haven"t really had time to figure out what I feel. You"re a complicated girl; maybe too complicated for me. Life"s got enough twists in it."
Her mouth drooped a little.
"On the other hand," he added, "we WASPS ought to stick together. Not many of us left."
That brought a faint smile. "I"m not a WASP. My real name"s Szymanski...I changed it when I started modeling."
"Oh. Another complication."
She was about to reply when the radio speaker crackled, "AF-9, this is Cheyenne. Cheyenne to AF-9."
Kinsman leaned over and thumbed the transmitter switch. "AF-9 to ; Cheyenne. You"re coming through faint but clear."
"Roger, Nine. We"re receiving your telemetry. All systems look green from here."
"Manual check of systems also green," Kinsman said. "Mission profile ; okay, no deviations. Tasks about ninety percent complete."
"Roger. Ground control suggests you begin checking out your s.p.a.cecraft on the next orbit. You are scheduled for reentry in ten hours."
"Right. Will do."
"Okay, Chet. Everything looks good from here. Anything else to report, ol" Founding Father?"
"Mind your own business." He turned the transmitter off.
Linda was smiling at him.
"What"s so funny?"
"You are. You"re getting very touchy about this whole business."
"It"s going to stay touchy for a long time to come. Those guys"ll hound me for years about this."
"You could always tell lies."
"About you? No, I don"t think I could do that. If the girl was anonymous, that"s one thing. But they all know you, know where you work..."
"You"re a gallant officer. I suppose that kind of rumor would get back to New York."
Kinsman grinned. "You could even make the front page of the National Enquirer National Enquirer."
She laughed at that. "I"ll bet they"d pull out some of my old bikini pictures."
"Careful now," Kinsman put up a warning hand. "Don"t stir up my imagination any more than it already is. I"m having a hard enough time being gallant right now."
They remained apart, silent, Kinsman sitting at the control desk, Linda drifting back toward the galley, nearly touching the curtain that screened off the sleeping area.
The ground control center called in and Kinsman gave a terse report. When he looked up at Linda again, she was sitting in front of the observation port across the aisle from the galley. Looking back at Kinsman, her face was troubled now, her eyes...he wasn"t sure what was in her eyes. They looked different: no longer ice-cool, no longer calculating; they looked aware, concerned, almost frightened.
Still Kinsman stayed silent. He checked and double-checked the control board, making absolutely certain that every valve and transistor aboard the lab was working perfectly. Glancing at his watch: Five more minutes before Ascension calls Five more minutes before Ascension calls. He checked the lighted board again.
Ascension called in exactly on schedule. Feeling his innards tightening, Kinsman gave his standard report in a deliberately calm and mechanical way. Ascension signed off.
With a long last look at the controls, Kinsman pushed himself out of the seat and drifted, hands faintly touching the grips along the aisle, toward Linda.
"You"ve been awfully quiet," he said, standing over her.
"I"ve been thinking about what you said a while ago." What was it in her eyes? Antic.i.p.ation? Fear? "It...it has been a d.a.m.ned lonely life, Chet."
He took her arm and lifted her gently from the chair and kissed her.
"But..."
"It"s all right," he whispered. "No one will bother us. No one will know."
She shook her head. "It"s not that easy, Chet. It"s not that simple."
"Why not? We"re here together...what"s so complicated?"
"But-doesn"t anything bother you? You"re floating around in a dream. You"re surrounded by war machines, you"re living every minute with danger. If a pump fails or a meteor hits..."
"You think it"s any safer down there?"
"But life is is complex, Chet. And love...well, there"s more to it than just having fun." complex, Chet. And love...well, there"s more to it than just having fun."
"Sure there is. But it"s meant to be enjoyed, too. What"s wrong with taking an opportunity when you have it? What"s so d.a.m.ned complicated or important? We"re above the cares and worries of Earth. Maybe it"s only for a few hours, but it"s here and now, it"s us. They can"t touch us, they can"t force us to do anything or stop us from doing what we want to. We"re on our own. Understand? Completely on our own."
She nodded, her eyes still wide with the look of a frightened animal. But her hands slid around him, and together they drifted back toward the control desk. Wordlessly, Kinsman turned off all the overhead lights, so that all they saw was the glow of the control board and the flickering of the Computer as it murmured to itself.
They were in their own world now, their private cosmos, floating freely and softly in the darkness. Touching, drifting, coupling, searching the new seas and continents, they explored their world.
Jill stayed in the hammock until Linda entered the bunkroom, quietly, to see if she had awakened yet. Kinsman sat at the control desk feeling, not tired, but strangely numb.
The rest of the flight was strictly routine. Jill and Kinsman did their jobs, spoke to each other when they had to. Linda took a brief nap, then returned to snap a few last pictures. Finally they crawled back into the s.p.a.cecraft, disengaged from the laboratory, and started the long curving flight back to Earth.
Kinsman took a last look at the majestic beauty of the planet, serene and incomparable among the stars, before touching the b.u.t.ton that slid the heat shield over his viewport. Then they felt the surge of rocket thrust, dipped into the atmosphere, knew that air heated beyond endurance surrounded them in a fiery grip and made their tiny craft into a flaming, falling star. Pressed into his seat by the acceleration, Kinsman let the automatic controls bring them through reentry, through the heat and buffeting turbulence, down to an alt.i.tude where their finned craft could fly like a rocketplane.
He took control and steered the craft back toward Patrick Air Force Base, back to the world of men, of weather, of cities, of hierarchies and official regulations. He did this alone, silently; he didn"t need Jill"s help or anyone else"s. He flew the craft from inside his b.u.t.toned-tight pressure suit, frowning at the panel displays through his helmet"s faceplate.
Automatically, he checked with ground control and received permission to slide the heat shield back. The viewport showed him a stretch of darkening clouds spreading from the sea across the beach and well inland. His earphones were alive with other men"s voices now: wind conditions, alt.i.tude checks, speed estimates. He knew, but could not see that two jet planes were trailing along behind him, cameras focused on the returning s.p.a.cecraft. To provide evidence if I crash To provide evidence if I crash.
They dipped into the clouds and a wave of gray mist hurtled up and covered the viewport. Kinsman"s eyes flicked to the radar screen slightly off to his right. The craft shuddered briefly, then they broke below the clouds and he could see the long black gouge of the runway looming before him. He pulled back slightly on the controls, hands and feet working instinctively, flashed over some scrubby vegetation, and flared the craft onto the runway. The landing skids touched once, bounced them up momentarily, then touched again with a grinding shriek. They skidded for more than a mile before stopping.
He leaned back in the seat and felt his body oozing sweat.
"Good landing," Jill said.
"Thanks." He turned off all the craft"s systems, hands moving automatically in response to long training. Then he slid his faceplate up, reached overhead and popped the hatch open.
"End of the line," he said tiredly. "Everybody out."
He clambered up through the hatch, feeling his own weight with a sullen resentment, then helped Linda and finally Jill out of the s.p.a.cecraft. They hopped down onto the blacktop runway. Two vans, an ambulance, and two fire trucks were rolling toward them from their parking stations at the end of the runway, a half-mile ahead.
Kinsman slowly took his helmet off. The Florida heat and humidity annoyed him now. Jill walked a few paces away from him, toward the approaching trucks.
He stepped toward Linda. Her helmet was off, and she was carrying a bag full of film.
"I"ve been thinking," he said to her. "That business about having a lonely life...You know, you"re not the only one. And it doesn"t have to be that way. I can get to New York whenever..."
"Now who"s taking things seriously?" Her face looked calm again, cool, despite the glaring heat.
"But I mean..."
"Listen Chet. We had our kicks. Now you can tell your friends about it, and I can tell mine. We"ll both get a lot of mileage out of it. It"ll help our careers."
"I never intended to...1 didn"t..."
But she was already turning away from him, walking toward the men who were running up to meet them from the trucks. One of them, a civilian, had a camera in his hands. He dropped to one knee and took a picture of Linda holding the film out and smiling broadly.