Louise lay a few feet away. From the way she was snoring, she was out like a light. Irv suspected that he could have led a brass band past her without waking her up, let alone playing slap and tickle with Pat. Suddenly he wanted her more than he had when she was in his arms.
He shook his head. Turning down a woman who offered herself like that was not one of the easier things he had done. He laughed at himself. “It’s not as if I’ve had a lot of practice,” he said under his breath.
“What’s that?” Pat asked.
“Nothing. Just brainfuzz.” He rolled over and eventually went to sleep.
“Adin, dva, tri!” Rustaveli shouted. At “three,” he and the American doctor pushed on the rover with all their might. She was even smaller than Katerina, but determination and no little strength made up for her lack of size. Grunting and sweating, she and Rustaveli fought the rover’s weight until it overbalanced and flipped back onto its wheels. It jounced a couple of times, then sat still.
“Well done!” Valery Bryusov cheered from a few meters away. His left arm was splinted and in a sling rigged from a piece of blanket. He made a rueful gesture with his good hand. “I wish I could have helped.”
“Never mind, Valery Aleksandrovich.” Rustaveli sprang onto the rover and tried the motor. The vehicle rolled ahead. He stopped it and grinned. “Thanks to Sarah, ah, Davidovna, you are fixed, now it is fixed, and we will be going back to our comrades.”
“Carefully, I hope,” Sarah said. She picked up the blankets she used to supplement the flimsy costume that was all she wore inside her pedal powered plane and started to redrape them.
Bryusov stepped forward to help her, but Rustaveli beat him there. After so long with just Katerina to think about, he was astonished at how much the mere sight of a different woman excited him. But when his hands “accidentally” started to slide down from her shoulders, the flinty look she gave him stopped him in his tracks. “Excuse me,” he muttered, surprised at how embarrassed he was.
“All right, then,” she said. But her voice did not imply that it was all right; her voice warned him not to try it again. This, he thought, could be one seriously stubborn woman. Maybe he should be just as well pleased not to be spending three years of his life in close company with her. Nevertheless-
“Sarah Davidovna, we are in your debt,” he said.
“I especially,” Bryusov agreed. “The more so as you had tomake a journey dangerous to yourself to help me, and our nations are not the best of friends.”
Under the awkward blankets, she shrugged. “There aren’t any nations here, just people-and not very many of us. Compared to anyone or anything else on Minerva, we’re all closer than brothers. If we don’t help each other, who will?”
“You are right,” Rustaveli said, though he knew Oleg Lopatin would have hurt himself laughing at such a notion-and perhaps Colonel Tolmasov, too. For that matter, he doubted that all the Americans on Minerva were as altruistic as this Dr. Levitt; otherwise, for instance, Tolmasov would have been happier dealing with Emmett Bragg.
While Rustaveli was working through that chain of thought, Bryusov asked what the Georgian should have. “How may we help you now, Sarah Davidovna?”
“You, Valery Aleksandrovich, can help best by staying out of the way and not risking any further harm to yourself,” she said firmly. “Shota Mikheilovich, if you would, you could help me swing Damselfly around so that it faces back toward Jotun Canyon once more. That will save me the trouble of flying around in a long, slow semicircle before I can head back to my own people.”
So much for the brotherhood of all men on Minerva, Rustaveli thought. Still, the request was entirely reasonable. “Show me what to do.”
He walked over to the ultra-ultralight with her. “Very simple,” she said. “You take one wingtip, I’ll take the other. Then we walk around till the plane points the way we want it to. Just be careful not to poke your fingers through the plastic skin.”
“Da,” he said absently. He was amazed at how easily the plane moved. “This, ah, Damselfly cannot weigh even as much as I do.”
“Not even close,” the American doctor agreed. The aircraft soon pointed east, but she still looked discontented. Rustaveli understood why when she said, as much to herself as to him, “Now how am I supposed to get into the blasted thing?”
He saw the problem at once. The canopy opened at the top, and there was no way to clamber up without tearing the plastic film of the fuselage to ribbons. He rubbed his chin; whiskers rasped under his gloves as he thought. Finally he snapped his fingers, or tried to-the gloves effectively muffled the noise. “Suppose I drive the rover alongside your plane here? You could climb on top of the roll cage, and I will help you down onto the seat inside the plane.”
After his try at feeling her up, he wondered if she would hesitate. She didn’t, not even for a second. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
The rover purred up to Damsel. fly. Rustaveli turned off the engine and set the brakes on all four wheels. Then he scrambled up onto the top of the machine. Sarah Levitt came swarming after him. “You do that very well,” he said.
“I haven’t been on a jungle gym since I was nine years old, but it’s not the sort of thing you forget.” Sarah undid the canopy and sat on the metal bars of the roll cage with her feet dangling down into-what would one call it? The pilot’s compartment? The engine room? Wondering that, Rustaveli was almost caught by surprise when the American doctor said, “Lower me.”
Rustaveli hooked his feet at the corners of intersecting bars and took a firm grip on Sarah Levitt’s waist. He was glad she was a small woman; it made her weight easier to control as she slid into Damselfly. Although his arms traveled up her torso as she descended, he took no undue liberties.
“Thank you,” she said, in a way that thanked him for that as well as for his help.
He backed the rover out of the way and walked around to the other side of Damselfly so he could close the canopy. When it was latched, he asked, “Now what?”
“No need to shout,” she said. “The skin is too thin to cut down on sound.” She was already pedaling hard, though the propeller had not yet begun to spin. Her legs did not slow down as she went on, “Go to the end of one wing and run along with me, holding it level, when I start to taxi.”
He sprang to attention, and snapped off a salute sharper than any Tolmasov would ever wring from him. “I am yours to command.”
Under her white plastic helmet, the American doctor’s eyes twinkled. “You are a very silly man, Shota Mikheilovich. How did you manage to sneak past all the selection boards?”
He winked at her. “Simple. I did not tell them.” He was whistling as he walked out to the wingtip.
The big propeller, tall as he was, revolved slowly at first, then faster and faster. “Now!” Sarah Levitt shouted. Damselfly rolled forward, startlingly fast; Rustaveli was into a trot almost at once. Then he was running, and running for all he was worth. For a moment, it seemed to him that he was the one on the point of becoming airborne.
Then Damselfly wheels lifted clear of the ground. The plane was going faster than the Georgian could match. He pulled to a stop and stood panting, his breath a cloud of fog around his head. The American doctor briefly took one hand off the control stick to wave to him and Bryusov.
They both waved back. The linguist walked up to Rustaveli as Damselfly skimmed eastward, toward Jotun Canyon. “I’m sorry you will have to do all the driving as we return to our comrades,” Bryusov said.
Rustaveli was still watching the ultra-ultralight diminish in the distance. “Nichevo,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. At least I won’t have to pedal home.”
“There!” Louise Bragg shouted. She slapped Irv on the back. He staggered, straightened and followed her pointing finger with his eyes. At first he could make out nothing through the mist, but then he, too, spied the moving speck. He held the radio to his mouth. “Honey-uh, Damselfly-we have you visually.”