Rick listened to everything that the pilot said, but half his mind was all the time somewhere else. He could not get Alice’s strange behavior out of his head. As soon as the meal was over he slipped away, leaving Deedee still fascinated by what Tom Garcia had to tell her.
He was not sure where he would find Alice, but he went wandering aft toward the women’s quarters. He received odd looks from half a dozen female apprentices as he went, but at last he located her where he might have expected—in the tiny exercise room, running doggedly on the treadmill. “Alice!”
“What?” She gradually slowed the pace to zero, and stood there with her chest heaving.
“You ignored me back there. I wondered why. I mean, I didn’t do anything.”
She glanced across at the door. “Not here. We can’t talk here.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll explain later. Go back to your room.”
“But I want to—”
“I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes. Now go—this second.”
Rick retreated along the corridor to his room. He unfolded his bunk and sat down on it. When Alice arrived at last she closed the door and locked it.
“Rick, we should have talked before I left for dinner. Do you want a job with Vanguard Mining, or would you rather be kicked out and sent back to Earth?”
“That’s a dumb question. You know the answer. What does it have to do with you and me?”
“Everything. Vanguard has a very simple operating philosophy: The company comes first. One sure way to fail is to put emotions and personal feelings ahead of the company and your job. There’s a very easy way, however, to have the best of both worlds: Do what you like, but don’t let it show. Do you have any idea how many people were getting close to each other in the New Mexico training camp, or on CM-2?”
“Jigger and Gina—”
“Did you realize they were partners, until the party on the final night?”
Rick shook his head. He had known, but he didn’t want to tell Alice just how he knew.
“I wasn’t going to say anything or do anything in the mess hall,” he protested. “I was just going to talk to you.”
“Yeah, sure. Talk to me. You didn’t see your face. You big simpleton.” She hugged him close, to take the edge of what she was saying. “Anyone who saw you looking at me would know in a minute how things were between us. You couldn’t have made it any clearer if you’d written my name on your forehead.”
“I can’t help the way I feel.”
“Nor can I. But we have to be discreet. We can’t afford to moon around looking lovesick. So don’t expect me to be anything but cold and distant when we’re in public. Getting bounced from the program is one chance neither of us can take.”
“What about in private?” Rick wasn’t being rejected, but he felt like it.
“That’s a different matter.” She smiled at him and touched her finger to his lips. “In private, what we do is your business and mine.”
Chapter Thirteen
Rick was convinced that no one else would solve the problem of the ship’s travel time. It was a shock when at the end of the third day Barney French announced that a total of six people had obtained the right answer.
She did not, however, provide the names. “You know who you are,” she said to the assembled group. “This isn’t a school. My job isn’t to give out prizes.”
Which left Rick to stare around and wonder who was so smart. Chick Teazle? Gladys de Witt? Vido? Not Deedee, if what she had told Tom Garcia was the truth. Had a whole group of them cooperated, without telling the rest? Not judging from their expressions. It seemed to him that everyone was staring round at everybody else.
Barney also offered no public comment as to how people had managed on their individual assignments. She simply called them in later, one at a time, asked a few questions and made barbed comments on the answers, and piled on the work load.
“You’ll need this, and this, and this,” she said calmly to Rick. He didn’t argue, but he knew that each item she dropped on him meant four or five hours hard work. It made him wonder why he had been so keen to succeed when he was on CM-2.
He carried his assignments back to his cabin and started the grind. The next couple of days were endless labor, broken only by food, sleep, and stolen hours with Alice. Barney French had dumped on her even harder than Rick. Alice had only just squeaked through the finals on CM-2, and still she was barely making the grade. Rick felt almost guilty at the time they spent together—but he never suggested that they might stop seeing each other. Amid all the work, Alice provided the bright spot in a sea of drudgery".
Halfway point came and went, a few minutes of weightlessness while the Vantage turned end-over-end. Deceleration began. Four and a half more days, and they would be at their destination in the Belt.
Seventy-two hours after turnover Rick, wandering along to the dining area dazed by an excess of studying, found himself sitting opposite Deedee. She stared at him in a sad-eyed and accusing way, but all she said was, “How you doing, Rick?”
“Fine.” Did she know? How could she know? He had not spoken a word to anyone, and after the first day he had been careful not even to look at Alice in public.
He pulled out of his trance and made a big effort. “I’m fine,” he repeated. “How are you doing?”
“Busy. Working hard. Thinking a lot. About a lot of things.”
Their food had not yet appeared, but she stood up and went to another table. Rick felt uncomfortable, though he told himself that he had not certainly not done anything to Deedee. She kept looking at him from where she was sitting at the other table.
He wolfed his food down as fast as he could and returned at once to his cabin. It was late, and Alice had told him that she didn’t think she would be able to make it until the next day, but he really wanted to see her and touch her and talk to her.
He was lying on his bunk, supposed to be learning the table of the elements but actually drifting and dreaming, when it happened.
An urgent voice spoke over the general announcement channel. “Emergency. Please return at once to your cabin and secure all movable objects. Lie on your bunk and strap yourself down. In five minutes we will perform a major course change and move to high acceleration. Repeat, this is an emergency.”
Rick glanced around the little cabin. The chair was tucked away in the wall. He went across to the terminal, grabbed the picture of his mother, and locked it away in the high cabinet. As the announcement was repeated—this time he recognized Tom Garcia’s voice, nothing like as casual as usual—he went back to the bunk, lay down, and secured the straps across his body and legs.
Now what? The terminal came on without his touching it, something he had not realized could be done. Barney French’s image appeared on the ceiling above Rick. He realized for the first time that the terminal could also serve as a backlit projector, throwing an image onto the flat plane of the white ceiling.
“To repeat what our pilots told you,” Barney said quietly, “we have an emergency situation. Let me assure you that this is not what you apprentices refer to as a ‘zinger,’ part of a planned test. Since Tom Garcia and Marlene Kotite are otherwise occupied, I have agreed to tell you what we know so far. Fifteen minutes ago we received word from Headquarters of a major accident on one of our advanced mining facilities, Company Mine 31. There are casualties. We don’t know yet how many. After the initial message from CM-31 there has been no communication of any kind. Because of the changing geometry of our mines in the Belt, the Vantage happens to have the best location and velocity vector of all our vessels to reach CM-31 in minimum time. We will shortly change direction and go to our maximum acceleration of a little more than two gees. That will be maintained for four and a half hours, after which we will perform turnover and decelerate with equal force for six hours. We anticipate that accommodation changes on board the Vantage will be necessary upon our arrival at CM-31, but I cannot yet inform you of what those might be.