I hooked on to a throw line and scooted across to the personnel lock, the same one we’d come out nine days before. The week on Ganymede had given me a touch of groundhog legs—a sense that there really ought to be an up and down, so that I kept looking around for a reference. Going through the personnel lock fouled me up even further, because for a moment I was convinced that I was falling down it. Don’t ask me to explain why; it’s just a reflex, like sneezing. Zak felt it. too; he started spinning his arms for balance the second he came through the lock, which just made him tumble until he stopped it.
We followed the line through a series of tubes and ended up in a big room so long the curvature hid the heads of people standing against the far wall.
“Ah, gentlemen. ‘And the hunter, home from the hill.’ Welcome back.”
I turned and found Ishi smiling at me.
“The first thing he does is quote a rival poet to me.” Zak said, and pumped Ishi’s hand when I was finished with it.
“You look thinner,” I said. “Working too hard?”
“What’s new?” Zak said.
“Not much. We lost another bathyscaphe-type probe in Jupiter’s atmosphere, but it found nothing new before it failed. And no, Matt, there has been little work for me. I do have to go out tonight to correct a drifting setting in a satellite, however.”
“Tonight? But that’s the amateur hour,” I said.
“Correct. I understand you will play guitar. I regret missing it.”
“Don’t,” Zak said. “I’ve heard him practice.”
“Oh, a music critic, too?”
“Come along, Ishi, such louts don’t recognize a renaissance man when they see one.”
“Wait, we have to get our luggage.”
The panel behind me slid aside and two men struggled in with a net of baggage. They unslipped a knot and the cases tumbled slowly out; in a one-tenth-g field nothing could be damaged. I located our bags near the top of the stack and started to reach for them.
“You boys are standing directly in front of my suitcases,” a familiar voice said.
“These are ours, lady,” Zak said.
“Don’t you think I know my own—Captain! Captain Vandez!”
“The Captain is not here, ma’m,” a man said.
“I demand—”
“Here’s your case, Zak,” I said. “Ishi—catch!” I threw him one of mine and snatched up Zak’s other bag.
“Don’t let them get away. They have one of my—”
I showed the man the names stenciled on the cases. He nodded.
“I know your names, boys! Don’t think you can—”
We circled around the pile and I scooped up my second case. The man was talking to her as we went out the door.
“Good grief,” Zak said, “who is that woman?”
“Mrs. Schloffski,” Ishi said. “It is rumored that her husband was appointed to the Laboratory through political influence.”
“The ISA has a lot to answer for,” I said.
“Matt!” My father had just come out of a side corridor. Jenny wan with him. We all shook hands and I kissed Jenny. She held the kiss a little longer than I expected. It was top quality goods.
“I’ve got to go pamper a shuttle right now,” Jenny said, an arm around me, “but when I come off my shift…”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll even give you preference over my guitar. I still have some practicing to do before tonight.”
“Well,” Jenny said, wrinkling her nose, “I suppose I will have to take what I can get.” She gave me a peck on the check and walked away.
“What next?” Zak said. “Now that Matt here has beaten off the hordes of panting women that follow him everywhere, what say we snag a milkshake and discuss the adventures of our brave heroes amid the terrible snows of Ganymede?”
“I’m afraid not,” Dad said. “Matt has to go home.”
“Oh,” Ishi and Zak said together.
“Well, next time,” Zak finished lamely.
“See you tonight,” I said. “Ishi, put our names in for time in the squash court. I’m going to beat you yet.”
Ishi smiled and waved good-bye. Dad and I made our way home through the tubes, talking about minor events that had happened in Monitoring while I was away. They were registering more and more of the unusual debris from outside Jupiter’s moon system. The chunks of rock usually spiraled in and entered Jupiter’s atmosphere near the poles.
“Could it be a meteor shower from the asteroid belt?” I said.
“That is one theory.” Dad said. He seemed distracted and didn’t add anything more.
Mom wasn’t there when we got home; Dad said she was in Hydroponics, working late. I unpacked, crammed my gear into the cubbyholes the Lab calls closets, and came back out to the living room. Dad was sitting at the dining table; his hands were clasped together.
“Sit down.”
I did.
“I talked to Commander Aarons about you yesterday. Captain Vandez mentioned you in his weekly report from Ganymede.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I must admit it surprised me. I did not think you would make such an error.”
“Huh?”
“I’m talking about the trouble you and Yuri had.”
“What trouble?”
Dad grimaced. “The air hose. Captain Vandez reported that you failed to attach it properly, did not notice the mistake, and almost killed both yourself and Yuri. And that you would not report the incident yourself—Yuri had to do it.”
“What!”
“It was a good thing Yuri managed to get to that way station. I realize the basic idea was yours, and Yuri reported that, which was a good thing. It made you look better in Captain Vandez’s eyes, so that he did not reprimand you in person. If Yuri had not gotten to that station in time, the Captain would have had to send a ship out to save you. Then it would have gone very badly for you. As things stand—”
“Dad!”
“What?”
“That’s a bunch of lies!”
“I am simply repeating what Commander—”
“I know, But it’s all wrong. I didn’t foul up the air hose. Yuri did it.”
“That isn’t the way it was reported.”
“But that’s the way it was. That goon didn’t—”
“Hummm. Wait a moment. Can you prove any of this?”
“Prove—? Well, no, I—”
“Yuri radioed in the report. You—according to Captain Vandez—never mentioned the subject afterward, when you were on the air. He thought you were simply too embarrassed to own up. Captain Vandez said he thought Yuri had been quite fair to you, considering, and he did not regard the matter as too serious.”
“Well, I do,” I said sharply. “Yuri turned in a false report.”
“What really happened?”
I told him. He wondered whether Zak could give any testimony that would back me up. I decided not; I had never said anything over the air that would prove my version of events.
“I hate to say this.” Dad said, “but it appears Yuri has the edge on you. He reported the incident. You did not. Silence on your part is hard to explain.”
“I know. That’s what I get for cutting corners on the regulations.”
“You should have reported in sick in the first place.”
“And I should have blown the whistle on Yuri when he gummed things up. I thought the job was more important than a bunch of rules.”
“The rules are there to insure your safety. All of us are living in a hostile environment. It pays to be careful.”