“Hey, sei still, Freund,” Jenny said. “Was gibt?”
“What gives? Oh, maybe I’m worried about meteoroids.” I said, knowing I wasn’t.
“I know what you mean.” Jenny said, taking me seriously. “I found out from the bridge that Ishi was caught in one of those funny swarms we’ve been having.”
“What? Why didn’t they warn him?”
“The swarm was well clear of him, on radar. There must’ve been some small stuff that didn’t show. It looked okay.”
“How come they’re letting us go out at all?”
“There’s a lull, they say. No bunches of meteoroids coming in from the asteroid belt—”
“If that’s where they’re from. We don’t know a frapping thing about them, or these storms, or what in hell is going to happen to us, to the Lab, to…”
“Hey, hey, easy,” Jenny said softly, patting my gloved hand. “Just talk them out slowly. Don’t let all your problems stack up on you.”
So we talked. I told her about the mess with Yuri, about how I was angry and scared of him at the same time. I couldn’t put it into words very well. My feelings were all mixed up inside. Compared to me Jenny seemed serene and sure of herself, and after talking to her I began to feel a little better, too. Between check-ins with the bridge, monitoring the storm activity, eating and getting some rest, we talked and mused about what was happening out here. The time passed quickly.
Satellite Seventeen was a glimmering white dot that swelled into a tarnished ball, even more decrepit than Satellite Fourteen. There were grainy patches where the polished metal skin had dulled and turned bluish-gold, for some reason. I snapped a few photographs for Mr. Jablons.
It took pretty long to install the new Faraday cups. The adhesive patch on my chest was crowded with components and I had to be sure I had all the microchips right.
Jenny left the Roadhog to help because it was impossible for me to hold everything in place and make high-vacuum welds at the same time. I couldn’t even use magnetic clamps to hold all the parts in place, either, since the fields might disturb some of the instruments inside the satellite.
The bridge and Monitoring both confirmed proper functioning of the new Faraday cup; I thought I recognized Dad’s voice.
Roadhog’s ion engine boosted us over to intercept Satellite Fourteen, firing at maximum thrust all the way to make up time I had lost fiddling with Seventeen. I spotted it and tried to shave a little time off by doing the approach on manual. My distance perception was a little faulty; I overshot and had to backtrack with maneuvering jets.
Jenny handled a lot of the dog work on the installation this time. My reflexes were fouled up a little from simple muscle fatigue, but we got everything working well inside the bridge’s allotted time. The window for our return orbit opened just as we were battening down. I gunned her hard enough to see a thin violet trail behind us, and we were on our way home.
Somebody once said that spaceflight is hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of terror. Well, there isn’t much terror in shuttle work but there is plenty of boredom. Jenny and I slept most of the way back. The bridge woke me up once to report a steady rise in storm activity on Jupiter. I acknowledged, and thought I spotted more of those funny whirlpools before I fell asleep again. At the time I didn’t much care if there was a three ring circus on Jupiter, complete with clowns; I was tired.
When I tucked Roadhog into her berth I topped off her fuel tanks and started running through a series of maintenance checks to be sure the instruments were still okay.
“Hey, don’t you want to get inside?” Jenny said. She had just woken up and was grumpy.
“Sure.” I said over suit radio. “But I want to be sure Roadhog is ready to go out right away if I need her.”
“Ummm.” She stretched. “We’ve been out in her—what?—fourteen hours. Some time to suddenly become a stickler.”
“Tourist!”
“Ummmm.”
“A working cowboy waters his horse before he gets anything to drink himself.”
“She’s a horse now, is she? I thought she was a roadhog.”
“Come on,” I grinned at her through my faceplate. “I’ll race you to the airlock. And—special today only, folks—I’ll buy you that drink.”
“Lead the way, my swain.”
I woke up late the next morning with a funny ringing buzz in my head and eyes that didn’t want to focus. Getting out of bed almost convinced me that the spin had been taken off the Can and my bedroom was now at zero-g—nothing moved quite right.
I recognized the symptoms. I had felt the same way when Dad introduced me to the black currant wine Mom brought down from Hydroponics; with no resistance or experience, it doesn’t take very much to addle your brains.
Jenny and I hadn’t really drunk a lot, but I guess it makes a difference what you drink, too. I’d experimented with hard liquor while she sipped an aperitif wine. The evening had gone rather welclass="underline" we sat in a corner of the darkened bar, meriting a few puzzled glances from the watch officers who came in after leaving duty. There was no one else around at those early morning hours, so our baptism into the rites of elders went unobserved by our friends, just the way we wanted it. We talked about the various illusions the sexes have, and how hard it is to see through them. It wasn’t so much what was said, as how we said it. No resounding conclusions, but I learned a lot.
Then I had walked her home and kissed her good night. Now I had a hangover. How could life be more complete?
After a solid breakfast to get my blood sugar count up again. I felt pretty good. I resolved to learn a bit more about liquor before I tried some of the more exotic brands of rocket fuel the bar offered.
I got down to the Student Center during what would have been the normal morning coffee break, if these had been normal times. Kids were milling around the corridors trading rumors, with a particularly big clump at the bulletin board. I shouldered my way up near the front and saw a single typed notice:
PLEASE NOTE THAT IF, REPEAT, IF A SKELETON CREW IS LEFT BEHIND AT THE LABORATORY, ONLY SINGLE MEN OF MATURE YEARS WILL BE CONSIDERED.
COMMANDER AARONS
“Pooh!” a girl next to me said. “That boils it down to ship’s officers.”
“And some technicians.” a boy said.
“And me.” I put in.
“Didn’t you read it all?” the girl said. “That ‘of mature years’ translates as ‘no kids’.”
“Eighteen should be old enough,” I said.
“Uh uh.” the boy said. “That just means you’re legally entitled to vote and carry a gun.”
“What’s a better definition of maturity?” I said sharply.
The guy shrugged. “Fight it out with Aarons if you want. I’m just giving you an educated guess.”
“I need more than a guess.”
I turned and worked my way out of the mob again. There weren’t many kids in the Can in all, but they all seemed to be hanging around the Center. I wondered if any work was getting done, and then realized that it probably didn’t matter to most of them; they had already mentally adjusted to the idea of shipping Earthside. It was a depressing revelation.
“Hey! Where you going?”
“Oh, hi Zak.” I stopped at the edge of the crowd. “I’m going to the bridge.”
“Don’t. I’ve already tried that gambit. Fifty other people thought of it first; the place is packed. They’re not giving out any information, either.”