“What is admirable?” Jakov said. “I think you and I would not agree. But if you are running for President of the United States, you have my support. I will make speeches for you, but they will not let me vote.”
“That’s a pity,” said Johnny Baker, and thought for a moment of John Glenn, who had run for office, and won. “Back to the salt mines. Who’s going out for samples this morning?”
The nucleus of Hamner-Brown was thirty hours away. In the telescopes it showed as a swarm of particles, with a lot of space in between. The scientists at JPL were excited at the discovery, but for Baker and the others it was a pain in the ass. It wasn’t easy to get Doppler shift on the solid masses, because everything was immersed in the tail, and the gas and dust was streaming away at horrendous speeds, riding the pressure of raw sunlight. The masses were approaching Earth at around fifty miles per second. Finding a sideways drift was even more difficult.
“Still coming straight at us,” Baker reported.
“Surely there is some lateral motion,” Dan Forrester’s voice said.
“Yeah, but it’s not measurable,” Rick Delanty told him. “Look, Doc, we’re giving you the best we’ve got. It’ll have to do.”
Forrester was instantly apologetic. “I’m sorry. I know you’re doing all you can. It’s just that it’s hard to make the projection without better data.”
And then they had to spend five minutes soothing Forrester’s ruffled feathers and assuring him they weren’t mad at him.
“There are times when geniuses drive me crazy,” Johnny Baker said.
“Easy way to fix that,” Delanty said. “Just give him what he wants. You don’t hear no complaints about my observations.”
“Shove it,” Baker said.
Delanty rolled his eyes. “Where?” He drifted over to Baker. “Here, I’ll punch in the numbers. Just read ’em off.”
When they finished the morning observations and had a few moments to relax, Pieter Jakov coughed apologetically. “There is a question,” he said. “I have wanted to ask it for a long time. Please do not take it wrong.”
It struck Johnny that Pieter had waited until Leonilla had gone into the Soyuz and closed the hatchway. “Go ahead.”
Pieter’s eyes tracked back and forth between the two Americans. “Our newspapers tell us that in America the blacks serve the whites, the whites rule the blacks. Yet you seem to work together very well. So, bluntly: Are you equal?”
Rick snorted. “Hell no. He outranks me.”
“But otherwise?” Pieter suggested.
Rick’s face would have looked serious enough, except to another American. “General Baker, can I be your equal?”
“Eh? Oh, sure, Rick, you can be my equal. Why didn’t you say something before?”
“Well, you know, it’s a delicate subject.”
Pieter Jakov’s expression wasn’t cryptic at all. Before he could explode, Johnny asked, “Do you really want a serious lecture on race relations?”
“Please yourself.”
“How does Leonilla pee in free fall?”
“Hm. I… see.”
“See what?” Leonilla came wriggling back through the double hatch.
“A minor discussion,” Johnny said. “No state secrets involved.”
Leonilla clung to a handhold and studied the three men. John Baker was tapping numbers into a programmable hand computer, Pieter Jakov grinned broadly, watching in apparent admiration… but they all wore that broad, irritating, I’ve got-a-secret grin. “They give you good equipment,” said the kosmonaut. “There are not many things that we do better in space than you do.”
Delanty seemed to have trouble with his breathing. Baker said quickly, “Oh, this pocket computer isn’t NASA issue. It’s mine.”
“Ah. Are they expensive?”
“Couple of hundred bucks,” Baker said. “Um, that’s a lot in rubles, not so much in terms of what people make. Maybe a week’s pay for the average guy. Less for somebody who’d actually have a use for it.”
“If I had the money, how long would it take to get one?” Leonilla asked.
“About five minutes,” Baker said. “Down there, in a store. Up here it might be a while.”
She giggled. “I meant down there. They have… those… in stores, to buy?”
“If you’ve got the money. Or good credit. Or even not-so good credit,” Baker said. “Why? You want one? Hell, we’ll find a way to get you one. You too, Pieter?”
“Could that be arranged?”
“Sure. No problem,” Baker said. “I’ll call the PR man at Texas Instruments. They’ll give you a pair of them for the publicity. Help ’em sell more. Or would you rather have a Hewlett-Packard? Those use a different kind of notation, but they’re fast—”
“That is what is confusing,” Pieter said. “Two companies, two different rivals making such fine equipment. Wasteful.”
“Maybe wasteful,” Rick Delanty said, “but I can take you into any damn electronics store in the country and buy one.”
“No politics,” Johnny Baker warned.
“This ain’t politics.”
There was an awkward silence. Pieter Jakov drifted over to the UV camera with its digital readouts. He ran a hand lovingly over it. “So precise. So intricately machined, and the complex electronics. It is a real pleasure to work with your American machinery.” He gestured around Hammerlab, at the containers of growing crystal, at the cameras and radars and recorders. “It is amazing how much we have learned on this short mission, thanks to your excellent equipment. As much, I think, as on any of our previous Soyuz flights.”
“As much?” Leonilla Malik’s voice was sarcastic. “More.” Her voice held a bitterness that snapped three heads around in surprise. “Our kosmonauts go along for the ride. As passengers, to prove that we can send men into space and sometimes bring them down alive. For this mission we had nothing to contribute but food and water and oxygen — and one launch to your two.”
“Somebody had to bring the lunch,” Rick Delanty said. “Pretty good, too.”
“Yes, but it is all we brought. Once we had a space program—”
Jakov interrupted in rapid-fire Russian. He spoke too rapidly for Johnny or Rick to follow, but what he was saying was obvious.
She answered with a short, sharp syllable and then continued. “The basis of Marxism is objectivity, is it not? It is time to be objective. We had a space program once. Sergei Korolev was as great a genius as anyone who ever lived! He could have made our space arm the greatest instrument for knowledge in the world, but those madmen in the Kremlin wanted spectaculars! Khrushchev ordered circuses to shame the Americans, and instead of developing our capabilities we gave the world stunts! The first to have three men in orbit — by taking out all the scientific instruments and jamming a third man, a very small man, into a capsule built for two, for one orbit! Circuses! We might have been the first to the Moon, but now we have yet to go there.”
“Comrade Malik!”
She shrugged. “Is any of this news? No. I thought not. So we had our spectaculars, and we used up our opportunities to gain headlines, and today the best pilot in the Soviet Union cannot dock his spacecraft with a target the size of a comfortable dascha! And you offer to give us, give us as a promotion, something that the best engineers in the Soviet Union cannot build or buy for themselves.”
“Hey, didn’t mean to get you upset,” Johnny Baker said.