“What is it, exactly?” inquired Falkenstein.
“I’m hungry,” Gorbovsky declared. He finally got out of the flight suit and headed for the wardroom, dragging the suit along the deck by a sleeve. “Stupid planet!” he snapped.
Falkenstein took the suit from him and walked alongside.
“Stupid planet,” repeated Gorbovsky, staring over their heads.
“It is quite a difficult planet for landings,” Bader affirmed, enunciating distinctly.
“Let me have something to eat,” said Gorbovsky.
In the wardroom he collapsed onto the sofa with satisfied moaning. As he entered, Sidorov jumped to his feet.
“Sit down, sit down,” Gorbovsky said graciously.
“So what happened?” asked Falkenstein.
“Nothing in particular,” said Gorbovsky. “Our boats are no good for landing.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Photon craft are no good for landing. The tuning of the magnetic traps in the reactor is always breaking down.”
“Atmospheric magnetic fields,” Waseda, the atmosphere physicist, said, and wrung his hands, making an audible rubbing sound.
“Perhaps,” said Gorbovsky.
“Ah, well,” Bader said unhurriedly. “I’ll give you an impulse rocket. Or an ion craft.”
“Do that, August,” said Gorbovsky. “Please give us an ion craft or an impulse rocket. And somebody get me something to eat.”
“Good lord,” said Falkenstein. “I can’t even remember the last time I flew an impulse rocket.”
“Never mind,” said Gorbovsky. “It’ll come back. Listen,” he said affectionately. “Are they going to feed me today?”
“Right away,” said Falkenstein. He excused himself to Sidorov, took the magazines off the table, and covered it with a chlorovinyl tablecloth. Then he placed bread, butter, milk, and kasha on the table.
“The table is laid, sir,” he said.
Gorbovsky got up from the sofa reluctantly. “You’ve always got to get up when you have to do something,” he said. He sat down at the table, took a cup of milk with both hands, and drank it in one gulp. Then he drew a plate of kasha toward him with both hands and picked up a fork. Only when he picked up the fork did it become clear why he had used both hands for the cup and the plate. His hands were trembling. His hands were trembling so badly that he missed twice when he tried to take a bit of butter on the end of his knife.
Craning his neck, Bader looked at Gorbovsky’s hands. “I’ll try to give you my very best impulse rocket, Leonid,” he said in a weak voice. “My very best.”
“Do that, August,” said Gorbovsky. “Your very best. And who is this young man?”
“This is Sidorov,” Falkenstein explained. “He wanted to talk with you.”
Sidorov stood up again. Gorbovsky looked benevolently up at him and said, “Please, sit down.”
“Oh,” said Bader. “I completely forgot. Forgive me. Leonid, comrades, allow me to introduce—”
“I’m Sidorov,” said Sidorov, grinning uncomfortably because everyone was looking at him. “Mikhail. Biologist.”
“Welcome, Mikhail Sidorov,” Percy Dickson said in English.
“Okay,” said Gorbovsky. “I’ll finish eating in a minute, Comrade Sidorov, and then we’ll go to my cabin. There’s a sofa there. There’s a sofa here too,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “but Bader is sprawled out all over it, and he’s the director.”
“Don’t even think of taking him,” Falkenstein said in Japanese. “I don’t like him.”
“Why not?” asked Gorbovsky.
Gorbovsky was taking his ease on the couch, and Falkenstein and Sidorov were sitting by the table. On the table lay shiny skeins of videotape.
“I advise against it,” said Falkenstein.
Gorbovsky put his hands behind his head.
“I don’t have any relatives,” Sidorov said. Gorbovsky looked at him sympathetically. “No one to cry over me.”
“Why ‘cry’?” asked Gorbovsky.
Sidorov frowned. “I mean that I know what I’m getting into. I need data. They’re waiting up for me on Earth. I’ve been sitting here over Vladislava for a year already. A year gone almost for nothing.”
“Yes, that’s annoying,” Gorbovsky said.
Sidorov linked his fingers together. “Very annoying, sir. I thought there would be a landing on Vladislava soon. I couldn’t care less about being among the first ones down. I just need data, do you understand?”
“I understand,” Gorbovsky said. “Indeed so. You, as I recall, are a biologist.”
“Yes. Besides that, I passed the cosmonaut-pilot courses and graduated with honors. You gave me my examinations, sir. But of course you don’t remember me. I’m a biologist first and last, and I don’t want to wait any more. Quippa promised to take me with him. But he made two landing attempts and then gave up. Then Sterling came. There was a real daredevil. But he didn’t take me along either. He didn’t have the chance—he went for a landing on the second run, and he didn’t come back.”
“He was an idiot!” said Gorbovsky, looking at the ceiling. “On a planet like this you have to make at least ten runs. What did you say his name was? Sterling?”
“Sterling,” Sidorov answered.
“An idiot,” declared Gorbovsky. “A brainless idiot.”
Falkenstein looked at Sidorov’s face and muttered, “Well, there we have it. We’ve got ourselves a hero here.”
“Speak Russian,” Gorbovsky said sternly.
“What for? He knows Japanese.”
Sidorov flushed. “Yes,” he said. “I know it. Only I’m no hero. Sterling—there’s a hero. But I’m a biologist, and I need data.”
“How much data did you get from Sterling?” asked Falkenstein.
“From Sterling? None,” said Sidorov. “He got killed, after all,”
“So why are you so thrilled with him?”
Sidorov shrugged. He did not understand these strange people. They were very strange people-Gorbovsky, Falkenstein, and probably their friends too. To call the remarkable daredevil Sterling a brainless idiot… He remembered Sterling—tall, broad-shouldered, with a booming carefree laugh and sure gestures. And how Sterling had said to Bader, “The careful ones stay on Earth, August. It’s a qualification for the job, August!” and snapped his sturdy fingers. Brainless idiot…
Okay, thought Sidorov, that’s their business. But what should I do? Sit back again with folded hands and radio Earth that our allotment of cyberscouts have burned up in the atmosphere; that the scheduled attempt to land hasn’t succeeded; that the scheduled detachment of explorer spacers refused to take me along on a search run; that I argued myself blue in the face with Bader again and he still insists he won’t trust me with a ship, and that he’s expelling me from “the little corner of the universe entrusted to his care” for “systematic impertinence”? And once again kind old Rudolf Kruetzer in Leningrad, shaking his head under his academic skullcap, will put forward his intuitive notions in favor of the existence of life in systems of blue stars, and that mad dog Gadzhibekov will roar on about his experimental conclusions denying the possibility of life in the systems of blue stars; and again Rudolf Kruetzer will tell everyone about the same eighteen bacteria caught by Quippa’s expedition in the atmosphere of the planet Vladislava; and Gadzhibekov will deny any link whatsoever between these eighteen bacteria and the atmosphere of Vladislava, alluding with full justification to the difficulty of identification given the actual conditions of the experiment in question. And once again the Academy of Biology will leave open the question of the existence of life in the systems of blue stars. But there is life, there is, is, is, and we only need to reach out to it. Reach out to Vladislava, a planet of the blue star EN 17.