“Call me Chris,” the woman said, grinning easily. Her handshake was firmer than Beresford’s had been and Surgenor was aware of callouses at the base of her fingers.
“I was hoping to be able to stay for an hour myself, give our friend Lamereux a good send-off and all that, but I find I have to finish a report tonight.” Beresford smiled a nervous apology, excused himself and hurried out.
“My God, did you ever see such an old woman?” Christine said, nodding in the direction of the door. She was older than Surgenor had first thought, in her mid or late thirties, and was lean rather than slim, as though her body had been honed down by years of hard work.
“You’ll soon get used to him,” Surgenor said, his romantic fantasies fading.
“I won’t have to.” She gave Surgenor an appraising glance from deep-set, dark-shadowed eyes. “I think he had reasons of his own for bringing me here tonight, but he hasn’t got them any more.”
“You managed to turn him off?”
Christine nodded. “I managed to scare the shit out of him.”
“That would do it,” Surgenor said. “That would turn him off, all right.”
“You’re damn right.” Christine craned her neck to look at the bar. “What’s a girl got to do to get a drink around here?”
Surgenor gave an admiring chuckle. “Just name it. What would you like?”
“Straight Bourbon, and make it a tall one—it looks like I’m way behind everybody else.” “Okay.” Surgenor fetched a drink to the required specification. By the time he had returned with it Christine had already joined the group at the piano and was harmonizing as though she had been with the Sarafand crew for years instead of minutes. She nodded a curt thanks to him as she took the glass, then turned back to the singers. Surgenor went back to his original seat and got to work on his own drink, telling himself he was glad there was no chance of a jackpot trip being further complicated by undue femininity on the part of the new crew member.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Surgenor came out through the main entrance of the Service hostel, filled his lungs with dew-cleansed morning air, and looked around for the shuttle which would carry him out to the Bay City terminal.
The silver-and-blue vehicle was waiting in the reserved section at the front of the parking area, its driver giving preliminary glances at his wristwatch. Surgenor walked across to it, slung the cases which contained all his personal possessions into the luggage bay, and climbed on board. The shuttle was three-quarters filled with departing surveyers and base personnel going out to begin a day’s work at the field, and he nodded to familiar faces here and there as he made his way to an empty place. His own ship was not due to lift off until early in the afternoon, and he was mildly surprised therefore to see Christine Holmes watching him from the bench seat at the rear.
“On the road early,” he commented, sitting down beside her.
“I’m new to the job—this is only my second trip,” she said. “What’s your excuse?”
“I’ve been on Delos before.”
“So you’re bored with it.” Christine examined him with undisguised curiosity. “I hear you’ve been on survey work for twenty years.”
“Almost.”
“How many worlds have you covered?”
“A fair amount, I suppose—I’m not sure how many.” Surgenor wondered briefly why he was lying on this point—he knew precisely the number of planets he had traversed. “Does it matter?”
“Not to me, it doesn’t. But if you’re bored after a couple of weeks’ stopover on Delos, what’s it going to be like when they put you out to grass?”
“Let me worry about that,” Surgenor said stiffly, annoyed at the forthrightness of the question. There was no rank structure on survey ships—an indication of the essentially casual nature of the work—but he felt that a raw novice could have chosen to show respect for his experience. Or was it that the question had touched a nerve, reminding him of his growing ambivalence towards the Service? How was he going to reconcile the life of a star gypsy with his need for stable and permanent relationships? What was to be his ultimate fate if it turned out that, literally, he was unable to stop travelling?
“Anyway,” he said, diverting his thoughts, “what decided you to sign on?”
“Why? Don’t tell me you’re one of those dinosaurs who thinks a competent woman is some kind of freak.”
“Did I say that?”
“You didn’t have to.”
“As a matter of fact, it’s not your sex—it’s your age,” Surgenor replied, losing his temper. “You’re about twice as old as most new starts.”
“I see.” Christine nodded, seemingly unoffended by his rudeness. “Well, that’s a fair question. I guess you could say I’m looking for a new career—something to take me out of myself, as they say. I had a husband once, and a son. And they both died. I wanted to get away from Earth, and I’ve got mechanical aptitudes, so I took a surveyor’s course…and here I am.”
“I’m sorry if I…’
“It’s all right, she said brightly. “It was a long time ago—and they say everybody has to die sometime.”
Surgenor nodded a glum assent, wishing he had confined himself to remarks about the weather or, better still, had chosen a different seat. “All the same, I’m sorry about…about what I…’
“That bitchy crack about my age? Forget it. Anyway, you’re no spring chicken yourself, are you?”
“Too right,” Surgenor said, relieved at the return to undemanding banter. A few seconds later the shuttle’s doors closed and the vehicle began its journey to the space terminal. The slanting rays of the sun, changing direction at each corner, threw a spotlight on Christine’s strong-jawed face, emphasizing the pallor of her complexion. She smoked cigarettes almost continuously throughout the trip, occasionally getting ash on her own uniform and brushing it off on to Surgenor’s. He considered drawing her attention to the multitude of NO SMOKING signs in the shuttle, but a moment’s reflection about the possible consequences persuaded him to remain silent. It was with a disproportionate sense of relief that he saw the terminal’s perimeter fence begin to blur past the windows, followed by clusters of peripheral buildings and glimpses of the metal pyramids of the spacecraft themselves.
He unshipped his case and walked with Christine to the Service operations block where they went through signing-in procedures and the pre-flight medical checks. There were still three hours to go before the Sarafand crew’s final muster. Surgenor hoped that Christine would stay in the crew lounge, but she opted to walk out to their ship with him. It was basically an eighty-metres-tall cylinder tapering to a point at the top, and with four triangular fairings on the lower third which made it into a slim pyramid. When Surgenor got closer he saw that considerable refurbishing had been done on the Sarafand. Most noticeable were the new rows of sacrificial anodes, the blocks of pure metal which acted as centres for electrical and chemical interactions between the ship and alien atmospheres, thus minimizing erosion of the entire hull. Unfortunately, the freshness of the anodes drew attention to the scarred dinginess of the surrounding metal.
“Is this it?” Christine said, as soon as their destination became obvious. “Is it really and truly a Mark Six?”
“That’s the mark that put our flag on three-quarters of the planets in the Bubble.”
“But is it still safe to fly in?”
Surgenor reached the entrance ramp first and started up it. “If you’ve got any doubts,” he said, without looking back, “this is the time to pack in the job. They don’t really like crewmen funking out, but if anybody is going to funk out they prefer them to funk out at base, and not to funk out in the middle of a trip.”