That done, it was easy to locate the Bars, a bright cubist’s Christmas tree growing perceptibly smaller as I watched. It was between me and the blue beachball I’d been born on. At least life would not be corny enough to award me Shara’s death. But Bryce Carrington’s didn’t appeal to me much more.
My thighs ached like hell, the right one especially, but my spine hadn’t begun to hurt yet—I hadn’t yet worked out that it ought to. There were voices in my headphones, urgent ones, but I was still too fuzzy to make any sense out of what they were saying. Later I could spare time to retune my ears; right now figures were clicking away in my mind and the answers kept getting worse. There’s much more pressure in an air tank than in a thruster. On the other hand, I had ten aimable thrusters with which to cancel the velocity imparted by that one diffused burst. On the third hand, I had started this with badly depleted thrusters... .
Even as I concluded that I was dead I was doing what I could to save my life: one by one I lined up my thrusters on the far side of my center of mass and fired them to exhaustion. Left foot, fore and aft. Right foot, likewise. Belly thruster. My back began to moan, then cry, then shriek with agony; not the localized knifing I’d expected but a general ache. I couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or bad. Back thruster, clamping my teeth against a whimper. Left hand, fore and aft—
—Save a little. I reserved my right hand pair for last minute maneuvers, and looked to see if I’d done any good.
The Monkey Bars were still shrinking, fairly rapidly.
I was almost fully conscious now, feeling that my brains were just catching up with me. The voices in my headphones began to make sense at last. The first one that I identified, of course, was Norrey’s—but she wasn’t saying anything, only crying and swearing.
“Hey, honey,” I said as calmly as I could, and she cut off instantly. So did the others. Then—
“Hang on, darling. I’m coming!”
“That’s right, boss,” Harry agreed. “I’ve been tracking you with the radar gun since you left, and the computer’s doing the piloting.”
“She’ll get you,” Raoul cried. “The machine says ‘yes.’ With available fuel, it can get her to you and then back here, Charlie, it says ‘yes.’ ”
Sure enough, just to the side of the Bars I could see the Family Car, nose-on to me. It was not shrinking as fast as the Bars were—but it did appear to be shrinking. That had been a hell of a clout that can of air fetched me.
“Boss,” Harry said urgently, “is your suit honest?”
“Yeah, sure, the force of the blast was outwards, didn’t even damage the other can.” My back throbbed just thinking about it, and yes, damn it, the Car’s visible disk was definitely shrinking, not a whole lot but certainly not growing, and at that moment of moments I recalled that the warranty on that computer’s software had expired three days ago.
Say something heroic before you moan.
“Well, that’s settled,” I said cheerfully. “Remind me to sue the bas—hey! How’s Tom?”
“We got it patched,” Harry said briefly. “He’s out, but telemetry says he’s alive and okay.”
No wonder Linda was silent. She was praying.
“Is there a doctor in the house?” I asked rhetorically. “I called Skyfac. Panzella’s on his way. We’re proceeding home on thrusters to get Tom indoors now.”
“Go, all three of you. Nothing you can do out here. Raoul, take care of Linda.”
“Yah.”
Silence fell, except of course for the by now unheard constants of breathing and rustling cloth. Norrey began to cry again, briefly, but controlled it. The disc that was her and the Car was growing now, I had to stare and measure with my thumb but yes, it was growing.
“Attaway, Norrey, you’re gaining on me,” I said, trying to keep it light.
“That I am,” she agreed, and when the rate of the Car’s growth had just reached a visibly perceptible crawl, the corona of her drive flame winked out. “What the—?”
Visualize the geometry. I leave the Monkey Bars at a hell of a clip. Maybe a full thirty seconds elapse before Norrey is in the saddle and blasting. Ideally the computer has her blast to a velocity higher than mine, hold it, then turnover and begin decelerating so that she will begin to return toward the Bars just as our courses intersect. A bit tricky to work out in your head, but no problem for a ballistic computer half as good as ours.
The kicker was fuel.
Norrey had to cut thrust precisely halfway through projected total fuel consumption. She had used up half the content of her fuel tanks; the computer saw that at these rates of travel rendezvous could be accomplished eventually; it cut thrust with a computer’s equivalent of a smile of triumph. I did primitive mental arithmetic, based on guesswork and with enormous margins for errors, and went pale and cold inside my plastic bag.
The second kicker was air.
“Harry,” I rapped, “run that projection through again for me, but include the following air supply data—”
“Oh Jesus God,” he said, stunned, and then repeated back the figures I gave him. “Hold on.”
“Charlie,” Norrey began worriedly, “Oh my God, Charlie!”
“Wait, baby. Wait. Maybe it’s okay.”
Harry’s voice was final. “No good, boss. You’ll be out of air when she gets there. She’ll be damn low when she gets back.”
“Then turn around and start back now, hon,” I said as gently as I could.
“Hell no,” she cried.
“Why risk your neck, darling? I’m already buried—buried in space. Come on now—”
“No.”
I tried brutality. “You want my corpse that bad?”
“Yes.”
“Why, to have it hanging around the Closet?”
“No. To ride with.”
“Huh?”
“Harry, plot me a course that’ll get me to him before his air runs out. Forget the round trip: Give me a minimum-time rendezvous.”
“No!” I thundered.
“Norrey,” Harry said earnestly, “there’s nothing else to come get you with. There’s not a ship in the sky. You blast any more and you’ll never even get started back here, you’ll never even stop leaving. You’ve got more air than him, but both your air combined wouldn’t last one of you ’til help could arrive, even if we could keep tracking you that long.” It was the longest speech I’d ever heard Harry make.
“I’m damned if I want to be a widow,” she blazed, and cut in acceleration on manual override.
She was as dead as me, now.
“Goddammit,” Harry and I roared together, and then “Help her, Harry!” I screamed and “I am!” he screamed back and an endless time later he said sadly, “Okay, Norrey, let go. The new course is locked in.” She was still dead, had been from the moment she overrode the computer. But at least now we’d go together.
“All right, then,” she said, still angry but mollified. “Twenty-five years Iwanted to be your wife, Armstead. I will be damned if I’ll be your widow.”
“Harry,” I said, knowing it was hopeless but refusing to accept, “refigure, assuming that we leave the Car when it runs out of juice and use all of Norrey’s suit thrusters together. Hers aren’t as low as mine were.”
It must have been damned awkward for Harry, using two fingers to keep himself headed for home at max thrust, holding the big computer terminal and pushing keys with the rest. It must have been even more awkward for Raoul and Linda, towing the unconscious Tom between them, watching their patch job leak.