“We let the ship get captured by Titan,” Raoul said triumphantly.
“Oh,” Harry said. “Oh. Dump eight or nine klicksecs—”
“Sure,” Raoul went on, punching keys. “Easy. A tenth gee for two-and-a-half hours. Or make it easy on ourselves, a hundredth of a gee for a little more than a day. Uh, twenty-five and a half hours. A hundredth gee isn’t enough to make pee trickle down your leg, even if you’re free-fall adapted.”
I had actually managed to follow most of the salient points—computer display is a wondrous aid for the ignorant. “Okay then,” I said sharply, in my “pay attention, here comes your blocking” voice, focusing everyone’s attention by long habit. “Okay. This thing can be done. We’ve been talking it over ever since two hours before your shuttle docked here. I’ve told you what they want of us, and why they want all of us. My inclination is to tell you to have your answers ready along about next fall. But the bus is leaving soon. That launch window business you mentioned, Raoul.” Harry’s eyes flashed suspiciously, and yes, Tom too had picked up on the improbability of such luck. “So,” I went on doggedly, “I have to ask for your final answers within the hour. I know that’s preposterous, but there’s no choice.” I sighed. “I advise you to use the hour.”
“Damn it, Charlie,” Tom said in real anger, “is this a family or isn’t it?”
“I—”
“What kind of shit is that?” Raoul agreed. “A man shouldn’t insult his friends.”
Linda and Harry also looked offended.
“Listen, you idiots,” I said, giving it my very best shot, “this is forever. You’llnever ski again, never swim, never walk around under even Lunar gravity. You’ll never take a shit without technological assistance again.”
“Where on Earth can you take a shit without technological assistance today?” Linda asked.
“Come on,” I barked, “don’t give me satire, think about it. Do I have to get personal? Harry—Raoul—how many women you figure you’re going to date in space? How many would leave behind a whole world to stay with you? Seriously, now. Linda—Tom—do you know of any evidence at all to suggest that childbirth is possible in free fall? Do you want to bet two lives someday? Or had you planned to opt for sterilization? Now the four of you stop talking like comic book heroes and listen to me, God dammit.” I discovered to my transient surprise that I genuinely was blazing mad; my tension was perfectly happy to find release as anger. I realized, for the first time, that a little histrionics can be a dangerous thing. “We have no way of knowing whether we can communicate with the goddam fireflies. On a gamble with odds that long, stakes this high, two lives is enough to risk. We don’t need you guys anyway,” I shouted, and then I caught myself.
“No,” I went on finally, “that’s a lie. I won’t try to claim that. But we can do it without you if it can be done at all. Norrey and I have personal reasons for going—but what do you people want to throw away a planet for?”
There was a glutinous silence. I had done my best; Norrey had nothing to add. I watched four blank, expressionless faces and waited.
At last Linda stirred. “We’ll solve zero-gee childbirth,” she said with serene confidence, and added, “when we have to,” a second later.
Tom had forgotten his discomfort. He looked long at Linda, smiling with puffy lips amid his burst capillaries, and said to her, “I was raised in New York. I’ve known cities all my life. I never realized how much tension was involved in city life until I stayed at your family’s home for a week. And I never realized how much I hated that tension until I noticed how much I was getting to dread having to go dirtside again. You only realize how stiff your neck and shoulders were when someone rubs them out for you.” He touched her cheek with blood-purple fingernails. “It will be a long time before we have to put a lock on our airlock. Sure, we’ll have a child someday—and we won’t have to teach it how to adapt to a jungle.”
She smiled, and took his purple fingers in her own. “We won’t have to teach it how to walk.”
“In zero gee,” Raoul said meditatively, “I’m taller.” I thought he meant the few centimeters that every spine stretches in free fall, but then he said, “In zero gee nobody isshort.”
By golly, he was right. “Eye-level” is a meaningless term in space; consequently so is height.
But his voice was speculative; he had not committed himself yet.
Harry sucked beer from a bulb, belched, and studied the ceiling. “On my mind. For a long time. This adapting stuff. I could work all year insteada half. See a job through foronce. Was thinking of doing it anyway.” He looked at Raoul. “Don’t figure I’ll miss the ladies any.”
Raoul met his eyes squarely. “Me either,” he said, and this time his voice held commitment.
Light dawned in the cerebral caverns, and my jaw hung down. “Jesus Christ in a p-suit!”
“It’s just a blind spot, Charlie,” Linda said compassionately.
She was right. It has nothing to do with wisdom or maturity or how observant I am. It’s just a personal quirk, a blind spot: I never will learn to notice love when it’s under my nose.
“Norrey,” I said accusingly. “You know I’m an idiot, why didn’t you tell me? Norrey?”
She was sound asleep.
And all four of them were laughing like hell at me, and after a second I had to laugh too. Any man who does not know himself a fool is a damned fool; any man who tries to hide it is a double-damned fool, for he is alone. Together, we laughed, diminishing my foolishness to a shared thing, and Norrey stirred and half-smiled in her sleep.
“All right,” I said when I could get my breath, “someone for all and all for someone. I won’t try to fight the weather. I love you all, and will be glad of your company. Tom, you stretch out and get some sleep yourself; Raoul, get the light; the four of us’ll go get briefed and come back for you and Norrey, Tom; we’ll pack your comic books and your other tunic. You still mass around seventy-two, right?” I bent and kissed Norrey’s forehead. “Let’s roll it.”
Starseed
I
It was a week after that day that we next found an opportunity to talk together—and we spent the first hour and a half of our opportunity in relative silence. A week locked in a steel can with many strangers had turned out to be even less fun than a comparable period with as many students. Most of these strangers were our employers, the other two were our Space Command keepers, none of them were our subordinates and nearly all of them were temperamentally unsuited to live with artists. All things considered, we handled the close quarters and tension much better than we had in the early days of the Studio—which surprised me.
But as soon as we could, we all went out for a stroll together. And discovered that we had much more important things to do than compare notes, first.
Distance shrank the mighty Siegfried, but refused to turn it into a Space Commando model; it retained its massive dignity even when viewed from truly Olympian perspective. I felt an uncharacteristic rush of pride at belonging to the species that had built it and hurled it at the sky. It lightened my mood like a shot of oxygen. I tugged at the three kilometers of line that connected me to the great ship, enjoyed the vast snakelike ripples I caused, let their influence put me in a slow roll like an infinite swan dive.