Silence.
“I guess that damper circuit works, Harry,” I said approvingly at last. “We’ve got privacy. By the way, that gurgling was horrible.”
“When did I have a chance to rehearse?”
“You got that heavy-breathing tape going?”
“In circuit,” Harry agreed. “Heavy breathing and cadence counts, no repeats. Hour and a half’s worth.”
“So if anyone’s listening, they’re just, uh, getting into our pants,” Raoul said almost inevitably.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s talk family talk. We’ve each spent some time with our assigned partners. What’s the consensus?”
Some more silence.
“Well, has anybody got presentiments of doom? Choice gossip? Tom? You follow politics, you knew most of these people by reputation anyway. Tell us all about that first, and then we can compare personal impressions.”
“All right, let’s see—is there anything to be said about DeLaTorre? If he is not a man of honor and compassion, no one is. Even his critics admire him, and a good half of them are willing to admit it. I’ll be honest: I’m not as certain of Wertheimer’s integrity as I am of DeLaTorre’s. Except of course that he picked DeLaTorre to head this posse, which raises him a notch. Anybody feel different? Charlie, he’s your puppetmaster, what do you say?”
“A heartfelt ditto. I’d turn my back on him in the airlock. Go on.”
“Ludmilla Dmirov has a similar reputation for moral toughness, unpusharoundable. She was the first diplomatic official ever to turn down a state-owned dacha in Sovmin. Those of you who don’t know nomenklatura, the patronage system in Moscow, adacha is sort of a country cabin for high-ranking officials, and turning one down is like a freshman senator refusing to vacation or junket, or a rookie cop turning down the usuals. Unthinkable… and dangerous.” He paused. “But I can’t be as certain that it’s integrity with her. It may just be orneriness. And compassionate she is not.”
Norrey was assigned to Dmirov; she spoke up. “I’m not sure I agree, Tom. Oh, she plays chess like a machine, and she sure knows how to be impenetrable—and maybe she doesn’t know enough about when and how to turn it off. But she showed me all her son’s baby pictures, and she told me that the Stardance made her cry. ‘Weep from the chest,’ she said. I think the compassion’s in there.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “I’ll take your word. And she was one of the ones who pushed hard for a UN Space Command. Without her there just might not be a UN anymore and space might have become the next Alsace-Lorraine. I’m willing to believe her heart’s in the right place.” He paused again. “Uh, with all due respect, I don’t think I’d be prepared to turn my back on her in the airlock yet. But my mind’s open.
“Now, Li,” he went on, “was also a prime mover in the formation of the Space Command—but I’ll lay odds that it was a chess-player’s move for him. I think he took a cold extrapolative look at the future and decided that if the world did blow itself up over the issue of space, it would seriously restrict his political career. He is reputed to be one sharp horse trader and one cold son of a bitch, and they say the road to Hell is paved with the skins of his enemies. He owns a piece of Skyfac Inc. I wouldn’t turn my back on him on live network TV and, Linda, I hope you won’t either.”
“That is certainly the image he has cultivated,” she agreed. “But I must add a few things. He is impeccably polite. He is a philosopher of incredible perception and subtlety. And he is rock steady. Hunger, lack of sleep, danger—none of these will affect his performance or his judgment in any measurable way. Yet I find his mind to be open, to change and to changes. I believe he might well be a real statesman.” She broke off, took a deep breath, and finished, “But I don’t think I trust him either. Yet.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “Is he a statesman for mankind or for the People’s Republic? Okay, that leaves my own man. ‘Whatever else you can say about the others, they’re probably all statespersons. Sheldon Silverman is a politician. He’s held just about every elective office except President and Vice President. He could have been the latter any time he was silly enough to want to; only some incredibly subtle errors cost him the former. I think he bought or bribed his way onto this trip somehow, as his last chance to earn a whole page in the history books. I think he sees himself as the leader of the team, by virtue of being an American. I despise him. He costs Wertheimer the notch that DeLaTorre earned him, as far as I’m concerned?’ He shut up suddenly.
“I think you may be holding his past against him,” Linda said. “Damn right,” he agreed.
“Well—he’s old. Some old people change, quite radically. Zero gee has been working on him; wait and see.We should bring him out here some time.”
“My love, your fairness is showing.”
“Damn right,” she said, forcing a grin from him. “It sort of has to.”
“Huh?”
“He gives me the creeps.”
“Oh. I see. I think.”
“Harry, Raoul,” I said, “you’ve been hanging out with the Space Commandos.”
Raoul took it, of course. “Cox we all know or know about. I’d let him hold the last air bottle while I took a leak. His second-in-command is an old-time NASA science officer type.”
“Jock,” Harry put in.
Raoul chuckled. “You know, she is. Susan Pha Song was a Viet Nam War baby, raised in Nam by her aunt after her father split and her mother got napalmed. Hasn’t got much use for America. Physicist. Military through and through; if they told her to she’d nuke Viet Nam and drop rose petals on Washington. She disapproves of music and dance. And me and Harry.”
“She’ll follow orders,” Harry asserted.
“Yeah. For sure. She’s a chicken colonel as of last week, and in the event Commander Cox drops dead, the chain of command goes to her, then Dmirov, presumably. She’s got pilot training, she’s a space freak.”
“If it comes to that extreme,” I said, “I for one am going free lance.”
“Chen Ten Li has a gun,” Linda said suddenly.
“What?” Five voices at once.
“What kind?” from Harry.
“Oh, I don’t know. A small handgun, squarish looking. Not much barrel.”
“How did you get a look at it?” I asked.
“Jack-in-the-box effect. Took him by surprise, and he recovered late.”
The jack-in-the-box effect is one of the classic surprises of free fall, predictable but unexpected, and it gets virtually every new fish. Any container, cabinet or drawer you open will spew its contents at you—unless you have thought to velcro them all in place. The practical joke possibilities are nearly inexhaustible. But I smelled a rat. “How about that, Tom?”
“Eh?”
“If Chen Ten Li has been one of the major forces behind intelligent use of space, wouldn’t he know about jack-in-the-box?”
Tom’s voice was thoughtful. “Huh. Not necessarily. Li is one of those paradoxes, like Isaac Asimov refusing to fly. For all his understanding of the issues of space, this is the first time he’s been further off-planet than a jetliner goes. He’s a groundlubber at heart.”
“Still,” I objected, “jack-in-the-box is standard tourist anecdote. He’d only need have spoken with one returned spacegoer, for any length of time.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Raoul said, “but there was a lot about zero gee that I knew about intellectually, that I still tripped over when I got there. Besides, what motive could Li have for letting Linda see a gun?”