Rasmussen broke in, «You realize that we will have to return Earthward before the next expedition could possibly get anywhere near here.»
«Some of us can wait here for the next expedition. I will, anyway.»
The captain nodded and a slow grin spread across his face. «I knew you would even before we found out that your friends are really our brothers.»
Lee looked around for Grote. «Come on, Jerry. Let’s get moving. I want to see Ardraka’s face when he sees the boat.»
OLD TIMER’S GAME
Modern sports—professional and amateur—have had headaches dealing with performance enhancing drugs.
But they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
«He’s making a travesty of the game!»
White-haired Alistair Bragg was quivering with righteous wrath as he leveled a trembling finger at Vic Caruso. I felt sorry for Vic despite his huge size, or maybe because of it. He was sitting all alone up there before the panel of judges. I thought of Gulliver, giant-sized compared to the puny little Lilliputians. But tied hand and foot, helpless.
This hearing was a reporter’s dream, the kind of newsmaking opportunity that comes along maybe once in a decade. Or less.
I sat at the news media table, elbow to elbow with the big, popular TV commentators and slick-haired pundits. The guys who talk like they know everything about baseball, while all they really know is what working stiffs like me put up on their teleprompters.
Old man Bragg was a shrimp, but a powerful figure in the baseball world. He owned the Cleveland Indians, who’d won the American League pennant, but then lost the World Series to the Dodgers in four straight.
Bragg wore a dark gray business suit and a bright red tie. To the unsophisticated eye he looked a little like an overweight one of Santa’s elves: short, round, his face a little bloated. But whereas an elf would be cheerful and dancing-eyed, Bragg radiated barely-concealed fury.
«He’s turning baseball into a freak show!» Bragg accused, still jabbing his finger in Caruso’s direction. «A freak show!»
Vic Caruso had been the first-string catcher for the Oakland Athletics, one of the best damn hitters in the league, and a solid rock behind the plate with a cannon for an arm. But now he looked like an oversized boy, kind of confused by all the fuss that was being made about him. He was wearing a tan sports jacket and a white shirt with a loosely-knotted green tie that seemed six inches too short. In fact, his shirt, jacket, and brown slacks all appeared too small to contain his massive frame; it looked as if he would burst out of his clothes any minute.
Aside from his ill-fitting ensemble, Vic didn’t look like a freak. He was a big man, true enough, tall and broad in the shoulders. His face was far from handsome: his nose was larger than it should have been, and the corners of his innocent blue eyes were crinkled from long years on sunny baseball diamonds.
He looked hurt, betrayed, as if he were the injured party instead of the accused.
The hearing wasn’t a trial, exactly. The three solemn-faced men sitting behind the long table up in the front of the room weren’t really judges. They were the commissioner of baseball and the heads of the National and American Leagues, about as much baseball brass (and ego) as you could fit into one room.
The issue before them would determine the future of America’s Pastime.
Bragg had worked himself into a fine, red-faced fury. He had opposed every change in the game he’d ever heard of, always complaining that any change in baseball would make a travesty of the game. If he had his way, there’d be no interleague play, no designated hitter, no night baseball, and no player’s union. Especially that last one. The word around the ballyard was that Bragg bled blood for every nickel he had to pay his players.
«It started with steroids, back in the Nineties,» he said, ostensibly to the commissioner and the two league presidents. But he was looking at the jampacked rows of onlookers, and us news reporters, and especially at the banks of television cameras that were focused on his perspiring face.
«Steroids threatened to make a travesty of the game,» said Bragg, repeating his favorite phrase. «We moved heaven and earth to drive them out of the game. Suspended players who used ’em, expunged their records, prohibited them from entering the Hall of Fame.»
Caruso shifted uncomfortably in his wooden chair, making it squeak and groan as if it might collapse beneath his weight.
«Then they started using protein enhancers, natural supplements that were undetectable by normal drug screenings. All of a sudden little shortstops from Nicaragua were hitting tape-measure home runs!»
The commissioner, a grave-faced, white-haired man of great dignity, interrupted Bragg’s tirade. «We are all aware of the supplements. I believe attendance figures approximately doubled when batting averages climbed so steeply.»
Undeterred, Bragg went on, «So the pitchers started taking stuff to prevent joint problems. No more rotator cuff injuries; no more Tommy John surgeries. When McGilmore went twenty-six and oh we—»
«Wait a minute,» the National League president said. He was a round butterball, but his moon-shaped face somehow looked menacing because of the dark stubble across his jaw. Made him look like a Mafia enforcer. «Isn’t Tommy John surgery a form of artificial enhancement? The kind of thing you’re accusing Vic Caruso of?»
Bragg shot back, «Surgery to correct an injury is one thing. Surgery and other treatments to turn a normal human body into a kind of superman—that’s unacceptable!»
«But the fans seems to love it,» said the American League president, obviously thinking about the previous year’s record-breaking attendance figures.
«I’m talking about protecting the purity of the game,» Bragg insisted. «If we don’t act now, we’ll wind up with a bunch of half-robot freaks on the field instead of human beings!»
The Commissioner nodded. «We wouldn’t want that,» he said, looking directly at Caruso.
«We’ve got to make an example of this … this … freak,» Bragg demanded. «Otherwise the game’s going to be warped beyond recognition!»
The audience murmured. The cameras turned to Caruso, who looked uncomfortable, embarrassed, but not ashamed.
The commissioner silenced the audience’s mutterings with a stern look.
«I think we should hear Mr. Caruso’s story from his own lips,» he said. «After all, his career—his very livelihood—is at stake here.»
«What’s at stake here,» Bragg countered, «is the future of Major League Baseball.»
The commissioner nodded, but said, «Mr. Bragg, you are excused. Mr. Caruso, please take the witness chair.»
Obviously uncertain of himself, Vic Caruso got slowly to his feet and stepped toward the witness chair. Despite his size he was light on his feet, almost like a dancer. He passed Bragg, who was on his way back to the front row of benches. I had to laugh: it looked like the Washington Monument going past a bowling ball.
Vic settled himself gingerly into the wooden witness chair, off to one side of the judges, and stared at them, as if he was waiting for their verdict.
«Well, Mr. Caruso,» said the commissioner, «what do you have to say for yourself?»
«About what, sir?»
The audience tittered. They thought they were watching a big, brainless ox who was going to make a fool of himself.
The commissioner’s brows knit. «Why, about the accusations Mr. Bragg has leveled against you. About the fact that you—and other ballplayers, as well—have artificially enhanced your bodies and thereby gained an unfair advantage over the other players who have not partaken of such enhancements.»
«Oh, that,» said Vic.
Guffaws burst out from the crowd.