"Why can't he-"
"He doesn't have his hands free, Richard."
When I let go my bride and looked, I saw what she meant. Bill was hanging upside down with a look of patient suffering on his face. My- Our bonsai maple he held pressed against his belly, the plant unhurt. He looked solemnly at Gwen. "I didn't drop it," he said defensively.
I silently granted him absolution for throwing up during touch down. Anyone who can attend to a duty (even a simple one) during the agony of acute motion sickness can't be all bad. (But he must clean it up; absolution did not mean that I would clean up after him. Nor should Gwen. If she volunteered, I was going to be macho and husbandly and unreasonable.)
Gwen took the maple and set it on the underside of the computer. Bill unbuckled himself while I supported him by his ankles, then I lowered him to the ceiling and let him straighten himself up. "Gwen, give Bill the pot and let him continue to take care of it. I want it out of the way... as I must get at the computer and the instrument board." Should I say out loud what was worrying me? No, it might make Bill sick again... and Gwen will have figured it out for herself.
I lay down on my back and scrunched under the computer and instrument board, switched on the computer.
A brassy voice I recognized said, "-Seventeen, do you read? Volvo Bee Jay Seventeen, come in. This is Hong Kong Luna ground control calling Volvo Bee Jay Seventeen-"
"Bee Jay Seventeen here. Captain Midnight speaking. I read you. Hong Kong."
"Why in hell don't you stay on channel thirteen. Bee Jay? You missed your checkpoint. Wave off. I can't bring you down."
"Nobody can. Captain Hives; I am down. Emergency landing. Computer malfunction. Gyro malfunction. Radio malfunction. Jet malfunction. Loss of visibility. On landing we fell off our jacks. Fuel gone and attitude impossible for lift off anyhow. And now the air scavenger has quit."
There was a fairly long silence. "Tovarishch, have you made your peace with God?"
"I've been too bloody busy!"
"Hmm. Understandable. How are you fixed for cabin pressure?"
"The idiot light reads green. There's no gauge for it."
"Where are you?"
"I don't know. Things went sour at twenty-one forty-seven, just before I was to turn control over to you. I've spent the time since on a seat-of-the-pants descent. While I don't know where we are, we should be somewhere on Golden Rule's orbit track; our bums were all carefully oriented. We passed over what I think was Aristoteles at, uh-"
'Twenty-one, fifty-eight," Gwen supplied.
'Twenty-one, fifty-eight; my copilot logged it. I brought her down in a mare south of there. Lacus Somniorum?"
"Wait one. Did you stay with the terminator?"
"Yes. We still are. Sun is just at horizon."
"Then you can't be that far east. Time of touch down?"
I didn't have the foggiest. Gwen whispered, 'Twenty-two, oh-three, forty-one." I repeated, 'Twenty-two, oh-three, forty-one."
"Hmm. Let me check. In that case you must be south of Eudoxus in the northernmost part of Mare Serenitatis. Mountains west of you?"
"Big ones."
"Caucasus range. You're lucky; you may yet live to be hanged. There are two inhabited pressures fairly close to you;
there may be someone interested in saving you... for the pound of flesh nearest your heart, plus ten percent."
"I'll pay."
"You surely will! And if you're rescued, don't forget to ask for your bill from us, too; you may need us another day. All right, I'll pass the word. Hold it. Could this be some more of your Captain Midnight nonsense? If it is, I'll cut your liver out and toast it."
"Captain Hives, I'm sorry about that, truly I am. I was simply kidding with my copilot and I thought my mike was cold. Should have been; I opened the switch. One of my endless problems with this collection of scrap."
"You shouldn't kid around while maneuvering."
"I know. But- Oh, what the hell. My copilot is my bride;
today is our wedding day-just married. I've felt like laughing and joking all day long; it's that sort of a day."
"If that is true-okay. And congratulations. But I'll expect you to prove it, later. And my name is Marcy, not Hives. Captain Marcy Choy-Mu. I'll pass the data along and we will try to locate you from orbit. Meantime, you had better get on channel eleven-that's emergency-and start singing Mayday. And I've got traffic, so-"
Gwen was on her hands and knees, by me. "Captain Marcy!"
"Huh? Yes?"
"I really am his bride and he really did marry me just today and if he weren't a hot pilot, I wouldn't be alive this minute. Everything did go wrong, just as my husband said. It's been like piloting a barrel over Niagara Falls."
"I've never seen Niagara Falls but I read you. My best wishes, Mrs. Midnight. May you have a long and happy life together, and lots of children."
"Thank you, sir! If someone finds us before our air runs out, we will."
Gwen and I took turns calling "Mayday, Mayday!" on channel eleven. When I was off duty, I checked into the resources and equipment of good old Volvo B. J. 17, the clunker. By the Protocol of Brasilia that skycar should have been equipped with reserve water, air, and food, a class two first-aid kit, minimum sanitary facilities, emergency pressure suits (UN-SN spec 10007A) for maximum capacity (four, including pilot).
Bill spent his time cleaning viewports and elsewhere, using Kleenex salvaged from the glove compartment-Naomi's wig had come through okay. But he almost burst his bladder before he got up his nerve to ask me what to do. Then I had to teach him how to use a balloon... as the skycar's "minimum sanitary facilities" turned out to be a small package of rude expedients and a pamphlet telling how to use them if you just had to.
The other emergency resources were of the same high standards.
There was water in a two-liter drinking tank at the pilot's position-almost full. No reserve. But nothing to worry about as there was no reserve air, and we would suffocate in stale air before we could die of thirst. The air scavenger still was not working but there was a fitting to crank it by hand-all but the crank handle, which was missing. Food? Let's not joke. But Gwen had a Hershey bar in her purse; she broke it in three and shared it. Delicious!
Pressure suits and helmets occupied most of the storage space back of the passenger couches-four of each, correct by the book. They were military surplus rescue suits, still sealed in their original cartons. Each carton was marked with contractor's name (Michelin Tires, S.A.) and date (twenty-nine years ago).
Aside from the fact that the plasticizers would have bled out of all plastomers and elastomers-hoses, gaskets, etc.- in that time, and the fact that some roguish japester had neglected to supply air bottles, these pressure suits were just dandy. For a masquerade ball.
Nevertheless I was prepared to trust my life to one of these clown suits for five minutes, or even ten, if the alternative involved exposing my bare face to vacuum.
But if the alternative was merely rassling a grizzly bear, I'd holler, "Bring on your b'ar!"
Captain Marcy called us, told us that a satellite camera showed us to be at thirty-five degrees seventeen north, fourteen degrees oh seven west. "I've notified Dry Bones Pressure and Broken Nose Pressure; they're nearest. Good luck."
I tried to dig out of the computer a call directory for Luna. But it was still sulking; I could not get it to list its own directory. So I tried some test problems on it. It insisted that 2 + 2 = 3.9999999999999999999999.... When I tried to get it to admit that 4 = 2 + 2, it became angry and claimed that 4 = 3,14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937511 .... So I gave up.
I left channel eleven switched on at full gain and got up off the ceiling. I found Gwen wearing a powder blue siren suit with a flame-colored scarf at her throat. She looked fetching.