At the present time, Trikon Station is not devoted to crystal or pharmaceutical production or experimentation. Attempting such projects in the future will undoubtedly require a reconfiguring of the laboratory modules in order to obtain proper micro-gee management.
Dan Tighe lingered in the wardroom long after the end of the dinner hour. In his hand was a Mackintosh apple. Trikon dieticians routinely included seasonal fruits in the regular ninety-day food supplies. Fresh fruit was a luxury in orbit, and station personnel devoured it quickly. The Mackintosh was the first sign that summer was ending in North America.
The wardroom ceilings automatically dimmed with the pastoral sunset depicted on the viewscreens along the galley wall. Six identical sunsets, side by side. All six combined couldn’t compare to being outdoors and watching the real thing, Dan thought.
He took a bite of the apple, slurping in the tart juices that oozed beneath the broken skin. Hisashi Oyamo and Chakra Ramsanjawi floated lazily through the wardroom on the way to their nightly chess match in the ex/rec area. Ramsanjawi threatened Oyamo with a new gambit he had devised on ELM’s computer terminal. Oyamo laughed derisively. Neither paid Dan any attention.
Dan nibbled the apple down to the core with a minimum of juice and pulp escaping to the vents. Presently, the person he had been waiting for appeared. Lorraine Renoir mixed herself a squeeze bottle of coffee at the galley designated for after-hours snacks. She noticed Dan and floated in his direction.
“Eating all the fresh fruit, I see,” she said.
“My procedure for preventing scurvy.”
“Bad choice. Citrus fruits prevent scurvy.”
“What do you expect from an old Air Force man?” he asked.
“Not much,” said Lorraine, with a smile.
Her eyes searched him in a silence that lengthened past lighthearted banter. Dan drove his teeth into the apple’s core, liberating a seed that bobbed against the roof of his mouth. Extricating the seed with his finger would be in poor taste, so he swallowed it.
“Tom Henderson tells me we have a health risk on board.”
“Who might that be?” said Lorraine.
“New Trikon scientist named Hugh O’Donnell.”
“What makes you think he’s a health risk?”
Dan made a smile for her. “His standing orders to report to you every day.”
Lorraine shot a quick burst of coffee into her mouth. She had sought out Dan to discuss Kurt Jaeckle’s offer. But now she felt the same resentment that rose like bile in her throat whenever someone attempted to compromise her position as medical officer. The Russell Cramer issue was murky; the Hugh O’Donnell issue was clear. She might disapprove of his former drug use and dislike his irreverent altitude, but she had an ethical duty to keep his medical history in strictest confidence. No matter how much Dan smiled or crinkled the corners of his sky-blue eyes, O’Donnell’s past was none of his business. At least not at this stage.
“You have standing orders to report to me every week,” she said. “Does that make you a health risk?”
His smile vanished. “Only to myself,” he muttered.
Without realizing it she leaned toward him, put her hand on his sleeve. “Oh Dan, your blood pressure’s all right up here. Your hypertension is more an emotional problem than a physical one.”
“Yeah, sure. And what happens if it goes up again?”
“It won’t. Not in micro-gee.”
“But if it does?”
She fixed him with her dark, serious brown eyes. “It won’t. Trust me.”
If I can’t trust my own heart, Dan thought, how can I trust you? Or anybody else?
Lorraine seemed to realize she was clutching his arm. She released her hold and said, “At any rate, Hugh O’Donnell is not what you would consider a health risk.”
Feeling glad that she had switched the subject back to its original theme, he replied, “Tom Henderson sent me O’Donnell’s bio, and I was a little confused.”
“What’s confusing about his bio?”
“Nothing, so far as it goes,” said Dan. “Except it doesn’t go very far: He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1984, then he popped up working for Simi Bioengineering, a member of Trikon NA, in 1996. Nothing in between. Since he reports to you every day, it makes sense that you would know about his activities during those twelve years.”
“I’ve seen him exactly five times, including the day he arrived. We haven’t delved into his distant past.”
“Will you tell me if you discover anything pertinent?”
“Pertinent to what?”
“The safety of this station.”
“Do you see him as a safety risk?”
“I don’t have overwhelming confidence in Trikon’s selection of personnel.”
Lorraine felt her brows knitting, felt the simmering anger that always came over her when someone tried to invade her professional territory. And she felt confusion, too. She did not want to be angry with Dan. Yet she was.
“Do you see him as a safety risk?” she repeated stiffly.
“Not yet.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “If and when I do, I will discuss the problem with his immediate supervisor and with you. But since I don’t perceive him as a safety risk, I have an ethical obligation to honor his confidences.”
“Thank you for your cooperation,” Dan said icily. He pushed away from the table and sailed toward the wardroom hatch, pausing only to slam dunk the apple core into a waste receptacle.
Lorraine took another sip of coffee, but a constriction in her throat prevented her from swallowing. She forced down the coffee and realized that her hands were shaking.
“Dammit!” she whispered to herself.
She sailed to the hatch. He was at the far end of the connecting tunnel, swimming swiftly with an occasional stroke against one of the side walls.
“Dammit,” she repeated.
Games came easily to Chakra Ramsanjawi. During his boyhood years in England, he had mastered physical games like squash, tennis, and cricket. He had even tried rugby, although his early years of malnutrition prevented him from developing the sheer body strength necessary to survive the violent scrums.
As he developed into manhood and the sedentary career that rusted his physical abilities, he turned his focus to mental games—especially those that required unorthodox modes of thought. Chess was his passion; he spent long hours huddled over a board in a dimly lit reading room of the London men’s club he had joined along with Sir Derek.
On Trikon Station surprisingly few people played chess. Stu Roberts had challenged him to a game after boasting about having been dormitory champ in college. Ramsanjawi concluded that it must have been a dormitory full of cretins. Roberts’s mind was too scattered, too full of frivolous songs to assemble the requisite concentration. He quickly knuckled under to Ramsanjawi’s opening gambit, threw up his arms in mock despair, and never played again. Oyamo was the only worthy opponent on the station, and even the Japanese scientist was hardly fitting competition, Ramsanjawi thought.
As he floated through the wardroom, Ramsanjawi noticed Dan Tighe eating an apple by himself at one of the tables. It was not unlike the American station commander to eat in solitude, but Ramsanjawi sensed a special purpose in Tighe’s presence. In the ex/rec room Ramsanjawi positioned himself so that he could watch the commander through the doorway.