There was a forced cheeriness about Lona’s chatter as they slid into the gulf of darkness. She wanted to know all about Titan, just as she had wanted to know all about the South Pole, the change of seasons, the workings of a cactus, and many other things; but those questions she had asked out of naive curiosity, and these were asked in the hope of rebuilding contact, any contact, between herself and him.
It would not work, Burris knew.
“It’s the biggest moon in the system. It’s bigger even than Mercury, and Mercury’s a planet.”
“But Mercury goes around the sun, and Titan goes around Saturn.”
“That’s right. Titan’s much larger than our own moon. It’s about seven hundred and fifty thousand miles from Saturn. You’ll have a good view of the rings. It has an atmosphere: methane, ammonia, not very good for the lungs. Frozen. They say it’s picturesque. I’ve never been there.”
“How come?”
“When I was young, I couldn’t afford to go. Later I was too busy in other parts of the universe.”
The ship slipped on through space. Lona stared, wide-eyed, as they hopped over the plane of the asteroid belt, got a decent view of Jupiter not too far down its orbit from them, and sped outward. Saturn was in view.
To Titan then they came.
A dome again, of course. A bleak landing pad on a bleak plateau. This was a world of ice, but far different from deathly Antarctica. Every inch of Titan was alien and strange, while in Antarctica everything quickly became grindingly familiar. This was no simple place of cold and wind and whiteness.
There was Saturn to consider. The ringed planet hung low in the heavens, considerably larger than Earth appeared from Luna. There was just enough methane-ammonia atmosphere to give Titan’s sky a bluish tinge, creating a handsome backdrop for glowing, golden Saturn with his thick, dark atmospheric stripe and his Midgard serpent of tiny stone particles.
“The ring is so thin,” Lona complained. “Edge-on like this, I can hardly see it!”
“It’s thin because Saturn’s so big. We’ll have a better view of it tomorrow. You’ll see that it isn’t one ring but several. The inner rings move faster than the outer ones.”
So long as he kept conversation on that sober level, all went well. But he hesitated to deviate from the impersonal, and so did she. Their nerves were too raw. They stood too close to the edge of the abyss after their recent quarrels.
They occupied one of the finest rooms in the glistening hotel. All about them were the moneyed ones, Earth’s highest caste, those who had made fortunes in planetary development or warp-transport or power systems. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. The women, whatever their ages, were slim, agile, alert. The men were often beefy, but they moved with strength and vigor. No one made rude remarks about Burris or about Lona. No one stared. They were all friendly, in their distant way.
At dinner, the first night, they were joined at table by an industrialist with large holdings on Mars. He was far into his seventies, with a tanned, seamed face and narrow dark eyes. His wife could not have been more than thirty. They talked mostly of the commercial exploitation of extrasolar planets.
Lona, afterward: “She has her eye on you!”
“She didn’t let me know about that.”
“It was awfully obvious. I bet she was touching your foot under the table.”
He sensed a struggle coming on. Hastily he led Lona to a viewport in the dome. “I tell you what,” he said. “If she seduces me, you have my permission to seduce her husband.”
“Very amusing.”
“What’s wrong? He has money.”
“I haven’t been in this place half a day and I hate it already.”
“Stop it, Lona. You’re pushing your imagination too hard. That woman wouldn’t touch me. The thought would give her the shudders for a month, believe me. Look, look out there.”
A storm was blowing up. Harsh winds ripped against the dome. Saturn was nearly in the full phase tonight, and his reflected light made a glittering track across the snow, meeting and melding with the white glare of the dome’s illuminated ports. The precise needle-tips of stars were strewn across the vault of sky, looking nearly as hard as they would appear from space itself.
It was starting to snow.
They watched the wind whipping the snow about for a while. Then they heard music and followed it. Most of the guests were moving along the same track.
“Do you want to dance?” Lona asked.
An orchestra in evening clothes had appeared from somewhere. The tinkling, swirling sounds rose in volume. Strings, winds, a bit of percussion, a sprinkling of the alien instruments so popular in big-band music nowadays. The elegant guests moved in graceful rhythms over a shining floor.
Stiffly Burris took Lona in his arms and they joined the dancers.
He had never danced much before, and not at all since his return to Earth from Manipool. The mere thought of dancing in a place like this would have seemed grotesque to him only a few months ago. But he was surprised how well his redesigned body caught the rhythms of it. He was learning grace in these elaborate new bones. Around, around, around…
Lona’s eyes held firm on his. She was not smiling. She seemed afraid of something.
Overhead was another clear dome. The Duncan Chalk school of architecture: show ‘em the stars, but keep ‘em warm. Gusts of wind sent snowflakes skidding across the top of the dome and drove them just as swiftly away. Lena’s hand was cold in his. The tempo of the dance increased. The thermal regulators within him that had replaced his sweat glands were working overtime. Could he keep to such a giddy pace? Would he stumble?
The music stopped.
The dinnertime couple came over. The woman smiled. Lona glared.
The woman said, with the assurance of the very rich, “May we have the next dance?”
He had tried to avoid it. Now there was no tactful way to refuse, and Lona’s jealousies would get another helping of fuel. The thin, reedy sound of the oboe summoned the dancers to the floor. Burris took the woman, leaving Lona, frozen-faced, with the aging industrial baron.
The woman was a dancer. She seemed to fly over the floor. She spurred Burris to demonic exertions, and they moved around the outside of the hall, virtually floating. At that speed even his split-perception eyes failed him, and he could not find Lona. The music deafened him. The woman’s smile was too bright.
“You make a wonderful partner,” she told him. “There’s a strength about you … a feeling for the rhythm…”
“I was never much of a dancer before Manipool.”
“Manipool?”
“The planet where I … where they…”
She didn’t know. He had assumed everyone here was familiar with his story. But perhaps these rich ones paid no heed to current vid-program sensations. They had not followed his misfortunes. Very likely she had taken his appearance so thoroughly for granted that it had not occurred to her to wonder how he had come to look that way. Tact could be overdone; she was less interested in him than he had thought.
“Never mind,” he said.
As they made another circuit of the floor, he caught sight of Lona at last: leaving the room. The industrialist stood by himself, seemingly baffled. Instantly Burris came to a halt. His partner looked a question at him.