PART TWO

_Thursday, June 23, 1977_

_New York City--1_ P.M. (_E.D.S.T._)

He was only ten minutes late. _Pretty good--for me_, he thought ruefully. The image of Doc Bronski came alive again behind his eyes, the pink-cheeked old man listening and nodding while a much younger Phil Kutler talked importantly about his future plans. _Good!_ the old doctor said. _Good!_ Then at the end, straight-faced: _Good! For you it’s right. Only once a day you got to get someplace. The rest of the time, your patients worry about being on time._...

Usually, he made sure to keep it that way; he did not ordinarily go out for lunch. But on Thursdays, one to three was free and--for some reason he had not yet examined--he had been very reluctant to have Lisa come to the office.

Half-way down the block, he saw her in front of the restaurant. She was wearing green, a startling sea-green with a soft full skirt that seemed to float around her legs. She stood alone, very straight, with the dancer’s solidity under her slenderness that always took him by surprise. He noticed, too, that in her flat green sandals she somehow had the posture of a woman in high heels; and that she stood without any impatience; and that something about her kept the other people who hurried heedless along the sidewalk, from bumping or brushing her.

_She’s a good waiter_, he thought.

Whatever had held her attention across the street released it. She turned and saw him, took a step forward as he hurried up.

“I’m sorry,” he started. “You know how--” He saw her smile start. “You didn’t have to wait out here. I had a table reserved.”

“I was enjoying it.” She glanced across the street. “They’re gone now. There were two girls waiting for someone over there--just kids, they looked like--and three boys came down from the loft building next door here and kept watching them. Then one of them went across, and the girls wouldn’t talk at first, and I guess they were mad at their dates or whoever they’d been waiting for. Anyhow, they got together, and--” She laughed, and took his arm. “--I’ll tell you this, you almost lost _me_. The third boy looked so _lonesome_--”

They sat down and ordered drinks. “I ordered lunch before,” he told her, “They make a good _cacciatore_ here, but you have to wait if you don’t give them notice.”

“Fine!” She talked on, still glowing, about the girls across the street and the ragged old man who had tipped his hat to her as he passed: the way the whole city _tingled_ on this kind of June day.

She had always loved New York. And she didn’t get down much these days. Like a kid, on a holiday, he thought--or more like a kid playing hookey....

“Does Johnny know you’re out?” It started light, but by the time the words were on his lips, he had to work at keeping it that way.

She laughed. She had a good laugh, but this time it had lost the spontaneity of the sidewalk. “I’m not ... an escaped prisoner,” she said. “Johnny thinks it’s great I’m doing a little work for a change.”

A few more minutes of holiday would have been nice, Phil thought irritably. Not _escaped_, no....

She went on, “He just flew me down, and I had a recording date at the Center. That’s what made me think of calling you--I knew I’d be in the neighborhood.” The waiter set frosted martini glasses in front of them. Lisa lifted her glass and held it toward Phil in a smiling toast. She sipped slowly. “All right, mastermind, you’re way ahead of me. No, he does _not_ know I’m out--” she set the glass back on the table with care--“with _you_.”

Abruptly, the cloak of detached relaxation that had enveloped her, held her apart from the sidewalk crowd, fell from her shoulders. It was, perversely, like watching another woman take off a too-tight dress, sighing out of girdle, stockings, brassière, into naked comfort. Lisa seemed almost to vent the same sigh of relief as she stripped the practiced, professional, surface of calm from the coiled tense energies inside her.

“In fact, I almost called you to call it off,” she said. “After I called yesterday, I realized Johnny wouldn’t--Well, I guess I was sort of peeved. He was being silly about this morning. Oh Hell! I don’t have to explain it to you.” The edge of brightness in her voice was sharp.

Phil leaned back in his chair, his hand twirling the stem of his glass on the cocktail napkin, making wet circles. Across the table, Lisa sat straight on her chair, her lips moving with taut animation, shoulders tensing a little with each new sentence. “You know, when we first started--seeing each other--he used to talk about you all the time: ‘Phil said this,’ and ‘Phil told me that’ and ‘The way Phil explains it....’ It got to where I was actually jealous of you for a while there....” She hesitated.

“Fair enough,” he smiled. “I was kind of jealous myself....”

“I bite,” she said. “Of whom?”

“‘And to which, and with what?’”

This time her laugh was genuine. “Hey, Doc, remember me? I’m not a patient. I’m just your lunch date. The rule book says you have to _answer_ my questions.”

“Well, I did. _Both_ of you, if you’ve got to know.”

She was embarrassed; he knew why, and let himself enjoy her confusion a moment before he explained:

“First of all, I kicked myself six times around the block for letting _anyone_ else walk away with you. And then I noticed this little cloud, see? Absolutely no bigger than a man’s hand. You know what it was? _Professional_ jealousy. My psychiatrist explained it all to me. I was sore because you could get things out of Johnny that I couldn’t.” He grinned. “And we _won’t_ go into anything about my choice of words, either--”

_Or anything about why a girl who’s as miserably “in love” as you are, should feel sorry for me for being single._... “Did you say a recording date?” he went on aloud. “A new show?”

“Well, not exactly a _show_.” She tasted her chicken and nodded approvingly. “They’re doing a tape series--Bartok--tri-di. We did the first movement of that percussion and celeste thing this morning.”

“A series?”

“Well, I haven’t _committed_ myself after this one. I didn’t know--This chicken is marvelous, Phil.”

“Was this the recording or just rehearsal?”

“Recording. I did most of my practice at home. Only had to come down a couple of times.”

“Well,” he said neutrally, “it’ll be good to see a new Trovi tape. You haven’t done much recently.”

She looked at him with brittle amusement. “That’s like saying, ‘Johnny took a long trip.’ You know damn well I haven’t done anything for the last year, almost. Since we moved up there.” She stopped, waited, hoping he’d pick it up, give her an opening.

_Not yet_, he thought with faint annoyance, and fed her a question instead about the morning’s work. He ate slowly, watching from under half-lowered lids as she talked just a little too briskly about the session: musicians; dancers; cameramen and their idiocies. The dark shadows under her eyes and strained set of her mouth did not match the bright narrative. She caught his eye, and her talk trailed off.

“Okay,” he said, “So you got over being jealous of me. And Johnny does not know you called me. And you’re back at work. Maybe. _And_ you haven’t been sleeping. So?”

“So--Well--Actually, it was sort of silly, I guess, calling you. I was feeling kind of low, and I--well, Johnny was drinking a lot again and--in spite of what I said before, I guess he didn’t like my taking this job too well. He may have to face up to _something_ he won’t like, soon, though ...” she added, half to herself. “Actually, things are much better now. I almost called you up to call it off, and then I thought it would be good to see you again anyhow. I’ll probably tell Johnny when I get home.” But her face tensed again when she said it. Then she broke into a smile: “Only, I think I might better say I just bumped into you? If your conscience will let you back me up...?”

He nodded. Inside him a slot opened up, and like letters, the thoughts that were not spoken slid safely into a waiting-room of his mind where he could pick them up, open them and spell them out at his leisure.

“Phil, the truth is, he--The way it is now, he _hates_ you! He hates so many--Oh, I’m _sorry_, Phil! Does everyone treat you like this? Like a piece of furniture or something? As if you had no feelings?”

_Not everyone, kid. Just my patients._ “If I’m lucky they do,” he said, laughing. “That’s how you can tell your friends from a psychiatrist. Sure, Johnny hates me, Lee. He’s got reasons. How would you feel about a doctor who told you what was wrong with you, and then wouldn’t cure you?”

“_Wouldn’t?_ Oh. I guess he does feel that way.”

“I’m not sure he’s wrong, Lee. I’ve been over that file fifty times in the last year if I’ve looked at it once. And I _still_ don’t know why it fizzled. Which makes it pretty sure that the blind spot’s in _me_.”

“But nobody else got anywhere at all with it!”

“That’s just what I mean. He had some good solid frontline defenses. I got through. Period. Then I got lost somehow. I’m the guy who’s peddling road maps, see? And I didn’t have one for him. So he found his own way out. Period and exclamation point.” He ate a forkful of high-priced sawdust, and added, “Also crazy-mixed-up metaphors. But you dig me, kid.”

_Only you don’t_, he realized with an unanticipated pang of dismay. _You used to, but now you don’t. Lee, honey, can’t you think anything any more but Johnny Wendt? Or see, or hear, or feel._

_Ah, cut the crap, Kutler!_ he told himself. Of course she couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Shouldn’t. He knew that beforehand. He had it all planned for them. _What the hell, Doc? You wrote the prescription yourself!_

_So open up. Take the nice medicine._

_Mexcity--12_ M. (_C.S.T._)

It was not excessively hot, for late June in Mexcity. But four blocks, from the air-conditioned Government office to the cool stone walled interior of the club left Chris sweat-sodden and near exhaustion. He was a big man, with a powerful frame, who tended to run to flesh. He was conscientious about exercise; he had to be, more than most of them. They came up, mostly, for six months, a year--maybe six years. He had gone up with the first crew to work on the Dome; he had every intention of dying there--or farther out.

But meantime, he thought (as he thought every time he came down) he ought to come Earthside more often; his muscles were in good condition, and the regular centrifuge workout topside kept the giant gravity down here from overcoming him. But his heart pumped too hard; his blood rushed too much; and the unfiltered air out of doors clogged his nostrils; the sun bursting out from behind clouds seared his eyeballs; clouds hiding the sun obscured his vision. It was always too bright or too dim, too damp or too dry, too cold or too hot, when you were used to Dome-regulated atmosphere.

Today, it was--for him--steaming hot.

And, when he entered the cool lobby of the club, it was clammy cold.

He went up to his room, switched on the air conditioning and lay down. After a while his heart stopped thumping, and the sweat on his neck and back dried. He got up, peeled off the sticky clothes, called down for ice cubes. A tall drink and a quick shower, and it was twelve-thirty. He might still catch Harbridge for lunch.

The General was out, the Decagon switchboard said. He should be back by two.

Chris left his name. “Please have him call me as soon as he gets back,” he said.

It was a relief, in a way. He ordered lunch sent up, and ate in comfort in the room, without having to venture out into the street again. As he ate, he pulled out his notebook and pencil, and started figuring. A small smile settled on his mouth, while his second cup of coffee cooled in the pot. His pie sat forgotten on the back of the tray. Names and figures and layouts and lists of equipment filled page after page, as Dr. Christensen practiced the day-to-day magic of modern science: fitting five pet projects into the money allotted for one. Twice, he stopped to make calls out: the first to New York, the second to St. Thomas.

He was smiling grimly over a column of figures when they buzzed back, and he reached for it unthinkingly. He had already flicked the switch when he thought of his rumpled shirtsleeves, and the messy lunch tray still in view. Too late....

It wasn’t Harbridge anyhow; it was Kutler, from New York.

“Phil, for krissake! How’ve you been?”

“Mostly good. I got a message here to call you back--what brings you down to Earth? I thought you took vows up there--?”

“Damn near.” He laughed. “Only thing I come down for is begging trips. Say, what’s the chances of getting together while I’m here? I’ve got a couple of ideas I’d like to toss around with you.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Couple of things. I’ll tell you, I’d just as lief not do it on the phone. Any chance of getting you down here?”

The other man hesitated, looked down at something on his desk. “Over the weekend, I guess,” he said. “What’s your schedule?”

Chris shook his head. “I have to be at the base tomorrow afternoon.” But there was nothing really to keep him in Mexcity till then. He didn’t mind traveling: flying was more comfortable a lot of ways than sitting still, and he had enough vanity left to relish his VIP’s privilege of a seat on the Mexcity-New York mail rocket--thirty-two minutes, pad to cradle. “Suppose I make it up your way?” he suggested. “Could we get together for a couple of hours? Tonight, maybe? Or tomorrow?”

“Tonight would be better,” Kutler said. “I don’t see where I could squeeze anything in at all during the day. Look--can you give me _any_ idea what’s on your mind?”

“Well, this much at least: I need a psycher to do a job for us. It’s a big job. And I think you might be the right guy. There’s nothing secret about it, really, but it just happens to be tied up sideways with a Security problem, so--that’s all I can say on the phone.”

“I see.” He was thoughtful. “Then it has nothing to do with--our mutual friend?”

“Friend? Oh--Johnny? No.”

“Have you been in touch with him lately?”

“No. What’s up?” He asked it casually enough, but in the time it took to say the three words, a whole new set of possibilities and probabilities opened up. The whole wild plan with Harbridge could be thrown out ... maybe even the lab transfer bit wouldn’t matter ... though that was going to be necessary anyhow ... unless, of course, Kutler--or somebody--could solve the leave problem....

Slice it any way you liked, if Wendt was about to come out of his funk, the whole picture changed--for the damsight better.

“I don’t know exactly,” the doctor said. “I was sort of hoping when I got your message that you’d heard something. I just had lunch with Lisa--”

“Lisa?”

“Trovi. The dancer. You know, she and Johnny are--engaged?”

“Oh. Yeah. I knew about it. Didn’t know her name.” He dug back in memory. “I thought they were married by now?”

“Sort of.” Kutler smiled.

“Oh. Well, you’re in touch then?”

“Not really. I had lunch with Lisa, but that’s the first I’ve seen either of them in six months. You know Johnny quit on the therapy? He wouldn’t consider analysis, and we’d about had it with anything else.”

“Oh. Well how does it look now?”

“Offhand, bad. But I don’t know. I know Lee pretty well. She used to work with me, you know? Dance and music stuff with a clinic group I had for a while? She--well, just say, she’s not the panic type; but she was pretty shook today. I figured things were just getting worse. Then I got back and found your message, and thought maybe you’d heard from him, and that got me wondering if whatever’s up with them could be just--call it _crisis_. You follow?”

“Yeah.” _All the way. In fact, I’m way out front._ “And better slow down, too. It could be nothing. But it _could_ be--”

He did not let himself pursue it further.

“... any chance of your seeing them while you’re down? I know you’re busy as hell, Chris, but I can’t go myself; I’m the last one he’d talk to right now. And I don’t know who else would even _know_ what the difference was, if anything’s happened at all--one way or the other. Lee’s a good kid, but I can’t rely altogether on what she says. _You’re_ not in love with the guy.” He paused, and added: “This is pure hunch, Chris. I haven’t got fact one to go on, but I’ve got a feeling, that’s all. I think maybe this is the time that you could get through to him.”

“Through, how?” he asked cautiously. Prayers don’t get answered like that, on the phone.

“I wish I knew. I don’t. I couldn’t tell you where or what or how or even who. I just think that something’s about to bust there. Could be just _her_, and you’d be wasting your time. But--I think it’s a good time for you to see Johnny. If you still want him back that is?”

“Yeah. We could use him.” _Want him? Jeeeeesus!_ “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’ll try calling him. See what happens.” He thought quickly. “Suppose I get hold of him and call you back? See how his time stacks up--if he’ll see me at all. Then you and I can work out some time to get together.”

“Good. I’ll juggle my time if I have to, for this.”

“Right.”

After he switched off, he sat and thought for a while. Then he moved the tray, combed his hair, got his jacket back on, and tried Jed again. He got through this time.

“Say, don’t you get any phone messages there?” he demanded.

“Sure, but I never get to make any calls. There’s always one coming in.”

The general and the scientist grinned at each other.

“I take it you made out?” Harbridge said.

“_I_ didn’t. _You_ did,” Chris told him. “They were all ready to let me out the back door with a pat on the head and a promise of a box of old clothes for my little Mars-bugs as soon as they had some to spare. But lab facilities down here for Earth-normal environment studies? Sorry! So ... I told them, very sincerely, that I thought perhaps General Harbridge could be persuaded to handle the Earthside part of the project--and we sat down and talked.”

Jed looked very innocent. “You know,” he said, “sometimes I wonder what we ever did to make them so--_touchy_ over there?”

“It’s a long story,” Chris said, and then, soberly: “Look, I still got troubles. It worked out about the way we figured--some personnel money, and maybe a bit for supplies. Okay, we can run some good studies on the bugs down here, which we need to, but they won’t even consider transferring the whole lab setup down till the September report. _After_ elections, that means. It was a stone wall, Jed. We’re already shut out.”

“Not _quite_,” Harbridge said. “But--” He didn’t have to finish it; they’d been all over the ground the night before. “Well?” he said finally. “What do you think? You want to try it the hard way?”

“I don’t know, Jed,” Chris said slowly. “It looked good last night, but--Let’s say, if it looks necessary, a month from now would be soon enough. Don’t you think?”

“Better,” the General said. “Silly season.”

“Yeah. Okay. Hell, I hope we don’t have to--I’ve got a new line to try, anyhow.”

“Something good?”

“I don’t know. Phil Kutler just called me. You know--the psycher? I was telling you about him last night?”

Jed nodded.

“He’s been following up on Johnny Wendt. Thought I ought to see him, about now.” He saw Harbridge’s wary glint. “If there’s anything to it ...” he said prayerfully.

“Well, if you get Wendt, you won’t need--” He broke off again.

“What I was thinking--I’m going to call Johnny now. If I get anywhere, I’ll let you know.” He smiled. “_Or_ if I don’t. Either way, I’ll talk to you tomorrow before I take off.”

“Right. Good luck, Chris.”

“Thanks.”

He made several rapid calls, checking on the routine of the trip. Then he built himself one more tall drink and switched on the phone.

“I want Rockland, New York,” he told the operator. “The residence of Colonel John Wendt. I don’t know the number. It’s person to person for Colonel Wendt....”

_Rockland--4_ P.M. (_E.D.S.T._)

The phone chime couldn’t compete with Beethoven. He didn’t even hear it till it rang once in an interval. Then he tried _not_ to hear it. But when the music began again, he was listening for it, and at the next chime he got up and went inside, turned the volume down and switched the phone onto audio only.

“Yes?” _Lisa!_ She was never this late....

“Colonel Wendt? Hold the line for Mexcity, please.”

Mexcity? Not Lisa, anyhow. _Colonel_ Wendt? Who the hell--? What did Mexcity want with him anyhow, at this late date?

“Colonel Wendt?” The voice was familiar.

“Yes?”

“Johnny--hi! This is Chris.”

“I’ll be damned! I thought you were away up there.”

“Was. Will be. Tomorrow. Don’t you ever answer your phone? I’ve been trying to get you for the last half hour.”

“What’s on your mind?”

A moment’s silence, after which Christensen’s voice came through just a bit too loud and too jovial: “At the moment: dinner. What are you people doing tonight? I thought maybe I could talk you into coming down to New York for the evening. I’m planning to hop the mail rocket there right away.”

“Anything in particular, Chris?” _You’re not calling me just for love, ole bud!_

“Several things.” The voice was more normal.

Okay. Backslapping gambit rejected. “How about tomorrow?” Johnny said. “I’m not sure I could, but--?” He let it dangle.

“I can’t tomorrow. Got to be in Denver by three.”

“Hate to miss seeing you,” Johnny said evenly. “Next time around, maybe?” _Yeah, next century._ Perversely, he reached out and switched on the video. After all, it wasn’t Chris’ fault. He’d been pretty decent, all round.

“My God, you look comfortable!” Christensen said. “It’s miserable here!”

_So go back up where you belong._... “Yeah,” he said. “Hate to go into town myself.” The perverse impulse swept him again. “Listen, why don’t you come up here instead? Why don’t you eat with us? You know Lee, don’t you?” _No, you don’t._

“Only from watching her. Matter of fact, I’d like to. If you really mean it?”

“Right. You can pick up a heli in New York, fly right in here. Just north of Nyack. Our strip is number seventeen. You can’t miss it.”

“Okay. If I have any trouble getting on the rocket, I’ll call you back. Otherwise--let’s see--I guess I should make it about seven?”

“We won’t eat till eight, probably.”

“I’ll see you.”

“Right.”

He switched off, and snapped off the player angrily. Well, it was his home and his dinner, after all. He didn’t have to listen to anything he didn’t want to.

And where in Hell was Lisa?

After four, now.

He went outside and got the coffee cup from the grass. Took it in to the kitchen and poured it down the sink. Scrubbed the cup by hand, and filled it up again, with just coffee. Got out another tape, a new piano boogie revival, and started the player again--loud.

He went into the work room and sat down at the drafting board, with its half-finished sketch. Lisa would be in any minute now. He got up and opened the door from the kitchen. Make her feel good to find him working....

He stared at the sketch, trying to feel like a man who was working. Then something hit him--the ghost of an idea. Or the memory of one? There was a picture in back of his mind of what the sketch _should_ be.

The memory was of a time when the pictures were always there, waiting, ready to go onto paper, into wire and contacts and complex machines.

This picture was not shiny-new, the way they used to be. This was remembered, a legacy from himself. But it was sharp and clear. It was good design. It would work.

He ripped the old sheet off the drawing board, pinned on a fresh one, and started sketching.

The coffee got cold between sips. The boogie tape came to an end, and began playing over. After a while, the kitchen door closed, or almost did. He looked up. Lee was home. Going to start supper, he thought, didn’t want to disturb him.

_Hah! That’s a good one!_ He looked at the drawing. What the hell had he been trying to do? _What for?_

But he felt good.

He went out and watched her move, wifely, around the room. When she came within reach, he grabbed her and pulled her down on his lap. Laughing, she told him about the morning session, about the pickup she’d watched on Sixty-third Street, the weird redhead salesgirl at Best’s that afternoon.

Something nagged at his mind; then he remembered. It wouldn’t be one of their good nights at home after all.

“Oh, I should have told you before, I guess. Pete Christensen called. You know, Moon Lab guy? He’s coming for dinner--?”

“_Dinner?_” she pushed away, and stood up. “What _time_?”

“Seven-ish.” He looked at the clock. It was almost a quarter of. He grinned. “Well,” he said, “I forgot. I’m sorry, babe.” Then he pulled her back on his lap, and kissed her.

_Rockland_--9 P.M. (_E.D.S.T._)

“I heard about this place,” the big blond man said slowly, “But I don’t think I really believed it before.”

_I like him_, she thought. And he _really_ liked the house. Lisa piled the last of the dinner dishes into the conveyer, and followed Christensen’s gaze out across the patio to the pink and purple glory of the fading sun reflected in the river far below. She hadn’t seen any of it this way for a while. The house, the river, the sheer brown cliff on the other side that was the twin of the one on which their house stood. The food, the furniture, the porch on which they sat. All this, through the stranger’s eyes, re-acquired meaning.

Christensen was saying something, a question, about the conveyer. Lisa opened her mouth, but Johnny was answering him. Well, that was something: at least he could still talk about his own bright ideas.

The flashing hostility of the thought shocked her. I’m over-anxious, she told herself. She was being foolish about the whole thing. He just didn’t want company. He’d been working, and he didn’t want to be interrupted, that’s all.

Just the same, she was glad Chris was there. If they were alone, no matter how much his mind was on what he was doing, sooner or later Johnny would have looked at her sharply, questioning. _Where’d you go, babe? What took you so long?_

Sooner or later, she thought again. He still would ask: tonight or tomorrow, or next year. Sooner or later....

_I won’t think about it. I won’t worry._

It had been easy enough not to mention Phil before. She had just talked all around it. The sense of shock returned as she realized that was why she’d gone shopping, why she had stayed so late. Luncheon was incidental to him by this time; it was the afternoon that bothered him.

_I won’t think about it!_ She sat back in the chair, half-listening to Johnny’s explanation, and concentrated on visualizing what was happening behind the conveyer door. Soundless, sterile processing of dirty dishes: along the perforated belt where floods of hot water rinsed the food particles down the drain into the grinder; then into the washer, where detergent foamed around them; then out again along the belt, through the rinsing spouts and the drying jets, and at last through the side opening of the long shelf in the kitchen, still neatly racked, ready to use.

Lucky Lisa. _Lucky, lucky Lisa._ Nothing to do. The dinner cooks itself, cleans up after itself. _Next week we put in the automatic digester. Then there’ll be nothing left for Lisa to have to do except sit and stew about Johnny. And Lisa._

She stood up. “The view is really better from the living room this time of day,” she said. _The girl speaks her lines well_, she thought idiotically, and watched the characters move to the new set, rearranging themselves with just the sort of almost-right staging that was inevitable without a really _good_ director.

The Successful Scientist said something to the Ex-Rocket Jockey. Ex-Rocket Jockey replied, rather shortly.

Both look at Girl. S S smiles successfully. E-R J smiles X-ly. (_Crookedly? I suppose_)

Girl: (Smiling girl-ly) “Mmmmmm? I was daydreaming.”

S S: “Just looking at your book here. I used to be fascinated with this stuff myself, but I haven’t done any serious reading outside the job since--I don’t know when.”

E-R J: (Points to Book) “_Serious?_ You too, Chris? Well, I’ll be damned!”

S S: (Embarrassed, but genial) “Oh, I don’t know. If you’d brought back a couple of telepaths, now, instead of just bugs, we might have got somewhere.”

_Oh, God!_ she thought. _Oh my dear God!_ That did it. _Okay, here goes nothing!_

* * * * *

“It is fascinating,” Lisa said slowly. “They’ve done a lot of work on it the last three or four years, you know.”

Chris shook his head. “I didn’t know. Anything really new?”

“This fellow--what’s his name?--Potter,” she went on, as Chris held the book jacket up to the light. “He has a theory that all the different kinds of psi powers that have been proved to exist so far--”

She offered the bait consciously, deliberately.

“--all boil down to some form of PK....”

“_Proved_ to exist?” Johnny asked coldly, taking the bait.

“All right, _demonstrated_?”

“Not to _me_.” He took the hook too.

“Well, they’ve run enough experiments to show at least--all right, to _indicate_--”

It wasn’t hard to do. Easier than if he’d had a chance to sit there reacting to the mention of the trip. Why in _hell_ hadn’t she remembered beforehand that Dr. Christensen was the one who’d been in charge of the whole trip? “Moon Lab” just meant some vague kind of research to her. But of course--

If she _had_ connected, what good would it have done? It was too late to stop him from coming.

“--to _indicate_ that there are people who are--well, _sensitive_--”

What was the book doing out there anyhow? She’d left it in the bedroom.

“--and others who can control--All right, who _seem_ to be able to control--”

She saw his smile loosen up a little bit, and found she could breathe again without thinking about it.

“--to control the motion of inanimate objects--”

_Damn!_ She’d done it herself. She’d left it--No she hadn’t. She’d left it in the _kitchen_. Johnny must have picked it up during the day.... Then he’d been reading it himself?

“--‘non-physical’ isn’t the right word,” she said, still floundering half-deliberately. “That would put the whole thing right back on a mystical plane.”

“Which is a fine place for it.” Johnny stood up. “Your glass is empty, Chris. Lee? You ready?” She shook her head. He went out to the kitchen with the two empty glasses.

“You worked yourself into a hole,” Chris said, laughing, not knowing what had happened, or what had almost happened--maybe--either.

“Back up about ten sentences, will you?” he asked. “You started to say something about Potter’s theory?”

“Well, I haven’t finished the book,” she said. “Actually, I just got started on it last night. I wouldn’t want to try to explain it.” Her smile looked less nervous than it felt, she hoped. “Do you get down often?” she asked, stalling until she could come up with something better. If they could get onto something _safe_ before he came back....

“Not often enough, I’m beginning to think.” She liked the way he smiled: he _meant_ it. And he meant what he said. All the time. “You said something before about ‘PK,’ and I’ve been trying to remember--”

_Oh, no-o-o-o!_

“--I told you, it’s been years since I followed the literature on this. PK is teleportation, isn’t it? Stuff like that?”

_All right_, she thought recklessly, _the_ hell _with it_! Let Johnny have all the fits he wanted to. This man was really interested: he _meant_ it. _And_ she liked him. And liked talking to him.

“Psychokinesis is what it actually stands for,” she said. “That’s control of physical objects--Well, actually, any psi activity that involves application of energy, rather than just perception.” Damn if she was going to keep floundering, either. She wasn’t setting up straw houses now. “And Potter’s approach basically is that perception involves an energy transfer, too. Light rays have to strike the eye, or sound waves hit your ear, before you see or hear. Even internally, the message goes to the brain through a series of impulses that he claims work like a radio condenser. I mean, he says the nerves don’t actually touch, but energy stores up in one end until it sort of sparks to the end of the next one. So--wait a minute, let me find it here.”

She reached for the book. He had been studying the back jacket. “This man, Potter, is a neurologist,” he said thoughtfully. “Got interested in this stuff from working on neural exchange process. You know, that’s goddam interesting. Say, Johnny, this is right up your alley, you know? Thanks.” He took the full glass. “I never thought of it that way before, but if anyone ever _does_ crack this nut, I’ll bet it’s a cybe man who does it!”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Johnny said drily. “Some of the squirrel tracks they’re following now are no nuttier.”

The silence did not really last long. Christensen said mildly, “Which set of tracks did you have in mind, John? Cybernetics or parapsychology?”

“Take your pick. I was thinking of some of the commercialized, excuse the expression, _robots_. But if you want to drag para- or any other kind of psychology into it, that’s okay with me.”

_The X-smile again_, Lisa noted. _I ought to do something._ This could get out of hand with no trouble at all. Everything she could think of seemed too absurd. It was quite evident that neither of them wanted coffee. Or music, or cards, or a look at the Moon.

* * * * *

_What the hell am I doing here?_ He knew the answer to that one, too well: there were dozens--or hundreds?--of men who could handle the job he wanted Wendt for. Handle it better than John could, from the looks of things. But none of them were named _Johnny Wendt: Space Hero_.

And he, Peter Christensen, didn’t owe anything to them, either.

_Oh, crap. You don’t need a new conscience, chum. You just need headlines. Go fetch!_

Then he saw that the glass in the other man’s hand was empty again.

_Already?_ Things were worse than he’d thought....

“Hey, Johnny, wait up!” He drained the glass, and decided he’d been moralizing too damn much. If he didn’t have to fly back tonight, he wouldn’t mind tying one on himself. He followed his host to the kitchen.

“What are you working on, now?” He asked, then chuckled. “Or have you got an idea-conveyor-and-processor to do your designing jobs too?”

The answering grin was almost like a guy he used to know named Johnny Wendt. “Not yet. Matter of fact, I got into something today that’s been half on my mind all evening. I keep forgetting to be sociable. We don’t have much company here, you know....” He trailed off, and eyed his drink. Then abruptly: “Got nine-tenths of something on the drawing board,” he said, “if you want a look?”

“Sure. I’d like to.”

He turned to follow and saw Lisa, halfway through the door, stop herself fluidly in midstride, and melt back into the living room.

_Smart girl_, he thought. He stepped into the study.

It was a good room, well-designed, like the rest of the house, arranged for comfort and use as well as looks. And it was Johnny’s room, beyond a doubt. If he’d been brought here blindfolded, Chris thought, he’d have known this room belonged to John Wendt. But there was also something that _didn’t_ fit: something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. It bothered him.

He started for the drawing board, but Johnny waved him to the couch instead. “Nothing worth looking at,” he said. “Not yet, anyhow.”

Chris sat down obediently. Anything he said was going to be the wrong thing. Let Wendt keep the ball.

After a while, Johnny said, “Okay, let’s get it over with. _What_ didn’t you want to talk about on the phone?”

“I don’t know if you’d be interested,” Chris said slowly. “I just finagled some dough for an increase in personnel. There’s a job I thought you might do for us, but....” He waved a hand to include not just the room, but the house and the river, and the life it stood for. “Why should you?” he finished.

“Yeah. Why should I?”

More silence. Chris looked around still trying to pin down the elusive wrongness of that room.

Then he got it.

There was a gilded football on a shelf from Johnny’s college days. There were old books, and a couple of photographs on the wall that couldn’t have any meaning except in one person’s memories. There were new things, too. But there was nothing, nothing at all, in this room, or anywhere in the house, to remind Johnny Wendt or anyone else that the man who lived here had spent most of five years of his life off of Earth: on the Moon, on Mars, inside the _Colombo_.

Involuntarily, Chris shivered, as a child shivers in the ghost-filled dark. He stood up, feeling tired. He had to get up early tomorrow morning. He ought to be leaving.

“Okay, so you changed your mind,” Johnny said. “What were you...? A-ah, never mind. Skip it.” He picked up his glass. It was empty again. He stared at it, then put it carefully down, still empty. “I’m sorry, Chris,” he said suddenly. “I’m being damn rude. I get--jumpy. Sit down for krissake, and tell me what’s on your mind. You came all the way up here to see me. I can at least listen to what you want.”

“Okay,” Chris said. “But do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Get the jug.” He caught Wendt’s eye and held it. “Then we can _both_ settle down. All right?”

It was close. Johnny wavered, then grinned crookedly and went for the bottle. _All right._ There wouldn’t have been much sense even in trying to talk if Wendt was lushing so bad he couldn’t admit it. _All right_, Chris thought: _Here goes nothin’...._

He talked steadily for half an hour. Wendt sat and listened, arms folded across his chest, legs crossed, lips pressed in, his whole face narrowed and closed. When he spoke at all, it was in monosyllables. More likely, he would just grunt a reply to a question. But he listened.

* * * * *

“Damn place has turned into a bio lab,” Chris said.

Johnny shrugged, didn’t smile. The man was a guest in his home; he’d been childish enough already.

“Those damn bugs you brought back....”

Johnny lifted his glass to his mouth, barely sipped, put it down. _So I brought ’em back. All right. We’ve made that point now. Let’s drop it, hey, boy?_ He folded his arms across his chest, sat listening.

“Look, before I get into this any more--this is so new, some of it, I mean, it hasn’t even been classified yet. But they’ll probably top-secret it out of habit. For that matter, it might be pretty big. If you’d rather _not_ hear--?”

“It’s okay with me,” Johnny said. “Who the hell would _I_ talk to?” And cursed himself for an idiot. There went the last chance to get out from under the whole damn fool thing gracefully. _Well_, he thought, _maybe I like to suffer_ ... or maybe it was time to find out how bad it was to sit through this kind of crap. Some day it had to get to where it just didn’t make any difference. It wasn’t _his_ ball game now. He was off the team. He was too old for it. If the kids still wanted to play, why should it matter to him if they babbled about it?

_About time_, he decided, approvingly, biting his fingers into his biceps across his chest.

“Okay. Well, you remember those freak results on the first chromosome charts?”

He nodded. Doug had--_Hell with that bit_! Listen to the man....

“Well it got even freakier when we got some good clear micropics and tried it again. Turns out all seven varieties had the _same damn charts_--let alone the same crazy number of genes.”

“Yeah?” This time he allowed himself a small smile. It was getting just too damn silly. He knew where the damn bugs came from, and what they did, and they were no more related than--

_The Hell with it! Nobody’s asking you anything. Just listen, that’s all you have to do--listen!_

After that he managed to sip and hear, hear and sip, and not think at all, mostly.

“... maybe different parts of a cycle, or even mutated species of the same bug? And we had just about decided we were dead wrong, when this crazy new thing comes up--

“Understand, now, we had these things under twenty-four-hour-a-day observation, cameras on the microscopes around the clock, and not a damn one of ’em ever did anything except make more of the same. No meiosis, no conjugation, nothing to account for the diploid chart or make any use of it. No mutations--but, _none_, see? That’s about the only thing that kept anybody interested.

“We figured at first maybe the lab is too clean. So we x-rayed a few batches, and _still_ no mutations. Then some bright lad pops up with figures showing that the increase in cell _deaths_ under radiation corresponded to what you’d expect statistically for total of deaths plus mutations in protozoa down here. So these damn things would rather die than change--they’re just not _capable_ of adaptation. It says here.

“We had a couple of bio men around who thought this was the most fascinating thing since the original rib job, and I was kind of tickled at the idea of getting whatever those cells were using to resist radiations with--or I was until those statistics popped up to show it wasn’t resistance, it was just complete lack of flexibility.

“So one of the bio boys gets the bright notion of trying a culture in Earth-normal atmosphere. I think he was chasing some notion about mutations being a complex result of radiations and some elements in the atmosphere. And the first reaction looked like high score for him, because the damn bugs went wild. Not one friggin one of them stayed the way it was. _Every single one_ changed at least slightly.

“So they started all over again, and when we ran off the first rolls of film, we found out we were not only getting meiosis and conjugation, but getting it between what were supposed to be different species--which was what we’d figured all along. The only thing we _weren’t_ getting was mutation!

“Johnny, every damn one of those changes could be charted on the maps! And every damn one of ’em came out the way they were supposed to. Some of ’em were wild but not wild, crazy--just wild, way-out. You’d get a bacterium conjugating with an alga--or what we had figured for bacteria and algae, and the one of the products mixing with one of the water-retentive fungi, maybe, while the other one went into symbiosis with an unchanged alga and wound up like a new lichen--oh, some of those things mixed and matched seven or eight times around before they were done. But it all settled down into a group of five different types perfectly adapted to the environment they were in, and just as viable in it as they’d been on Mars.”

It seemed to be time to say something again. Chris looked like it was time for an answer. It was damn sure time to wrap the whole thing up.

“So?” he said. “What’s the scoop?”

“I’ve just told you essentially all we know so far. What I came down for this trip was to dig up some extra dough for a big program on it. Frankly, I’d hoped I could get all or most of it transferred to Earthside Labs. I think I’ll be able to get that come fall. Right now, it’s all upstairs, and if you feel the same way you did, I guess there’s no point in asking--but let’s put it this way: I have a hunch our best approach to this will be with the math and, if we can do it, with analogs. I don’t think straight bio experimentation will ever crack this--unless we can set up the labs on Mars.”

_All right, man, all right, get to it, will you? The answer is_ No!

“So the first thing I need is a hell of a good cybe man, and you--”

“Lots of good cybe men around,” Johnny broke in evenly.

“Yeah. You realize, that part could just as easily be done down here? Christ, no reason you couldn’t work at home--don’t blame you not wanting to swap a setup like this for--”

“Ready for a refill?” Johnny asked. “Wish I could help you out, Chris, but I tell you, I’ve got my hands full right now. I--”

Chris was eyeing the bottle and glass in his hands. _Why so eager, son? I thought_ I _was the lush_...? Then he got it. His hand tightened on the bottle neck as he poured.... _I’ve got my hands full_, he’d said.

“Yeah,” he said out loud. He handed the glass back, and poured himself one. “Yeah. Well--luck.”

* * * * *

“... _really_ a pleasure. It’s a lovely place....”

_Too smooth, too polite._ Whatever he come for, he didn’t find, Lisa thought. She was sorry.

“Too lovely, maybe,” she said suddenly. “I think sometimes we forget we’re still part of the human race.”

Shock raced around the room, bouncing off each of them to boomerang on the others.

Johnny’s grin was a social grimace. “Her trouble is just not having things tough enough,” he said. “When we were still putting the place together, she didn’t have a gripe in her. Now I think she’d be jealous of the dishwasher.”

_Laugh_, she told herself. _Go ahead. The man made a funny._ Chris was laughing: a polite laugh, too. Surely she ought to do as much.

“Frankly, I think it would get _me_ that way,” Chris said. “You know, this is the only place I’ve ever been on Earth that has all the comforts of home. And right now, I’d give anything to have, say, a week, with nothing to do in a joint like this--Just lie around in the sun and listen to music and boss the servos around. But I’d bet I’d be half-nuts in three days--” He stopped short. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean....”

“Well, why don’t you stick around...?”

“We keep talking about taking a camping....”

They broke in at once, both broke off at once, and for some reason the tension was gone.

“Well, any time you think you can stand a day or two of it,” Johnny said, “just give us a couple days’ notice....”

It wasn’t what you’d call wild enthusiasm; but for Johnny, it was an effusion.

“Thanks,” Chris said, and meant it. He _did_ understand. “I’ll take you up on that one of these days. Right now--Look, how about turning that around? It wouldn’t be as uncomfortable as camping out, I’m afraid, but at least it’s _different_. Changed a lot since your time, too, Johnny--You ever been up, Lee?”

She shook her head. She could feel the pinkness of her cheeks, and her own quickened breathing. She tried to see Johnny’s face, but he moved back a step into the shadow. She couldn’t even tell if her own feeling was more excitement or apprehension.

“We’ll think it over,” Johnny said. “Might be an idea.” His tone was completely flat.

“You understand,” Chris said, “This has nothing to do with what we discussed? I’m talking about just a visit.”

“Carfare’s pretty high, isn’t it?”

“It’s on the company. The boss has some privileges.”

“Well, we’ll think it over.” And this time, she thought, he really _meant_ it. He _would_ think about it.

_What did Chris say to him? What did it?_

* * * * *

They stood outside together, and watched the heli lift. Johnny switched off the landing lights, and the Moon jumped out of the background and hung like a lantern right over the patio wall.

Lisa stared up with a new fascination. After a while she became aware of Johnny’s eyes watching her, with mixed amusement and tenderness.

She moved closer to him. And broke the spell. “Nice to see Chris,” he said abstractedly. “Maybe we ought to take him up on that some time--if you want to, I mean. But I--well, Hell, I wish he’d picked some other time to come. I was only half here tonight. Look, babe, you mind if I sit up some? Got a little work I’ve been thinking about--design stuff. I was working on while you were in town today.”

_Mind?_ “Go ahead,” she said, and made a face at him. “At least I’ll be able to finish that book of mine without giving you bad dreams.”

_Mind?_ She watched him till he disappeared through the kitchen door, reading the angularity of his shoulders, the swinging of his hands, the forward thrust of his head, and delighting in what she read. _We should see more people_, she thought. But Chris was special.

She got ready for bed slowly, and lay there a long time, with the book open in front of her, but not really reading. _What a day!_ The dance session--Kutler--Christensen--and maybe even a trip to the Moon! And on top of it all, Johnny working again.

After a while, a sentence caught her attention, and she began reading. It was after two when she finished the book, and turned out the light. She fell asleep almost instantly, and dreamed of cute little fat viruses, teaching her telepathy, so that she didn’t have to wait for her baby to talk before she could communicate with it.

Her baby....

_Dollars Dome--10:30_ P.M. _(C.S.T.)_

Her name was Rita. She stood immobile behind the high counter, head bent in a posture of reverie--almost of prayer--to the microscope eyepiece.

His name was Thad. He was holding two culture plates which he had just carried up from the Mars lab. He intended to set the plates down on a rack at the end of the room. But when he saw her, he stopped.

Her new lab coat was spotless white, and she had pinned a stiff white square of cloth around her head to cover her hair. The way she stood, only the shoulders and collar of her coat showed; the folds of the headcloth draped so that the coat and cloth framed her face with the suggestion of a robed and cowled young nun.

She was not pretty. But the serenity of her fresh-skinned cheek, emphasized by the furrows of concentration on her brow, gave her so much the look of the eternal virgin that he could not, at first, do anything but stand and stare.

He had seen her before, of course: in the cafeteria, several times; on the Mall; at a party the week before; in the projection room, yesterday. It was a month, at least, since she came up. They had been introduced at the party, and again yesterday, watching some films. He could not have seen her less than fifteen-twenty times, altogether. And each time he had noted, without interest, only that she was new, quiet, plain-looking; and of course goggle-eyed and stumble-footed, like all newcomers.

Now he wondered how he could possibly have thought her _plain_; or why, when they met, he had registered only her name, Rita Donovan, and her background--a _summa cum_ type from Johns Hopkins. He had not been concerned enough to learn if she were married or single, or otherwise unattached.

It might have been half a minute that he stood watching her. Then he walked on and set his culture plates down. Neither his stillness nor his action penetrated the distant focus of her concentration. He walked around back of her counter, and noticed she had damn good legs, too.

“Something good?” he asked.

She started, and looked up.

“_Good?_” She laughed. “Every time I see these things--They’re just _fantastic_!”

“Right out of this world,” he reminded her, smiling.

“Oh, of course.” She flushed faintly and her laugh held a note of embarrassment. “I guess I’ll get used to it too. Some day. But--”

“Not very damn likely you won’t, if you’re working up here,” he said. “Not at the rate _these_ babies are going. We get to where it all seems almost normal, downstairs--every once in a while, that is. Then somebody comes up with something like Hendrickson’s idea on controlled evolution, and you know you haven’t even scratched the surface yet!”

“Have you seen his films?” she asked eagerly.

“Not the whole thing. I caught part of the run this morning. They’re showing ’em again at sixteen hundred.” He glanced at the big wall chrono, pleasurably aware that until his eyes moved, the pink lingering in her cheeks had been, in part at least, a (pleased?) response to the way he was looking at her. (Yes, pleased, he was sure, when he looked back.) There was an hour to kill before the showing. “Got anything cooking you have to stick with?” he asked. “We’d have just about time for some coffee before they start.”

She looked around carefully, checking. “I guess nothing special....” Her hesitation was _not_ about leaving the lab; he was sure of it.

“I’ll help you check out the cameras,” he said, and headed for the far end, brushing her arm as he passed. The intensity of joint awareness startled--almost stopped--him. He debated suggesting his room for the coffee: but only an hour....

“Why don’t we go up to my place for coffee?” _she_ said. The words broke the bubble of tension surrounding the touch.

He grinned. “I’m with you,” he said fervently.

“What’s Hendrickson getting at anyhow?” she asked. “I didn’t hear him the other night, but the way it looked in the _Abstracts_, he’s hypothesizing what amounts to _intelligent_ choice when he says ‘controlled.’ Did you hear his talk?”

“I missed it too. There’s so damn _much_ all the time, you never know which one to go to. But I got hold of him last night, and he won’t put it that way of course, but it seemed to me that’s how it added up.”

They left the building and went outside into the bright glow of “afternoon sunlight,” diffused from the dometop lights during the lunar night.

“But that means you also have to accept the idea of--I mean, what does the _deciding_?”

“Well, I guess that’s why he won’t use the word, ‘intelligence.’ He keeps saying his theory is purely pragmatic--a description of behavior, he says, not an explanation. So you can’t pin him down.” The most fantastic thing of all, he thought contentedly, more startlingly even than the stuff you worked on up here were the people you worked _with_. She had taken off the white kerchief, and out in the “sunlight,” her hair shone a rich reddish brown and her face glowed with something quite other than the austere intensity in the lab.

They entered the dorm building, and she started up the stairs. “Wait a minute!” he said. “Anyone showed you the _right_ way to go upstairs here yet?”

She laughed. “You mean ‘giant steps’?”

“Yup. Race?”

“You’re on.” They both knelt to remove their shoes. “Three flights,” she said, and they set off together, bounding up four, five, six steps at a time under the light gravity of the Moon.

_Rockland--2_ A.M. _(E.D.S.T.)_

Across the patio, a glow of light from the opaqued bedroom wall showed him Lisa was still up. He thought about that, and decided against it. Too much of that. Too much liquor; too much Lisa. Too much mash, too much mush. Half the drink was still in the glass. He stepped outside, and slowly, carefully, quietly, let it trickle over the edge of the tilted glass, till it was all gone, back to the soil. _Asses to ashes and alcohol to earth._ He lit a cigarette, and looked up again at the looming deceitful lure of the Moon. He wasn’t going there. He wasn’t going. _Anywhere._ He’d done all his going. And all his coming. Yeah. Too much.

He looked at the drawing board. The design that had seemed so good, so _right_ in the afternoon now looked dead and clumsy. Hell with it. Hell with--Damn him! _Damn him!_ Coming in here with his talk and his problems and his five-year-old daydreams, throwing everything out of whack. Tilting the machine.... Great big blond baby who didn’t know it was too big to be out there. Nice safe little Moon base.

Hell, the Moon was part of Earth, didn’t they know that? Took all the know-how they had to make out even there....

... And they wanted to go to Mars! All the big babies, like Chris, out of the yard for the first time.... Stand on the curb screaming blue murder to get across the street.

Well he’d been across the street. And back. Back for good. If they wouldn’t listen to him, that was their tough luck.

What he needed was a drink.

He went back and filled his glass. The bedroom light was out. Good. For once, there was nobody watching, waiting, listening, to see what he’d do. Nobody...? He walked through the living room and pushed the door open, suddenly, silently. She was asleep, sound asleep, sprawled on the bed like a kid. She was smiling a little bit. She was beautiful. He closed the door just as softly, and padded back to his work room.

_Work_ room! That was a laugh. He laughed. _Haw, haw!_ The sound came out, too loud and not funny.

What does Johnny Wendt want with a work room? Used to work. Don’t got to work now.

_What for?_

Money? Smile once for a whiskey ad. That’s money. Science? That was a laugh, too, but he didn’t try it this time. Science is a big blond bastard, fixing it for everybody to go the way Doug went.

_Which way? Which way did you go, Doug?_

_Doug, for krissake, where are you?_

_Come back, Doug._

_Doug, migod!_ And you stand on the dry dust with your suit all around you to keep you safe in the thin air, and miles away, whichever way you look, is nothing, nothing at all.

Better have another drink. Put the bottle down, now. Careful. Might spill.