PART FIVE
_August 24, 1977_
_Dollars Dome--6_ P.M. (_C.S.T._)
They had buckled her into the comfortable safeness of the couch, and she had swallowed a pill, and then vaguely felt the faint prick in her arm.
There had been dreams and dreamy times and maybe-dreams which were hard to sort out, but as she came more awake, she decided the truly-half-awake times had been only the ones where she swallowed what someone told her to, and float-walked to the toilet and back again.
She was very hungry. Somebody came and unstrapped her arms, and left her to free herself after that from the rest of the fastenings. She sat up stiffly, stood up on prickling feet, and stepped into the corridor. A whitecoated young man looked horrified, came running at her.
“Sorry, Miss, I didn’t think you’d be up so quick.”
Vaguely, she recognized him--or his jacket?--as the one who’d unfastened her. Then, with a rush of clarity, she saw it was Johnny he’d been standing with down the corridor. She stepped forward and whitejacket caught her arm.
“Steady--”
“I’m all right.” She took another step, and the prickling began to ease. Johnny didn’t look any better than she felt.
“Home was never like this,” she muttered.
“Huh? Feeling rocky, babe?” His face was gray but he was a lot steadier on his feet. “Takes getting used to,” he said, but he didn’t sound as if it made much difference. He wasn’t even looking at her. He kept staring at the couch behind him.
She stood still. _Getting my Moon legs_, she thought nervously, and wished the damn whitejacket character would go away, or Johnny would kiss her, or preferably both.
“Hello?” she said, smallvoiced, and put her hand on his arm.
“Hi, babe.” He turned and really looked at her this time, and closed his other hand over hers. “Better yet? I was just looking at this setup--didn’t get a chance when we boarded. It’s changed some since--They’ve improved it a lot, but it seems to me there should be something better than all this belt-and-buckle junk. There must be some kind of synthetic fabric that would do the job,” he said thoughtfully. “See, if you had--”
_If I had half a brain_, she thought, turning the mounting irritation back on herself, _I’d have stopped to think_ I’m _not the one who needs coddling this time!_
“--made up into a net--soft enough for comfort, but rigid--”
He was keeping his brain busy. _Fine. But what happens next?_
“--enough to hold shape on a frame, you could work the whole thing with a pushbutton--”
The whitejacket type looked as impatient as she felt.
“--Give it a kind of dead man’s brake,” Johnny rattled on, impervious, “so it won’t work during blast--”
Whitejacket gave her a pleading look. She took a deep breath. “Hey,” she said. “Mister! You know which way to the Dome? I’m a stranger here myself--”
He grinned, shook his head as if to wake himself up. “Sure. Right down this aisle, lady. Step right through the double doorway to your right ... ea-ea-ea-zee does it. You are now breathing the fresh pure air of Kansas City, imported direct to the Moon for the benefit of Dr. Christensen’s walking talking researching exiles. Siberia was never like this either. Well, how do you like it?”
_I don’t know_, she thought. _I’m too busy liking you._ She made herself stand still, not look around. If she looked, if she seemed to notice anything different, it would go away. _Oh, Johnny!_ she thought, remembering suddenly, sharply, the man who had gone to Mars.
_But he’s still that way, lots of times_, she defended automatically, even to herself; and told herself right back, _Sure he is--on Earth!_ But they weren’t on Earth: they were on the Moon, and Johnny hadn’t even been able to listen to _talk_ about space for a year and a half now without flipping his lid....
_Never mind_, she stopped herself. She didn’t have to understand it; she could just be grateful for it.
“All right, snotty, _be_ blasé,” she said aloud. “Me, I’m a greenhorn. I’m impressed.” And she was, too. Startling, how anything could be so much like what you expected, but so much--what--so much more _real_. Like seeing art-book reproductions of Degas’ dancers, and suddenly finding yourself in front of a full-scale canvas, alive with the breath and brush of the artist. And even now, all she was seeing was through the protective refraction of the great air dome. She wondered if visitors could ever get outside....
“Hey, babe, stop staring and come say hello to the nice man.”
She turned and smiled at Chris, with what she meant to be only a sideways glance at Johnny. His face was open and relaxed and easy ... a face she remembered from long long ago, and saw now only for fleeting moments in great privacy and dim light. But even while she watched, it disappeared under the familiar mask.
“You’ll have to excuse the lady,” he was saying to Chris. “It’s her first experience as visiting firelady off the planet of her birth, and....”
“I’m just Moon-struck,” she broke in. “Hello, Chris. I ... it ... well, _thanks_ for asking us.”
“Believe me, it’s a pleasure to see you.” He reached out a big hand, and took hers in it, then released her to shake hands with Johnny. “Having any trouble walking? Good. Those shoe plates are supposed to make just enough difference, but gravity and magnetism aren’t exactly the same. Some people have trouble at first. Come on. Got some chow waiting for you. Even the Moon has traditions. Banquet in the dining room every time a ship comes in.”
They were walking across a curious concrete flooring, flecked with sparkling bits of silvery stuff, away from the dome and wall, the great air-lock “gate” through which they had entered, leaving the two tall ships and the Moon-vista behind them as they approached the center of the base.
The shiny bits in the floor must be the magnetizing element, she decided, and became pleasantly aware of the difference Chris had mentioned. She felt light, buoyant, fluidly effortless in all her movements--but still her feet behaved as they were accustomed to behaving under normal gravity.
“I guess the people who feel uncomfortable walking must be the ones with feet out of proportion to their bodies,” she said thoughtfully, remembering how the plates had been carefully trimmed to size and attached to her shoes at the spaceport on Earth. “I mean, if your feet were a little small, the surface wouldn’t give you quite as much attraction as you needed to make it feel the same...?”
Chris nodded. “We have special plates made up with thicker soles for overweight people, if they’re staying on. Although, once you get used to the idea, it’s kind of fun not to use them at all.” He smiled. “You see what kind of solitary pleasures a man is reduced to in a setup like this? But I can’t very well go floating around the place where the hired hands can see me, so I only do it when I’m alone in the executive suite,” he added, to Johnny, and went on: “Listen, if you folks would rather skip the love-feast today, we can have something sent up to my place. Whatever you’d rather--?”
“Makes no difference,” Johnny said curtly. “Whatever you want. They’ll be expecting you, won’t they?”
She heard the tightness in his voice, shot a quick unnecessary look at his face, and did her duty: “Frankly, I _would_ appreciate it if it’s not too much trouble,” she lied. “I’m ... kind of dazed.” _That_ was no lie.
“Sure thing. Wait here a minute, will you?” Chris stepped off more briskly in the direction they had been going, caught up with a group a little way ahead, and spoke quickly to a tall gangling redhead in shorts and a violent patterned shirt. The redhead glanced back at them, nodded, and rejoined his group. Chris came back, smiling, and they turned off the wide main “street,” down a side corridor, heading “out” again now, toward a different part of the dome wall. A little later they turned again, and lost sight of the outside, walking up a ramp that led to another corridor, this one lined with doors. Chris paused in front of the last door along the row, and pushed it open.
Lisa took one step inside and gasped. Her first impressions of the room itself were vague. That didn’t matter. She was facing a full wall section of the dome. From floor to ceiling, and perhaps eighteen feet along the side, the clear plastic brought the incredible outside right in with them.
She heard Chris laugh, and Johnny said, “Hey, babe, you’re obstructing traffic.” She stepped forward to let them in, but never moved her eyes. The only thing she thought about at all in that brief time of pure perception was to wish that Chris would go away, so she could know if Johnny was sharing her delight. Then Chris went away.
“’Scuse me. Check messages ’noffice,” he said. Or something like that. He vanished through a side door, and she took her eyes off the outside long enough to look to Johnny and reach out her hand. He stepped closer, took her hand in his own, and stood next to her, seeing it with her--but just for an instant; then he stepped away.
Awareness of his movements around the room intruded gradually on her preoccupation. She turned, and found him studying the titles in a bookshelf; looked around herself, and took in a low couch, table, comfortable looking sling chair. Another table, writing height, in the far side of the room, with a straight chair in front of it. Everything else was built in: shelves, drawers, cupboards.
No pictures. She was beginning to approve of Pete Christensen. Anyone who’d hang a picture on a wall in the same room with what she’d just been looking at....
Dinner was the biggest surprise yet, because it was so normal--normal for Earthside luxury, that is. It arrived, scant minutes after Chris had mixed and served cocktails, on a hotel-type wheeled table, which came up in a sort of oversized dumbwaiter. On a plastic cloth, plastic dishes and earthenware containers held what was literally the banquet Chris had promised: appetizer to mints, with all stops in between, and roast beef featured in the middle. _Plus_ a wine she could not identify, but found delightful.
“Our own brand,” Chris chuckled. “So was the ‘gin.’ For that matter, damn near everything on the table is. I’m not sure offhand whether the dishes were made here or not, but the ceramic stuff was. And the plastic cloth. _And_ the roast beef.”
She had known about the hydroponics farm, and there was really nothing startling, if you thought about it, at the idea that where man can grow starch, he can, and will, also distill spirits. “Which tank do you grow your beef in?” She asked skeptically.
“No tank,” he said, beaming. “That pink slice represents one of our biggest scores to date, gal. Experiment in transporting animals _in utero_. First viable one we got was a pig--wouldn’t you know it? But we have practically a complete livestock farm here now, and we’ve got the process down to where we--” He stopped, as if checking himself, and then finished smoothly. “--we think we can pack up any kind of stock a space traveler orders and ship it to him--anywhere, any time. Not bad, hey? We’re fooling around with deepfreeze now--the embryos, I mean. No luck so far, but--?”
His shrug, Lee thought, was magnificently eloquent: all around her, in front of her, even being ingested inside her, was evidence of the stubborn, determined, bull-headed damn dumb optimism of that shrug. Pete Christensen had _made_ this station--fought for it, worked at it, schemed on its behalf--_made_ it almost as literally as though he’d built it with his hands, unaided.
“You still headin’ for the wild blue yonder, man?”
_Johnny._ Lisa looked once at his tight sardonic withdrawal and thought with a shiver:
_He made_ that, _too_.
_Dollars Dome--7:30_ P.M. (_C.S.T._)
_Half an hour_, Phil thought. He’d give it another half hour, then he’d have to go up.
“You get so it seems normal,” he said in answer to the comment from one of the three new all-alike young biochemists. _How do they turn ’em out so same-all-over?_ Once upon a time, scientists at least had been odd ducks, individualists--Okay, escapists; but _individuals_. Now...? “It’s morning now, Moonwise. Just dawned yesterday. But at Moon-night, all the difference is the blinds are down--that’s the effect. The dome lights actually give you the same color and quality of light. You just can’t see out, very far. You have to make your own day-and-night for living purposes. That’s one of the tests you’ll be getting this week. Find out what kind of routine or schedule looks best for each one of you, and after a while ‘night’ is the time you go to your room to sleep.” _You’ll get used to it before_ I _will, I bet_, he thought, amused at the knowledgeable confidence he managed to convey.
_Half an hour, at the most._ God only knows which bit of fur Chris was rubbing backwards now. _Or which way Lightning Boy will strike when ole Doc Kutler shows! Well, might as well live dangerously--if there was no safe way to do the job._...
He confirmed the opinion of another of the triplet fledglings that the day-night bit might be behind some of the psychogenic systemic malfunctions he’d been warned about.
“Damnedest industrial hazards popping up these days,” the third one said. “Used to be in our line all you worried about was catching malaria or getting too much roentgen. Now you sign a release about asthma and psychosomatic hypertension before they’ll hire you.”
“Well, that’s really my job here,” Phil said. “I’m the chief headshrinker in charge of eustachian tubes. The day-night thing makes trouble, but nothing like what that inner ear of yours will try to do. Not to mention all the things your involuntary reflex system has to learn all over, and--”
“You know, I never thought of just how _many_ things low gravity and rhythm disruption could do to a man!” Biochem No. 1 broke in, “Man, _that_ could be fascinating!”
_Well, all right._ Phil started to feel better. At least one out of three was not Cool Cat straight to the core. The lad had spoken out of turn, and out of character. Phil made a mental approving note and fixed the still-nameless face in his mind. Then he stood up.
“I’m going to have to run out on you for a while,” he apologized. “Boss-man has super-visitors upstairs.” No. 1 grinned; the others looked politely baffled. _Carrera_--that was his name.
“Scuttlebutt around St. Thom wasn’t so far off, I guess,” No. 2 said to No. 3.
“Everyone was saying _Johnny Wendt_ would be on board,” No. 3 explained. “Who is it anyhow? Or do we get Classified Personnel up here?”
_Johnny Wendt._ In emphasis. Even from this jerk....
“Everyone was right,” Phil said flatly. “He’s up with Dr. Christensen now.”
“Oh?”
“Dammit!” said No. 2. “I _know_ I’d have recognized him. I’ll swear he wasn’t on the Messenger.”
Phil shrugged. “Maybe they have private luxury compartments?” he said with a suggestion of a leer. “He brought Lisa Trovi with him.” And turned and went, knowing he had penetrated the professional boredom of No.’s 1 and 2.
_Johnny Wendt!_
Maybe the boys back at the table were more jazzed up about Lee being there--but they didn’t say her name in caps or italics. Well, he thought, it was nice to know you weren’t the _only_ sucker in town. And Christensen’s bulldoggish efforts for the first time to get Wendt’s name back on the rolls made full _objective_ sense to Phil.
He tossed a mental apology at Chris. Amendment, rather. He’d actually begun to think the director _cared_ about Wendt.
Or maybe he did; it wouldn’t matter, _if_ he did. He didn’t care enough about _himself_ to make a centimeter’s difference if the blueprint was the plan for space. Whether he cared or not, he _needed_ Wendt.
Phil started up the stairs to see the immovable object visiting the irresistible force.
Plus, of course, Lisa.
_Dollars Dome--8_ P.M. (_C.S.T._)
The big wheel drifted in a sunlit void. Cargo ships snuggled cozily into the vast hub hold. Tiny toy-robots and toy-men who looked, in outspace gear, more like the robots than the robots did, clung to the outer shell, making their way in spiralling circuits around the great rim and the hub, checking, repairing, resealing the scars of cosmic dust and ultra-high-velocity pinpoint pebbles.
Inside the ion tubes, geiger-suited crews cleaned and inspected. Fuel shuttles took their turns at the maw of the tanks. In the rim living quarters, crew couches were stripped and sprayed, deodorized, sanitized, and u-vee’d, covered with fresh plastic sheets. A team of two went through inspecting straps and webbing, and buckles.
All the routine of the _Messenger’s_ two-day Moonside orbit went on as it always did. Shuttles came and went from and to the three domes. And as routinely as all the rest, magnetic tweezers plucked a thin strip of microfilm from a minute wall hole; a piece of candy offered and accepted was sucked till the candycoat came off the hard center--a pellet precisely shaped and sized to tonguing into the cavity of a false tooth; two men conversed about supplies and schedules, talking fluently meanwhile with their hands.
The shuttles went in and out, and before most of the residents of Dollars Dome knew who their guests were--or that they _had_ special guests--the top man in every national delegation at World Dome, plus Dr. Chen and his aides in Plato Crater, knew that _John Wendt_ had come back.
They also knew that Wendt had refused to go back into space since his first return from Mars--or that that was what the American government _said_. Now he was brought up, with absolute secrecy--kept in his bunk the whole way--as a prisoner? or for Security reasons? by choice? _why?_--and that a “woman friend” had accompanied him: presumably the American tri-di dancer, Trovi.
_Why?_
In at least sixteen different rooms in the three man-made Moon oases, men sat silently asking themselves the same questions, or conferring worriedly with other men about it.
In Dollars Dome, the word gradually spread too. And in Dr. Peter Andrew Christensen’s living room, Trovi and Wendt sat sipping wine and coffee, while the Director made small talk and speculated about those sixteen--or more--rooms, and what was going on inside them all.
* * * * *
“... still headin’ into the wild blue yonder?” It didn’t come out light, the way he’d meant it to. He avoided Lee’s quick look.
“You seen any leopards change spots lately, John?” The bastard laughed as if the joke was on himself. Sure.
_Yeah. This cat over here, man. Flyin’ tiger turned to pussy-cat. Yeh-man!_
The self-made leopard looked like licking cream, rambling on to Lisa about food again. “Food gets ridiculously important to us here,” he said. “But the psych boys had that taped ahead of time. Found it in the World War Two, with the sub service, and then they doubled it in spades on the nuclear jobs. I guess they figure all of us for--what do they call it?--oral regressives--anybody who’ll get into this kind of spot at all. Anyhow, that’s one thing I never had to fight for. Johnny can tell you, even at the beginning, before we really had the farm going, we used to get beef and turkey sent up, even when there was no shipping space for lab supplies! Lord, how that used to gripe me!” He stopped a minute, to empty his wine glass. “Coffee?”
“Let me do it,” Lee said.
_Busy little bee, ain’t you just, baby?_
“Of course that was before we had the Messenger,” Chris was going again. “Every ounce counted, ten times over then.”
“Yeah,” Johnny heard himself saying, his voice coming from somewhere outside his volition, but inside himself: “We had pretty good chow on. The. _Colombo._ Too.” That was how it came out. But how was unimportant. From where? _Why?_
He tried to remember when he had last so much as completed a conscious _thought_ about that travesty--let alone said a word about it--Except _No_ or _Go to Hell_! Or like that. He tried to see Lee’s face without her noticing. Tried to find something else to say, while they sat waiting. Tried to think of some way for them to be on the shuttle tomorrow when it took off again.
_Eight_ days, he thought. Eight whole long twenty-four-hours-to-the-each old-fashioned Earth-type days. _My God!_
It had been a mistake to come. But he’d known that. _Old Johnny-can’t-turn-down-a-dare_, he thought, with small amusement.
That wasn’t quite right, either. It took _three_ dares: Chris; then Lisa; then that damfool McLafferty with his idiot committees. Good ole Solidarity Wendt, all-out for ole buddy Chris. Yeah.
There was a little wine still in the bottle. He picked it up. “Lee?”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’m on coffee now.”
“Chris?”
“Just a drop--no, never mind,” Chris said. “I’ve got some brandy someplace around--” But he made no move to get it. “I’ve got to get some work done tonight yet. Always busy as hell around here when the Messenger’s up,” he added, to Lee.
“How long does she stay in orbit?” Johnny asked, hoping it sounded idle.
“Two days. Starts back Friday morning, but for our purposes, it’s Thursday night. Anything out of here has to get off the ground by ten tomorrow at the latest, to make orbit. Then she’s back by next Wednesday. One thing, at least, you don’t have to worry about late trains when they run on orbit!”
_And when did I hear that joke the first time?_ Johnny thought, while Lisa gave her nicest duty-laugh. _This party’s sure getting dead_, he thought. _And guess who killed it? Hell!_
_Eight days. Okay._
_Eight days?_
He finished the wine.
* * * * *
“By the way,” Chris said, leaning back, “I’ve been catching up on that ESP stuff since I saw you that time, Lee. You know, I used to fool around with it quite a bit back in school--the Rhine cards and all that. But I lost touch.”
“Decided you couldn’t push rockets with wishes?” Johnny bit in.
“That’s about it,” said Chris equably. “Now I think maybe I should have stood with it. I’m sure as hell not pushing ’em any _other_ way.”
“If spaceships were wishes,” Johnny said, and stood up. “It’s in there, isn’t it?” He pointed to the bedroom door.
“Huh?” Chris double-took. “Oh, yeah, right through the bedroom.”
“Excuse me.” He went out and left the other two in brief uncomfortable silence.
“You know,” Chris said after a moment. “Telepathy would be damn useful sometimes, when you think of it.”
“It’s okay, Chris.” Lee smiled, with obvious effort, and stood up. No matter where she sat or what she did, her eyes kept turning back to the stark lithographic contrasts of the weird lunar landscape on the other side of the curved wall. “It’s--”
... _a lot better than I was afraid of_.... Well, you didn’t say a thing like that: not even to a beaming-father-type like Chris. _He’s not married_, she realized suddenly. That was too bad; he was a man who ought to have children. _Children!_
The landscape blurred, and she blinked hard and fast.
“... matter of fact,” he was saying, “Your man Potter seems to be getting a lot of respect. Maybe we _will_ push ships with PK someday, if he’s right. Telepathy would be a lot more help just now, though--I’d give a pretty to know what they’re up to at Red Dome, and Intelligence doesn’t come up with much. His idea on telepathy is that it amounts to a semantic translation of a total set of somatic conditions, right?”
“That’s how I get it.” Outside, a shimmering blue-tailed beetle skimmed in a long parabola through the sky. Somebody’s shuttle-ship. _That’s how we looked, coming in!_ “Doesn’t sound too likely, though--I mean, how many people would get the right message ever, if it depended first on one of them being able to--well, _project_ his own nerve and muscle sets to another, and then the other one having the right frame of reference, semantically, to ‘read’ the somatic set? Like, it won’t do us any good when we meet up with Jovians or the bug-eyed types from Arcturus Three, will it?” _Keep it light_, that’s all. _Just keep it light._
“Oh, I’m willing to let the Arcturians wait,” he laughed. “I just want to know what the boys in Red Dome are dreaming up. Now if you just fill me in on how to make your muscles feel like my muscles--come to think of it, that’s up Kutler’s alley, isn’t it? Wonder if he’s up on this at all?”
“Talking dirty again?” Johnny stood in the bedroom doorway looking from her to Chris to her. “Kindly keep y’all’s muscles in different parts of the room,” he said, with a grin that was not a grin at all. “Or,” he went on, facing Chris, still with the smile that made the words an official joke, “you will start feeling _my_ muscles.”
_Oh, Lord! Stop it, Johnny!_ please _stop_!
“How in hell did you two get around to the Phys Ed department?” he went on. “I thought I left you up on thought-steam rocket ships?”
“Too rarefied,” Chris said. “They forgot to think us up some atmosphere.”
“Oh? Oh, yes, when did Young Doctor Kutler join the party?”
“Well, he hasn’t yet. Matter of fact, I thought he’d be up here by now. He took over as official greeter for me with the new people who came up with you.”
“You mean,” Johnny said slowly, “Kutler is up here too?”
“Sure. Didn’t you know? Lee, _you_ knew...?”
_Yes. Yes, I did._ “Hmmm?” She made a great thing out of tearing herself from the view. “Oh, is he here _now_? I knew he _had_ been up, but--?”
Chris swallowed it. Not Johnny. Damn him, damn his eyes! He had no right to know so much about her and so stupid-silly little about _him_.
“Sure, he’s on the payroll now. First time I ever did anything the Security boys loved me for. We’ve had this problem of sending people on leave one month out of every four. Plays hell with our schedules and personnel problem, which didn’t bother them downstairs--but when they started tightening up on Security, they got _damn_ bothered about all these classified project people being Earthside on their own so much. But if they stay up here, without that relief, they don’t last a year, most of ’em. Every psychogenic trouble in the books--plus some Phil can write his own book about it when he’s done. They--there he is. Come in. Hi--we were talking about you.”
Phil came in, smiled quietly, nodded to Lisa, and crossed to where Johnny stood, hand held out.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said.
“Is it?”
Phil dropped the hand Johnny had ignored.
She knew exactly what would happen next, and could not even start to think how to avoid it. She was appalled, but in a way almost relieved, to find she was not even going to _try_.
The two men stood two feet apart, face to face, for a hovering moment. Then Phil turned, with a faint shrug. “How do you pick these guys you hire, Chris? I swear, when you talk to a bunch of them, you’d think they were all manufactured in the same--”
“_I_ hire?” Christensen started. “Hell of a lot _I_ have to do with....”
“I asked you something, Doc,” Johnny said at the same time, and reached out and put his hand on Kutler’s shoulder, turning him back. “Are you so damn sure it’s so good to see me?”
Kutler shook his shoulder sharply; Johnny’s grip tightened.
Lisa stood watching.
“For krissake, Wendt!” Chris stepped forward. “What did _he_ do?”
“Nothing,” Johnny said through almost clenched teeth. “Not a goddam thing!” He didn’t look at Chris; just at Phil. He dropped his hand. Neither one moved.
“So _you’re_ the bright boy who’s been making plans?” Johnny laughed, a short ugly bark. “I should of known. Okay, boy, here I am. Still in my head, more or less. You proved your point. Lightning didn’t strike. I made the trip, and so what? What’s next on your list of magic tricks?”
“Oh, Christ, Wendt, forget it, will you?” Kutler said. “I didn’t ask to get you here. I only work here.” He turned to Chris. “I’ll see you later, I guess?” He turned to Lee. “I’m sorry.”
That was the cue, of course. Johnny took two steps forward and his arm drew back. “Leave. Her. Out. Of. It,” he said. “You. Son. Of. A. Bitch.”
For one quick instant, the script almost went through to the end. Something exploded in Phil Kutler’s eyes that Lisa had known must be in the man--because he _was_ a man--but had never seen or heard in any way. Then the doctor reached out again and drew back the male response.
“Okay,” he told Johnny mildly. “Have it _your_ way.” He turned and left.
The silence he left was like the death of sound after a thunderclap. Johnny stood tense, his arm still half-set for a blow, until the door closed. Then he dropped into the nearest chair, went loose all over, and looked down at the floor.
“I guess I figured things a little wrong, Chris,” he said tiredly. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry as all hell.” After a moment he looked up at Lisa, and then away. He said nothing to her. Dimly she knew that--for the first time?--maybe not?--she had had nothing to offer him.
_Damn it, oh damn, damn, damn, oh damn it all!_
“Maybe it would be better if we went back down this trip,” Johnny said, still to the floor.
“I’ll see if I can work it,” Chris said. Something in his voice made her look closer. It was incredible, but it was true: Chris wasn’t angry; not even disappointed, specially; he just knew it was no good. Maybe he also knew it hurt Johnny even more than it did him to know it; but he no longer cared. It wouldn’t work: that finished it. He went to the cabinet, set a full bottle of Earthside brandy on the table, and two glasses.
“Why don’t you two take this along to your place?” he said, casually as though nothing had ended, nothing had even begun. “I’ll see what I can do about shifting some schedules. We might have to try and get you onto a UN ship, okay?”
Johnny nodded. “Thanks.” He stood up, started to pass the bottle up, and couldn’t do it. Lee followed. _Damn it_, she thought, _this time he wasn’t even drunk!_
He made up for it. He was drunk _and_ asleep when Chris phoned to the room two hours later. “He’s sleeping,” Lee said softly.
“Oh? Well, listen, we’ve got a problem here. I can get _one_ bunk. _Only_ one. UN ship’s full up, a bunch of VIP’s who won’t wait. And I can’t squeeze out more than one here, this trip.”
She was silent. She looked at the square solid face in the screen, and wished ... well, what was there _to_ wish?
“The only way I could do it, Lee, would be as Priority Emergency, and I think that might make some--well, some unpleasant publicity.”
“It’s all right, Chris,” she said clearly. “Suppose Johnny takes this one, and I’ll go next week, the way we planned.”
“Do you think that’s--a good idea?”
She smiled. Johnny was not going to think it was a good idea at all. “It looks like the only thing we _can_ do, doesn’t it?” Well, Johnny could think what he liked. “I--frankly, I’d just as lief stay the week, if it won’t--Well, you’re the boss. Just, if you think that’s best, it’s perfectly all right with me.”
She waited breathlessly. “Sure,” he said. “I just didn’t think you’d want--I thought you might be uncomfortable staying by yourself.”
“No. I’ll tell Johnny when he wakes up,” she said.
“You send him to me,” Chris said. “I’ll tell him.” She did not contradict.
After she hung up, she went to the outside wall and pulled back the drapes that Johnny had drawn. Light flooded the room. She closed the drapes again, and stood outside them, nose to the window like a kid at a candy store.
Instead of being worried, or upset, or angry, or nervous, or anything she _ought_ to be, she kept looking and wondering if people ever got tired of a scene like that.