PART SIX
_August 25--September 2, 1977_
_Dollars Dome--Thursday, August 25_
“Yeah. Sure. If it’s all right with Lee, it’s okay.” _Sure, what the Hell? Why shouldn’t I leave my girl behind? Give the other boys a chance._... That was idiocy. Or was it? You couldn’t say Chris had failed to _notice_ Lee. _Well, who does? You want a babe nobody else wants, find yourself some old bag. Plenty of girls who’ll be overjoyed to marry the great Wendt._ Plenty of ’em. Sure. For all he knew, this time might have torn it with Lee anyhow. He stood up. “I’ll go see if I can round her up and see what she thinks, okay?”
“Right. See you in half an hour? I’ve got to get the changes cleared through soon as possible.”
“Right.” He went out of Admin and across the mall to the guest residence. The place had changed since--well, sure it had, he was thinking four years back and more. He hadn’t really _seen_ it when he came through on the way back from--
_All right, leave it lay.... Forget it!_
She wasn’t in the room. He found her finally in the dining room, drinking a glass of milk with a tableful of awed young scientists. If he could laugh today, it would be funny--the way their eyes swiveled after her when she got up to come to him. _Plus_ the double-take when the whispered word went round the table about who it was she’d gone to. _The great Wendt!_
Well, the great Wendt was getting sent home for being bad. And he couldn’t have mama’s hand to hold, this trip.
“Chris says he can swing one berth, but that’s all,” he said. “The way I see it, I’m a heel no matter what I do. You rather stay alone till next trip, or what?”
“Well--what do you think?”
“I think--never mind, babe, you don’t _want_ to know that. I guess there’s nothing to do but go along with it? Unless you think you’d be--”
“What?”
“I don’t know. It’s that ole sou’then gennulman training coming out. You know what I mean.”
“_Here?_ Don’t be an idiot, darling. I’ll keep my chastity.”
Damnedest part of it was: she would, too.
“Okay, babe. I’ll go let him know.” But he stayed where he was. “Babe?”
“Hmmm?”
“Hell, I--I’m sorry, that’s all. I don’t know what the Hell...!”
“It’s okay, Johnny. Let it ride, huh?”
“Sure.”
But there was something missing. After he talked to Chris, he wandered out, thinking he’d find her and see if there was anything he could do, in the three hours he had, to help things. Then he knew what he really meant by “help things,” and made sure he _didn’t_ find her.
_She_ wouldn’t stop him. But it wasn’t what she wanted. Or what he had any right to ask.
Be a good thing if she did find someone else, he thought. He swallowed the fury in his throat, and found the bar.
TRIP TO MOON FOR PROCESS SERVER?
DOME DIRECTOR SUBPOENAED
_McLafferty Demands Christensen Testify at Special Hearing For Space Security Next Week_
Mexcity, Aug. 25: Dr. Peter A. Christensen, Director of the All-Americas Laboratory for The Investigation of Extra-Territorial Phenomena, has been summoned to testify at a Special Hearing of the Security Subcommittee of the Joint Congressional Space Affairs Committee (SAC).
The Subcommittee convened in special session yesterday to study evidence previously announced by Chairman Ramon E. McLafferty (I., E. Ch.) as “seriously questioning the efficacy of Space Research Security.” The nature of the evidence has not yet been revealed.
Special Hearings on the matter, which Rep. McLafferty describes as “most urgent,” will commence next week, in advance of the convening of Congress. Dr. Christensen was called upon by the Committee today to appear voluntarily for questioning in regard to Security measures in the Moon Dome.
Queried on the procedure of the Subcommittee if the Moon Research Director should fail to comply with the request for voluntary appearance, Rep. McLafferty said that a subpoena definitely would be issued.
“The Moon Dome is a territorial part of the Americas,” stated the East Chilean Industrialist, who is a candidate for Senator from Chile this fall. “If it is necessary to send a subpoena there,” he told a press conference this morning, “we will do so.” He added that he did not believe Dr. Christensen would fail to comply with the Subcommittee’s request.
_Dollars Dome--Sunday, August 28_
The Biochem labs occupied a complete “building”--a structural unit shaped like a pie-slice with the first forkful already gone--a pumpkin pie, possibly, or any fallen custard filling that would provide for greater height at the outside than in the center. Eight such buildings extended from the central Mall to the crater walls, rising by stepped-back stories till the top two levels in each were single rows of rooms facing the transparent dome wall above the crater. These were, for the most part, living quarters, but in Bio even the top stories were taken over for lab space by now.
Still, there was not room enough in the one building. The “Mars-bugs,” which had occupied perhaps one cubic meter in their sample boxes on the _Colombo_ twenty months earlier had been so carefully, prudently, frequently, and multi-experimentally proliferated in the meantime that a department which had once shared the single building with two other sections had now--and recently, nearly half of the growth having occurred in the past three months--overflowed into corners and corridors all through the Dome.
There was a batch of cultures in Metallurgy being studied for “evolution-mutation” response to various mineral environments. With the assays and testing of (non-self-reproducing) Mars samples long finished in that department, and its original function in connection with rocket construction and propulsion become an economic dodo, the once-proudly _in_organic chemists turned eagerly to working with bugs.
The hydroponics farm had suffered no such financial blight as had Metals and Fuels and other non-maintenance projects; but efficiency in the building known as the Farm had so minimized space requirements during eleven years of steadily increased personnel _and_ improved living standards, that one whole tank room was available--and thus put to use--for “farming” experiments with bugs.
A section of Electronics was currently being cleared and remodeled for the cybernetic approach to a theoretical understanding of “controlled evolution” by construction of analog computers which might “act out” the mathematics that had to date eluded all other efforts at analytical understanding.
As a matter of fact, the bugs had already, in one sense, overflowed the Dome itself. One farm-tank full had been “planted” in an open pavilion outside the walls, roofed against meteors, but incompletely enclosed: “The Shack” was the simplest way to conduct Moon-environment tests.
* * * * *
Lisa followed Thad Bourgnese down ramp after ramp in the Bio building, listening with half an ear as she was trailed through the upper levels where the Earth-normal atmosphere work was done, down to the glassed-off pressurized chambers near the crater floor where experiments were conducted by space-suited scientists in Mars-normal, or at least a half-dozen variant approximations of Mars-normal, atmosphere.
This was the only building she had not previously toured at least superficially; and Thad was seeing to it that her tour here was _not_ superficial at all. But by this time she was chronically half a day behind herself, still absorbing mentally what she had seen in the morning, while she tried to retain what was shown her in the afternoon long enough to digest it that evening.
She hadn’t realized; she hadn’t even _begun_ to realize before she came: she had known everything there was to know about Johnny Wendt--except what mattered.
She knew the public hero, the lover, and the tortured man. From very far and very near, especially from near--from inside-out almost--she knew him better than, perhaps, she knew herself: certainly better than _he_ knew himself. But now, in his absence, she was learning for the first time in concrete specific terms just _who_ Johnny was--what he had done--and _why_ so many people _gave_ a damn.
Nine-tenths of the research inside the Dome was directly connected with what Johnny had brought back from Mars. Half of the total stemmed directly from investigations initiated by either Wendt or Laughlin on Mars, or by Johnny on the trip home.
The popular tag, _astronauts_, was misleadingly limited, and Johnny had never done or said anything to correct the misconception for Lee. The fact was, he and Doug had not been sent just to pilot a ship, collect specimens, and carry them safely home. That job could have been accomplished with robots; the justification for risking human life was the requirement of trained human judgment. The two men had not just picked samples: they had decided _what_ to pick; had run the first tests and experiments on the spot; initiated whole lines of research; and judged on the basis of their findings what was worth carrying home and what was not.
They had worked hard for a year and more on Mars; and harder, perhaps, training for ten long years before. Between them, they had contained a practicing knowledge of the whole spectrum of analytical and investigative sciences. Doug was the “biologist”--which, in that team, meant doctor, farmer, organic chemist, cook, as well as the branches of the life sciences; Johnny was “physicist,” which meant, in particular, the whole range of cybernetics, from its application to neurology and linguistics, to its most abstruse “big-brain” computing techniques. As such, he was pilot and navigator, engineering crew, construction and repair man, inorganic chemist, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineer, nuclear physicist, and mathematician.
It had taken ten years of Academy and post-grad work, and then special training on the Moon, to prepare these two, and a score of others for the complex job. In the end, Johnny and Doug had seemed the best team for the trip.
Lisa had known all this, but known it as one knows, for instance, that the diameter of Earth is 7928 miles; now she was learning it first-hand, as one knows the diameter of a plum is small enough to be held inside one’s hand.
And it was awkward, always, because everyone--bar Chris and Phil--took it for granted that she knew already.
Naturally, Johnny would have told her everything; naturally, she’d have seen the slides and films, read the records, heard the stories over and again.
But--naturally--she knew nothing, except what she had read in public print, heard from Phil Kutler, or pieced together from Johnny’s infrequent, oblique, and most often uncompleted references. If he even owned any slides or pictures, Lisa did not know about it; she finally had to ask to see the stereos of the Martian “city”--the crumbling ruins of whatever civilization had once existed there. Then, when they found out that she really never _had_ seen anything, they brought the whole works out for her: Marscapes and space shots and all the “Mars-bug” micro-shots that were not _too_ classified to show.
And all the time, wherever she went, whatever she did, right outside and visible every time you crossed the mall, was the Beyond, the still-unborn world of the Moon, and Space itself, the stuff of dreams that ruled the whole life of a man like Peter Christensen--that _had_ ruled, guided, channelled Johnny’s life, until--
Till what? Till he went out too far? Till he woke up? Until the big dream turned to a steady nightmare for some reason no one, Phil or Chris, Johnny, or she herself, quite knew.
The strange thing was, the more she learned, the more she understood, about the John Wendt she had never met, the harder it was to think of going home to the sad travesty of the whole man who waited for her back on Earth.
Well, not yet quite on Earth: it was now Sunday afternoon, and he would be en route along the Belt from Perigee--or even spiraling downward in the Earth bird by now. Since Thursday night, he would have been in the same state of drugged calm in which they had both awakened just enough to take nourishment and eliminate wastes, still half-unaware, all the way up.
“Well, that’s about it....”
Lisa pulled herself out of her private world of worry and wonderment, and followed Thad back up the ramps.
“About the only thing you haven’t seen yet is the Shack,” he was saying.
“Shack?”
“Outside,” he explained. “We figured the easiest way to study these babies at Moon conditions was right out there on the Moon. You’ve probably seen the Shack from your window. You’re in North Hall, aren’t you?”
“Yesss ... oh, of course. I thought--” She giggled, realizing for the first time how absurd the immediate assumption had been. “I thought it was some kind of _guard_ house.”
Thad laughed and pushed the lounge room door open for her, leaned past to hold it as she went through. He nodded to two men deep in discussion near the door, waved to a group across the room. It was cheerful and late-afternoon-feeling inside. A handsome red-haired girl detached herself from a knot of white-coated technicians at the tea table and approached them.
“Hi, Ree.” His voice held a special warmth that made Lisa look again, more closely, at the girl. It was astonishing, really, how many of these girl scientists were lovely women as well....
_Well! How quaint! Shades of great-granddad!_ ... but it was true, all the same, she thought stubbornly. You just _didn’t_ see this particular kind of--well, loved-loveliness--in most busy-brain career types on Earth. But here, even the plain ones seemed to have that sort of _glow_....
_So?_ There were at least as many men as women here, she reminded herself--and no fluffy chicks to grab off the men from the brainy types. So why shouldn’t they look loved-and-lovely? They _were_, that’s all. As to wit, Thad’s voice just now....
_Oh, Johnny! Johnny, come back! Wherever you are, all the rest of you, darling--come back!_
The three of them sat together, drinking hot tea and talking: the dance, and biology, McLafferty and psychosomatic cures, the current topics of gossip and news in the Dome--all but one, Lisa thought. None of them mentioned John Wendt.
_He’s down by now, I guess._...
“What time does the rocket get down to Earth usually?” she asked.
“Oh, six, seven, eight, maybe nine--depends on the Belt and ionosphere conditions, mostly.”
She nodded, sipped tea. It was nearly six now; he’d be on Relay, or on the way down. What was he thinking? What had he been thinking...?
Nothing, of course. He’d been asleep all this time. Four days in her life that had simply _not-been_ for him: it was a strange thought, and an unpleasant one.
* * * * *
She was up in her room, just done changing for dinner, when Chris phoned, to tell her he’d received clearance on the Earth landing. “I just wanted to let you know,” he said a bit awkwardly. “Everything’s fine....”
“Johnny--?” She took a firm grip on the words this time: “Johnny was all right? He wasn’t upset, or--anything?”
“He’s fine. Tell you the truth, Lee, I asked for a special call on it. He came out of it fine. Calm. Sent word he’d meet you at Baja next week.”
“Oh thank _God_!”
She had not meant that to be said aloud; she was not even _certain_ that she had. But the words stayed in her brain like a refrain for hours afterward: _thank God, oh, thank God!_
“... told them I’d ask you, and see what you....”
“I’m sorry, Chris. I was wandering. I missed something.”
“The World Dome call.”
“Which World Dome call?”
“You _were_ wandering, gal. I was telling you, I had a call from the UN Dome right after the one from Relay. They heard you were staying on this week, and wanted to know if there was any chance of getting you to give an evening performance before you go?”
“Performance? Here? On the _Moon_?”
“Well, I _said_ I didn’t know--Why not? I should think this place would be a dancer’s dream?”
He was dead right, of course. And she was shocked that in five days here she’d never even _thought_ of the things you could do dancing at one-sixth gravity!
“I’d _love_ to, Chris, but--listen, I’ll try some stuff tonight and see how it goes, okay? Can you let them know tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. It would be all rush-rush, anyhow. Not much difference tonight or tomorrow. You had dinner yet?”
“I was just going. I told Thad I’d eat with him and that lovely girl--Rita?”
“Rita Donovan?”
“That’s right. But if I’m going to practice, I think I’ll eat later. Are you going down now?”
“I suppose so. Why?”
“Well, would you explain to Thad? Or what’s his room? I’ll call--”
“I’ll let him know. Now can _I_ ask a favor?”
“Any time, Chris.” He was such a _nice_ man....
“Frankly, I feel kind of foolish,” he said, with his slow smile, “but Kutler’s been up here sounding off about your dancing, and tell you the truth, I don’t usually take much time for that kind of thing on tri-di. I--”
She let out a peal of delighted laughter. “_Doctor_ Christensen, are you asking for a stage-door pass to watch rehearsal?”
“I guess that’s the size of it.” He actually looked sheepish...!
“Okay, but on one condition--”
“Yes?”
“Where’s the stage?”
He started to answer, and she interrupted. “I didn’t mean _the_ stage. I meant a place for practice. All I need is floor and something to play tapes on. Oh--can I get some stuff from the library now?”
“All the time,” he said. “Like the dining room. Library has to stay open, around here. Everyone’s on such whacky schedules.”
“Well, good, I’ll change and go see what they’ve got. Suppose--how about meeting me there? Then you can show me where to set up shop?”
“Great. Twenty minutes. I’ll see Thad on the way.”
“You’re a doll.” She switched off, humming the tune that had started to run through her head as soon as she thought at all seriously about dancing here. But _how_ could she not have thought of it once all this time?
She shook her head, smiling, still humming, and changed to dance leotards, added a full skirt, and slipped on soft dance shoes.
Before she left the room, she stood for a long moment looking through the dome wall at the brilliant mid-day moonscape outside.
_If I ask to see the Shack, they’ll let me go out_, she thought; and thought, afterwards, it was silly to _want_ to so much. But she would ask.
_Mexcity--Monday, August 29, 9:30_ A.M. _(C.S.T.)_
The General refolded his morning paper, and set it neatly in its accustomed upper left hand corner of his desk. He was pleased. By now the gossip columnists would be in full cry; the afternoon papers would be worth seeing.
From his briefcase, he took a flat envelope, and excerpted three microfilms. He threw the first one on the desk reader, and glanced through it again: Chris was too damn _involved_ with Wendt, he thought worriedly. The message was somehow, almost intangibly, fuzzy; not Chris’ usual clear-stated summary, anyhow. And somehow the man had completely missed seeing the obvious newspaper advantages.
Prentiss had just about bust a gut getting the press release ready when word came from Relay--and Chris hadn’t even thought to call him during the week on it, so they could get set ahead.
Nobody (but _no_body, the General thought chuckling reminiscently) was going to believe that Johnny Wendt had gone up to the Moon, in the company of a beautiful dancer, both under strictest security to the point of full-trip sedation, and come back, the same way, the same _Messenger_ orbit, leaving the gal behind, for purely _personal_, non-significant reasons.
He found it hard to believe himself. The more he thought about it, the more the overtones--or undertones?--of the courier-message from Christensen bothered him.
_Hell_, he decided: _It’s good copy. That’s all._
And what _could_ Chris be pulling?
It didn’t make sense enough to worry over.
So he stopped worrying.
The next film he had also seen at home the night before, but he studied it carefully again. It was long: five single-spaced typed pages, compactly written; and it contained the life history of Ramon E. McLafferty, Congressman from East Chile, white hope of the Industrialist Party, Chairman of the Space Security Subcommittee of the Joint House-Senate Space Affairs Committee--former ranch hand, bookie, stock yard “insurance”-protection boss, newspaper owner, fighting union smasher, contractor for nearly 20% of the work on construction of the _Messenger_, minority holder of Undersea Corp. stock, and probable next junior Chilean Senator.
The General spent some time rereading, and reading again, the story of Ray McLafferty’s rags-to-riches rise--plus an abstract of a psychoanalytic report, and some dirty-edges peripheral track-trailing. When he felt quite sure he had all the pertinent facts in his mind, he took the film and placed it immediately in the special miniature safe at the back of his bottom desk drawer.
The third film was a standard form from M.I., stamped across the top with block-lettered TOP SECRET’s. This one Harbridge had gotten on his way to work. It was, as it turned out, the most interesting document of the three.
In one unsensationally worded paragraph, it stated conclusively that definite evidence had finally been obtained regarding the Palisades Query. There had been a physical transferral of subjects (ref. PQ 1579J-2z) on several occasions, first known being 9/12/76; most recent, 3/14/77; two known dates in between, and three suspected. Transferral in small quantity, but sufficient for purpose of investigation by instigators.
Which meant simply that on at least four occasions, small, but significant, samples of Mars-bugs _had_ been successfully turned over to agents of Red Dome, where said samples might now be assumed to have flourished and multiplied, and to be under study at _least_ as intensive as that at Playfair.
The General pursed his lips thoughtfully. He removed the film, and held a match to the edge, dropped it into a metal bowl set with precision at the right front edge of the desk top, watched it dissolve into smoke and a small residue of chemical matter.
He repeated the procedure with Chris’s report, smiling as he thought about Ray McLafferty:
_Lordy, what he’d give to see that damn paper!_
The smile was because there was no possibility that any such information could get to the Congressman’s hands.
_Dollars Dome--Tuesday, August 30, 1977_
“I hate to stop and eat, even,” she said. Her cheeks were pink, and her smile was one of pure sensual pleasure. You could see in the way she walked that she was still feeling the wild pleasures of leaps and pirouettes to soaring music, free from the weight of a lifetime on Earth. “You know, I just can’t figure out why I never even _thought_ of it till they asked!”
Phil smiled, and manufactured a leer. “Come let me show you my couch,” he said. “We’ll find _out_ why.”
“Darling,” she said, “But I’m _hungry_.”
“Wellll--okay,” he said. “_After_ dinner.”
They laughed at each other, and impulsively, she reached for his hand as they walked into the dining room. Damn if it wasn’t catching, he thought with amusement, and yet with a sharpening edge of concern--because it just didn’t _fit_. But when you looked at the tables in here, the groups of two, four, five, six, eating and talking and smiling....
It reminded him of something dim, in the background of memory....
He caught it: photographs, in his childhood, of Israeli and Russian co-ops. Propaganda shots, of happy smiling healthy “free workers.”
But the scene here was not posed. It was for real. And it went on all the time, all the hell over the slaphappy Dome. _And_ it was getting more pronounced. He noticed it more than he had at first, in spite of getting used to it. _And_ he thought it had started to show up in the clinical picture too. Nothing conclusive yet, but--
“Hey?” She’d said something he missed.
“Just--I wish I was going to have time to _do_ that show.”
“Well, why not? Chris said something about them calling again today. If you gave the word now, I’ll bet they’d get it set for tomorrow night?”
“_Tomorrow?_ Don’t be silly, dear. I’d need at _least_ four more--well, maybe three days. But I’m just _starting_ to get an idea what I can do. Phil, it’s like--like starting all over, say to learn ballet, _after_ you’ve been an expert in, say, African dance. It’s _that_ different!”
“Yeah? Well you could fool me, kid. I’m just ignorant enough to think you looked damn good back there.”
They took their dinners to a table where Thad Bourgnese and the Donovan girl and a couple of others were already seated. Thad jumped up to move a chair for Lee next to his own. Phil pulled up his own chair alongside Rita, watching her.
By every damn bit of experience he had with anyone he’d ever known, this particular girl ought to flip her lid this time. Instead, she turned and smiled and said, “She is just too beautiful to believe, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Phil ate his soup, and kept his thoughts to himself. When Chris joined them a few minutes later, and took Lisa’s other side, engaging her in intense quiet-voiced conversation, he watched Thad from out of the edge of his vision.
Bourgnese turned to Rita again. That was all. You’d have sworn no one anywhere around the table had felt the least ruffle of irritation at any point.
Phil was beginning to believe they _hadn’t_; for the first time, he started mentally reviewing, _seriously_, some of the startling improvements he’d seen in his hypertension cases. _It figures_, he thought, reluctantly. _Damn if it don’t figure_....
“Phil!”
“Hmmm?” He looked past Rita and Thad to Lee’s rosy face.
“Remember what we were saying before?”
“Yeah?” _Which what? Which before?_
“Well,” she said, brimming with laughter, “Chris wants to know if I’d be willing to give up my berth this week, so he can take it!”
“I got the official bit just now,” Chris told them all. “They want me to testify next Tuesday. But, Lee, we can switch someone else, if you think--”
“Oh, _no_. I mean, thanks, but--well, frankly, I was just telling Phil when we came in, I wished I could have some more time for practicing. Now I’ve got started, I’m just _flabbergasted_....”
* * * * *
Later, he got her alone long enough to make sure she had not spoken spur-of-the-moment, before she thought about Johnny.
She hadn’t.
“Chris said I could radiowire him this evening, and if he wants, he’ll be able to call me, tonight or tomorrow. So we’re not announcing anything about the performance yet. But he got a report that Johnny was fine when he landed, and--oh, dammit, Phil, one week won’t _kill_ him. One _more_ week, I mean. And when do you think I’ll ever get a chance to do this stuff again?”
“Honey--_I’m_ not saying No.”
“I know.” She looked at him with such affection it almost hurt. “I’m not arguing with you, either, dear--just with me. But you know--I’m beginning to think maybe Johnny’s a lot tougher than we give him credit for. _I_ think he’ll be okay.” She stepped away, turned back for a moment. “Or maybe I want to find out if he is,” she added, and vanished down the ramp to her practice room.
_St. Croix, U.S.A.A.--Friday, September 2, 1977_
The bar was cool and dim in the daytime, a good place to sit and look, without the added haze and heat and too-bright light, into the anyhow doubtful mirror of your mind. But as dusk dropped on the island, the bar conversely brightened. With the evening’s coolness, it grew warmer inside. At midnight, it had become a gaudy splotch of brilliance aburst with noise, fragrance and stench, sweat and promises.
Light and color, odors and entreating bodies, these could be shut out, he had learned quickly, simply by keeping his eyes on his glass, and his glass full enough. But the noises--shrieking and murmuring, laughter and shouts, the sound of glasses, of cards and rolling dice and clicking wheels, of shuffling feet, pounding heels, of silver coins and golden rum in swift exchange,--the bloodbeating rhythm of the calypso band in back of the thousand sounds of passion and delight, despair, forgetfulness, lust and seduction in the tropic night--these could not be shut out, nor would he do so if he could. They built a barrier over the darkness that shrouded the mirror of his soul.
Johnny sat where he had been since noon, in the carved wooden booth, and the girl’s voice for some reason emerged by itself, separately, from the sound of the room, drawing him back from the dazed withdrawal with which he had countered the bar’s evening dawn.
He looked at her apprehensively: lovely kid. He shook his head: “No thanks, doll. Thanks, but no thanks. Siddown. Have a drink.”
She sat.
She was young, very young. Her shoulders were bare, and the white ruffles of her blouse on breast and arms gave her an oddly _pure_ look in the cacophony of color in the midnight-bar. When she sat, the cerise skirt and black lace ruffle of her petticoat were hidden; all he could see was the blouse and bare skin above. Light spilled on golden skin; the crimson of her lips was all the impact of color she made; all the rest was black (hair and eyes), and white (blouse, teeth, eyes), and glowing tan-gold. She might have been anything from a grown-up twelve to well-preserved twenty-two--well-preserved, that is, for an island girl of her trade. Johnny guessed seventeen.
While she drank rum-and-coke, and he sipped a fresh bourbon, he gave the whole idea some serious thought. A lovely girl, certainly. Clean-looking, too. He could check with Jake. Jake would know; Jake was his buddy. Jake said, don’t take any babes up without checkin’ first. Half of ’em’s sick, and most of the rest is thieves. Jest check with me first. That’s what Jake said.
Jake was at the bar now. Johnny toyed with the thought of taking the girl to the bar, and then maybe upstairs. The room upstairs was big and dim, cool, quiet now at midnight as it had been in the bar when he came in at noon. At noon the room was hot, and even through the blinds the whiteness of high sun crept in.
The room was cool now: cool and quiet and all alone.
_Lisa_....
“What’s your name, doll?”
She told him, and it was hilariously funny, because it was Dolly, and he’d called her _doll_ so she’d thought he knew all along, and the band came and played _Dolly Dawn_. When they went to the bar, Jake nodded and said Dolly was fine, Dolly be good for him. So he gave Dolly five dollars, for being a good girl, and shook hands with Jake, and went up alone to the dim cool aloneness where nobody knew or cared anything anyhow he could sleep deep and no dreams.
But he remembered before he was all the way asleep that it was Friday--_had_ been Friday--and tomorrow--today--he would have to leave ... back to where the world was and people who knew all about it ... about everything.
When he woke up, the newspaper was under the door for him: he’d told them when he came: no papers, no tri-di, no nothin’, till Saturday. Bring me a paper on Saturday. And here it was.
They were all right. Jake, all of them, they were okay.
The headline was right on page one.
_MOON LAB DIRECTOR WILL TESTIFY_
_Christensen To Appear At SAC Hearing Tuesday_
Mexcity, Sep. 2: Dr. Peter A. Christensen, Research Director of the U.S.A.A. Moon Laboratory, is en route to Earth today, to testify voluntarily for the McLafferty Committee, at a hearing next Tuesday, Sep. 6.
The announcement of Dr. Christensen’s compliance with the request of the S.A.C. Security Subcommittee Chairman, Rep. Ramon E. McLafferty (I., E. Ch.) was made today by Brigadier General “Jed” Harbridge, Decagon Science and Space chief. The Moon Lab program, although under Congressional control primarily, is sponsored in part by the U.S.A.A. Space Academy, and associated Decagon Space Research units.
There was no comment from Gen. Harbridge on the “evidence” McLafferty claims to have regarding Security leaks, and general laxity, at the Moon Dome. The official Decagon statement said only that Dr. Christensen boarded the Messenger satellite last night, and will appear, of his own volition, at the Tuesday hearing.
Dr. Christensen’s decision followed an official request from the Subcommittee radioed to the Moon Tuesday. Acknowledgement of the message and compliance with the request was received Wednesday by Rep. McLafferty, it was learned at his office here today. Dr. Christensen will arrive on Earth Sunday, Sep. 4, at about 8 P.M., at St. Thom Spaceport. The rocket, previously announced to land at Baja Spaceport, was rescheduled for St. Thom after receipt of Dr. Christensen’s message to the Decagon.
Johnny smiled wryly. Poor Chris--everything had looked so rosy to him five years ago. They were really ganging up on the guy now. _Yeah--poor Chris! Poor benighted bastard! Damn good thing_ ... but you couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man. He meant well; he was a Hell of a good guy.
_Just stupid, that’s all!_
Johnny shrugged, dropped the paper, picked it up and riffled through for other news, feeling luxurious because he didn’t have to leave today after all. The ship was coming to St. Thom. Twenty minutes away, was all. Plenty of time, if he left on the six o’clock jitney tomorrow. “About 8 P.M.” usually wound up to mean about midnight....
TROVI TO DANCE ON MOON
_Well, well, we’re getting around, aren’t we?_
It was a good picture of her, one of the batch they had taken out at the edge of the pool last September: Lee in Peter Pan costume, poised on one toe, it seemed, right on the edge of the pool--about to take off, you’d swear it.
A new art-form will be born this Saturday night [it said underneath] when Lisa Trovi, world-renowned tri-di dancer, gives a precedent-making performance at the Moon’s World Dome. Miss Trovi has been on the Moon, at the U.S.A.A. Dome, since August 24, practicing for her appearance this Saturday.
“It’s a completely new kind of dance,” Miss Trovi says. “I’m just beginning to realize what can be done in light gravity. It’s like changing from swimming in treacle to swimming in water.”
The performance, scheduled for 8.30 P.M. (G.S.T.--3.30 P.M. C.S.T.) will be broadcast live if conditions permit. Tri-di tapes will be aired from New York at a later date.
_Saturday_....
But _this_ was Saturday. She wasn’t on the wheel. She wasn’t coming.
He realized only slowly that he was not surprised.
“Stands to reason,” he thought. He showered and went down for breakfast of ham and eggs, pineapple juice, and good native rum at the bar.