"Do so, please. Let me know." She switched off.
Bo sat for a moment thinking about her. Valeria McKittrick was worth
considering. She wasn't beautiful in any conventional sense but she was
tall and well built; there were good lines in the strong high boned
face, and her hair was a cataract of spectacular red. And brains,
too ... you didn't get to be a physicist with the Union's radiation
labs for nothing. He knew she was still young, and that she had been on
Achilles for about a year working on some special project and was now
ready to go home.
She was human enough, had been to most of the officers' parties and
danced and laughed and flirted mildly, but even the dullest rockhound
gossip knew she was too lost in her work to do more. Out here a woman
was rare, and a virtuous woman unheard-of; as a result, unknown to
herself, Dr. McKittrick's fame had spread through more thousands of
people and millions of miles than her professional achievements were
ever likely to reach.
Since coming here, on commission from the Lunar lab, to bring her
home, Bo Jonsson had given her an occasional wistful thought. He liked
intelligent women, and he was getting tired of rootlessness. But of
course it would be a catastrophe if he fell in love with her because
she wouldn't look twice at a big dumb slob like him. He had sweated out
a couple of similar affairs in the past and didn't want to go through
another.
He placed his ad on the radinews circuit and then went out to get
drunk. It was all he could do for Johnny now, drink him a final
wassail. Already his friend was cold under the stars. In the course of
the evening he found himself weeping.
He woke up many hours later. Achilles ran on Earth time but did not
rotate on it; officially, it was late at night, actually the shrunken
sun was high over the domes. The man in the upper bunk said there was a
message for him; he was to call one Einar Lundgard at the Comet Hotel
soonest.
The Comet! Anyone who could afford a room to himself here, rather than
a kip in the public barracks, was well fueled. Bo swallowed a tablet
and made his way to the visi and dialed. The robo-clerk summoned
Lundgard down to the desk.
It was a lean, muscular face under close cropped brown hair which
appeared in the screen. Lundgard was a tall and supple man, somehow
neat even without clothes. "Jonsson," said Bo. "Sorry to get you up,
but I understood--"
"Oh, yes. Are you looking for a spaceman? I heard your ad and I'm
available."