He wanted to cry, for he had not known that he was brutal. "Can't you
see?" he screamed, and it was necessary to explain it to her; and then
it was not necessary. "You're like the awful, indifferent, mindless
blackness of space, unreasoning!"
"Unreasoning," she repeated carefully.
"You're _Hertha_!"
"I'm Hertha," she said.
* * * * *
The period of calmness that returned after the fever was crystal and
lucid, preceding, he knew, a severe, prolonged seizure.
"I'm afraid," she told him, shivering, "but I will go."
He watched her get into the light surface suit, clamp down the helmet
with trembling hands. He was shaking with nervousness as she hesitated
at the lock. Then she pulled it open. It clicked behind her. He heard
the brief hiss of the oxygen replacing the air that had whooshed out.
And he felt sorry for her, alone, terrified, on the scaly, hard
surface of the tiny satellite. He closed his eyes, pictured her walking
past his strip mine, past the gleaming heap of minerals ready for the
transport.
He felt tears in his eyes and yet he could not entirely explain his
feelings toward her--half fear, sometimes half affection. But more
important than that: Why was she with him? What were her feelings? Had
some sense of gratitude made her come? Affection?
He could not understand her. At times she seemed beyond all
understanding. Her responses were mindless, almost mechanical, and that
frightened him.
He remembered her dumb, apologetic caresses and her pathetically clumsy
tenderness--or reflex; he could never be sure--and her eager yet
reluctant hands and the always slightly hurt, slightly accusing look in
her eyes, as if at every instant she was ready for a stinging blow, and
her great sighs, muted as if fearing to be heard and....
He was drunk, screaming meaninglessly, and the bartender threw him out.
The pavement cut his face. When he awoke, it was morning and he was in
a strange room and she was in bed beside him.