"Then you can have it. I'm going to try keeping my eyes open and
staying alive."
There was no reply.
His expression was tart and greasy despite all his light talk, and
I knew mine was the same. I tested the security rope between our
pressure suits. It was a taut and virile bass.
We scaled a staccato of rocks, our suits grinding pepper against our
hides.
The musk summit rose before us, a minor-key horizon with a shifting
treble for as far as I could smell. It was primitive beauty that made
you feel shocking pink inside. The most beautiful vista I had ever
tasted, it couldn't be dulled even by the sensation of beef broth under
my skin.
"Is this transphasia?" I asked in awe.
"It always has been before," Quade remarked. "Ready to swallow your
words about this being something an old hand wouldn't recognize,
Captain?"
"I'm swallowing no words until I find out precisely how they taste
here."
"Not a bad taste. They're pretty. Or haven't you noticed?"
"Quade, you're right! About the colors anyway. This reminds me of an
illiscope recording from a cybernetic translator."
"It should. I don't suppose we could understand each other if it wasn't
for our morphistudy courses in reading cross-sense translations of
Centauri blushtalk and the like."
It became difficult to understand him, difficult to try talking in the
face of such splendor. You never really appreciate colors until you
smell them for the first time.
* * * * *
Quade was as conversational as ever, though. "I can't see
irregularities occurring in a gravitational field. We must have
compensated for the transphasia while we still had a point of
reference, the solid reality of the spaceship. But out here, where all
we have to hang onto is each other, our concept of reality goes _bang_
and deflates to a tired joke."
Before I could agree with one of his theories for once, a streak of
spice shot past us. It bounced back tangily and made a bitter rip
between the two of us. There was no time to judge its size, if it had
size, or its decibel range, or its caloric count, before a small, sharp
pain dug in and dwindled down to nothing in one long second.
The new odor pattern in my head told me Quade was saying something I
couldn't quite make out.
Quade then pulled me in the direction of the nasty little pain.
"Wait a minute, Spaceman!" I bellowed. "Where the devil do you think
you're dragging me? Halt! That's a direct order."
He stopped. "Don't you want to find out what that was? This _is_ an
exploration party, you know, sir."
"I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't
like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any
further from the ship."
"That's important, Captain?"
"To the best of my judgment, yes. This--condition--didn't begin until
we got so far away from the spacer--in time or distance. I don't want
it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but
it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up."
"Not for an experienced spaceman," Quade griped. "I'm used to
free-fall."
But he turned back.
"Just a minute," I said. "There was something strange up ahead. I want
to see if short-range radar can get through our electrogravitational
jamming here."
I took a sighting. My helmet set projected the pattern on the cornea.
Sweetness building up to a stab of pure salt--those were the blips.
Beside me, there was a thin thread of violet. Quade had whistled. He
was reading the map too.
The slope fell away sharply in front of us, becoming a deep gorge.
There was something broken and twisted at the bottom, something we had
known for an instant as a streak of spice.
"There's one free-fall," I said, "where you wouldn't live long enough
to get used to it."
He said nothing on the route back to the spacer.
* * * * *
"I know all about this sort of thing, Gav," First Officer Nagurski said
expansively. He was rubbing the well-worn ears of our beagle mascot,
Bruce. A heavy tail thudded on the steel deck from time to time.
My finger could barely get in the chafing band of my regulation collar.
I was hot and tired, fresh--in only the chronological sense--from a
pressure suit.
"What do you know all about, Nagurski? Dogs? Spacemen? Women?
Transphasia?"
"Yes," he answered casually. "But I had immediate reference to our
current psychophysiological phenomenon."
I collapsed into the swivel in front of the chart table. "First off,
let's hear what you know about--never mind, make it dogs."
"Take Bruce, for example, then--"
"No, thanks. I was wondering why _you_ did."
"I didn't." His dark, round face was bland. "Bruce picked me. Followed
me home one night in Chicago Port. The dog or the man who picks his own
master is the most content."
"Bruce is content," I admitted. "He couldn't be any more content and
still be alive. But I'm not sure that theory works out with men. We'd
have anarchy if I tried to let these starbucks pick their own master."
"_I_ had no trouble when I was a captain," Nagurski said. "Ease the
reins on the men. Just offer them your advice, your guidance. They
will soon see why the service selected you as captain; they will pick
you themselves."
"Did your crew voluntarily elect you as their leader?"
"Of course they did, Gav. I'm an old hand at controlling crews."
"Then why are you First Officer under me now?"
He blinked, then decided to laugh. "I've been in space a good many
years. I really wanted to relax a little bit more. Besides, the
increase in hazard pay was actually more than my salary as a captain.
I'm a notch nearer retirement too."
"Tell me, did you always feel this way about letting the men select
their own leader?"
* * * * *
Nagurski brought out a pipe. He would have a pipe, I decided.
"No, not always. I was like you at first. Fresh from the cosmic energy
test lab, suspicious of everything, trying to tell the old hands what
to do. But I learned that they are pretty smart boys; they know what
they are doing. You can rely on them absolutely."
I leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Let me tell _you_ a thing,
Nagurski. Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no
longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less
human nature. Even I know that much!"