"Say," I said, but the girls were shouting. I yelled, "Hey!"
They quieted but kept glaring balefully at each other and circled like
a couple of female wrestlers waiting--but wholly unable--to pounce.
"We're in a pickle," I started.
"_You're_ in a pickle," Helene corrected me.
"Oh, stop it!" I said.
"I didn't start it," Helene said.
Logic!
"Now, look," I said, "we've got to get down. If one of us could only
manage to grasp something that's fastened--the carpet, a window, a
doorknob--"
I didn't finish; it was too painfully obvious that none of our orbits
took us that close to the finite boundaries of my null-grav living
room. Helene's, I noticed, was the closest. A germ of an idea came into
my mind as I observed that Helene's handbag was still in a tight orbit
around her.
"Honey," I said.
She raged at that and made futile fluttering motions as though she
thought she just might be able to fly.
Perhaps formality was indicated.
"Mrs. Wright," I tried.
Gladys laughed and the irate Mrs. Wright, sweeping close to Gladys'
orbit at perihelion, made a vicious swipe which neatly tore away a
considerable portion of the upper part of Gladys' sunsuit, which
portion went fluttering away on a bat-like trajectory of its own. I
forgot the portion; the point of departure was more absorbing.
Helene gasped and told me to concentrate on getting us down; but my
powers of concentration were rather difficult to influence since I was
in a fixed orbit and, like Mercury or old Luna, my face was turned
inward and Gladys' orbit was now considerably tighter than mine.
"Well, do something, will you!" Helene cried. "At least, stop leering!"
Now I'm a reasonable man even when befuddled by null-grav, so I tried
to forget about orbiting hemispheres and to attack the problem of
reaching terra firma.
I closed my eyes, but promptly became so unoriented that I almost
became ill; so I opened them again and concentrated on my primary, the
sun-chandelier.
The visio had stopped buzzing. I hoped that meant that Jim O'Brien--if
it had been Jim--had figured that something was amiss and was now
hurrying over in his Caddicopter. He could throw us a line and haul us
out. Then I threw that hope away. Jim's severely practical; and this
_was_ to have been my wedding night.
Oh, well....
* * * * *
Could one of us somehow reach the sun-chandelier and short it, thereby
shorting the machine downstairs? Mentally reconstructing the house's
electrical circuitry, I concluded that my lab was on a separate circuit.
_Hey! I am confused_, I thought. Helene's handbag! I'd thought of it
before. Of course! Women carry all sorts of things.
"Helene," I said, "do you have a squeeze bottle in your bag? Perfume or
hair spray or deodorant, maybe?"
"Bill Wright, if you think for one minute that I'm going to--"
"Have you?" I cut in.
She spluttered. "Perfume," she finally said grudgingly. "Though with
that eau-de-whatever Gladys is wearing, I should think--"
"Oh, stop it! Now will you please get the perfume out!"
She did; then she went wandering off to aphelion in her orbit and
momentarily out of my line of sight. When she came back toward
perihelion with the chandelier, I said, "Now, look, wriggle around a
little axially if you can--"
That did it. Helene exploded into a verbal nova. "You lecherous beast!"
she cried. "It isn't enough for you to dally with this shameless blonde
hussy on our wedding night. Not enough for you to float along looking
like a blissful ogling ogre, making mental mockery of your wedding
vows. No, you--you BEM!--you have to ask your meek and retiring, your
quiet and unassuming, your defenseless and self-effacing wife to act
like a bumping and grinding burlesque queen!"
And my meek, retiring, quiet, unassuming, etc., wife went on
etcetera-ing ad practically infinitum.
When swiftly trajecting Helene's tirade paused for lack of words and/or
breath, I said meekly above the gently orbiting blonde's chuckles, "But
I was only trying to get us out of this mess. I wanted you to perform
a slight axial rotation so that you could aim your--er--posterior
at the cellar door when you next reach aphelion near it. Do you
understand?"
"No," she said, but did manage by some completely feminine and to me
quite incomprehensible maneuvers (girdle girding procedure, maybe?) to
twist ninety degrees axially.
"When I say 'go,' squeeze the spray bottle," I directed, "and keep
squeezing it hard and keep it pointing straight away from your
longitudinal axis."
"My _what_? Now, look, what do you think you'll accom--"
"Wait!" I cut her off. "For every action there's an equal and opposite
reaction, right? I hope you'll widen your orbit when the reaction sets
in."
She was nearing aphelion. "Go!" I cried.
She did squeeze the spray bottle, and kept squeezing it quickly and
strongly, but so far as I could judge her orbit wasn't effected one
whit. Something was accomplished, however, that made our situation more
desperate: those little droplets of potent perfume proceeded to bounce,
scatter, splatter and ricochet all over the place. The scent spread.
Overpoweringly.
"And _you_ talked about _my_ perfume!" Gladys cried and began to giggle
again.
My gaze wandered toward the lovely albeit space-happy blonde.
"Bill!" Helene cried as she swept across my line of sight. She looked
like an avenging angel, a very lovely one. She made me feel humble and
contrite; I went dutifully back to the problem.
* * * * *
It seemed rather hopeless. Both Gladys and I were orbiting nearly
parallel to the floor in what I was calling the plane of the ecliptic.
My brief encounter with the chandelier had twisted me into the plane as
had Gladys' unfortunate but exhilarating encounter with my irate bride.
Helene's orbit was still tilted from the plane, like Pluto's, and was
curiously elliptical like a comet's. Currents created by the allegedly
draftless air-conditioning system must have caused and must be
maintaining the ellipse. Being a newcomer to our tight little system,
Helene also still had considerable orbital speed whereas air resistance
would soon bring Gladys and me to a midair stop, probably in inferior
opposition. I knew what Helene would think of that.
I decided we couldn't do anything individually or jointly unless an
outside agent were introduced or full advantage taken of something
already present.
We had cosmic debris, for sure: the flipflopping chaise longue which
was in a tight orbit near the peak of the cathedral ceiling; the
framed picture of the Viking rocket (could I ever use a little of
_its_ thrust now!) fluttering close to the flapping torn part-away of
the sunsuit down below the plane of the ecliptic; and the big package
Helene had brought. The last suddenly proved to be on a collision orbit
with Gladys, curving in then to bump against her derriere. Reaching
back swiftly she caught it like an errant salesman's hand. I waited
expectantly.
"Wonderful!" she commented. "Wonderful!" And pulled out a bottle of
Scotch. I watched in fascinated, gleeful anticipation as she unscrewed
the cap, and moved the bottle up toward celestial north to reach a
normal drinking position. Naturally the contents promptly departed;
then splashed against the arch of the ceiling and went into a thousand
odd orbits, of which many made moist contact with my own. The
perfume-Scotch combination--_yoicks!_
"Glad," I said.
"Oh, it's _Glad_ now!" Helene burst.