It was a dank fog-shrouded morning. Sometime during the night the quill
of the dead reckoner had traced its fine red line over the 30th
meridian. Roughly half-way, Charles Orsino thought, rubbing the sleep
from his eyes. But the line was straight as a string for the last four
hours of their run. The damn girl must have fallen asleep on watch. He
glared at her in the bow and broke open a ration. Blandly oblivious to
the glare, she said: "Good morning."
Charles swallowed a mouthful of chocolate, half-chewed, and choked on
it. He reached hastily for water and found the tall plastic column of
the ion-exchange apparatus empty. "Damn it," he snarled, "why didn't you
refill this thing when you emptied it? And why didn't you zig-zag
overnight? You're utterly irresponsible." He hurled the bucket overside,
hauled it up and slopped seawater into the apparatus. Now there'd be a
good twenty minutes before a man-sized drink accumulated.
"Just a minute," she told him steadily. "Let's straighten this out. I
haven't had any water on the night watch so I didn't have any occasion
to refill the tube. You must have taken the last of the water with your
dinner. And as for the zig-zag, you said we should run a straightaway
now and then to mix it up. I decided that last night was as good a time
as any."
He took a minute drink from the reservoir, stalling. There was
something--yes; he had _meant_ to refill the apparatus after his dinner
ration. And he _had_ told her to give it a few hours of straightaway
some night....
He said formally: "You're quite right on both counts. I apologize." He
bit into a ration.
"That's not good enough," she said. "I'm not going to have you tell me
you're sorry and then go scowling and sulking about the boat. In fact I
don't like your behavior at all."
He said, enormously angry: "_Oh, you don't do you?_" and hated her, the
world and himself for the stupid inadequacy of the comeback.
"No. I don't. I'm seriously worried. I'm afraid the conditioning you got
didn't fall away completely when they swore you in. You've been acting
irrationally and inconsistently."
"What about you?" he snapped. "You got conditioned too."
"That's right," she said. "That's another reason why you're worrying me.
I find impulses in myself that have no business there. I simply seem to
do a better job of controlling them than you're doing. For instance:
we've been quarreling and at cross-purposes ever since you and Martha
picked me up. That couldn't be unless I were contributing to the
friction."
The wheel was fixed; she took a step or two aft and said professorially:
"I've never had trouble getting along with people. I've had differences,
of course, and at times I've allowed myself displays of temper when it
was necessary to assert myself. But I find that you upset me; that for
some reason or other your opinion on a matter is important to me, that
if it differs with mine there should be a reconciliation."
He put down the ration and said wonderingly: "Do you know, that's the
way I feel about you? And you think it's the conditioning or--or
something?" He took a couple of steps forward, hesitantly.
"Yes," she said in a rather tremulous voice. "The conditioning or
something. For instance, you're inhibited. You haven't made an indecent
proposition to me, not even as a matter of courtesy. Not that I care, of
course, but--" In stepping aft, she tripped over the water bucket and
went down to the deck with a faint scream.
He said: "Here, let me help you." He picked her up and didn't let go.
"Thanks," she said faintly. "The conditioning technique can't be called
faulty, but it has inherent limitations...." She trailed off and he
kissed her. She kissed back and said more faintly still: "Or it might be
the drugs we used.... Oh, Charles, what _took_ you so long?"
He said, brooding: "You're way out of my class, you know. I'm just a
bagman for the New York police. I wouldn't even be that if it weren't
for Uncle Frank, and you're a Falcaro. It's just barely thinkable that I
could make a pass at you. I guess that held me off and I didn't want to
admit it so I got mad at you instead. Hell, I could have swum back to
the base and made a damned fool of myself trying to find Grinnel, but
down inside I knew better. The kid's _gone_."
"We'll make a psychologist of you yet," she said.
"Psychologist? Why? You're joking."
"No. It's not a joke. You'll _like_ psychology, darling. You can't go on
playing polo forever, you know."
Darling! What was he getting into? Old man Gilby was four-goal at sixty,
wasn't he? Good God, was he hooked into marriage at twenty-three? Was
she married already? Did she know or care whether he was? Had she been
promiscuous? Would she continue to be? He'd never know; that was the one
thing you never asked; your only comfort, if you needed comfort, was
that she could never dream of asking you. What went on here? Let me out!
It went through his mind in a single panicky flash and then he said:
"The hell with it," and kissed her again.