When he floated in with the coffee he gave me another of those
glaze-eyed God-fearing looks—but just a mite disappointed, I thought—and
said, “Dammit, Joe, you’re perfect! You always clean your plate.”
Apparently when I was there, Joseph just didn’t exist for Jeff. And vice
versa. It was sort of eerie, especially with the hum of space in my ears
like a seashell and nobody else for five million miles.
Beginning with the scrambled eggs, I discovered that Jeff didn’t exactly
idolize Joseph—or even take with him the attitude of “My buddy can do no
wrong,” like he did with me. I overheard him criticizing Joseph.
Reasonably at first; then I heard him chewing him out—next bullying him.
It made me wistful, that last, thinking how good it would feel to be
full-bloodedly cursed to my face once in a while instead of all the
sweetness and light. And right there I got the idea for some amateur
therapy, Shaula-Deva help me.
I waited for a moment when we were both relaxed and then I said, “Jeff,
the trouble with you is you’re too nice. You ought to criticize things
more. For a starter, criticize me. Tell me my faults. Go ahead.”
He flushed a little and said, “Dammit, Joe, how can I? You’re perfect!”
“No man is perfect, Jeff,” I told him solemnly, feeling pretty foolish.
“But you’re my buddy I always can trust,” he protested, squirming a bit.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk this way.”
* * * * *
“Jeff, you can’t trust anybody too far,” I said. “Even good guys can do
bad things. When I was a boy there was a kid named Harry I practically
worshipped. We lived on a pioneer world of Fomalhaut that had good snow,
and we’d hitch rides with our sleds off little airscrew planes taking
off. We’d each have a long white line on his sled and loop it beforehand
around the plane’s tail-gear and back to the sled. Then we’d hide. As
soon as the pilot got aboard we’d jump on our sleds and each grab the
free end of his line and have one comet of a ride, until the plane took
off. Then we’d quick let go.
“Well, one frosty morning I let go and nothing happened, except I
started to rise. Harry had tied the free end of my line tight to my
sled.
“I could have just rolled off, I suppose, but I didn’t want to lose my
sled or my line either. Luckily I had a sheath knife handy and I used
it. I even made a whizeroo of a landing. But ever afterwards my feelings
toward Harry—”
“Stop it, please, Joe!” Jeff interrupted, very red in the face and
shaking a little. “That boy Harry was utterly evil. And I don’t want to
hear any more about this, or anything like it, ever again. Understand?”
I told him sure I did. Heck, I could see I’d gone the wrong way about
it. I even begged his pardon.
After that I just sweated it out. But I found I couldn’t spend much time
on books or my thoughts, I’d keep listening for what Jeff was saying to
Joseph. And sometimes when he’d pause for Joseph’s reply I’d catch
myself waiting for the imaginary me to make one. So I took to staying in
the same cabin as Jeff as much as I could.
That seemed to make him uncomfortable after a while, though he pretended
to glory in it. He’d ask me questions like, “Tell me about life, Joe. So
I’ll know how to handle myself if we’re ever parted.”
But the weariest things come to an end, even duty orbits around Shaula.
And so the time came when we were servicing our last beacon—outside the
planet Shaula-by, it was. Next step would be a fast interplanetary orbit
for Base at Shaula-near.
I was out working—on a safety line of course, but suit-jetting around
more than I needed to, just for the pure joy of it, so that my suit tank
was almost dry. I’d switched my suit radio off for a bit, because,
working in space, Jeff had taken to just gabbling to me nervously all
the time—maybe because he figured there couldn’t be room for Joseph with
him in his suit.
[Illustration: space walk]
I finished up and paused for a last look at the ship. She was sweetly
slim from her conical living quarters to the taper-tail of her ionic
jet, but she had more junk on her than an amateur asteroid prospector
hangs on his suit the first time out. Every duty orbit, fifty scientists
come with permission from the Commandant to hang some automatic research
gadget on the hull. The craziest one this time was a huge flattened band
of gold-plated aluminum, little more than foil-thick, attached crosswise
just in front of the tail and sticking out twenty feet on each side. I
don’t know what it was there for—maybe to measure the effects of space
on a Moebius strip—but it looked like a wedding ring that had been
stepped on. So Jeff and I called it Trompled Love.
But in spite of the junk, the ship looked mighty sweet against the
saffron steppes and baby-blue seas of Shaula-by with Shaula herself, old
Lambda Scorpii, flaming warm and wildly beyond, and with “United States”
standing out big as life on the ship’s living quarters. United States of
Shaula, of course.
* * * * *
I was almost dreaming out there, thinking how it hadn’t been such a
terrible duty after all, when I saw the ship begin to slide past Shaula.
Poking out of her tail, ghostlier than the flame over a cafe royale, was
the evil blue glow of her jet. In an instant I’d guessed exactly what
had happened and was beating myself on the head for not having
anticipated it. Joseph had swum into the cabin right after Jeff. And
Jeff had yelled at him. “It’s about time, you lazy lunkhead! Everything
secure? Okay, I’m switching on the beam!” And I’d probably brought the
whole thing about by telling him that damfool sled story—and then
sticking to him so close he just had to get rid of me, so as to be with
Joseph.
Meanwhile the ship was gathering speed in her sneaky way and the wavy
safety line between me and the airlock was starting to straighten.
As you know, an ionic jet’s only good space-to-space. It’s not for
heavy-G work; ours could deliver only one-half G at max and was doing
less than one-quarter now. Which meant the ship was starting off slower
than most ground cars.
But the beam would fire for hours, building up to a terminal velocity of
fifteen miles a second and carrying the ship far, far away from lonely
Joe Hansen.
Except that we were tied together, of course.
I was very grateful then for the weeks I’d practiced space-roping,
though I’d never won any prizes with it, because without thinking I
started to whip my line very carefully. And on the third try, just as it
was getting pretty straight, I managed to settle it in a notch in one
outside end of Trompled Love. After that I took up strain on the line as
gradually as I could, letting it friction through my gloves for as long
as I could before putting all my mass on it—because although one-quarter
G isn’t much, it piles up in a few seconds to quite a jerk. I spread
that jerk into several little ones.
Well, the last jerk came and the line didn’t part and Trompled Love
didn’t crumple much, though the Shaula-light showed me several very
nasty-looking wrinkles in it. And there I was trailing along after the
ship, though out to one side, and feeling about as much strain on the
line as if I were hanging from a cliff on the moon, and knowing I was
going about five feet a second faster every second.
* * * * *
My idea wanting to be out to the side (and bless my impulses for
realizing it was the one important thing!) was to keep my line and
myself out of the beam. An ionic jet doesn’t look hot from the side. But
from straight on it’s a lot brighter than an arc light—it’s almost as
tight as a laser beam—and I didn’t want to think about what it would do
to me, even trailing as I was a hundred yards aft.
Though of course long before it had ruined me, it would have
disintegrated my line.
My being out to the side was putting the ship off balance on its jet and
presumably throwing its course toward base and Shaula-near little by
little into error. But that was the least of my worries, believe me.
I thought for a bit and remembered I could talk to Jeff over my suit
radio. I decided to try it, not without misgivings.