[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
product?" but it was wasted. She wanted to be kissed again. I kissed her.
It was hard work, standing up. Every time she moved we lurched against the
rail or drifted off the floor entirely; only a standby jet was operating and
we were otherwise beyond any consideration.
We sat down.
After a while, we talked.
I stretched and looked around me. "Lovely place you have here," I said. "Now
that that's taken care of, I have something else on my mind. Questions: two of
them." I told her what the questions were.
I explained about Runstead's lousing up San Diego and Venus Project. And about
Hester's murder.
"Oh, Mitch," she said. "Where do I begin? How'd you ever get to be star
class?"
"Went to night school," I said. "I'm still listening."
"Well, you should be able to figure it out. Sure, we Consies wanted space
travel. The human race needs Venus. It needs an unspoiled, unwrecked,
unexploited, unlooted, un "
"Oh," I said.
" unpirated, undevastated well, you see. Sure we wanted a ship to go to Venus.
But we didn't want Fowler Schocken on Venus. Or Mitchell Courtenay, either.
Not as long as Mitchell Courtenay was the kind of guy who would gut Venus for
an extra megabuck's billing. There aren't too many planets around that the
race can expand into, Mitch. We couldn't have Fowler Schocken's Venus Project
succeed."
"Um," I said, digesting. "And Hester?"
Page 87
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Kathy shook her head. "You figure that one out," she said.
"You don't know the answer?"
"I do know the answer. It isn't hard."
I coaxed, but she wouldn't play. So I kissed her for a while again, until some
interfering character with a ship's-officer rosette on his shoulder came
grinning in. "Care to look at the stars, folks?" he asked, in a tourist-guide
way that I
detested. It didn't pay to pull rank on him, of course; ships' officers always
act a cut above their class, and it would have been ungraceful, at least, to
brace him for it. Besides
Besides.
The thought stopped me for a moment: I was used to being star class by now. It
wasn't going to be fun, being one of the boys. I gave my Consie theory a quick
mental runthrough. No, there was nothing in it that indicated I would have a
show-dog's chance of being sirred and catered to any more.
Hello, Kathy. Good-by, Schocken Tower.
Anyway, we went up to the forward observation port. All the faces were strange
to me.
There isn't a window to be found on the Moon ships; radar-eyed, GCA-tentacled,
they sacrifice the esthetic but useless spectacle of the stars for the greater
strength of steel. I had never seen the stars in space before.
Outside the port was white night. Brilliant stars shining against a background
of star particles scattered over a dust of stars. There wasn't a breadth of
space the size of my thumbnail where there was blackness; it was all light,
all fiery pastels. A
rim of fire around the side of the port showed the direction of the sun.
We turned away from the port. "Where's Matt Runstead?" I asked.
Kathy giggled. "Back in Schocken Tower, living on wake-up pills, trying to
untangle the mess.
Somebody had to stay behind, Mitch. Fortunately, Matt can vote your proxies.
We didn't have much time to talk in Washington; he's going to have a lot of
questions to ask, and nobody around with the answers."
I stared. "What in the world was Runstead doing in Washington?"
"Getting you off the spot, Mitch! After poor little Jack O'Shea broke "
"After what?"
"Oh, good Lord. Look, let's take it in order. O'Shea broke. He got drunk one
night too often, and he couldn't find a clear spot in his arm for the needle,
and he picked out the wrong girl to break apart in front of. They had him
sewed up tight. All about you, and all about me, and the rocket, and
everything."
"Who did?"
"Your great and good friend, B. J. Taunton." Kathy struck a match for her
cigarette viciously. I could read her mind a little, too. Little Jack O'Shea,
sixty pounds of jellied porcelain and melted wax, thirty-five inches of
twisted guts and blubber.
There had been times in the past weeks when I had not liked Jack. I canceled
them all, paid in full, when I thought of that destructible tiny man in the
hands of Taunton's anthropoids. "Taunton got it all, Mitch," Kathy said. "All
that mattered, anyhow. If Runstead hadn't had a tap on Taunton's interrogation
room we would have been had, right then. But Matt had time to get down to
Washington and warn me and the President oh, he's no Consie, the President,
but he's a good man. He can't help being born into office. And here we are."
The captain interrupted us. "Five minutes till we correct," he said. "Better
get started back to your hammocks. The correction blasts may not be much but
you never know."
Kathy nodded and led me away. I plucked the cigarette from her lips, took a
puff and gave it back. "Why, Mitch!" she said.
"I'm reformed," I told her. "Uh Kathy. One more question. It isn't a nice
Page 88
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
question."
She sighed. "The same as between you and Hester," she said.
I asked, "What was between Jack uh?"
"You heard me. What was between Jack and me was the same as between you and
Hester. All one way. Jack was in love with me, maybe. Something like that.
I wasn't." And torrentially: "Because I was too damn crazy mad in love with
you!"
"Uh," I said. It seemed like the moment to reach out and kiss her again, but
it must not have been because she pushed me away. I cracked my head against
the corridor wall. "Ouch," I said.
"That's what you're so stupid about, curse you!" she was saying. "Jack wanted
me, but I didn't want anyone but you, not ever. And you never troubled to
figure it out never knew how much I cared about you any more than you knew how
much Hester cared about you. Poor Hester who knew she could never have you.
Good lord, Mitch, how blind can you be?"
"Hester in love with me?"
"Yes, damn it! Why else would she have committed suicide?" Kathy actually
stamped her foot, and rose an inch above the floor as a result.
I rubbed my head. "Well," I said dazedly.
The sixty-second beeper went off. "Hammocks," said Kathy, and the tears in her
eyes flooded out. I put my arm around her.
"This is a stinking undignified business," she said. "I have exactly one
minute to kiss and make up, let you get over your question-and-answer period,
intimate that I have a private cabin and there's two hammocks in it, and get
us both fastened in."
I straightened up fast. "A minute is a long time, dear," I told her.
It didn't take that long.
Page 89
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]