Again, Dangerous Visions

by edited by Harlan Ellison

  Kinsman's face fell, but the others lit up.

  "It'll be a three-man mission!"

  "Two men and the chick."

  Tenny warned, "Now don't start drooling. Murdock wants a chaperon, not an assistant rapist."

  It was Kinsman who got it first. Slouching back in his chair, chin sinking to his chest, he muttered, "Sonofabitch . . .he's sending Jill along."

  A collective groan.

  "Murdock made up his mind an hour ago," Tenny said. "He was stuck with you, Chet, so he hit on the chaperon idea. He's also giving you some real chores to do, to keep you busy. Like mating the power pod."

  "Jill Meyers," said one of the captains disgustedly.

  "She's qualified, and she's been taking the Life girl through her training. I'll bet she knows more about the mission than any of you guys do."

  "She would."

  "In fact," Tenny added maliciously, "I think she's the senior captain among you satellite-jockeys."

  Kinsman had only one comment: "Shit."

  The bone-rattling roar and vibration of liftoff suddenly died away. Sitting in his contour seat, scanning the banks of dials and gauges a few centimeters before his eyes, Kinsman could feel the pressure and tension slacken. Not back to normal. To zero. He was no longer plastered up against his seat, but touching it only lightly, almost floating in it, restrained only by his harness.

  It was the fourth time he had felt weightlessness. It still made him smile inside the cumbersome helmet.

  Without thinking about it, he touched a control stud on the chair's armrest. A maneuvering jet fired briefly and the ponderous, lovely bulk of planet Earth slid into view through the port in front of Kinsman. It curved huge and serene, blue mostly but tightly wrapped in the purest dazzling white of clouds, beautiful, peaceful, shining.

  Kinsman could have watched it forever, but he heard sounds of motion in his earphones. The two girls were sitting behind him, side by side. The spacecraft cabin made a submarine look roomy: the three seats were shoehorned in among racks of instruments and equipment.

  Jill Meyers, who came to the astronaut program from the Aerospace Medical Division, was officially second pilot and biomedical officer. And chaperon, Kinsman knew. The photographer, Linda Symmes, was simply a passenger.

  Kinsman's earphones crackled with a disembodied link from Earth. "AF-p, this is ground control. We have you confirmed in orbit. Trajectory nominal. All systems go."

  "Check," Kinsman said into his helmet mike.

  The voice, already starting to fade, switched to ordinary conversational speech. "Looks like you're right on the money, Chet. We'll get the orbital parameters out of the computer and have 'em for you by the time you pass Ascension. You probably won't need much maneuvering to make rendezvous with the lab."

  "Good. Everything here on the board looks green."

  "Okay. Ground control out." Faintly. "And hey . . .good luck, Founding Father."

  Kinsman grinned at that. He slid his faceplate up, loosened his harness and turned in his seat. "Okay girls, you can take off your helmets if you want to."

  Jill Meyers snapped her faceplate open and started unlocking the helmet's neck seal.

  "I'll go first," she said, "and then I can help Linda with hers."

  "Sure you won't need any help?" Kinsman offered.

  Jill pulled her helmet off. "I've had more time in orbit than you. And shouldn't you be paying attention to the instruments?"

  So this is how it's going to he, Kinsman thought.

  Jill's face was round and plain and bright as a new penny. Snub nose, wide mouth, short hair of undistinguished brown. Kinsman knew that under the pressure suit was a figure that could most charitably be described as ordinary.

  Linda Symmes was entirely another matter. She had lifted her faceplate and was staring out at him with wide blue eyes that combined feminine curiosity with a hint of helplessness. She was tall, nearly Kinsman's own height, with thick honey-colored hair and a body that he had already memorized down to the last curve.

  In her sweet, high voice she said, "I think I'm going to be sick."

  "Oh for . . ."

  Jill reached into the compartment between their two seats. "I'll take care of this. You stick to the controls." And she whipped a white plastic bag open and stuck it over Linda's face.

  Shuddering at the thought of what could happen in zero gravity, Kinsman turned back to the control panel. He pulled his faceplate shut and turned up the air blower in his suit, trying to cut off the obscene sound of Linda's struggles.

  "For Chrissake," he yelled, "unplug her radio! You want me chucking all over, too?"

  "AF-9, this is Ascension."

  Trying to blank his mind to what was going on behind him, Kinsman thumbed the switch on his communications panel. "Go ahead, Ascension."

  For the next hour Kinsman thanked the gods that he had plenty of work to do. He matched the orbit of their three-man spacecraft to that of the Air Force orbiting laboratory, which had been up for more than a year now, and intermittently occupied by two-or three-man crews.

  The lab was a fat cylindrical shape, silhouetted against the brilliant white of the cloud-decked Earth. As he pulled the spacecraft close, Kinsman could see the antennas and airlock and other odd pieces of gear that had accumulated on it. Looking more like a junkheap every trip. Riding behind it, unconnected in any way, was the massive cone of the new power pod.

  Kinsman circled the lab once, using judicious squeezes of his maneuvering jets. He touched a command signal switch, and the lab's rendezvous radar beacon came to life, announced by a light on his control panel.

  "All systems green," he said to ground control. "Everything looks okay."

  "Roger, Miner. You are cleared for docking."

  This was a bit more delicate. Be helpful if Jill could read off the computer . . .

  "Distance, eighty-eight meters," Jill's voice pronounced firmly in his earphones. "Approach angle . . ."

  Kinsman instinctively turned, but his helmet cut off any possible sight of her. "Hey, how's your patient?"

  "Empty. I gave her a sedative. She's out."

  "Okay," Kinsman said. "Let's get docked."

  He inched the spacecraft into the docking collar on one end of the lab, locked on and saw the panel lights confirm that the docking was secure.

  "Better get Sleeping Beauty zippered up," he told Jill as he touched the buttons that extended the flexible access tunnel from the hatch over their heads to the main hatch of the lab. The lights on the panel turned from amber to green when the tunnel locked its fittings around the lab's hatch.

  Jill said, "I'm supposed to check the tunnel."

  "Stay put. I'll do it." Sealing his faceplate shut, Kinsman unbuckled and rose effortlessly out of the seat to bump his helmet lightly against the overhead hatch.

  "You two both buttoned tight?"

  "Yes."

  "Keep an eye on the air gauge." He cracked the hatch open a few millimeters.

  "Pressure's okay. No red lights."

  Nodding, Kinsman pushed the hatch open all the way. He pulled himself easily up and into the shoulder-wide tunnel, propelling himself down its curving length by a few flicks of his fingers against the ribbed walls.

  Light and easy, he reminded himself. No big motions, no sudden moves.

  When he reached the laboratory hatch he slowly rotated, like a swimmer doing a lazy rollover, and inspected every inch of the tunnel seal in the light of his helmet lamp. Satisfied that it was locked in place, he opened the lab hatch and pushed himself inside. Carefully, he touched his slightly adhesive boots to the plastic flooring and stood upright. His arms tended to float out, but they touched the equipment racks on either side of the narrow central passageway. Kinsman turned on the lab's interior lights, checked the air supply, pressure and temperature gauges, then shuffled back to the hatch and pushed himself through the tunnel again.

  He reentered the spacecraft upside-down and had to contort himself in slow motion around the pilo
t's seat to regain a "normal" attitude.

  "Lab's okay," he said finally. "Now how the hell do we get her through the tunnel?"

  Jill had already unbuckled the harness over Linda's shoulders.

  "You pull, I'll push. She ought to bend around the corners all right."

  And she did.

  The laboratory was about the size and shape of the interior of a small transport plane. On one side, nearly its entire length was taken up by instrument racks, control equipment and the computer, humming almost inaudibly behind light plastic panels. Across the narrow separating aisle were the crew stations: control desk, two observation ports, biology and astrophysics benches. At the far end, behind a discreet curtain, was the head and a single hammock.

  Kinsman sat at the control desk, in his fatigues now, one leg hooked around the webbed chair's single supporting column to keep him from floating off. He was running through a formal check of all the lab's life systems: air, water, heat, electrical power. All green lights on the main panel. Communications gear. Green. The radar screen to his left showed a single large blip close by—the power pod.

  He looked up as Jill came through the curtain from the bunkroom. She was still in her pressure suit, with only the helmet removed.

  "How is she?"

  Looking tired, Jill answered, "Okay. Still sleeping. I think she'll be all right when she wakes up."

  "She'd better be. I'm not going to have a wilting flower around here. I'll abort the mission."

  "Give her a chance, Chet. She just lost her cookies when free-fall hit her. All the training in the world can't prepare you for those first few minutes."

  Kinsman recalled his first orbital flight. It doesn't shut off. You're falling. Like skiing, or sky-diving. Only better.

  Jill shuffled toward him, keeping a firm grip on the chairs in front of the work benches and the handholds set into the equipment racks.

  Kinsman got up and pushed toward her. "Here, let me help you out of the suit."

  "Lean do it myself."

  "Shut up."

  After several minutes, Jill was free of the bulky suit and sitting in one of the webbed chairs in her coverall fatigues. Ducking slightly because of the curving overhead, Kinsman glided into the galley. It was about half the width of a phone booth, and not as deep nor as tall.

  "Coffee, tea or milk?"

  Jill grinned at him. "Orange juice."

  He reached for a concentrate bag. "You're a hard girl to satisfy."

  "No I'm not. I'm easy to get along with. Just one of the fellas."

  Feeling slightly puzzled, Kinsman handed her the orange juice container.

  For the next couple of hours they checked out the lab's equipment in detail. Kinsman was reassembling a high resolution camera after cleaning it, parts hanging in mid-air all around him as he sat intently working, while Jill was nursing a straggly looking philodendron that had been smuggled aboard and was inching from the biology bench toward the ceiling light panels. Linda pushed back the curtain from the sleeping area and stepped uncertainly into the main compartment.

  Jill noticed her first. "Hi; how're you feeling?"

  Kinsman looked up. She was in tight-fitting coveralls. He bounced out of his webchair toward her, scattering camera parts in every direction.

  "Are you all right?" he asked.

  Smiling sheepishly, "I think so. I'm rather embarrassed . . ." Her voice was high and soft.

  "Oh, that's all right," Kinsman said eagerly. "It happens to practically everybody. I got sick myself my first time in orbit."

  "That," said Jill as she dodged a slowly tumbling lens that ricocheted gently off the ceiling, "is a little white lie, meant to make you feel at home."

  Kinsman forced himself not to frown. Why'd Jill want to cross me?

  Jill said, "Chet, you'd better pick up those camera pieces before they get; so scattered you won't be able to find them all."

  He wanted to snap an answer, thought better of it, and replied simply, "Right."

  As he finished the job on the camera, he took a good look at Linda. The color was back in her face. She looked steady, clear-eyed, not frightened or upset. Maybe she'll be okay after all. Jill made her a cup of tea, which f she sipped from the lid's plastic spout.

  Kinsman went to the control desk and scanned the mission schedule sheet.

  "Hey Jill, it's past your bedtime."

  "I'm not really very sleepy," she said.

  "Maybe. But you've had a busy day, little girl. And tomorrow will be busier. Now you get your four hours, and then I'll get mine. Got to be fresh for the mating."

  "Mating?" Linda asked from her seat at the far end of the aisle, a good five strides from Kinsman. Then she remembered, "Oh . . .you mean linking the pod to the laboratory."

  Suppressing a half-dozen possible jokes, Kinsman nodded. "Extravehicular activity."

  Jill reluctantly drifted off her webchair. "Okay, I'll sack in. I am tired, but I never seem to get really sleepy up here."

  Wonder how much Murdock's told her? She's sure acting like a chaperon.

  Jill shuffled into the sleeping area and pulled the curtain firmly shut. After a few moments of silence, Kinsman turned to Linda.

  "Alone at last."

  She smiled back.

  "Uh, you just happen to be sitting where I've got to install this camera." He nudged the finished hardware so that it floated gently toward her.

  She got up slowly, carefully, and stood behind the chair, holding its back with both hands as if she were afraid of falling. Kinsman slid into the webchair and stopped the camera's slow-motion flight with one hand. Working on the fixture in the bulkhead that it fit into, he asked:

  "You really feel okay?"

  "Yes, honestly."

  "Think you'll be up to EVA tomorrow?"

  "I hope so . . .I want to go outside with you."

  I'd rather be inside with you. Kinsman grinned as he worked.

  An hour later they were sitting side by side in front of one of the observation ports, looking out at the curving bulk of Earth, the blue and white splendor of the cloud-spangled Pacific. Kinsman had just reported to the Hawaii ground station. The mission flight plan was floating on a clipboard between the two of them. He was trying to study it, comparing the time when Jill would be sleeping with the long stretches between ground stations, when there would be no possibility of being interrupted.

  "Is that land?" Linda asked, pointing to a thick band of clouds wrapping the horizon.

  Looking up from the clipboard, Kinsman said, "South American coast. Chile."

  "There's another tracking station there."

  "NASA station. Not part of our network. We only use Air Force stations."

  "Why is that?"

  He felt his face frowning. "Murdock's playing soldier. This is supposed to be a strictly military operation. Not that we do anything warlike. But we run as though there weren't any civilian stations around to help us. The usual hup-two-three crap."

  She laughed. "You don't agree with the Colonel?"

  "There's only one thing he's done lately that I'm in complete agreement with."

  "What's that?"

  "Bringing you up here."

  The smile stayed on her face but her eyes moved away from him. "Now you sound like a soldier."

  "Not an officer and a gentleman?"

  She looked straight at him again. "Let's change the subject."

  Kinsman shrugged. "Sure. Okay. You're here to get a story. Murdock wants to get the Air Force as much publicity as NASA gets. And the Pentagon wants to show the world that we don't have any weapons on board. We're military, all right, but nice military."

  "And you?" Linda asked, serious now. "What do you want? How does an Air Force captain get into the space cadets?"

  "The same way everything happens—you're in a certain place at a certain time. They told me I was going to be an astronaut. It was all part of the job . . .until my first orbital flight. Now it's a way of life."

  "Really? Why is th
at?"

  Grinning, he answered, "Wait'll we go outside. You'll find out."

  Jill came back into the main cabin precisely on schedule, and it was Kinsman's turn to sleep. He seldom had difficulty sleeping on Earth, never in orbit. But he wondered about Linda's reaction to being outside while he strapped on the pressure cuffs to his arms and legs. The medics insisted on them, claimed they exercised the cardiovascular system while you slept.