founder—there’ll be other backers besides GSEC. We might even be able to
straighten things out with Ramelson again. Who knows?”
The atmosphere remained wet-weekendish. “It’s a living, I guess,” Abaquaan
agreed vapidly from the doorway. In his mind he was copiloting the flyer again,
and comparing it to the prospect of hanging around hotel lobbies and theater
foyers, collecting snippets of gossip about gullible, witless people who had
nothing to offer him and who didn’t interest him. He had several ideas on
improving the transmogrifier that he would have liked to discuss with Dave
Crookes, who would be among the party staying behind. But besides all that, he
realized that he cared what happened to Arthur’s Taloids; they were among the
few people he’d met outside of Zambendorf’s team whom he had not simply
dismissed as suckers. They valued their minds and were willing to rely on
themselves without need of magical powers or supernatural revelations as
substitutes for thinking. In Abaquaan’s book that made them worth the effort of
seeing that the feeling was mutual.
Clarissa hadn’t had so much fun for years and was feeling a little nostalgic. As
the base at Genoa was expanded and more Terran installations began to appear
across the surface, there would be more demand for pilots than pilots available
to meet them, she reflected ruefully. She could think of more attractive
propositions than having to deal with jerks like Herman Thoring again, who
thought the world stopped revolving for five minutes every time he went to the
bathroom. Publicity management, she had decided, was the manufacture of
make-believe news out of trivia when nothing newsworthy was to be said. On Titan
she had cultivated too much of an appetite for the real thing to want any part
of an imitation again. “How wonderful,” she said in a flat voice. “Maybe we
could make some extra bucks by doing TV commercials for psychic-proof spoons.”
Drew West thought back to the world of booking fees and box-office takes, and
then to the world of the Taloids, ice mountains, methane oceans, vegetable
cities, and mechanical jungles. He had always had a penchant for enriching his
life through frequent changes of scenery and atmosphere and spicing it with
dashes of the unusual and the exciting whenever possible. That was what had
drawn him out of the domain of more orthodox, humdrum, show-business affairs and
resulted eventually in his gravitating into Zambendorf’s team, where he had
remained for far longer than had been the case with any of his previous
positions. But his restlessness for something new had been making itself felt
again for some time before leaving Earth, and he had contemplated moving on even
before the sudden prospect of the Orion mission to Mars had caused him to
postpone any decision. What had happened on Titan would make the old life seem
that much more uninspiring. Although he had no firm plans or prospects, in
principle the decision was made. He raised his glass, took a long sip of his
drink, and said nothing.
“I guess for me it’s been kinda like the old days,” Joe Fellburg said. “You know
what I mean—I feel like I was back in the service out of retirement, except on
reflection maybe I’d retired too early in the first place.” He frowned, as if
not satisfied that the words conveyed what he had meant to say, then shook his
head with a sigh and resigned himself to the fact that it didn’t make much
difference anyway. “I dunno . . . Anyhow, we’ll get used to it again in the end,
probably.” He had enjoyed having military people around him again and the
feeling of being involved in something that mattered again instead of just
playing games. It was his rapport with the team that had held him, not the
business the team was in. Now that he saw that clearly, he was far from certain
that he would be able to make the relationship work again.
Thelma looked from side to side uncertainly, and then across at Zambendorf, who
was watching curiously. She spread her hands and shook her head. “Well, I’m
gonna say what I think everyone’s feeling. Look, you know how it is with me—I’m