“I don’t know,” said Donal, slowly. “I don’t know that I’d want the responsibility.”
“No responsibility.” Lee’s eyes were shining; and it struck home to Donal suddenly that the man was terrified: terrified of being refused. “Just tell me. Try me, now. Tell me to get down and bark like a dog. TeU me to cut my left hand off at the wrist. As soon as they’ve grown me a new one I’ll be back to do whatever you want me to do.” The knife was suddenly back in his hand. “Want to see?’
“Put that away!” snapped Donal. The knife disappeared. “All right, I’ll buy your contract personally. My suit of rooms are third door to the right, the head of the stairs. Go up there and wait for me.”
Lee nodded. He offered no word of thanks. He only turned and went.
Donal shook himself mentally as if the emotional charge that had crackled in the air about him the last few seconds was a thing of physical mass draped heavily upon his shoulders. He turned and went to the library.
Elvine was standing looking out the great expanse of open wall at the ocean, as he came in. She turned quickly, at the sound of his steps and came to meet him.
“What was it?” she asked.
“One of my soldiers from the Harmony business,” he said. “I’ve taken him on as my personal orderly.” He looked down at her. “Ev—”
Instantly, she drew a little away from him. She looked out the wall, one hand tailing down to play with a silver half-statuette that sat on a low table beside her.
“Yes?” she said.
He found it very hard to get the words out.
“Ev, you know I’ve been around here a long time,” he said.
“A long time?” At that, she turned to face him with a slight look of startlement. “Four months? It seems like hours, only.”
“Perhaps,” he said, doggedly. “But it has been a long time. So perhaps it’s just as well I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” Her eyes shot wide; hazel eyes, staring at him. “Who said you were leaving?”
“I have to, of course,” he said. “But I thought I ought to clear something up before I go. I’ve liked you a great deal, Ev—”
But she was too quick for him.
“Liked me?” she cried. “I should think you should! Why, I haven’t hardly had a minute to myself for entertaining you. I swear I hardly know what it looks like any more outside of this place! Liked me! You certainly ought to like me after the way I’ve put myself out for you!”
He gazed at her furious features for a long moment and then he smiled ruefully.
“You’re quite right,” he said Tve put you to a great deal of trouble. Pardon me for being so dense as not to notice it” He bent his head to her. ‘Til be going now.”
He turned and walked away. But he had hardly taken a dozen steps across the sunlit library before she called his name.
“Donal!”
He turned and saw her staring after him, her face stiff, her fists clenched at her side.
“Donal, you … you can’t go,” she said, tightly.
“I beg your pardon?” He stared at her.
“You can’t go,” she repeated. “Your duty is here. You’re assigned here.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Ev. This business of Oriente’s come up. Fm going to ask the marshal to assign me to one of the ships.”
“You can’t.” Her voice was brittle. “He isn’t here. He’s gone down to the Spaceyard.”
“Well, then, I’ll go there and ask him.”
“You can’t. I’ve already asked him to leave you here. He promised.”
“You whatT The words exploded from his lips in a tone more suited to the field man to this quiet mansion.
“I asked him to leave you here.”
He turned and stalked away from her.
“Donal!” He heard her voice crying despairingly after him, but there was nothing she, or anyone in that house could have done, to stop him then.
He found Gait examining the new experimental model of a two-man anti-personnel craft. The older man looked up in surprise as Donal came up.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Could I see you alone for a minute, sir?” said Donal. “A private and urgent matter.”
Gait shot him a keen glance, but motioned aside with his head and they stepped over into the privacy of a tool control boom.
“What is it?” asked Gait.
“Sir,” said Donal. “I understand Elvine asked you if I couldn’t continue to be assigned to your household during the upcoming business we talked about with Patrol Chief Lludrow earlier today.”
“That’s right. She did.”
“I did not know of it,” said Donal, meeting the older man’s eyes. “It was not my wish.”
“Not your wish?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh,” said Gait. He drew a long breath and rubbed his chin with one thick hand. Turning his head aside, he gazed out through the screen of the control booth at the experimental ship. “I see,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”
“No reason why you should,” Donal felt a sudden twist of emotion inside him at the expression on the older man’s face. “I should have spoken to you before sir.”
“No, no,” Gait brushed the matter aside with a wave of his hand. ‘The responsibility’s mine. I’ve never had children. No experience. She has to get herself settled in life one of these days; and … well, I have a high opinion of you, Donal.”
“You’ve been too kind to me already, sir,” Donal said miserably.
“No, no … well, mistakes will happen. I’ll see you have a place with the combat forces right away, of course.”
“Thank you,” said Donal.
“Don’t thank me, boy.” Abruptly, Gait looked old. “I should have remembered. You’re a Dorsai.”
STAFF LIAISON
“Welcome aboard,” said a pleasant-faced Junior Captain, as Donal strode through the gas barrier of the inner lock. The Junior Captain was in his early twenties, a black-haired, square-faced young man who looked as if he had gone in much for athletics. “I’m J.C. Allmin Clay Andresen.”
“Donal Graeme.” They saluted each other. Then they shook hands.
“Had any ship experience?” asked Andresen.
“Eighteen months of summer training cruises in the Dorsai,” answered Donal. “Command and armament—no technical posts.”
“Command and armament,” said Andresen, “are plenty good enough on a Class 4J ship. Particularly Command. You’ll be senior officer after me—if anything happens.” He made the little ritual gesture, reaching out to touch a close, white, carbon-plastic wall beside him. “Not that I’m suggesting you take over in such a case. My First can handle things all right. But you may be able to give him a hand, if it should happen.”
“Be honored,” said Donal, “Care to look over the ship?” “I’m looking forward to it.” “Right. Step into the lounge, then.” Andresen led the way across the small reception room, and through a sliding bulkhead to a corridor that curved off ahead of them to right and left. They went through another door in the wail of the corridor directly in front of them, down a small passage, and emerged through a final door into a large, pleasantly decorated, circular room.
“Lounge,” said Andresen. “Control center’s right under our feet; reversed gravity.” He pressed a stud on the wall and a section of the floor slid back. “You’ll have to flip,” he warned, and did a head-first dive into the hole.
Donal, who knew what to expect, followed the J.C.’s example. The momentum of his dive shot him through and into another circular chamber of the same size as the lounge, in which everything would have been upside down and nailed to the ceiling, except for the small fact that here the gravity was reversed; and what had been down, was up, and up was down instead.
“Here,” said Andresen, as Donal landed lightly on the floor at one side of the opening, “is our Control Eye. As you probably saw when you were moving in to come aboard, the Class 4J is a ball-and-hammer ship.” He pressed several studs and in the large globe floating in the center of the floor, that which he had referred to as the Control Eye, a view formed of their craft, as seen from some little distance outside the ship. Half-framed against the star-pricked backdrop of space, and with just a sliver of the curved edge of Freiland showing at the edge of the scene, she floated. A sphere thirty meters in diameter, connected by two slim shafts a hundred meters each in length to a rhomboid-shape that was the ship’s thrust unit, some five meters in diameter at its thickest and looking like a large child’s spinning top, pivoted on two wires mat clamped it at the middle. This was the “hammer.” The ship, proper, was the “ball.”
“No phase-shift equipment?” asked Donal. He was thinking of the traditional cylinder shape of the big ships that moved between the stars.