A tape of the confrontation was made from a ceiling camera, and will be forwarded to your office along with my complete report. When you see it, I think you will agree with my evaluation, that Herr Lefavre deserves no less than a 1,000 stress response rating.
I spoke to Herr Lefavre at the bar, before the actor began his job. His German is bad even for a Swiss. But he seems to be a personable young fellow, and I look forward to meeting him under less artificial circumstances.
Susanne and I will be in Colorado next month, and we look very much forward to calling on you.
Cordially
Kranz
4 – Roster
GROOMBRIDGE 1618 MISSION,
17 AUGUST 2051
PERSONNEL:
1. TAMER 4 TANIA JEEVES. FEMALE, 31. 8TH MISSION. SUPERVISOR.
2. TAMER 1 HSI CH’ING. MALE, 23. FIRST MISSION.
3. TAMER 1 VIVIAN HERRICK. FEMALE, 23. FIRST MISSION.
4. TAMER 1 JACQUE LEFAVRE. MALE, 25. FIRST MISSION.
5. TAMER 1 CAROL WACHAL. FEMALE, 24. FIRST MISSION.
EQUIPMENT:
5 GENERAL-PURPOSE EXPLORATION MODULES W/ STANDARD EQUIPMENT
1 PERSONNEL RECORDER
1 HOMING FLOATER (SECOND SHOT)
POWER REQUIREMENT:
2 SHOTS 7.49756783002 SU, TUNING @ LOCAL TIME
13:21 :47.94099BDK477
13:27:32.08386BDK477
MISSION PRIORITY 5.
FUNDING #733089 TRAINING.
5 – CHAPTER ONE
Jacque Lefavre’s first world was to be the second planet out from Groombridge 1618. It wasn’t an especially promising place; the planets accompanying small stars rarely pan out. They wouldn’t have wasted an experienced team on it.
Tama Jeeves was helping Jacque adjust his suit’s biometric readout. “Ten to one it’s just a rock. A hot rock or a cold one, we’ll see.”
The five of them were standing around the Colorado Springs ready room, having a last cup of coffee while putting their suits through final checks. They would be living in the suits for the next eight days.
“You don’t think we’ll find anything interesting, then?” Carol Wachal said. “Just an expensive training exercise?”
“Well, it’s always interesting. No two are alike, not even the rocks.”
“But you don’t think we’ll find any life?” Jacque said.
Tania shrugged and snapped shut the lid of the readout box. “I wouldn’t expect a Howard Johnson’s. Maybe fossils; maybe some tough species like the Martian nodules.”
A door at the other end of the room opened and a technician looked in. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Right after the next incoming.” The door led to the staging area, where their suits would be sterilized. Once clean, they would go on to the vacuum chamber that held the LMT crystal.
“Time to zip up,” Tania said. She pulled the tunic up over her head and tossed it into a locker. The others did the same.
Jacque noticed that Ch’ing discreetly avoided looking directly at his female teammates. Jacque himself lacked that particular grace, but at least had the politeness to examine each woman with equal interest Carol returned his stare and added a deadpan wink.
All five were in excellent physical condition and attractive in spite of their hairlessness and rather overdeveloped muscles. Tania had faint stretch marks from having given birth six times on three different planets, and hairline cosmetic surgery scars under each breast. But they were marks of her profession and didn’t detract from her beauty.
Out of reflex vanity, Jacque stood in such a way that the women couldn’t see his back. It looked as if someone had kept score on it-with an axe. Twelve years before, he had been chased down an alley and pinned to the ground by four men while a fifth tried to find his kidneys with a straight razor. This was evidently done for amusement, as they already had his wallet. He and his father moved back to Europe as soon as he got out of the hospital.
The suit, or “general-purpose exploration module,” was a roughly man-shaped machine that could keep a hardy person alive for as long as a month in the middle of a blast furnace or swaddled in liquid hydrogen. Inside it, one could stomp through a hurricane without being blown over, walk the ocean floor without being crushed, or pick up a kitten without hurting it.
It had several tools that weren’t obviously weapons. With them and with the help of the suit’s strength-amplification circuitry, one could: make a pretzel out of a steel bar; reduce a city to rubble; run around the equator of a small world in a week. But it took you five minutes of contortions to scratch your nose, and certain other parts of the anatomy were simply inaccessible.