On the other hand, Kourou had one very great advantage for Hilda Morrisey. It wasn’t the Bureau’s hated Arlington madhouse.
Here in Kourou she was the senior American officer present, at least until the deputy director got there for the actual launch. So she had no boss at all. She certainly didn’t take orders from Colonel du-Valier-although, in spite of the fact that she clearly outranked him, he did his best to give them.
If Hilda put up with the colonel at all it wasn’t because he was chief pilot and commander of the expedition to Starlab. He had something more interesting going for him. He was not only a well-built man but a Frenchman, and something in Hilda’s brain was telling her that, satisfactory though Wilbur was, it was about time to change her luck. Although Hilda’s few experiments with French males had not been very encouraging, there was that old rumor that they were the ultimate in lovers. Well, sure, they went to a lot of trouble to foster the rumor themselves. But still.
As a matter of fact, it was apparent that the personnel roster at Kourou was heavily weighted with rather good-looking men. Not only that, but men who were either single or-just as good-married to someone who was thousands of kilometers away. There were the Belgian, Bulgarian and Danish astronauts, for instance. They weren’t in a very good mood, because they’d been bounced from the launch to make room for Hilda, the Chinese commander Lin and most of all that great, silent, smelly creature, the Doc. Hilda sympathized with the rejects. They might well need a little consolation, and, if things happened to go that way, Hilda had an open mind about supplying it for them.
She had plenty of time to think about such matters, because the preflight “training” she was supposed to be going through was a clear waste of time. They were not going to have to wear spacesuits. She wasn’t going to be allowed anywhere near the controls of the giant LuftBuran spaceship that would carry them into orbit. All Hilda was really going to have to do was make sure American interests were protected when at last they did dock with Starlab, and when it came to the protection of American interests Brigadier Hilda Morrisey had received all the training she needed long before.
Hilda’s first day was spent listening to briefings she didn’t really care about. The launch controller, a dour Welshman who hated Kourou’s jungly heat, kept talking about launch windows and trip times; pointless, in Hilda’s view. Starlab sailed around the Earth in its Low Earth Orbit every eighty-eight minutes; it hugged Earth’s equator, and so the windows that were best for rendezvousing with it, allowing for the Earth’s own rotation, occurred just about every eighty-eight minutes as well. When that boring lecture was done the Portuguese who was their combat instructor went over and over the weaponry they were to take along against the outside chance that some Scarecrow troops had somehow managed to sneak back in. But what had some Portuguese to tell Brigadier Hilda Morrisey of the National Bureau of Investigation about weaponry?
More interesting were her colleagues. It was the first time the entire crew of the LuftBuran had been in one place. Hilda looked around and chose to sit between the two most interesting of them. One was Jimmy Lin-the formerly captive Jimmy Lin, along because he had firsthand knowledge of what the Scarecrow materiel on Starlab looked like; the other was the Floridian General Delasquez, along because he knew it from its unaltered state. Both had been recently debugged for the purpose of the launch, but if Hilda had hoped for any interesting tidbits from either of them she was disappointed. When she tried to strike up a conversation with the Chinese astronaut, he shot an agonized glance at his PRC guard, standing stiffly at the back of the room, and shrank away. The Floridian merely ignored her.
Stop the Space flight!
Save our planet! Save our country! Every launch produces tons of hydrochloric acid which destroys living things! We, the people of Guyana, well remember the effects of the poisonous Ariane 5 rocket which killed or damaged plants and animals as far as ten kilometers from Kourou. We will not tolerate a resumption of these deadly launches. Our priceless natural resources must be protected! This project must be abandoned!
(Signed) Pou d’Agouti
Besides themselves and, of course, the Doc-stolidly waiting in his little holding cage on the outskirts of the base, and not invited to the briefings-there were four others: the two Germans, the female French lieutenant whose main duty was to be to remain in the shuttle in case of disaster and Colonel duValier, who listened irritably to the briefings, grumpy because he knew it all and because the briefings were being given in English.
It took the Portuguese weapons man nearly half an hour to explain why the handguns they would be issued were to carry a reduced charge-“Because there is much danger of ricochet if fired”-while the carbines would be loaded with armor-penetrating rounds in case of dire necessity. Judging by the expressions on her crewmates’ faces, none of them was learning anything more than Hilda herself. She cast a sidelong glance at General Delasquez, who appeared unaware of her existence, and another at Commander Lin on her right. Hilda was not unaware of Lin’s reputation. According to gossip of the Pats he had harped incessantly on the sexual wisdom of his great ancient ancestor, some two-thousand-year-old sage named Peng-tsu, though none of them would admit to having experienced any of Lin’s expertise for themselves. There might be an additional possibility there, she thought, and allowed her forearm to slip onto his side of the armrest between them.
That produced nothing but a sudden jerk away from her, the man’s attention doggedly fixed on the speaker. She sighed and did her best to pay attention to the lecture on the sheath knife and crowbar.
All things ended in time; even this lecture. When they got up to go Hilda’s fleeting notion of trying to get Lin aside for a little chat evaporated when the Chinese officer whisked him firmly away. Evidently Commander Lin was not in the good graces of his government.
Her second choice was General Delasquez, but the chance of that diminished when Hilda saw that her aide was waiting for her outside the briefing room. Tepp saluted smartly. “Three messages from headquarters, ma’am. First, Colonel Makalanos reports that the X-ray screening is complete and no bugs were found. Second, Agent Dannerman thought you might want to know that Dr. Adcock-the pregnant one, ma’am-is having some sort of emergency. She’s in the hospital, but they give her condition as fair, not critical. Third, Vice Deputy Fennell advises that the deputy director is making arrangements to come here in person as soon as your mission is on its way back from the orbiter.”
To oversee the distribution of the spoils, of course, Hilda thought. “Thank you. How’s our Doc?”
Tepp’s expression didn’t change, but there was a touch of strain in her voice. “Apparently doing just fine, ma’am. Do you want me to look in on him?”
“No,” Hilda decided; no reason to push the woman to do something she hated. “I’ve got time before lunch to do it myself. What I’d like you to do is make friends among the permanent-party junior officers here, see what sort of gossip you can pick up. And meet me again after the afternoon briefing.”
“Ma’am,” Merla Tepp acknowledged as she saluted. She looked relieved. As Hilda turned toward the Doc’s pen she wondered if she were being too indulgent. Not really, she thought. For now, at least, Tepp could be more useful functioning as an extra ear than making herself sick in the presence of the space freak. Whether that meant she might need to be replaced sometime in the future was another question. Maybe not, Hilda thought. Maybe things would go so well on the mission to Starlab that they might once and for all be relieved of the burden of caring for the aliens.
She glanced up at the tall, rusting shape of an old Ariane 5 rocket, memento of Kourou’s early pioneering days, and then caught sight of the man who was studying it.
General Martin Delasquez. Sometimes your luck was good, Hilda thought, and turned to join him. “How did you like the briefing, General?” she asked chattily.
He gave her an unwelcoming look. “It was certainly a complete waste of time for me. I was stationed here at Kourou for months, and there is nothing they can tell me that they haven’t already told many times.”
She gave him an apologetic chuckle. “Our fault, I’m afraid; they want to make sure we new guys get all the dope. I know being stuck with us is an inconvenience, but I hope you won’t hold it against me personally. . . . General? Since you have actually been on Starlab and I haven’t, I was hoping you could tell me something about what to expect when we get there.”