“You’re either a very brave woman,” he remarked finally, “or a very stupid one.”
She grinned back at him. “Both hallmarks of the successful network journalist, Commander Low.” She scooped a glass from a passing waiter’s tray. “Drink?”
“Got one.” He gestured with the remnants of his soft drink.
“Ah yes, I remember.” Her tone turned Shakespearean. “The hold and resolute commander doesn’t smoke and doesn’t drink.” She favored him with a sideways glance that could have supported a hundred different interpretations. “So what do you do?”
Low was not a particularly imaginative man, but neither was he a complete social ignoramus. He chose to ignore subtle implications. “I walk a lot. In the woods, along the beach, through the city. If you don’t mind my asking, Ms. Robbins…”
She cut him off. “The only thing I mind is you calling me ‘Ms. Robbins.’ Try ‘Maggie.’ The Ayatollah wouldn’t, but everybody else does.”
“Any particular ayatollah?”
“All of ’em. You wonder how they manage to reproduce their own kind.” Her smile widened. “You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you? I’m surprised. I thought you’d be pumping me for reasons or qualifications.”
“Why?” He swirled the ice at the bottom of his glass, an intimate interlude in hydraulics and fluid physics. “You don’t have any. Not that it matters. This late in the game I can’t do anything about it anyway.”
She nodded slowly and her expression changed to one of studied sincerity. “I meant what I said, Commander. I won’t get in your way and I won’t cause any trouble. Should any kind of emergency arise, I think you’ll find me a fast learner. If I wasn’t”—and the smile returned—”I’d have been dead a dozen times over in as many years.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“You’re a national, no, an international hero, but don’t expect me to venerate you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just the pilot and I’m only a passenger.”
“I never asked to be venerated,” Low snapped back. He was beginning to wish he’d accepted her offer of harder liquid. “I just wanted to do my job.”
“Which you’ve done, better than anyone else in your highly specialized profession. That’s why you’re running this mission. That’s why I’m going along. I’m just as good at what I do as you are at what you do.” It didn’t seem possible, but she managed to move a little closer. “People who are the best in the world at what they do have no reason to argue among themselves. We stand above the rest, Commander. I hope you’ll find my presence complementary instead of antagonistic.”
“I guess I will. As long as you remember that it was politics and public relations that put you aboard and not any particular skills that relate to the carrying out of the actual mission.”
She bristled visibly, then took a healthy swig from her glass. “You know, I’m very good at reading people. Something of an expert. I think I can read you. You’re tough. You’d have to be, doing what you do, doing what you’ve done. Right now you’re testing me, trying to get a rise out of me, checking to see how I’ll respond to a challenge. Even a small one, such as an oblique insult. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve been insulted by experts.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Well, do I pass?”
Reaching out with careful deliberation he took the glass from her unresisting fingers, eyed the contents, and sipped. His face wrinkled and he passed it back to her.
“God, the swill they serve at these official functions!”
“I know, it’s dreadful, isn’t it?” She deliberately took another swallow. “But when you have to do as much talking as I do, anything that soothes the throat is welcome.”
“Anything?” His eyebrows lifted.
She hesitated and her grin returned. “You make do with whatever’s available. I fully expect, you know, to get a book out of this experience along with my daily reports. I expect to win a Pulitzer. Came close two years ago when I cracked the Mayan forgeries. You remember that?”
“Oddly enough, I do. Don’t remember you, though.”
“That’s right, Commander, keep testing. I’ll keep passing. It’s good that you don’t remember me. It means that the journalism carried more of an impact than any personalities. I’ll take it as a compliment.” She searched his face. She wasn’t much shorter than he was, though it felt otherwise. Boston Low had a way of making people feel small. It was the same with the Russian cosmonauts, physically short men all.
“You could do worse than be stuck with me. Keep that in mind. I’ll see you later, Boston Low.”
Without waiting to give him a chance for the last word (not that he wanted it anyway), she turned abruptly and disappeared into the crowd. She was of the sort who wouldn’t be happy unless they always had the last word, he knew. He tracked her until he could no longer see her.
Yes, he had to admit, he could have done worse. She was engaging, intelligent, persistent, and easy on the eyes. All that really mattered, though, was if she would prove as good as her word and stay out of the way. That and that alone would make her welcome in his eyes.
Offered a choice, though, he would have preferred to have onboard another fifty kilos of atmosphere.
CHAPTER 4
Taking into account both cargo and crew, it was well nigh the lightest shuttle load in the history of the program. There was even some talk among the more cost-conscious of including the latest backup weather satellite in the mission, or one of the two new South American communications packages scheduled to be orbited later in the year.
This practical suggestion was quickly voted down. Not because the shuttle and crew couldn’t handle an additional deployment, but because on this mission, more than any that had preceded it, there could be no distractions.
Low relaxed in the pilot’s chair and with his practiced, experienced eye scanned readouts he thought he’d never see again except in a movie. They’d changed hardly at all, and he’d been thoroughly checked out on the most recent modifications and additions. The calm voice of Mission Control whispered in his headset. There was a hypnotic quality to it, as there was to the complete moment.
Any minute now, he told himself. Any minute now I’ll wake up, and I’ll be lying on the damp banks of Redwood Creek, or waiting for the almond cookies to come out of the oven at Hung Fat’s, or watching some family from Iowa trying to deal with Dungeness crab out back of Scaparelli’s.
He blinked. The readouts didn’t blink back, and he sighed resignedly. What to most of humanity was the opportunity for great adventure he saw only as a job to get over with. Which, although he did not consciously realize it, was the safest approach to take.
Viewed through the shuttle’s windows, the sky above the Cape was a perfect cerulean blue. There were no clouds, no wind, and no incipient hurricanes waiting to ambush liftoff. There would be no weather delays, which suited Low fine. He hated delays of any kind. They got in the way of life.
People asked him if he ever became used to it. He hardly knew how to answer them. How did one become “used” to strapping oneself to the tip of a gigantic bomb and riding it into space, trying to monitor a thousand things at once while knowing that the next nanosecond could easily be the last one of your existence? One didn’t grow used to such things. What people never seemed to understand was that the thoughts were always much worse than any reality.
Might as well grow used to the thought of drifting forever in the icy void, engines useless, waiting for the last breath of air to escape from your lungs, waiting for the numbness to begin in your fingers and toes, waiting for …
Stop that, he ordered himself. In seventy-two hours it would all be over, done with, and he could stop worrying. Stop thinking. Sequestered among more important instruments, the chronometer would count it down for him. Seventy-two hours and they would be back where they’d started. The weather was expected to hold, and there’d be no need to divert to Edwards. A short mission. A milk run.
There would be congratulations, the requisite debriefing and then he could slip away. Back to where people didn’t give a damn who you were. Back to the other, wilder sea. Back to where he’d left his heart. Seventy-two hours.
“Let’s get moving,” he muttered under his breath.
“You say something, Boz?” Borden spoke without taking his eyes from the readouts and instrumentation that were his responsibility.
“Yeah. I was wondering if the physicists are wrong and our rock is actually made of green cheese.”
“Maybe it’s a cheese ball.” Borden nudged a switch. “You know: soft inside, hard and crunchy on the outside.” The copilot was the sort who’d happily don a lampshade and dance on a tabletop to liven up a party. Later and with equal glee, he’d effortlessly calculate the spatial relationship between shade, skull, table, floor, and the chest of the nearest attractive woman. He was equally adroit at risqué limericks and differential calculus.