Then Garlock took a chance. He had to take it sometime; he might just as well do it now.
‘See if you can hit Andromeda, Deggi,’ he suggested.
While Belle, James, and Lola held their breaths, Delcamp tried. The starship went toward the huge nebula, but stopped at the last suitable planet on the galaxy’s rim.
‘Can you hit Andromeda?’ Delcamp asked, more than half jealously, and Belle tensed her muscles.
‘Never tried it,’ Garlock said, easily. ‘I suppose, though, since you couldn’t kick the old girl out of our good old home galaxy, she’ll just sit right here for me, too.’
He went through the motions and the Pleiades did sit right there – which was exactly what he had told her to do. And everybody – even the ‘crackpots’ – breathed more easily.
And Belle was ‘nice’ to Fao; she didn’t use her claws, even once, all day. And, just before quitting time —
‘Does he … I mean, did he ever … well, sort of knock you around?’Fao asked.
‘I’ll say he hasn’t!’ Belle’s nostrils flared slightly at the mere thought. ‘I’d stick a knife into him!’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean physically…’
‘Through my blocks? A Prime’s blocks? Don’t be ridiculous, Fao!’
‘What do you mean, “ridiculous”?’ Fao snapped. ‘You tried my blocks. What did they feel like to you – mosquito netting? What I thought was … oh, all he really said was that all Primes have to have hell knocked out of them before they could be any good. That he had had it one way, Deggi another, and me a third. I see – you haven’t had yours yet.’
‘I certainly haven’t. And if he ever tries it, I’ll…’
‘Oh, he won’t. He couldn’t, very well, because after you’re married, it would…’
‘Did he tell you I was going to marry him?’
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‘Of course not. No fringes, even. But who else are you going to marry? If the whole universe was clear full of the finest men imaginable, can you ever conceive of marrying any one of them except him?’
‘I’m not going to marry anybody. Ever.’
‘No? You, with your Prime’s mind and your Prime’s body, not have any children? And you tell me not to be ridiculous?’
That stopped Belle cold, but she wouldn’t admit it. Instead: T don’t get it. What did he do to you, anyway?’
Fao’s block set itself so tight that it took her a full minute to soften it down enough for even the thinnest thought to get through. ‘That’s something nobody will ever know. But anyway, unless … unless you find another Prime as strong as he is – and I don’t really think there are any, do you?’
‘Of course there aren’t. There’s only one of his class, anywhere. He’s it,’ Belle said, with profound conviction.
“That makes it tough for you. You’ll have the toughest job imaginable. The very toughest. I know.’
‘Huh? What job?’
‘Since Clee won’t do it for you, and since nobody else can, you’ll just have to knock hell out of yourself.’
And in Oarlock’s room that night, getting ready for bed, Belle asked suddenly, ‘Clee, what in hell did you do to Fao Talaho?’
‘Nothing much. She’s a pretty good one, really.’
‘Could you do it, whatever it was, to me?’
‘As the man said when asked if he could play the violin – “I don’t know; I never tried it.”‘
‘Would you, then, if I asked you to?’
‘No.’
•Why not?’
‘Answer that yourself.’
‘And it was “nothing much”, it says here in fine print. But I think I know just about what it was. Don’t I?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘You knocked hell out of yourself, didn’t you?’
‘I lied to her about that. I’m still trying to.’
‘So I’ve got to do it to myself. And I haven’t yet?’
‘Check. But you’re several years younger than I am, you
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know.’
Belle thought it over for a minute, then stubbed out her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders. ‘No sale. Put it back on the shelf. I like me better the way I am. That is, I think I do… In a way, though, I’m sorry, darling.’
‘Darling? Something new has been added. I wish you really meant that.’
‘I wish I didn’t,’ Belle said. Ready for bed, she was much more completely and much less revealingly dressed than during her working hours. She slid into bed beside him, pulled the covers up to her chin, and turned off the light by glancing at the switch. ‘If I thought anything could ever come of it, though, I’d do it if I had to pound myself unconscious with a club. But I wouldn’t be here, then, either – I’d scoot into my own room so fast my head would spin.’
‘You wouldn’t have to. You wouldn’t be here.’
‘I wouldn’t, at that. That’s one of the things I like so much about you. But honestly, Clee – seriously, screens-down honestly – can you see any possible future in it?’
‘No. Neither of us would give that much. Neither of us can. And there’s nothing one-sided about it; I’m no more fit to be a husband than you are to be a wife. And God help our children – they’d certainly need it.’
‘We’d never have any. I can’t picture us living in marriage for nine months without committing at least mayhem. Why, in just the little time we’ve been paired, how many times have you thrown me out of this very room, with the fervent hope that I’d drown in deep space before you ever saw me again?’
‘At a guess, about the same number of times you’ve stormed out under your own power, slamming the door so hard it sprung half the seams of the ship.”
“That’s what I mean. But how come we got off on this subject, I wonder? Because when we aren’t fighting, like now, it’s purely wonderful. So I’ll say it again. Goodnight, darling.’
In the dark his lips sought hers and found them. The fervor of her kiss was not only much more intense than any he had ever felt before – it was much, very much more intense than Belle Bellamy had either wanted it or intended it to be.
Next morning eight o’clock, the four Tellurians appeared in 136
the office of Margonia’s Galaxian Field.
The first thing to do, Deggi, is to go over in detail your blueprints for the generators and the drive,’ Garlock said.
‘I suppose so. The funny pictures, eh?’ Delcamp had learned much, the previous day; his own performance with the Pleiades had humbled him markedly.
‘By no means, my friend,’ Garlock said, cheerfully. ‘While your stuff isn’t exactly like ours – it couldn’t be, hardly; the field is so big and so new – that alone is no reason for it not to work. James can tell you. He’s the Solar System’s top engineer. What do you think, Jim?’
‘What I saw in the ship yesterday will work. What few of the prints I saw yesterday will fabricate, and the fabrication will work. The main trouble with this project, it seems to me, is that nobody’s building the ship.’
‘What do you mean by that crack?’ Fao blazed.
‘Just that. You’re a bunch of prima donnas, each doing exactly as he pleases. So some of the stuff is getting done three or four times, in three or four different ways, while a lot of it isn’t getting done at all.’
‘Such as?’ Delcamp demanded.
And Fao said, ‘We’ll, if you don’t like the way we’re doing things you can —’
‘Just a minute, everybody.’ Lola came in, with a disarming smile. ‘How much of that is hindsight, Jim? You’ve built one, you know – and from all accounts, progress wasn’t nearly as smooth as your story can be taken to indicate.’
‘You’ve got a point there, Lola,’ Garlock agreed. ‘We slid back two steps for every three we took forward.’
‘Well… maybe,’ James admitted.
‘So why don’t you, Fao and Deggi, put Jim in charge of construction?”
Fao threw back her silvery head and glared, but Delcamp jumped at the chance. ‘Would you, Jim?’
‘Sure – unless Miss Talaho objects.’
‘She won’t.’ Delcamp’s eyes locked with Fao’s, and Fao kept still. ‘Thanks immensely, Jim. And I know what you mean.’ He went over to a cabinet of wide, flat drawers and brought back a sheaf of drawings – not blueprints, but original drawings in pencil. ‘Such as this. I haven’t even got it designed yet, to
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say nothing of building it.’
James began to leaf through the stack of drawings. They were full of erasures, re-drawings, and such notations as ‘See sheets 17-B, 21-A, and 27-F.’ Halfway through the pile he paused, turned backward three sheets, and studied for minutes. Then, holding that one sheet by a corner, he went rapidly through the rest of the stack.
“This is it,’ he said then, pulling the one sheet out and spreading it flat. ‘What we call Unit Eight – the heart of the drive.’ Then, tight-beamed to Garlock: