Garcilaso registered impatience. “Let’s stop tradin’ facts and theories we already know about, and start findin’ answers.”
Rapture welled in Broberg. “Yes, let’s get out. Over
there.”
“Hold on,” protested Danzig as Garcilaso and Scobie nodded eagerly. “You can’t be serious. Caution, step-by-step advance-”
“No, it’s too wonderful for that.” Broberg’s tone shivered.
“Yeah, to hell with fiddlin’ around,” Garcilaso said. “We need at least a preliminary scout right away.”
The furrows deepened in Danzig’s visage. “You mean you too, Luis? But you’re our pilot!”
“On the ground I’m general assistant, chief cook, and bottle washer to you scientists. Do you think I want to sit idle, with somethin’ like that to explore?” Garcilaso clamed his voice. “Besides, if I should come to grief, any of you can fly back, given a bit of radio talk from Chronos and a final approach under remote control.”
“It’s quite reasonable, Mark,” Scobie argued. “Contrary
to doctrine, true; but doctrine was made for us, not vice versa. A short distance, low gravity, and we’ll be on the lookout for hazards. The point is, until we have some notion of what that ice is like, we don’t know what the devil to pay attention to in this vicinity, either. No, first we’ll take a quick jaunt. When we return, then we’ll plan.”
Danzig stiffened. “May I remind you, if anything goes wrong, help is at least a hundred hours away? An auxiliary like this can’t boost any higher if it’s to get back, and it’d take longer than that to disengage the big boats from Saturn and Titan.”
Scobie reddened at the implied insult.
“And may I remind you, on the ground I am the captain. I say an immediate reconnaissance is safe and desirable. Stay behind if you want-In fact, yes, you must. Doctrine is right in saying the vessel mustn’t be deserted.”
Danzig studied him for several seconds before murmuring, “Luis goes, though, is that it?”
“Yes!” cried Garcilaso so that the cabin rang.
Broberg patted Danzig’s limp hand. “It’s okay, Mark,” she said gently. “We’ll bring back samples for you to study. After that, I wouldn’t be surprised but what the best ideas about procedure will be yours.”
He shook his head. Suddenly he looked very tired. “No,” he replied in a monotone, “that won’t happen. You see, I’m only a hardnosed industrial chemist who saw this expedition as a chance to do interesting research. The whole way through space, I kept myself busy with ordinary affairs, including, you remember, a couple of inventions I’d wanted the leisure to develop. You three, you’re younger, you’re romantics-”
“Aw, come off it, Mark.” Scobie tried to laugh. “Maybe Jean and Luis are, a little, but me, I’m about as otherworldly as a plate of haggis.”
“You played the game, year after year, until at last the game started playing you. That’s what’s going on this minute, no matter how you rationalize your motives.” Danzig’s gaze
on the geologist, who was his friend, lost the defiance that had been in it and turned wistful. “You might try recalling Delia Ames.”
Scobie bristled. “What about her? The business was hers and mine, nobody else’s.”
“Except afterward she cried on Rachel’s shoulder, and Rachel doesn’t keep secrets from me. Don’t worry, I’m not about to blab. Anyhow, Delia got over it. But if you’d recollect objectively, you’d see what had happened to you already, three years ago.”
Scobie set his jaw. Danzig smiled in the left corner of his mouth. “No, I suppose you can’t,” he went on. “I admit I had no idea either, till now, how far the process had gone. At least keep your fantasies in the background while you’re outside, will you? Can you?”
In half a decade of travel, Scobie’s apartment had become idiosyncratically his-perhaps more so than was usual, since he remained a bachelor who seldom had women visitors for longer than a few night watches at a time. Much of the furniture he had made himself; the agro sections of Chronos produced wood, hide, and fiber as well as food and fresh air. His handiwork ran to massiveness and archaic carved decorations. Most of what he wanted to read he screened from the data banks, of course, but a shelf held a few old books-Child’s border ballads, an eighteenth-century family Bible (despite his agnosticism), a copy of The Machinery of Freedom which had nearly disintegrated but displayed the signature of the author, and other valued miscellany. Above them stood a model of a sailboat in which he had cruised northern European waters, and a trophy he had won in handball aboard this ship. On the bulkheads hung his fencing sabers and numerous pictures-of parents and siblings, of wilderness areas he had tramped on Earth, of castles and mountains and heaths in Scotland where he had often been, of his geological team on Luna, of Thomas Jefferson and, imagined, Robert the Bruce.