Lorraine cinched the orange tube around his biceps and rubbed an alcohol swab over a vein. O’Donnell made a point of staring at the Monet print adorning the wall.
“I didn’t think you would be so squeamish,” said Lorraine.
“I’ve done my share of drugs,” he said, “but nothing that required a needle.”
Lorraine expertly drew a vial of blood and pressed a bandage against O’Donnell’s arm.
“What exactly are you testing for, Doc?”
“I use a screening panel for thirty different drugs. Cocaine, amphetamines, MDMA, and a host of synthetics you probably never heard of.”
“MDMA?” O’Donnell asked. “Ecstasy?”
“That’s correct,” said Lorraine as she tried to coax the rubber tube into its compartment.
“Ecstasy on Trikon Station?”
“God forbid,” Lorraine said.
Station personnel often joked that the sleep compartments were glorified telephone booths. The command module, however, was equipped with two authentic phone booths for the personal use of the crew, the scientists, and the Martians. A call originating from the station was transmitted by unsecured radio link to any of several communications satellites in geosynchronous orbits, then beamed down to receiving installations on Earth where conventional fiber-optic lines carried the call to its destination. Calls from Earth to the station went the same way, in reverse. The system was fast but had two drawbacks. First, the various links of the phone patch often distorted voices beyond recognition. Second, although the phones had voice encryption capabilities, Trikon regulations specifically prohibited scrambling except during operational emergencies. Any ham radio operator could eavesdrop on the calls by intercepting the radio signal.
Dan sealed himself into the booth. Conversations with Cindy were always tense. Knowing that strangers the world over could be listening made it worse. After one particularly violent argument over a child support payment, a female ham radio operator from the Shetland Islands had written to Trikon complaining about obscenities emanating from space.
Cindy cut him off one syllable into “Hello.”
“I found something on Billy’s dresser and I hope it’s a joke.” Her voice, even distorted, was coldly contemptuous. “A round-trip pass on a space plane.”
“That is no joke,” said Dan. His latest ploy in dealing with Cindy was to maintain a placid tone regardless of the topic of conversation. It did not always work, but it kept him from losing his temper. Sometimes.
“You can’t take him away from me like that!”
“It’s only a visit.”
“I don’t like the idea of him going up there. Riding a space plane. It’s a glorified rocket.”
“The aerospace plane is nothing of the sort. It has been tested and retested and shaken out in all kinds of conditions. Flying in it is safer than driving to the Seven Eleven.”
“Maybe the way you drive it is.”
Dan let the barb pinch him without answering. His driving record during their marriage had been checkered with speeding tickets.
“He’s just a boy!” Cindy screamed into the silence.
“Bill is twenty years old. In most places and in most times, that qualifies him as a man.”
“Not with me.”
“When I was twenty I already had a thousand hours’ solo flight time.”
“You’re always measuring him against your milestones. That isn’t good for him.”
“I’m no psychologist,” Dan said evenly. “But is it bad for a young man to know what his father did with his life?”
Cindy grumbled. One of her subsequent gentleman companions had been a psychologist. “How did you get the passes to him?”
“Well, I knew I couldn’t call him because you won’t let him come to the phone. I knew I couldn’t write because you intercept the letters. So I hired a process server to deliver them.”
“He’s not going!”
“You’ll deny him an opportunity that every boy, as you like to call him, would love to have?”
“I’ll call Ellis Berlow! I’ll get a court order!”
“Without Bill knowing?”
Cindy mumbled incoherently, then the connection broke. Dan clicked the handset back into its receptacle. Not a bad performance. Reasonable, low-keyed, courteous. Still, he could not hear the name of Ellis Berlow without a raging sea of memories flooding back from his subconscious. He pulled himself out of the phone booth and headed for the rumpus room.