Freddy hiked himself up until his eye was an inch from the inside of the box. Wires and circuits matched the diagram on the paper.
“You talk with her about you coming up here?” he asked.
“Of course we did. I told her that it was only six months, but that it would be very good for my long-range career plans. After that, we could talk about getting married.”
“Hmmm. I see,” said Freddy.
“What does that mean? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, I just found the relay I was lookin’ for.”
“Anyway,” Lance continued, “now I’m not so sure about getting married.”
“Because you can’t get her on the phone?”
“Yeah. No. Well, yeah,” said Lance. “That’s never happened. It’s like a sign.”
“Sign of what?”
“That something is wrong. People don’t always tell you. They give you signs.”
“Maybe she just don’ expect you to call.”
“I always have before.”
“You weren’ in space before.”
“But I always called.”
“You know what you beginning to sound like, man? The catechism the nuns taught me in school. ‘Who made me?’ ‘God made me.’ ‘Who God?’ ‘God the Supreme Being Who made all things.'”
“What’s wrong with that?” said Lance.
Freddy shook his head. “Lemme see the next page.”
They floated in silence, Freddy tracing computer circuits and Lance mulling over his crisis with Becky. The Swedish tech swam down the tunnel.
He nodded to the two crewmen, then disappeared into the observation blister. As soon as the door closed, Freddy chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” said Lance.
“Look at your watch and tell me when ten minutes is up.”
Lance obeyed, assuming that the ten-minute period was related to Freddy’s work. He signaled when the time had passed. Moments later, a female Martian appeared. She ignored the two crewmen and made straight for the observation blister. The door opened and she slipped inside.
Freddy laughed.
“Now what’s so funny?” said Lance.
“I been in here the last two nights. Same thing. He goes into the blister and ten minutes later some chick shows up. Last night it was one of the Europeans. Wonder what’d happen if two showed up.”
“There would be a fight.”
“Or maybe our friend’d need some help.” Freddy winked.
“Not from me,” said Lance.
“Can you imagine? I had a water-bed once, till my cousin Felix used it one night and forgot to take his boots off. Thought I was floating then, but that’d be nothing compared to this. All kinds of tumbling, all kinds of angles. And with the Earth and stars right outside the window. Beats lookin’ across an air shaft, eh?”
“I never have.”
“Tha’s right. No air shafts in Kansas.”
There was a thud against the blister door.
“What’s that?” Lance blurted.
“Newton’s Law.”
Freddy left Lance with instructions to keep a close eye on the circuitry, then headed for the command module to test the adjustments he had made to the relay. The project that Commander Tighe had assigned him was far less complicated than he had expected. If necessary, he could have reconfigured the entire computer system in two or three evenings. But Freddy was in no rush.
As he approached the command module, Freddy noticed two figures slipping out of The Bakery. Even at a distance of one hundred feet, he recognized the red mop of Stu Roberts and the ample ass of Russell Cramer. The two men entered Hab 1.
Freddy knifed past the command module. The test he was about to run could wait. As he passed the hatch to Hab 1, he could see Roberts and Cramer at the door to Roberts’s compartment. Freddy cast his eyes up and down the tunnel. No one was in sight. He pulled himself into The Bakery. Like the Mars module, it was in nighttime illumination: pools of dim light and long stretches of shadow. Freddy nosed up to the tiny lab assigned to Hugh
O’Donnell. The door was closed. The strip of cellophane tape O’Donnell stretched across the padlock each night to reveal signs of intrusion was undisturbed.
Dart throwing was easy in micro-gee, thought Hugh O’Donnell. Since the dart flew in a precisely straight line, rather than arc toward the floor in response to gravity, all you needed were an accurate aim and a correct release point in your throwing motion.