“No,” said Lance.
“I received a message that she wanted to see me,” Jaeckle said.
Lance did not reply. If Carla Sue wanted to see him she would do it in the Mars module, he thought.
“Well. Um, if you see her, would you tell her that I got her message and I’ll be in my office in the Mars module. Please.”
Lance nodded. Jaeckle pushed off the wall with one hand and headed down the corridor. Lance watched his small, red-suited form disappear through the far hatch.
Then he started after Jaeckle. Sure enough, the scientist headed down the central tunnel and into the Mars module. Lance followed behind him, then hesitated in the open hatchway.
Jaeckle must have sensed him. He turned, looking curious, concerned.
“Do you have official business in this module, crewman?” Jaeckle asked.
“No, sir,” said Muncie. “I’m off duty now.”
“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stay out of this module. Unless you have time reserved in the observation blister, of course.”
“No, sir. Not at this hour.”
“Then…” Jaeckle made a small shooing motion with both hands. The exertion moved him backwards, away from Lance.
“Yes, sir,” said Lance. He turned and started back up the tunnel. But after only a few meters, Lance grabbed a handhold and turned back again toward the hatch.
Along the length of the Mars module’s central tunnel he could see Jaeckle swim past the door that led to his office and head straight to the hatch of the observation blister. He knocked sharply against the metal hatch once and it was opened from inside. By a woman. At this distance Lance could not be sure who it was, but he was certain there was a woman in there waiting for Jaeckle. Carla Sue.
There wasn’t any message and he didn’t go to his office. He’s in the blister with Carla Sue, Lance realized, his insides flaming. She was waiting for him.
It unsettled Jaeckle to have the burly, sulky crewman hanging around the hatch to the Mars module. I’ll have to speak to Tighe about this, he thought. We have protocols. His people are not supposed to be in my module.
He thought for a moment that he should have asked the crewman why he was there. But Lorraine was waiting for him in the observation blister and Muncie looked too glowering, too bellicose, to speak to without an argument erupting. Tighe’s probably sent him in here on some pretext or other. I’ll speak to the commander about it. Later.
He rapped on the hatch and Lorraine swiftly opened it for him. Putting on his highest-wattage smile, Jaeckle entered the observation blister.
Lorraine was not smiling. She backed away from his reaching arms.
“There’s no easy way to say this, Kurt.” Her voice was tense, her hands knotted into tight little fists.
“To say what?” he asked, gliding toward her.
“We’re finished,” Lorraine blurted. “It’s over.”
Jaeckle felt his breath catch in his throat. Finished? She’s telling me it’s over?
As she finally pushed herself away from the biochemistry bench, Carla Sue realized she was playing a losing game. Wearily she nodded farewell to the other late workers and headed back to her compartment in Hab 1. Even though she had spent two extra hours on the soil samples she could still find nothing to confirm Russ Cramer’s supposed discovery.
Worse than that, she was no closer to her goal of penetrating the arrogant, self-absorbed psyche that encased Kurt Jaeckle like a suit of armor than she had been when she first tried to seduce Lance Muncie. Her failure was not for lack of effort. She had spent every possible minute of the last three days in Lance’s dubious company. They ate meals together, exercised in tandem, and spent a well-advertised double session in the observation blister.
The rumor mill, which Carla Sue knew to be more efficient than the station’s computer system, seized on this morsel of gossip with its usual speed. Her fellow Martians whistled when she floated to the biochemistry workstation in the Mars module. Trikon techs smirked when they passed her in the connecting tunnel. Freddy Aviles peered out of the labyrinth of cylinders in the logistics module and flashed a smile dripping with forbidden knowledge.