“What do you mean?” he asked, like a professor quizzing a student.
“I want to take over Russ Cramer’s position, now that he’s gone. And when it comes time to pick the team for the first mission to Mars, I want to be the chief biochemist.”
Jaeckle had been unconsciously backing away from her. He thumped against the closed door; he could retreat no further.
“The standards for the real Mars crew will be very high,” he said, trying to regain his dignity.
“No they won’t, and you damn well know it,” said Carla Sue. “They’ll be just as cockamamy as they were for this project. Carla Sue Gamble in space? You thought that was funny at first, didn’t you? But I’m here. And now that I’ve come this far I’m going all the way.”
“Your work will have to…”
“Never mind my work! It’s good enough, we both know that. I want to be on the first team and you’re going to make damned certain that I am.”
“Carla, I won’t have the power to select the actual Mars team.”
“You know, you’re probably right,” said Carla Sue. “You won’t have any power at all once people start seeing your face plastered over every supermarket checkout in the country. I don’t think anyone would want a man who raped his own daughter to plant the flag on Mars.”
Even though she was in her own compartment, Carla Sue realized she had just uttered the perfect exit line. Exaggerating a smile, she opened the door a tad and slipped out.
Jaeckle was too dumbfounded to follow. He stared blankly at the video screen and replayed the conversation over and over again in his mind, oblivious to the music and the images of evergreens laden with snow. The stereo was playing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
He unfurled a handkerchief from a shoulder pocket of his flight suit and mopped at the film of sweat oozing across his brow. A minute later, his brow still wet, he realized that he had twisted the handkerchief into a knotty coil.
Hovering in the shadows by the hatch to Hab 1, Lance felt his skin crawling with hatred. He had been right. For two hours he had waited here watching Carla Sue’s compartment. Ever since he had seen Jaeckle go into the observation blister.
I was right, he kept repeating to himself. First they spend two hours in the blister and then they come straight back here to her compartment. They think they’re pretty smart, coming back separately. But they’re not smart enough to fool me.
Lance edged closer to Carla Sue’s compartment, his insides blazing. He saw that the accordion door was tightly sealed. Music played inside. Christmas music!
Something—someone—thumped against the door. Lance remembered
Freddy’s comment the first time they had seen the observation blister: Newton’s Law.
Lance felt a surge of nausea as he hung in the aisle. A chill spread out from his spine. His mouth filled with bile. He thought first of the Hab 1 Whits; they were only a few feet away. But he wanted to be out of this module, as far away as possible from Kurt Jaeckle and Carla Sue Gamble and whatever was going on behind that door. So he bolted and threw up his guts in the Whit of Hab 2.
Dan Tighe ate alone at a table in the rear of the wardroom. As was his custom, he divided his attention equally between the food tenuously adhering to his tray and the people occupying the other tables. He was particularly interested in Aaron Weiss. The reporter had not developed into the pain in the ass Dan had expected. Except for the incident with Hugh O’Donnell, the only complaint had been from Jaeckle, who was insulted by Weiss’s lack of interest in the Mars Project.
Weiss was sharing a table with Stu Roberts on the far side of the wardroom. Roberts’s bony Adam’s apple was in constant motion, either from slurping his food or from whining about long-forgotten rock stars. Weiss looked as bored as a gelding at a stud farm, thought Dan with an amusement he barely could contain. If Weiss spends much more time with Roberts, he’ll beg to return Earthside. Not a bad idea. Maybe I should assign Roberts to escort him wherever he goes.