“You sounded so, so serious when you said that,” she said, “and you look so dour and unapproachable that I never suspected that you could have a sense of humor. But don’t ever make a joke like that in the pool or you’ll be the one responsible for drowning me.” In the event, neither of them drowned, although the enthusiasm she displayed while making sure he stayed afloat made the process feel like a bout of mixed wrestling. And while they were sitting on loungers at the edge of the pool before or after a swimming lesson it was worse, or better, because she could see that he was attracted to her. She kept telling him to relax, to be less serious about everything and to remember that he was, after all, on leave. It was obvious that he was becoming a challenge to her. But he wasn’t playing hard to get, just feeling too embarrassed and uncertain about himself to play at all. He kept trying to find excuses to return to his cabin to avoid being alone at the pool with her for too long.
He was, after all, only human.
In the dining room, on the recreation deck, and in the big observation lounge, where there would be nothing to look at but each other until Kreskhallar emerged from hyperspace, the soft assault continued although at times it became less frontal. In the lounge there was nothing to do but talk, usually about and often with the other passengers, and drink various other-world concoctions that were intended to lower his resistance and/or remove his inhibitions, which they didn’t. She said very little about herself other than that she had recently graduated top of her year – she didn’t mention her specialty – and that to celebrate her parents had paid for this five-world, star-traveling convention that would enable her to visit worlds she was never likely to see otherwise while indulging her hobby among people of like mind.
O’Mara told her even less about himself, because the uniform, which he had taken to wearing on every social occasion like a suit of green armor, told her what he did in real life.
But there was one evening, when the ship was ten hours out of Traltha’s planetary capital, Naorthant, and the stars and myriad moons of the Tralthan system had been shining into the darkened observation lounge, when he had returned alone to his cabin with his resistance very low indeed.
Angrily he wondered why he was acting like some stupid knight errant from the legends that the passengers discussed endlessly among themselves. What was he trying to prove? She was an intelligent and very desirable young women, so much so that he couldn’t understand why she had any time for a coarse, ugly person like himself at all. And there was no way that it could become a permanent commitment, because it would end when Kreskhallar returned her to Earth in four weeks’ time. Nobody in Sector General would ever know about it, whatever “it” turned out to be, and if they did find out, neither Craythorne nor anyone else would care. He was on leave, after all, and he had been told by his chief to relax and enjoy himself.
He wasn’t being unfaithful, he told himself again and again as he tossed sleepless in his bunk while in the darkness of the cabin pictures formed of Joan wearing even less than she had worn in the pool. It was utterly stupid, probably even insane, to feel that he was being unfaithful to someone who didn’t even know he was alive.
CHAPTER 19
His idea of casual dress would have been a clean set of Monitor-green coveralls with the insignia removed, but Joan would have none of that. Instead she insisted that he dress like a tourist for the sightseeing trips of Traltha’s famed beauty spots and, inwardly kicking and screaming, he was dragged into the Earth-human section of the spaceport’s shopping mall, where she became a sartorial tyrant regarding his wardrobe. He had never been the kind of person who merged into the background, O’Mara thought ruefully, but the result was so loud and garish that he was sure people would be able to hear as well as see him coming.