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Using eyeballs and the scooter’s radar, Johnson killed almost all of his velocity relative to the Columbus and drifted forward at a rate better measured in inches per second than in feet. He made further minute adjustments with his little maneuvering rockets as he slid into airlock number two, which was big enough to accommodate the scooter. “Columbus, I’m all the way inside,” he reported. “Velocity… zero.”
“Roger that.” It wasn’t the radio operator who answered, but the airlock officer, a man. The outer door slid shut behind the scooter. Once it had securely closed, the inner door slid open. The airlock officer said, “We have pressure for you, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson. You can open the top and come out for a bit.”
“Thanks,” Glen said. “Don’t mind if I do.” He had to equalize pressure before the canopy would come off; the Columbus kept its internal pressure a little higher than either the Lewis and Clark or the scooter. When Johnson did emerge, he was wearing a grin. “Always good to see an unfamiliar face.”
“I believe that,” the airlock officer said. “Hell, it’s good for me to see you, and I’ve only been stuck aboard this madhouse for a few months.”
“You don’t know what a madhouse is,” Johnson said, loyally slandering his own shipmates.
“Well, maybe you’re right,” the other fellow admitted. “You folks even had a stowaway, didn’t you? Somebody who wasn’t supposed to be aboard, I mean.”
“We sure did.” Glen Johnson would have drawn himself up in pride, but didn’t see much point in weightlessness. “As a matter of fact, you’re looking at him.”
“Oh,” the airlock officer said. “I’m sorry. No offense.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Johnson said easily. “After all the different things Brigadier General Healey has called me over the past couple of years, you’d have a hard time getting me mad.” He pushed off against the scooter and grabbed the nearest handhold. The corridors of the Columbus, like those of the Lewis and Clark, were designed so that people could impersonate chimpanzees.
“Doctor Harper should be along any minute now,” the airlock officer said.
“It’s all right. I’m not in any big hurry,” Johnson answered. “We don’t have scheduled flights yet-that’ll have to wait for a while. Not enough traffic that we have to worry about it, either. As soon as he gets here, I’ll take him where he needs to go.”
“She. Her,” the fellow from the Columbus said. “Doctor Chris Harper is definitely of the female persuasion.”
“Okay. Better than okay, in fact,” Johnson said. “I figured anybody who’s a doctor of electrical engineering was odds-on to be a guy, even if Chris is one of those names that can go either way. Not sorry to find out I’m wrong, though.”
“We brought along as even a mix as we could, same as the Lewis and Clark did,” the airlock officer replied. “It’s not fifty-fifty-more like sixty-forty.”
“That’s better than our blend-we’re closer to two to one,” Johnson said. He wondered if the larger number of newly arrived women would change the social rules that had developed aboard the Lewis and Clark. Time will tell, he thought with profound unoriginality.
From what the airlock officer had said, he’d expected Dr. Chris Harper to be a beautiful blonde who might have gone into the movies instead of electrical engineering. She wasn’t; she had light brown hair, chopped off pretty short, and wasn’t anywhere near beautiful. Cute was the word that sprang to Johnson’s mind: again, something less than original. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, and stuck out the hand he wasn’t using to hold on.
“Same to you, I’m sure,” she said. “You’re supposed to take me to Dome 22, isn’t that right?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “They’re just about ready for you there. They probably could have gotten things going by themselves, but we’ll be able to get twice as much done-maybe more than twice as much done-with more people doing it.”
“That’s the idea,” Dr. Harper said. She pointed toward the scooter. “And what am I supposed to do here?”
“Get in, sit in the back seat, and fasten your belt,” Johnson answered. “Fare is seventy-five cents, fare box is on the right-hand side. Because of company policy, your driver’s not allowed to accept tips.”
She snorted and grinned. “They kept telling us the people who came out on the Lewis and Clark were a little strange. I see they were right.”
Before Johnson got the chance to deny everything with as much mock indignation as he could, the airlock officer pointed at him and said, “He’s the stowaway.”
Dr. Harper’s eyes widened. “You mean there really was one? When we heard about that, I thought it was like a lefthanded monkey wrench or striped paint-something they pulled on the new people.” She swung her attention back to Glen Johnson. “Why did you stow away? How did you stow away?”
“I didn’t quite,” he said, “I was flying orbital patrol, and I came aboard the Lewis and Clark- the space station, it still was then-when my main engine wouldn’t ignite.” He’d arranged the engine trouble himself, but he’d never told that to anybody, and didn’t intend to start here. “I got there just before the ship was going to leave Earth orbit, and the commandant didn’t want anybody who wasn’t in on the secret going back down and saying something he shouldn’t, letting the Lizards know what was up. So he kept me aboard, and I came along for the ride.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s not as exciting as hiding in a washroom or something, is it?”
“Afraid not,” Johnson answered. Now he pointed to the scooter. “Shall we get going?” He pushed off from the wall and glided toward the little cockpit. Dr. Harper did the same. She was good in weightlessness, but she still didn’t take it quite so much for granted as did the crewfolk of the Lewis and Clark. She scrambled in behind him and strapped herself down.
He sealed the canopy, double-checked to make sure it was sealed, and waved to the airlock officer to show he was ready to go. The officer nodded and touched a button. The inner door to the lock closed. Pumps pulled most of the air back into the Columbus. The outer door opened. Using tiny burns with his maneuvering jets, Johnson eased the scooter out of the airlock. The outer door closed behind him.
“You’re good at this,” Chris Harper remarked.
“I’d better be,” Johnson answered, swinging the scooter’s nose in the direction of Dome 22. Once he’d done that, he decided he ought to elaborate a little more: “I was a fighter pilot when the Lizards got here, and then, like I said, I did a lot of orbital patrolling. And I’ve been out here a while now, too. So I’ve had more practice at this kind of thing than just about anybody.”
“I always enjoy watching somebody who knows what he’s doing, no matter what it is,” she said. “You do. It shows.”
“Glad you think so,” he said. “Now I have to make extra sure not to let any little rocks bounce off us, or anything stupid like that.”
Dome 22 had been set up on an asteroid about half a mile across at its thickest point. “This is the one they’
re going to use as a test, isn’t that right?” Chris Harper asked as they drew near the drifting chunk of rock and metal.
“Yeah, I think so,” he answered. “That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it? For a last look to make sure everything goes the way it should?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Dr. Harper agreed. “Do you suppose the Lizards will notice when we do test?”
“Everyone’s assuming they will, or at least that they’ll notice the beginning,” he said. “Of course, they may stop paying any attention to this asteroid once we shut down the dome and take everybody off. We’re hoping that’s what they do, but don’t bet anything you can’t afford to lose on it.”
“Fair enough,” she said briskly, and then, to his surprise, tapped him on the shoulder. “I know you said it was against the rules to tip the driver, but I’ve got something for you, if you want it.”
He wondered what she had in mind. The cockpit of a scooter wasn’t the ideal place for some of the things that leaped into his mind, especially not when they’d come so close to the dome. “Well, sure,” he said in tones as neutral as he could make them. He might have been wrong, after all.
And he was. She said, “Here, then,” and handed him a couple of things. They were small enough for both of them to fit in the palm of his hand: a roll of Lifesavers and a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum. They weren’t her reasonably fair white body, but he exclaimed, “Thank you!” just the same.
“You’re welcome,” Dr. Harper answered. “My guess was that you people had probably run out of things like that a while ago.”
“And you’re right, too,” he said. “As far as teeth and such go, we’re probably better off on account of it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the hell out of these. Cherry Lifesavers… Jesus.”
He was close enough to the asteroid now to let him see all the construction that had gone on alongside of Dome 22. He clenched the candy and gum. In a way, that was what the construction was all about: so the USA could go right on making such frivolous things. He laughed at himself. If you don’t sound like something out of a recruiting film, what does?
