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“He’s got a point,” Johnson said.
Stone shrugged this time. “Well, what if he does?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed off, slid gracefully past Flynn, and vanished down that corridor.
“Was it something I said?” Flynn wondered.
“Nope. He just doesn’t care to be last year’s model, but he can’t do anything about it,” Johnson answered.
“Anybody who can remember when rockets to the Moon were the province of pulp magazines is not going to be right up to date,” Flynn observed. “For that matter, neither is anybody who can remember pulp magazines.”
“That’s true,” Johnson said. “I was never on the Moon. Were you? And here we are in orbit around Home. It’s pretty peculiar, when you think about it.”
“The Moon’s not worth going to. This place is,” Flynn said.
He wasn’t wrong about that, either. The Lizards had been amused when humans flew to the Moon. Since the Race was used to flying between the stars, that first human journey to another world must have seemed like the smallest of baby steps. And when people went to Mars, the Lizards were just plain perplexed. Why bother? The place obviously wasn’t worth anything.
“Heck,” Johnson said, “they didn’t even get all that hot and bothered when we went out to the asteroid belt in the Lewis and Clark. ”
“At least they were curious then,” Flynn said. “We had a constant-boost ship. That made them sit up and take notice. And they wondered what the dickens we were up to. Those spy machines of theirs…”
Johnson laughed. “Oh, yeah. I remember spoofing one of them when I was in a scooter. I signaled to it just the same way as I had to some of the bases we’d set up on the rocks close by the ship.”
“That should have given some Lizard monitoring the signals the spy machine was picking up a case of the hives,” Flynn said.
“Well, I hope so. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know for sure, though,” Johnson said. “What I do know for sure is, it gave our dearly beloved commandant a case of the hives. He called me into his lair, uh, office to grill me on the weird signal I’d sent. Somehow, he never appreciated my sense of humor.”
“He probably thought it lacked that quality of mirth known as being funny,” Flynn said.
“Thanks a hell of a lot, Mickey. I’ll remember you in my nightmares.” Johnson wished he could have left the control room in a display of at least medium dudgeon, the way Walter Stone had. But it was still his shift. He did everything required of him. He always had. He always would, for as long as he was physically able to. He was damned and double-damned if he would give Lieutenant General Healey the excuse to come down on him for something small like that.
He laughed out loud. “Are you attempting to contradict me?” Flynn inquired in moderately aggrieved tones. “How can I know whether something is funny unless you tell me the joke?”
Johnson explained, finishing, “Of course Healey doesn’t come down on me for the small stuff. He comes down on me for big stuff instead.”
After grave consideration, Flynn shook his head. “I don’t think you’d make Bob Hope quake in his boots, or Jack Benny, either.”
“I should say not,” Johnson replied. “They’re dead.”
“I don’t even think you’d get them worried enough to start spinning in their graves,” Flynn said imperturbably. “Neither would that Lizard called Donald, the one who runs the quiz show.”
“How’s he going to spin in his grave? He’s still alive,” Johnson said. “And so is that gal called Rita-oh, yeah.” Recordings of You’d Better Believe It had made it to the Admiral Peary. Some people found Donald funny. Johnson didn’t, or not especially. But, like every other male on the ship, he… admired the lovely Rita’s fashion statements. “One more reason to be sorry I’m not going back to Earth.”
“Two more reasons, I’d say.” Mickey Flynn paused to let that sink in, then went on, “However much you might like looking at her, you don’t suppose she’d look at you, do you? You were not born yesterday, mon vieux. ”
Except for the minor detail that gravity would quickly kill him, Johnson was in reasonably good shape for his age, which was about the same as Flynn‘s. But the other pilot wasn’t wrong; neither one of them had been born yesterday, even subtracting cold sleep. After some thought, Johnson said, “I’ve been accruing pay since the 1960s, and I haven’t had a goddamn thing to spend it on. I may not be pretty, but I might do for a sugar daddy.”
“Maybe you would-if they still have sugar daddies back on Earth,” Flynn said.
“They will. That, I’m not worried about.” Johnson spoke with great conviction. “As long as old guys have more money than they know what to do with, pretty girls’ll give ’em ideas.”
“Hmm. On those grounds, I might even qualify for sugar daddyhood myself,” Flynn said. “I’ve been accruing pay longer than you have, since I joined the crew of the Lewis and Clark on the up and up instead of stowing away, and I’ve been a bird colonel longer than you have. I could outbid you.” He seemed to like the idea.
Johnson laughed at him. “If we’re back on Earth-or in orbit around it, anyway-there’ll be enough girls to go around. You get one, I’ll get another one. Hell, get more than one if you want to.”
“An embarrassment of riches. And, probably, a richness of embarrassments,” Flynn said. “But then, a richness of embarrassments is what sugar daddies are for. I should endeavor to give satisfaction.”
How did he mean that? Johnson refused to give him the satisfaction of asking. Instead, he said, “It’s pretty good weightless, from what I remember. Of course, it’s pretty damn good any which way.”
“There, for once, I find I cannot disagree with you.” Flynn looked aggrieved. “What an unfortunate development. Who could have imagined it?”
Johnson patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. It won’t last.” Flynn seemed suitably relieved.
When Johnson’s shift ended, he went down to the refectory. A couple of doctors were in there, talking while they ate about how they could reacquaint thems
elves with the state of the art once they got back to Earth. They’d been weightless only since reviving aboard the Admiral Peary. Johnson was jealous of them; he couldn’t go all the way home again.
He got himself a chopped-meat sandwich and a squeeze bottle full of rhubarb juice. The juice wasn’t bad-was damn good, in fact. He wouldn’t have been surprised if somebody on the starship were fermenting it. The meat was full of pepper and cumin and other spices. That helped keep people from thinking about what it was: rat or guinea pig. The Admiral Peary hadn’t brought along any regular domestic animals, and the frozen beef and pork and lamb was long gone. The rodents could live-could thrive-on the vegetable waste from the hydroponic farm. Better just to contemplate them as… meat.
In came Lieutenant General Healey. That did more to spoil Johnson’s appetite than remembering that he was eating a rat sandwich. How many steaks could you carve off of Healey? Or would he prove inedibly tough? That was Johnson’s guess.
The commandant hadn’t missed any meals. His face was full. His body was round. If what he ate ever bothered him, he didn’t let it show. Johnson eyed him again, in a different way this time. Healey was bound to have even more pay saved up than Mickey Flynn did. But with that scowl on the commandant’s face, all the money in the world wouldn’t turn him into a sugar daddy.
Johnson quickly looked away when Healey’s radar gaze swung toward him. Not quickly enough, though-the commandant got his food and then glided toward a handhold near the one Johnson was using. “Well?” Healey asked. “Why are you staring at me? Is my fly unzipped?”
“No, sir,” Johnson said tonelessly. The trousers they wore didn’t have flies.
“Well, then? I’m not Lana Turner, either.” Healey hopelessly dated himself with that crack. Johnson, also hopelessly dated, got it with no trouble. Did anyone on the Commodore Perry even know who Lana Turner was? They leered at the lovely Rita these days-not that she wasn’t worth leering at herself.
