A World of Difference (48 page)

“Good. Thank you once more also for the clamps, and for flying so bravely against the Skarmer with the rifle”—an episode Sarah would have been happy to forget—“and thank you for Lamra.”

Sarah bowed very low this time, again fighting back tears. “Reatur, Lamra makes for me this long trip worth doing.” Even if, dammit, she added silently, I wasn’t there when the budlings dropped. She didn’t think she would ever stop kicking herself over what she had been doing some of that time. Much too late to change it now, though.

The domain-master asked, “Can Lamra bud again, Sarah?”

She blinked. He
did
have a gift for the telling question, and she hadn’t looked ahead in that particular direction. She gave him the only answer she could. “Not know, Reatur.”

“Only a thought.” He shrugged a Minervan shrug, with arms and eyestalks. “Even if so, I wonder if I should risk her again without you humans here to help care for her. But I like the idea of more budlings from her, could they be got in safety.”

“Not know, Reatur,” Sarah repeated. With a last bow, she went on, “Must go back to flying house now, to help get ready to go home.” She almost hoped Reatur would want to talk more. It was freezing inside the castle, but it was freezing
and
windy outside. But the domain-master waved heron. Sighing, she fixed her hood so only her eyes showed, then trudged out into the latest blizzard.

The small sun shone bravely in the green-blue sky, glittering off endless miles of snow. The snow fell on
Athena
, no less than on the ground. Irv Levitt, who was sweeping it off the spacecraft’s left wing, leaned on his pushbroom and asked, “How long do they think the weather will hold?”

“Two days,” Emmett said. “Which means our next launch window to rendezvous with the rocket motors upstairs is this afternoon. I intend to use it. We’re early, but—”

“Yeah,” Irv said. He understood that “but” perfectly well. Another storm like the last one, and
Athena
wouldn’t just be covered with snow. It would be buried in snow—not ideal circumstances for liftoff.

He started sweeping again. His answer had been short for another reason, too: he still wasn’t anywhere near comfortable around Emmett. It would have been a lot worse, he knew, had
Sarah seemed to want a return engagement with the mission commander. As far as he could tell—how far was that? a question often in his mind—she didn’t. He kept his distance from Emmett, anyhow.

How well that would work once
Athena
was in space was another question. Everybody would be in everybody else’s pockets again, and everybody, as he knew only too well, had good reason to be angry at somebody. They were all supposed to be very civilized people. He hoped the psych tests were right, because they were going to need to be very civilized, at least till they got home.

From the other wing, Pat called, “Done here.”

“Good,” Emmett said. He peered through snow goggles toward
Athena
’s tail, where Sarah and Louise were also busy with brooms. “Now we’re getting down to what the de-icers can handle.”

Irv saw the pilot glance his way but kept on pushing his broom. No, he thought, he was wrong: poor Pat didn’t have a reason to be angry at anyone, except the Russians or the Skarmer or whoever had killed Frank. But, thanks to him, Sarah had plenty of reason to be mad at her, which amounted to the same thing.

One of the better reasons for monogamy that nobody ever talked about, he thought as he shoved snow off the wing, was how bloody complicated everything else got.

When he looked up again, the wing was clean. Sarah and Louise, brooms shouldered like rifles, were marching in step up
Athena
’s fuselage, laughing as they came. If Louise knew what he knew … Oh, shut up, he told himself fiercely. For a wonder, the internal dialogue did.

“Let’s button this bird up,” Emmett said. He waved the rest of them into
Athena
ahead of him. Irv was stowing his brooms when the airlock doors clanged shut, first the outer, then the inner. He had heard those clangs hundreds of times, but this time they were special. The doors would not open again, not on Minerva.

The crew trooped forward, into the control cabin. The seat Irv had used for months was again, suddenly, an acceleration couch in his mind. “At least we’re used to gravity this time,” he said. “Taking off won’t be the hideous shock landing was.”

“Shall we call the Russians and tell ’em good-bye?” Emmett said. He was not looking for an answer; he had already picked up the microphone. “
Athena
calling
Tsiolkovsky, Athena
calling—”

“
Tsiolkovsky
here, Rustaveli speaking.”

Bragg switched to Russian. “
Zdrast’ye
, Shota Mikheilovich. Could you patch me through to Colonel Tolmasov? We are lifting off this afternoon; I want to pass on my respects before we go.”

“So you give us the honor of staying longer on Minerva than you, eh?” Rustaveli paused, perhaps to think of more English words, perhaps merely to set up his reply. “You may as well; the only thing anyone will remember is that you landed first.”

Bragg grinned. “Is that a kind thing to say?”

“No, only a true one. Do you deny it?” Rustaveli said. A moment later, he added in a different tone, “I have Colonel Tolmasov. Go ahead.”

“Sergei Konstantinovich?”

“Good day, Brigadier Bragg. What can I do for you?” As usual, Tolmasov’s English was excellent but bloodless.

“Not a thing, thank you. This is just a call to let you know we are lifting off this afternoon.”

“Are you?” Surprise brought a bit of life to the Russian pilot’s voice.

“Snow,” Bragg said simply.

“Ah, yes, quite. The hills south of Hogram’s domain have thus far shielded us from the worst of it, but I do not think that will last much longer here, either. The best of luck to you, Brigadier. I expect we shall have a good deal to say to each other, when we finally meet back on Earth.”

“I expect we will.” Bragg hesitated, went on. “Better to meet on account of this than in our planes, eh, Sergei Konstantinovich?”

“Yes,” Tolmasov said at once. “And yet—”

“—you’d like to fly against me, anyhow.
Da
, you’re a pilot.”

Back where Emmett couldn’t see him, Irv shook his head. Bragg and Tolmasov reminded him of a couple of big cats roaring at each other across a moat.

After Emmett signed off with Tolmasov, he turned that tigerish tone on his own crew. “All right, people, now we check this beast one more time, the standard preflight and everything else we can think of.”

They did. When at last they were through, the pilot sounded almost disappointed as he said, “Looks green. Let’s do it.”

“Initiate turbojet sequence?” Louise asked crisply.

“Initiate,” Emmett said. Her finger stabbed a button. For a moment, nothing happened. Irv glanced at the boards for red
lights, saw none. Then, through the thick padding of his seat, he felt vibration begin; muted thunder spoke from
Athena
’s engines.

Outside the spacecraft, he knew, the thunder would be anything but muted. “I hope Reatur has everyone well back, the way he promised,” he said.

“If they weren’t a minute ago, I guaran-damn-tee you they are now,” Sarah said. Irv nodded, at the same time wondering,
Guaran-damn-tee?
It sounded more like Emmett than his wife. But what if it did? After two years cooped up like this, everyone’s habits rubbed off on everyone else. You worry too much, he told himself, and worried some more.

“Power buildup?” Emmett asked. He was watching the readouts as closely as Louise, but was too conscientious a pilot not to follow routine.

“Nominal,” she answered, going through the ritual with him.

The thunder grew. “Thrust optimum for taxiing,” Louise declared. Emmett shoved the stick forward. Irv had just started to wonder if the landing gear de-icers were doing their job when he saw the landscape start to slide backward in the monitor and felt the soft, irregular bumps that said
Athena
wasn’t taking off from one of Houston’s glass-smooth runways. Kicked-up snow made the
VIEW AFT
screen a meaningless white blur.

The snow ahead hid surprises, too. Far from being soft, one of the bumps made Irv’s teeth click together. The whole spacecraft shuddered. “
Come
on now,” Emmett said, as if gentling a restive horse. Like a horse responding to its rider,
Athena
leapt ahead, leapt—“Airborne!” Emmett yelled.

The ground dropped away in the monitors, but whumpings and bumpings went on. “Landing gear retracting … retracted,” Louise said, simultaneously killing one of Irv’s worries and making him feel foolish.

“Lord, I forgot about the stupid wheels,” Pat said, relief in her voice. Irv grinned. Embarrassment, like misery, loved company.

“Heading one-two-two … one-two-five … one-two-seven,” Louise reported as Emmett swung
Athena
around.

“Steadying on one-two-seven,” he answered. That was the course the craft would need to rendezvous with the rocket motors waiting in orbit above Minerva. The noise in the cabin changed tone; part of it dropped away. “There’s Mach one,” Emmett said.

The monitors showed the sky a deeper blue-purple than it
looked even aboard the Concorde. As Irv watched, stars began coming out. “Seventy thousand feet,” Louise said.

“And Mach two,” Emmett echoed. “Still doesn’t fly like a Phantom, but we’re haulin’.” He flicked switches. The turbines’ roar died, to be replaced by a high, fierce whine. “Ramjet running.”

“Readings within parameters,” Louise said. Now the monitors that looked up and ahead showed star-flecked black; below, the Minervan surface looked more as it did in orbital photos than as if from a plane. The engine noise changed again, a little. “Computer adjusting ramjet opening for optimum combustion,” Louise reported.

“Pretty soon it can adjust till it turns blue and there still won’t be any oxygen out there to burn,” Emmett grunted.

“Two hundred twenty thousand feet,” Louise said, which was a more prosaic way of announcing the same thing. “Two hundred thirty thousand … two hundred forty thousand … commencing inboard rocket ignition sequence.”

“Go for it, hon,” Emmett agreed.

Irv didn’t see Louise press the button. He just felt as though something kicked him in the ass even harder than he had been kicking himself lately. “Aren’t you supposed to count down first?” he wheezed indignantly. He couldn’t see the gorilla lying on his chest, but it was doing its damnedest to cave in his ribs.

In spite of acceleration, Emmett Bragg’s voice never wavered. Irv remembered resenting the mission commander for that when they landed on Minerva. He tried not to listen. Then Emmett exclaimed, “Orbital velocity achieved!”

The inboard rockets died. Suddenly Irv weighed nothing at all. After that imaginary gorilla, he should have felt wonderful. Instead he gulped and swallowed spit—his stomach was certainly weightless.

“I have the external rocket pack on radar, bearing zero-zero two degrees, range twenty-seven miles and closing,” Louise announced. “Nice burn, Emmett.”

“Thanks, hon. Commencing docking maneuver. People, it’s official—we’re on our way home.”

“Wonderful,” Irv said. “Anybody have a Dramamine?”

“Right here.” Sarah handed him one.

He swallowed it dry—she had pills handy, but no water. After a while, his stomach decided it was under control after all. By then, the big bells of the orbiting rocket motors half-filled the
VIEW FORWARD
screen. “Home,” Irv breathed, and started to believe it.

“It moves!” Lamra exclaimed through thunder as the flying house—walked?—through the fields. She hung on tight to her toy runnerpest. The din was terrifying, but somehow she was not terrified, maybe because she was too interested in what the flying house was doing.

“It goes up!” This time she could hear the disbelief in her voice. “And up and up and up!” Her eyestalks followed the flying house as it turned and dwindled in the sky. The roar dwindled, too. The long, thin white cloud the flying house left behind began to fray and blow apart, just like any other cloud.

“I saw it come down before.” Reatur spoke louder than he needed to; Lamra supposed he was partly deafened, too, as she was. “I suppose I always thought that meant it could also go up again, but seeing it is a lot more impressive.”

“I never saw it come down. I was still cooped up in the mates’ quarters,” Lamra said, a little indignantly. She thought back. “But I remember the noise! Nobody knew what it was. We all thought the castle was falling down.”

“So did I, little one, so did I.” Reatur turned a couple of eyestalks from the daytime star that was all that was left of the flying house to Lamra. “That would have been a little while after I planted your buds on you.”

“So it would, Reatur,” she agreed, consciously imitating his turn of phrase. She looked down at herself. She still didn’t look the way other mates did, but the bud bulges were hardly bulges any more, and the scars that showed where the raw edges of skin had healed together were only light-colored ridges above her feet.

“All your budlings are doing well, I’m told,” Reatur said.

“Good,” she answered indifferently. She still did not care a lot about budlings. Seeing how grown males behaved was much more interesting: that was how she wanted to learn to act.

When Reatur spoke again, he sounded oddly diffident. “Do you think you would be interested in bearing another set of budlings?”

She started to answer, then stopped. One thing grown males sometimes did, she had noticed, was to think before they spoke instead of saying the first thing that popped into their minds. “I don’t know,” she answered at last. “Do you think you would be able to keep me from ending, the way the humans did?”

“I hope so. I think so,” the domain-master said. “We’ll have had a lot of practice by the time your budlings would be ready to drop.”

“That’s true,” Lamra said. “Maybe we’ll have more clamps by then, too. Do you think we could find some springy wood, say, that we can carve new ones out of?” She didn’t know if there was any such wood, but the outside world, she was finding, had all sorts of things in it that she didn’t know about.