Starfire (18 page)

"Nine hours. Then we head back down."

"Good. Plenty of time." Hyslop again had the little notebook in his hand. "I was listening closely right through the powered ascent phase, and it sounded to me as though one cluster wasn't firing as cleanly as the others."

"Exactly right."

"L-8?"

"That's the way I feel it, and it's the way the gyros measure it. But we've been through ground maintenance twice, and they insist that everything is nominal."

"I bet your tests were done at constant external pressure. Downside maintenance sometimes cuts corners that way and uses ambient. I think the aerospike for the L-8 cluster may be following a recorded pressure that's trailing the actual pressure by a few seconds. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. But if you call Dan Iverson at the Flight Test Facility here on Sky City, the FTF can run you a dynamic test with variable ambient air pressures. You'll be able to find out if that's the reason the L-8 cluster is off."

"Great." The woman raised blond eyebrows, plucked to a thin line. "I assume you can authorize that?"

"Sure. No, wait a minute." Hyslop paused, with an expression of surprise and irritation that Maddy found comical. "Damn it, I could have last week, but I'm not sure I can anymore. Look, go to Dan anyway, and tell him that John Hyslop told you that Dan is to get authorization from Bruno Colombo to have the test performed."

"Dan Iverson. John Hyslop. Bruno Colombo." The curved eyebrows went up farther. "I hope I can remember all the names. One of them is you?"

"I'm John Hyslop."

"I've heard that name." She reached out a long, slender hand. "Kirsten Lindstrom."

"Will you do it?"

"Sure. Why not?" She shrugged. "We have lots of time before we leave, and I'd love to have that twenty-one percent increase in EJV. If it works out, I'll let you know."

"I don't know where I'll be. Go through Dan."

"It's a promise."

Maddy, at last, was able to drag him away and off the shuttle. As soon as they were out of the pilot's hearing she said, "Didn't you even
know
her before?"

"No. You heard us introduce ourselves."

"But you went right into the cabin, which passengers are not allowed to do, and you started telling her what was wrong with the way she did things."

"I did?" He was frowning at Maddy. "I don't think so."

"I heard you. All that about the way the engines were firing, and what she ought to do about it."

"But that wasn't criticism of
her.
We were talking about the engines."

"If you came into my project, and I didn't even know you, and you started telling me you understood it better than I did, and how I ought to be running it, I'd—I'd—well—" It occurred to Maddy that at the moment John Hyslop
was
her project, and he understood himself far better than she did. She finished weakly, "Well, I don't know what I'd do."

She had left herself open for a major put-down, but all he did was stare at her, very seriously, and say, "I hope she didn't feel that way. I was trying to do her a favor, because her bonus depends on the performance of her shuttle. I said a fifteen percent improvement in EJV was great, but that was only so she wouldn't feel bad. The ratio of final payload to initial mass depends exponentially on the EJV. When the spec promises a twenty-one-percent increase, fifteen percent is terrible. Kirsten Lindstrom and I both knew it, but neither of us said it."

It was a correction rather than a put-down. Not in the least like Gordy Rolfe's cut-you-off-at-the-knees mockery and open sneer. Maddy decided that she preferred John Hyslop's way of doing things, particularly when he added, "I suppose we have a different style of operations out here. But I feel sure you'll get used to it. Have you ever been out at the shield before?"

"Never."

"Then the more you know about it ahead of time, the better. Let's go and get something to eat and we'll talk about it."

It was a genuine offer, well intended. Maddy had not eaten since morning and should have been starved. Instead, the thought of food produced a swirl of nausea. Her head was suddenly aching and the dizziness was back, worse than before.

It couldn't be that she was sick. She was
never
sick; hadn't been sick since she was seventeen. But the room in which they stood was rocking about her, and the straight line of Sky City's central axle seemed to bend and twist as she stared along its length.

"Are you all right?" John Hyslop's face was close to hers. She wondered why he was asking, then realized that she was clutching his forearm in both hands. She tried to shake her head. Nausea gripped her. She wanted to swallow, and couldn't.

It had happened impossibly fast. When the shuttle docked she had been fine. Now she couldn't speak and she dared not move. She wanted to lie down and die.

"Come on." John was pulling her along in the low-gravity environment. "Just hang on for two minutes. Keep your eyes closed if it helps; I'll make sure you don't bang into anything."

She wanted to say,
What's happening? heave me alone. Oh my God. Help me, please.
All she could manage was an anguished groan. Dizziness made speech impossible. Eyes open, eyes closed, it made no difference.

"One more minute," John said. He had her around the waist and was hurrying them along a broad, twisting tunnel. Maddy felt weight coming back. It made her feel sicker than ever, if that was possible. She realized that he was carrying her rather than steering her. They must be heading away from the central axis of Sky City. They passed two other people, who made way for them and called something to John that Maddy didn't quite catch.

Lab something, they said—was he taking her to a lab?

For tests? She couldn't stand the idea of tests. She was going to throw up. She must not throw up.

Anytime she moved her head, even a millimeter, the nausea became worse. She closed her eyes and concentrated on holding her head perfectly still. One more minute, he said. Surely she could hang on for one minute. But how long did a minute last when you felt like this?

The icy spray on her left temple made her gasp. She opened her eyes and involuntarily jerked her head. The universe rolled sickeningly about her.

"That should do it," said a voice. "But you're moving, making things worse." Not John's voice, but a stranger's. He was standing in front of her, a fat man in a green uniform.

John was next to him, holding her at the waist. "Don't move," he said. "Give it another half minute. Stay there."

Stay here, as opposed to what?
With that thought—with the very fact that she could think it—Maddy was suddenly enormously better. Her stomach no longer pushed up into her throat and the room was slowing and steadying.

"What?" she said. It wasn't much of a sentence, but the word came out all right.

"Labyrinthitis," the stranger said. "Have you been pogoing?"

Maddy didn't dare open her mouth, and anyway the stranger's words made no sense. He turned to John Hyslop. "Has she?"

"Yes. She's been down to Earth and back half a dozen times in the past week or two, and I don't think she had any training and preparation."

"There's your explanation, then. If you pogo between zero gee and multiple gees, it's just asking for inner-ear trouble. It's amazing she didn't get it sooner. Some people are hit the first time they come to Sky City." He turned again to Maddy. "You were lucky to be with somebody who recognized that you had labyrinthitis and brought you right here."

Maddy said weakly, "Labyr . . ."

"Labyrinthitis. Infection of the inner ear. Don't worry, it's never fatal."

Maddy wanted to protest that no one had warned her of anything like this, and why had it happened to her, who never got sick? She was not up to saying anything so complicated. Instead she said, "I feel awful."

"Soon you'll feel fine. Actually, you'll probably feel better than you are. We've got rid of the nausea and dizziness, but you still have an inner-ear disturbance. It will be a while before the shot completes the repair. And you're going to feel dopey and high and loose as a goose for the next few hours." The fat man in the green medical outfit turned to John. "Feed her, Hyslop, if she can eat. That will help. Sleep would be even better. No alcohol or fizzes; they are chemically similar to the Asfanil shot and they'll interact with it. Caffeine is all right, but no strenuous exercise. And there might be an Aphrodite effect, so no sex, and don't take her dancing tonight."

"I don't dance," John said seriously. "Thanks, Weinstein."

"Hey, unless you guys find something useful for me to do now and again, they'll stop paying me." Weinstein reached out, took Maddy's hand, and gave it a little formal shake. It seemed like pure courtesy, but she noticed that he watched her eyes and face closely while he did it.

"You'll do," he said. "Don't worry if you think and say strange things. That's standard drug side effects."

Maddy risked a tiny nod of her head. No spinning of the room, no convulsive gag reflex. "I can manage. You don't have to worry."

You
don't have to worry. The person who needs to worry is me. I'm supposed to stick tight to John Hyslop, and he's going off for a meeting out on the shield. Am I well enough to go with him? I don't think so. But that isn't even an issue. I
have
to be well enough. Or I must prevent him from going until I feel better.

"You do whatever you have to do." Thanks, Gordy. I know the Argos Group rules.

The rules, the sacred rules. The rules were wonderful. They told you exactly what to do at all times.

Of course, the rules made no allowance for sickness or weariness. You probably had to die to get off the hook, and even that wouldn't satisfy Gordy Rolfe. Worst of all, though the rules said
what
you had to do, they offered no advice at all on how to do it.

12

John had relinquished his hold on her waist, but he still guided her with a hand on one forearm. He could not have been more proper, yet she could feel goose bumps rising under his fingers. As he led her out of Weinstein's office—a neat, pink-walled room packed with medical equipment that she had no recollection of entering—Maddy felt spectacularly strange and light-headed. She struggled for self-control.
You have a job to do. You've got to stick with John Hyslop, or make him stick with you.

She halted, so that John was forced to turn and face her. "Five minutes ago I didn't think I'd ever feel like eating again. Now I'm all of a sudden starving. Your doctor friend said you could feed me. Will you do it?"

"Of course."

"Soon?"

"Right away. Can you move by yourself, or do you need my help?"

"I don't know. If you could . . ."

She held out her hand, letting it flop limply at the wrist.
Isn't that what poor weak women are supposed to do? Just as well there's no one from the Argos Group to see this. Maddy Wheatstone—rising star, hard as diamond, cold as Charon, never sick, never dependent—clinging for support like a delicate flower.

You do whatever you have to do.
John Hyslop didn't even seem suspicious. He took her by the elbow and carefully walked her to a drop chute. He halted at the edge.

"We'll be in free fall in the chute, but only for a few seconds. Can you stand that?"

Maddy nodded. The head movement was another informal test of her balance centers, and it went fine. All sense of vertigo had gone. In its place she felt a delicious, sensual languor. Was it low gravity that produced the sense of moving deep in warm water, or was it Weinstein's drug?

She stepped forward into the open space of the drop chute. The free-fall ride down added a new sensation. She felt hot and tingling in the pit of her belly, a warmth as good as the afterglow of the best sex ever.

Len Strahlig had been—how long ago? More than six months. And he had definitely
not
been the best sex ever, as well as being an empty-headed scumball liar. But he had talked a great line, just as a salesman was supposed to. The very opposite of John Hyslop. John was so serious and awkward and tongue-tied except about his work.
How would he be if he could relax for once and obey his emotions instead of his inhibitions?

The return of weight brought Maddy out of her budding fantasy. She realized that her eyes were closed, and reluctantly opened them. When you began to have erotic thoughts about a hard-line engineer who was also your primary job assignment, something was long overdue.

Maddy felt heavier, which meant that they had dropped a long way from the central axis. And yet—she took a couple of steps—the floating sensation was still there.

The drug. It had to be the drug.

A voice at the base of her brain whispered,
Be careful!
Argos Group training forbade the use of drugs, not for any moral reasons but because they warped business judgment. The warning was intended to apply mainly to dope and fizzes, but Weinstein had mentioned that the Asfanil shot might produce the same effects.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. She had been told that it would be good if she could sleep, except that she had to stay with John Hyslop. Both of those were possible only if she slept with him. Maddy took a deep breath. She had to get herself under control. She ought not have been thinking of sex at all at a time like this. You were permitted, even encouraged, to have sex with your assignment when that came as a necessary part of the job. But you never, under any circumstances, became emotionally involved. Thanks to the Asfanil, she felt more than involved; in her present mood she was likely to say or do anything.

Fortunately, she was no longer the focus of John Hyslop's attention. The drop chute had delivered them into the middle of the biggest room that she had ever seen on Sky City. Looking forward, along what had to be the main city axis, she saw thirty meters of floor before it reached a flat blue vertical surface. The wall behind was the same distance away. On the other two sides the floor curved up through ninety degrees to become the walls.

This had to be one of the big communal halls of Sky City, a combined social meeting place and restaurant. Scores of tables were scattered randomly on the smooth white floor. They and the one-piece chairs were all light and moveable. Small groups, mostly between two and six people, sat eating and chatting around the tables. Low-level rolfes scuttled unobtrusively between the tables, clearing and cleaning.