The Sam Gunn Omnibus (53 page)

He
chattered and babbled straight through our meager dinner. In truth, the food
was not very appetizing. The soy burger was too cool and the iced tea too warm.
I am sure it was nutritious, but it was also bland and dull.

Spence
could barely get a word in, the way Sam was nattering. I was content to let him
do the talking. Suddenly I felt extremely tired, worn out. It had been a
demanding day, with the flight from the Cape and Sam’s zero-gee acrobatics. I had
barely slept the night before and had arisen wit
h
the dawn.

I
yawned in Sam’s face. And immediately felt terribly
embarrassed. “Sorry,” I apologized. “But I am very tired.”

“Or
bored,” Sam said, without a trace of resentment.

“Tired,”
I repeated. “Fatigued. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Too
much excitement,” Sam said.

Spence
said nothing.

“I
must get some sleep,” I said, pushing my chair back.

“Can
you find your room all right?” Spence asked.

“I
think so.”

“I’ll
walk you to your door,” he said, getting to his feet.

Sam
remained seated, but he glanced first at me and then at Spence. “I’ve got a few
things to attend to,” he said, “soon as I finish this glorious Rockledge
repast.”

So
Spence walked with me along the sloping corridor toward the area where the
sleeping compartments were.

“Sam
works very long hours, even up here,” I said.

Spence
chuckled. “He’s working on a couple of Rockledge people. Of the female variety.”

“Oh?”

“The
little guy’s always got something going. Although I’ve got to admit,” Spence
added, “that he gets a lot of dope about what Rockledge is doing from his—uh,
contacts.”

“A
sort of masculine Mata Hari?” I asked.

Spence
laughed outright.

As
we neared the door to my compartment I heard myself asking

Spence,
“Why don’t they have windows in the compartments? It makes them feel so small
and confined.”

Even as I spoke the words I wondered
if I wanted to delay the moment I must say good-night to Spence, or if there
was another reason.

“The station’s spinning, you know,”
he replied, completely serious. “If you had a window in your compartment you’d
see the stars looping around, and then the Earth would slide past, and maybe
the Moon, if it was in the right position. Could make you pretty queasy,
everything spinning by like that.”

“But Sam said the view was magnificent.”

“Oh, it is! Believe me. But that’s
the view from outside, or down at the observation blister in the hub.”

“I see.”

“Sam plans to put a video screen in
each of his hotel rooms. It’ll look like a window that gives you a steady view
of the Earth or whatever else you’d like to see.”

So after all his talk about seeing “the
real thing,” Sam was prepared to show his hotel guests little more than video
images of the Earth from space. That was just like the gringo capitalist
exploiter, I told myself.

Yet I heard myself asking Spence, “Is
the view truly magnificent?”

“Sam didn’t show you?”

“No.”

His face lit up. “Want to see it
now? You’re not too tired, are you? It’ll only take—”

“I’m not too tired,” I said
eagerly. “I would like very much to see this fabulous view.”

All the way along the long tube
leading to the station’s hub a voice in my mind reprimanded me. You know why
you asked him about the windows, it scolded. You
wanted
Spence to take you to the zero-gee section.

We floated into the big padded gym.
Spence propelled himself to a particular piece of the padding and peeled it
back, revealing a small hatch. He opened it and beckoned me to him. I pushed
off the curving wall and swam to him, my heart racing so hard I feared it would
break my ribs.

Spence helped me wriggle through
the narrow hatch, then followed me into a small, cramped dome. There was barely
room enough for the two of us. He swung the hatch shut and we were in total
darkness.

“Hang on a minute....” he mumbled.

I
heard a click and then the whir of an electric motor.
The dome seemed to split apart, opening like a clamshell. And beyond it—

The
Earth. A huge brilliant blue curving mass moving slowly, with ponderous grace,
below us. The breath gushed out of me.

Spence
put his arm around my shoulders and whispered, “Lord, I love the beauty of thy
house, and the place where thy glory dwells.”

It
was—there are no words to do it justice. We huddled together in the transparent
observation blister and feasted our eyes on the world swinging past, immense
and glorious beyond description. Deep blue seas and swirling purest white
clouds, the land brown and green with wrinkles of mountains and glittering
lakes scattered here and there. Even the dark night side was spectacular with
the lights of cities and highways outlining the continents.

“No
matter how many time you’ve seen it,” Spence said, “it still takes your breath
away. I could watch it for hours.”

“It’s
incredible,” I said.

“We’ll
have to build more observation blisters for the hotel guests. Stud the whole
zero-section with them.”

The
panorama was ever-changing, one spectacular scene blending imperceptibly into
another. We saw the sun come up over the curving horizon, shooting dazzling
streamers of red and orange through the thin layer of the atmosphere. I recognized
the isthmus of Panama and the curving bird’s head of the Yucatan.

“Where
is Ecuador?” I asked.

“Too
far south for us to see on this swing. Why do you want to see Ecuador?”

In
my excitement I had forgotten that I was supposed to be from Los Angeles.

“Ricardo
Queveda
i
,” I temporized quickly. “He
told me was born in Ecuador.”

By
the time we were watching our second sunrise, nearly two hours later, I had melted
into Spence’s arms. I turned my face up to his, wanting him to kiss me.

He
understood. He felt the same passion that I did.

But
he said, very gently, “I’m a married man, Juanita.”

“Do
you love Bonnie Jo?”

“I
used to.
Now...”
He shook his head. In the light from the glowing Earth I could see how troubled
and pained he was.

“I
love you, Spence,” I told him.

He
smiled sadly. “Maybe you think you do, but it isn’t a smart move. I wouldn’t be
very good for you, kid.”

“I
know my own heart,” I insisted.

“Don’t
make it any tougher than it has to be, Juanita. I’m old enough to be your
father and I’m married. Not happily, true enough, but that’s my fault as much
as Bonnie Jo’s.”

“I
could make you happy.”

“You
shouldn’t be getting yourself involved with old married men. Pay some attention
to guys your own age, like Ric.”

“Queveda?
That...
that would-be revolutionary?”

He
looked totally surprised. “Revolutionary? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,”
I snapped. “Nothing at all.”

The
mood was shattered, the spell broken. I had confessed my love to Spence and he
had treated me like a lovesick child.

“We’d
better leave,” I said coldly.

“Yeah,”
Spence said. “We could both use some sleep.”

But
I did not sleep. Not at all. I seethed with anger all night. Spence had not
only rejected me, he had belittled me. He did not see me as a desirable woman;
he thought of me as a child to be lectured, to be palmed off on some young
puppy dog whose only passion is to avenge his miserable family’s supposed
honor.

What
a fool I had been! I did not love Spence. I hated him! I spent the whole night
telling myself so.

WHEN WE BOARDED
the Clipper for the return flight
to Florida, Sam was not with us.

“Where
is he?” I asked Spence.

“He
left a message. Went off to visit a buddy of his in the old Mac Dac Shack.”

“The
what?”

“One
of the smaller stations. It’s a medical center now.”

“Sam
needs medical attention?”

Spence
broke into a grin. “Maybe after last night, he does, after all.”

I
did not find that funny.

Sam
did not appear at the office until three days later, and when he did finally
show up he was grinning like a cat who had feasted on canaries.

He
breezed into the mission control center while I was monitoring our latest
repair mission. Ricardo Queveda sat in the left-hand chair, busily removing a
set of computer boards that had to be replaced with upgrades.

“I’ve
got everything lined up for the hotel,” Sam announced loudly, plopping himself
into the chair on my right.

“Congratulations,”
I said.

“Yep.
Finally got Rockledge to agree to a reasonable leasing fee. Got my buddy Omar
set to handle the logistics up in orbit. Contractors, a personnel outfit to
hire the staff—everything’s in place.”

He
smiled contentedly and leaned back in the little swivel chair. “All I need is
the money.”

I
had to smile at him. “That would seem to me to be a
major consideration.”

“Nah.”
Sam waved an arm in the air. “I’ll get the board to approve it
at the next stockholder’s meeting. That’s
only six weeks away.”

He
popped to his feet and strode confidently out of the center, whistling in his usual
off-key fashion.

“Gringo
imperialist,” muttered Ricardo Queveda.

“You
accept his paychecks,” I taunted.

He
gave me a dark look. “So do you.”

“I
don’t call him names.”

“No.
But you don’t need his money, do you? You live in a fine condo and drive a fancy
sports car. Your clothing costs more than your salary.”

“You’ve
been spying on me?”

He
laughed bitterly. “No need for spying. You are as obvious as an elephant in a
china shop.”

“So
my family has money,” I said. “What of it?”

“You
don’t come from Los Angeles and you don’t need this job, that’s what of it. Why
are you here?”

I
could not answer. My brain froze in the laser beams
of his dark eyes.

“Is
it because you are Sam’s mistress?”

“No!”

He
smiled tightly. “But you are in love with Spence, aren’t you?”

“No
I am not!”

“It’s
obvious,” Ricardo said.

“I
hate
him!”

“Yes,”
he said. “Anyone can see that.”

THE ANNUAL STOCKHOLDERS’ m
eeting took place six
weeks later. In that time I had become quite expert at running the mission
control board. During my first weeks on the job I merely sat alongside Gene
Redding and watched how he handled the job. Within two weeks he was allowing me
to take over when he took a break. Within a month we were sharing the duty on
long, ten and even twelve-hour shifts.

Sam needed more mission controllers
because the volume of work was increasing rapidly. As he had predicted, the money
was beginning to pour in to VCI. The ability to repair malfunctioning commsats
and to replenish the fuel they used for their attitude-control thrusters
suddenly made VCI a major force in the communications satellite industry.
Instead of replacing aging commsats the corporations could get VCI to refurbish
them, at a fraction of the replacement cost.