Homeward Bound

8

Glen Johnson looked down on Home from his orbital path in the Admiral Peary. He shared the control room with Mickey Fly

“Fu

He glanced over toward the doctor. She smiled, but she wasn’t laughing. That left him relieved. She said, “They really are anxious about ginger, though, aren’t they?”

“Anxious about it and eager for it, both at the same time,” Johnson answered. “That one scaly bastard who went helmet-to-helmet with me…”

“Good thing you had the recorder going,” she said.

“If somebody wants to talk off the record, that’s usually the time when it’s a good idea to make sure he’s on,” Johnson said. “As soon as he told me to turn off my radio, I figured he had to have ginger on his miserable little mind. And as soon as I knew that, I knew he was liable to try to diddle me if I didn’t have any to give him.”

“Did the captain of the Lizard ship ever apologize for seizing you?” Dr. Blanchard asked.

“Ventris? Oh, hell, yes-pardon my French-finally, in a way, once I browbeat him into it. Then he made it sound like it was our fault his scooter pilot got trapped by the wicked herb. To hear him talk, it was like ginger came after that Lizard with a gun. He didn’t have anything to do with it, of course.”

“Why, heaven forfend,” Mickey Fly

“Don’t hold your breath for that,” Johnson said.

Melanie Blanchard looked from one of them to the other. “I can see how both of you’d be welcome guests on the surface of Home.”

“Certainly,” Fly

“When are you going down to the surface?” Johnson asked the doctor.

“I don’t know yet,” she answered. “I’ll have to take it easy down there for a while-I do know that. I spent too long weightless aboard the Lewis and Clark. ”

“Is it safe for you to go?” he said.

“I think so,” Dr. Blanchard answered. “If I have any doubts when the time comes, I’ll get a second opinion.”

“What if the other docs lie to you because they want to be the ones who go down there?” Johnson asked.

She looked startled, then shook her head. “No, they wouldn’t do that,” she said. “They need to know they can count on me, too.”

“Wouldn’t be so good if the doctor who was treating you might want you dead instead of better,” Fly

“Wanted-dead more than alive,” Johnson intoned solemnly.

She glared at each of them in turn. Had she been a Lizard with eye turrets that moved independently, she would have glared at both of them at the same time. “Thanks a lot, guys,” she said, mostly in jest. “Thanks a hell of a lot. Now I’ll be looking back over my shoulder whenever I see anybody else wearing a white coat.”

“Well, spread the word around,” Fly

“Helpful,” Melanie Blanchard said. “Very goddamn helpful.” To show how helpful it was, she glided out of the control room.

“There-now look what you did,” Fly

“Me?” Johnson shook his head. “I thought it was you.”

Her voice floated up the hatchway by which she’d departed: “It was both of you, as a matter of fact.”

The two pilots looked at each other. They pointed at each other. Johnson started to laugh. Mickey Fly

“You don’t confuse me a bit,” Fly

“That’s because you were confused to begin with,” Johnson answered. “And if you don’t believe me, ask Stone. He’ll tell you.”

Fly

Johnson raised an eyebrow. “I have to think that one over.”

“I hope nothing breaks,” Fly

Since he was right yet again, Johnson did the only thing a sensible man could do: he changed the subject. “Well,” he said, “one of these days, the Lizards are going to get in an uproar about ginger that has something behind it.”

“How can they do that?” the other pilot replied. “Everybody knows there is no ginger aboard the Admiral Peary. ”

“Yeah, and then you wake up,” Johnson said scornfully. “Missiles with bombs in their noses are weapons. We brought plenty of those. Ginger is a weapon, too. You think we don’t have any?”

Fly

He was right again, of course. That didn’t mean Johnson wasn’t also right, not this time. “We can addle half the scaly so-and-sos down on that planet,” he insisted. “There’s got to be a way to get the herb from hither to yon.”

“You are assuming what you want to prove,” Mickey Fly

“If I’d gone to the kind of school you did, I’d have to drop my pants if I wanted to count to twenty-one,” Johnson retorted.

Fly

“Thank you so much.” Johnson suddenly snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it!”

“I hope you can take something for it,” Fly

Johnson ignored him. “I know where I’d put the ginger if I were designing the Admiral Peary. ” He held up a hand. “If you make that particular suggestion, I’m going to be very a

With dignity, the other pilot said, “Moi? Je ne comprende pas.”

“Of course you don’t,” Johnson said. “Listen, how many people in cold sleep is this ship carrying?”

“Seventeen,” Fly

“Heh,” Johnson said. “Fu

“You have a low, nasty, suspicious mind,” Fly

“Why, thank you,” Johnson said.

“I don’t know. Why not thank me?”

Johnson scowled. “I’d throw something at you, but I might miss you and hit something valuable instead.”

Fly

“Who’s going to tell him?” Johnson asked. “You?”

“Certainly not,” Mickey Fly

Walls with ears were a cliche. Ceilings with eyes at least made sense. As for the rest… “Your mother dropped you on your head when you were little.”

“Only when I needed it,” Fly

“That’s not all that’s amazing,” Johnson said darkly, but Fly

Over the next few days, he wondered if the commandant would summon him to his office to give him a roasting. Then, when that didn’t happen, he wondered why it didn’t. Because the Admiral Peary carried no ginger, and the idea that it might was ridiculous? Or because the ship was full of ginger, and the less said about the herb, the better? The one thing that didn’t occur to Johnson was that Healey hadn’t heard his speculation. The floors did indeed have kidneys, or maybe livers.

Dr. Blanchard worked with grim intensity in the exercise chamber, doing her best to build up her strength for the trip down to the surface of Home. Johnson spent stretches on the exercise bicycle, too, but he didn’t get excited about them the way she did. He was in pretty good shape for a man who’d spent the last twenty years of his life weightless. He could exercise till everything turned blue and not be fit enough to face gravity.

He said, “I wish they’d send one of the other docs down, not you.”

“Why?” she demanded, working the bicycle harder than ever so that her sweaty hair plastered itself against the side of her face. “I’ll be damned if I want to go through all this crap for nothing.”

“Well, I can see that,” he said, pedaling along beside her at his own slower pace-one of the great advantages of a stationary bike. “But you’re a hell of a lot better looking than they are.”

“Not right now, I’m not,” she said, which wasn’t true, at least not to someone of the male persuasion. She added, “Besides, I must smell like an old goat,” which was.

Johnson denied it anyway, saying, “I’m the old goat.”

“What you are is a guy with too much time on his hands,” she said. “Exercise more. That’ll help some.”

“Thanks a lot,” he muttered. “Some problems, you know, you’re not really looking for a cure.”

“Well, you’d better be,” Dr. Blanchard said, and that was effectively that.