The Daleth Effect

“Indescribable. But you’ll be there one of these days soon. DFRS will need hostesses, and we’ll bribe you away from SAS.” He jumped down into the cockpit, landing heavier than he realized, still not adjusted to the change in gravity, and opened the cabin door. “I’ll get one for myself too. Isn’t this the weather? What have you been doing?”

He went to the far end where he had the green bottles in a bucket of water with chunks of ice. She stepped into the cockpit and leaned down to talk to him.

“The same old round. Still fun, but don’t think I haven’t envied you all this Moon and Mars travel. Do you mean what you said about the hostess thing?”

“Of course.” He clicked the caps off both bottles with an opener fixed to the bulkhead. “No details yet, secret and all that, but there are definite plans for passenger runs in the future. There have to be. Do you realize that we can reach the Moon base faster than the regular flight can go from Kastrup to New York? Here.”

He handed her the bottle and she stepped forward to get it.

“Skal”

She drank deeply, lowered the bottle with a contented sigh, her lips full and damp. Just inches away. There was no thought involved.

His bottle dropped to the deck, rolled, spilling out a pale stream of foam. His arms were around her back, the flesh of his hands against the warmth of her skin, her thighs tight to his thighs, the pressure of her breasts flattening against him. Her mouth was open, her lips beer-moist against his.

Her bottle dropped, rolled, clattered against the others. They did not hear it. They were falling.

Arnie’s mouth was slightly open, and his head had fallen over to one side; he was breathing deeply and regularly. Martha rose slowiy so as not to disturb him. If she stayed in the still heat of the garden any longer she would fall asleep too, and she did not want to do that. She went into the house and slipped into a light beach jacket, then knocked on Skou’s door. He opened it, wearing a pair of earphones, and waved her in. He had converted the back bedroom into a command post and, there was a table full of communications equipment. He issued instructions and switched off.

“I’m going to the harbor for a bit,” she told him. “Professor Klein is asleep in the back yard and I didn’t want to bother him.”

“That’s our job, watching him. Ill tell him where you went if he wakes up.”

It was only a five-minute walk. Martha went along the beach, carrying her sandals. The sand was warm and felt good between her toes. She stayed away from the water, which she knew, even now, would be far too cold for swimming. The air was still, almost soundless except for the flut-flutting of a helicopter overhead. Probably part of the guard for Arnie. There were a number of extra cars and trucks parked in her neighborhood, and she knew that some of the neighbors had unexpected guests. That poor, tired little man was being guarded like a national treasure. Well he probably was one. She waved to a party of friends su

Perhaps he had gone across the road to the kro for a drink? No, he usually stopped there on the way to get some bottles of beer. Where could he have gotten to? Below decks probably.

She was about to call to him when she saw the beer bottle on the cockpit floor, and next to it, trailing through the half-open door, a piece of blue fabric. The halter top of a bikini.

In that single instant, with heart-stopping clarity, she knew what she would see if she looked into the cabin. As though she had lived this instant before, sometime, and had buried the memory which was now surfacing. Calmly—why? she wasn’t feeling calm—she stepped forward to the edge of the dock and leaned far out, holding onto the bollard anchored there. Through the door she could now see the starboard bunk, Nils’s broad back, and what he was doing. The arms that were tighdy pressed against that back, the ta

With a muffled sob she straightened up, feeling a hot wave of anger sweeping over her, reddening her skin. Here, in their boat, after being away all this time, not even home yet!

Ready to jump into the boat, ready to hurt, bite, tear, she did not want to hold back. But there was shouting, loud noise. She looked up.

“The sail is stuck!” someone shouted in Danish from the single-masted yacht that was rushing in toward the dock, almost on top of her.

There was a brief glimpse of a man wrestling with the fouled rigging, a woman pushing at the tiller, screeching something at him, and children grabbing for ropes and falling over each other. At any other time it would have been fu

Instead of striking bow on, the boat turned, hitting a glancing blow to the pilings, bouncing away. One of the small children fell off the cabin roof onto the deck and began to shriek in fright. The sail came down in a jumble and the man fought with it.

Then they lost way and bobbed to a stop. Tragedy averted. Someone even began to laugh. It had only taken seconds. Martha started forward again—then hesitated. In those brief instants everything had changed. They would be sitting up, pulling on clothing, laughing perhaps. She felt embarrassment at the thought, and hesitated. She was still as angry, though the anger was choked within her. The little yacht was tying up a few feet away. Could she, coldly now, enter that cabin, scream at them with these others here? A boy brushed against her, apologizing as he fastened one of the lines.

With a gasp, something between pain and hatred, she turned, fled, ru

Only when she reached the front door of her home did she realize that she was still carrying her sandals and that the soles of her feet were sore from the concrete sidewalk. Shaking, she put them on and remembered that she had no key. She raised her fist, but before she could knock Skou opened the door for her.

“Watchfulness is our password,” he said, letting her in and then closing and locking the door behind her.

She nodded, went by him, unseeing. Watchfulness… that was very fu

She ran her fingers through her hair, unable to face herself in the mirror. If he was not ashamed, she was. She stroked at her hair violently with the brush. Married men did things like this, she knew that—a lot of them in Denmark… But not Nils. Why not Nils? Now she knew. Had he done it before? What could she do now? What could she do about him?

With this thought she had a sudden image of him coming home, here, wanting to embrace her just as if nothing ad happened. He would do that—and what would she do? Could she tell him? Did she want him? Yes. No!

She wanted to hurt him just the way he had hurt her. What he had done was unforgivable.

Her throat was tight and she had the sensation that she would break into tears at any moment, and she did not want to. What was there to cry about? What the hell was there to cry about? There was plenty enough to be angry about.