the longest I’ve ever gone without speaking with her. I’ve always tried to share all my experiences with her—whatever I do, wherever I go. But here—this far away—”
“You could call her.”
“Via Smiling Marge?” I shook my head. “I don’t want to contaminate Lorie’s mind by unnecessary contact with that species of microorganism. Besides, it takes mucho stash.”
“Isn’t your father rich?”
“My father is. I’m not. He keeps his thumb in his own pocket.”
“Oh.”
“I’m piling up message cubes for Lorie, telling her the whole story. When I get back to Earth I’ll let her play them back in sequence, two years of letters all at once.”
“So that’s who you’ve been writing to!”
“You’ve noticed?”
“Half the time lately when I’ve gone looking for you, you’ve been off by yourself talking into a message cube,” Jan said.
Interesting. That she would go looking for me.
For strategic purposes I said, “Of course, those cubes haven’t all been for Lorie. I mean, you understand, not that I have any ties back on Earth of a formal kind, but there are a couple of girls who I think are interested in my adventures in the outer galaxy, and—”
“Certainly,” Jan said. “It’s thoughtful of you to keep them in mind when you’re so far away.”
Her tone was absolutely neutral. I detected no tinge of the jealousy that I was clumsily trying to arouse, and instantly I regretted the whole stupid adolescent ploy. Either Jan couldn’t care less about my supposed Earth-side amours (which of course I had invented on the spot, since the only letters I’m writing are to you) or else, even worse, she had seen through the maneuver and wasn’t awed by my pretensions to galactic playboyhood. I wished she’d tell me about some lad far away who made her aorta palpitate, just by way of hurling back the challenge, but she didn’t even do that. Her cool brown Brolagonian eyes offered me no information whatever. I was dealing with a girl with a ten-generation heritage of professional diplomacy. The only secrets she gives away are those she wants to give away.
We picked up a new battery for the runabout and ran a couple of other errands in town. Then Jan inveigled an off-duty soldier to drive us out to the place where we had abandoned the runabout. Her technique was neat: she had me lurk in the background until the ride was arranged; then I stepped forward, and there wasn’t a thing her victim could do about it except look disgruntled. By way of consolation Jan sat snuggled up close to him in the front seat on the way out. I hope that gruntled him a little.
This is a very capable girl. In many ways.
For the past several days we’ve been getting a new sequence out of the globe. It must be an important one, because it recurs every few hours, and on occasion it has simultaneously been projected on two of the 60-degree segments into which the circular viewing field is usually divided. No other scene has so far appeared in duplicate that way.
It looks like a teaser sequence for a space-opera video show. This is how it goes:
First we see a wide-angle view of a galaxy, perhaps ours, with constellations strewn across a dark background. Camera pans back and forth to give us a dizzying view at least a thousand parsecs wide. Then we zoom forward for a close-up of one patch of sky. Supply the music yourself: a high screechy crescendo. Suspense! Now we see about ten stars: a binary, a red giant, a white dwarf, a couple of main-sequence yellow stars, two Class O and B blazers, the whole family straight out of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.
We head toward the white dwarf, and now it is very clear that the camera is mounted in the nose of a star-ship on which we are the passengers. The music adds something low and ominous and throbbing, at about thirty cycles. Mystery! The white dwarf has five planets. It looks like we’re making for the fourth planet, which moves in an orbit pretty far away from
“You could call her.”
“Via Smiling Marge?” I shook my head. “I don’t want to contaminate Lorie’s mind by unnecessary contact with that species of microorganism. Besides, it takes mucho stash.”
“Isn’t your father rich?”
“My father is. I’m not. He keeps his thumb in his own pocket.”
“Oh.”
“I’m piling up message cubes for Lorie, telling her the whole story. When I get back to Earth I’ll let her play them back in sequence, two years of letters all at once.”
“So that’s who you’ve been writing to!”
“You’ve noticed?”
“Half the time lately when I’ve gone looking for you, you’ve been off by yourself talking into a message cube,” Jan said.
Interesting. That she would go looking for me.
For strategic purposes I said, “Of course, those cubes haven’t all been for Lorie. I mean, you understand, not that I have any ties back on Earth of a formal kind, but there are a couple of girls who I think are interested in my adventures in the outer galaxy, and—”
“Certainly,” Jan said. “It’s thoughtful of you to keep them in mind when you’re so far away.”
Her tone was absolutely neutral. I detected no tinge of the jealousy that I was clumsily trying to arouse, and instantly I regretted the whole stupid adolescent ploy. Either Jan couldn’t care less about my supposed Earth-side amours (which of course I had invented on the spot, since the only letters I’m writing are to you) or else, even worse, she had seen through the maneuver and wasn’t awed by my pretensions to galactic playboyhood. I wished she’d tell me about some lad far away who made her aorta palpitate, just by way of hurling back the challenge, but she didn’t even do that. Her cool brown Brolagonian eyes offered me no information whatever. I was dealing with a girl with a ten-generation heritage of professional diplomacy. The only secrets she gives away are those she wants to give away.
We picked up a new battery for the runabout and ran a couple of other errands in town. Then Jan inveigled an off-duty soldier to drive us out to the place where we had abandoned the runabout. Her technique was neat: she had me lurk in the background until the ride was arranged; then I stepped forward, and there wasn’t a thing her victim could do about it except look disgruntled. By way of consolation Jan sat snuggled up close to him in the front seat on the way out. I hope that gruntled him a little.
This is a very capable girl. In many ways.
For the past several days we’ve been getting a new sequence out of the globe. It must be an important one, because it recurs every few hours, and on occasion it has simultaneously been projected on two of the 60-degree segments into which the circular viewing field is usually divided. No other scene has so far appeared in duplicate that way.
It looks like a teaser sequence for a space-opera video show. This is how it goes:
First we see a wide-angle view of a galaxy, perhaps ours, with constellations strewn across a dark background. Camera pans back and forth to give us a dizzying view at least a thousand parsecs wide. Then we zoom forward for a close-up of one patch of sky. Supply the music yourself: a high screechy crescendo. Suspense! Now we see about ten stars: a binary, a red giant, a white dwarf, a couple of main-sequence yellow stars, two Class O and B blazers, the whole family straight out of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.
We head toward the white dwarf, and now it is very clear that the camera is mounted in the nose of a star-ship on which we are the passengers. The music adds something low and ominous and throbbing, at about thirty cycles. Mystery! The white dwarf has five planets. It looks like we’re making for the fourth planet, which moves in an orbit pretty far away from
Similar Books
