Magnus, imperturbable as ever, smiled mildly in the direction of the interruption, and said: "You had a question, commander?"
Bruce, his lean features pale with rage, green eyes flashing, rose to his feet. He said:
"Mister
Magnus—I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a briefing session, expressly for the purpose of laying out the respective duties of my officers in the Kepler III operation."
"But of course, commander."
"In that case, I don't see why we have to sit here and listen to a crash course in sociopolitical theory," Bruce said vehemently. "You can rely on the fact that my officers will perform their duties to the letter in accordance with their Corps training."
"Ah, yes, commander," .Magnus said smoothly. "That is a point upon which I have no doubt whatsoever. But unfortunately the carrying out of an independence investigation is not merely a matter of orders given and orders obeyed. There will arise inevitably in the course of any such operation certain situations which are, at this stage, unpredictable. In dealing with such situations, correct decisions can only be made by those people who are fully acquainted with the underlying principles of colonial independence."
Bruce was unimpressed and unrepentant. "Good God, man! If you spend this amount of time on preliminaries, just how long do you anticipate the entire operation will take to complete?"
Magnus drew the fingers of his right hand caressingly down the taut skin of his cheek. "That, commander, is a question which I can only answer at this stage by saying: as long as necessary. Does that satisfy you?"
"It does
not!"
snapped Bruce. "How in hell can I map out any kind of voyage schedule on the basis of 'as long as necessary'? Do you expect me to sit there on Kepler III indefinitely, with the biggest, newest ship in Earth's space force taking root under me?"
All boredom was gone from the proceedings now.
The Corps officers were well acquainted with Bruce in this mood, and secure in the knowledge that, for once, his planet-busting rage was not directed against one of their number, they watched with eager interest and a touch of pride. Seated to Magnus's right, his assistant Ichiwara stared through pebble-thick glasses, his mouth hanging open with shock in the face of such open lese majesty. Next to him, an Explorations Division secretary waited, hands poised over keyboard of her steno-typer, trembling visibly.
At the focus of all attention, Magnus remained unperturbed, his voice still cool and scholarly as he replied: "My dear commander, I thought I had already made it clear that I do not intend to skimp my work or my obligations in this matter. Six months, nine, or even a year, if necessary, are not too great a price to pay in oider to ensure the secure future of this planet Earth must live by her colonies, must accept her responsibilities towards them against the day when she may need their allegiance. If you have any doubts on this score, I suggest that you examine the memories of your own experience on Minos IV and think again. Do I make myself clear?"
All eyes turned towards Bruce, anticipating a further explosion, but the commander disappointed his audience. Lean features set hard, jaw thrust forward, he stood in silence for a long moment, then without another word, he did a smart about-turn and walked out of the room.
Magnus watched him go, with no change in his bland expression. Taking full advantage of the shocked silence, he surveyed the remaining occupants of the room in a leisurely manner, then said: "Now ladies and gentlemen, to continue...."
Maseba took a deep breath and settled back to his seat, his dark eyes watching Magnus with a new hint of respect One game to Magnus—but Bruce was not the
man to accept defeat gracefully; there would be a return bout.
Two hours later, the briefing session ended, Maseba hurried back through the corridors of sixth level towards medic section, his mind already full of plans for the execution of his own particular assignments during the Kepler III operation.
Even thus preoccupied, he still took time out to greet the crew members he met on the way.
"Olo, how about that burn? No pain?"
"Kekkunen, girl, I haven't forgotten you want that crooked toe straightened."
He came across a P.O. leaning against a bulkhead and massaging his left leg. "Dockridge, one of these days I'll have that leg off and start over again."
"Blimey, sir," Dockridge said. "I wish you wouldn't. It's nothing, really...."
As Dockridge talked, Maseba's eyes roved ahead down the corridor, and he saw a crewwoman moving in the opposite direction from the way he himself was going.
There was something about her walk . . . something
careful
... something.... Lithe as a cat, he took off in her direction, caught up with her and tapped her on the shoulder.
"Go tell your officer I want to see you in sick bay right away."
"But, sir..."
"But nothing—do as I say, girl. And tell your officer to call me, if it's not convenient" He swung on his heel and hurried away.
Helen Lindstrom had been known to swear that George Maseba, at his gentlest, had a bedside manner fit to charm the very stars out of the sky. He was exerting that charm to the full now as he took the hand of the little Japanese girl who lay in Psyche Room Four. Just above the girl's head a soothing pattern of colored lights, designed to interest and caress the mind of the watcher, changed and flowed. It seemed to Maseba that the girl saw, but that the patterns had no effect. She stared blankly, her eyes wet with tears.
"Mia, you don't want to take this to heart too much, and don't think I'm a villain."
She did not answer. Tears went on welling silently from her almond eyes like pearls of sorrow.
"Mia, you know and I know that we have to stick to the regulations." He ran his hand along her left arm and felt the embedded capsule, frowned for a moment, then took his hand away. "These things don't very often fail, maybe you've just been unfortunate. But you've let it go for nearly four months. You must have known. Why didn't you come to me?"
Still she lay silent, gazing upwards, unseeing as the webs of colored light changed and moved, and her tears flowed.
"You must see, Mia, that there's only one thing we can do. It doesn't hurt, you know. A matter of less than half an hour, then a few days rest, and after that light duties for a day or two. YouH be all right"
This time she answered him. "I'm all right now," she said quietly, her seal-brown eyes looking up into his.
Hell!
Maseba's bedside manner almost slipped as he realized fully, for the first time, just what he was dealing with here. This was something more than just a simple failure of a contracapsule—it was also something more than a matter of a crewwoman evading sick report.
"You want this baby?" he said.
She nodded. Her tears had ceased now, and she looked up at him with a pleading intensity.
"You know who the father is?"
Brief anger flared in her eyes. "Of course!"
"And you want the child because it's his?"
"Because I love him," she said.
"Love! Hell and damn, girl! Not here, not on a Corps ship—on my ship. Just look at the position sensibly. What kind of a mess would we be in, if all the female crew members went and got themselves pregnant, and concealed—" Maseba stopped as he had a sudden flash. What if something of that nature really had happened, a massive failure of an entire batch of contracapsules, due perhaps to the use of a quantity of incorrectly synthesized estrogen? Could be that this girl was the first of fifty, maybe sixty such cases, each—
"Is it so strange that two people in love should wish to make a baby together?" she asked, breaking in on his waking nightmare.
Despite the possible implications of the situation, looking down into her small doll face, George Maseba found himself smiling sympathetically. "Mia, my dear, don't tell me that you've never heard the old Corps line about love?"
She frowned. "About love?"
"Yes—love," he said, gently. "I've heard it attributed to Admiral Carter, Ivan Kavanin, even President Oharo, but I've a feeling that the first person who said it was just an ordinary, faceless, nameless medical officer, like me, in just this kind of situation." He quoted: " 'On board the ships of the Space Corps sex is permitted, but love is a bloody nuisance.'"
Her round features were solemn as she considered the words. "Yes, I can see that might very well be so," she said. A brief shudder passed through her small body.
"There will be other chances for you and your man," Maseba said. "I'm not going to ask you who he is. I don't want to know. But talk to him, tell him that this is the way it has to be. He'll help you more than I can. And when we get back to Earth at the end of this tour—then if you both feel the same way, come to me again, and I'll do what I can to help you both sign out of the Corps."
"Other chances . . ." she echoed his words quietly.
For a moment his black face and her golden one looked at each other and understood all that lay between them, understood the other's irrevocable point of view.
"May I go now, sir?" she asked.
He nodded. "Yes—I'll make the necessary arrangements. YouH be fitted in with the other things sickbay has to do, and we'll ... do the job some time very soon. Now go back to your friends in your four-bunk, and carry on with your normal duties. And—here, take these." He held up a small box. "They're 'A' sedatives, mildest of the mild. They can't hurt you, and they may make you feel a little better. .. ." Still with some irrational hope that he might win from her a smile, or a cheerful word, he continued. "IH tell you what—I'll see if we can't arrange some planet leave for you when we land on Kepler III."
"Thank you, sir," she said, and was gone.
He filled in the triplicate form, then rose from his desk and walked through the medic section to the office where De Witt and Huygens were drafting the arrangements for the detailed medical examination of a random sample of a thousand Keplerian colonists.
"Piet, I'm afraid I've got to load an extra job onto you. It's not urgent, but you ought to fit it in, say, within the next seventy-two hours."
Huygens looked up, smiling. "Sure, what is it?"
"Girl growing a baby," Maseba said, "and there's only one answer to that. I've ordered a compulsory abortion, copy of the order to the commander. Name's Mizuno, M. E. Nice kid. You fix it All right?"
"All right so I blew a gasket," Bruce said. "What did you expect me to do—sit there and listen to that Machiavellian bastard airing his pet theories and getting in sly digs at the Corps without doing a damned thing about it?"
"Maybe that would have been better," Helen Lindstrom said, carefully. She and Bruce were in the commander's cabin, both smoking cigars and sipping tomato juice. She knew this man so well, better than most She realized that when he had said, back on Earth, that their former association was over, he meant it He could turn feeling on and off like a faucet because he was Tom Bruce. For her, it was not so easy. The fire was still there, a quiescent volcano, well-covered and under control
His green eyes scanned her. "Stop talking like a woman, and say what you mean."
"I don't have to spell it out, do I? Magnus is big stuff to tangle with; an adverse report from him wouldn't do your record any good. Why not cooperate?"
"Cooperate? Who isn't cooperating? Hell get all the assistance he needs on the Kepler III operation, I'll see to that But while we're on board
Venturer Twelve
he's got to understand that
I'm
in charge."
She suppressed a sigh of exasperation, looking down deliberately, studying the rim of her glass. She realized that she had gone far enough, perhaps too far . . . Bruce didn't want to talk about it any more, and that was that. He was a stubborn man, and if he got the idea that she was trying to shield him, or to influence him in any way—or, worse still, if he should begin to think that she was taking advantage of their past association ...
'That girl Mizuno—you've seen Maseba's report?" he asked.
She nodded. "Sad business, poor kid."
He stared at her incredulously. "Sad?"
"You realize that she wants to have the child?"
He snorted. "For God's sake, Helen! What do you think we're running here, a bloody Noah's Ark? The sooner that little matter's cleared up the better, but the thing that really bugs me is the possibility that there may be others."
"We can only hope that this is an isolated case." Helen said.
"It'd better be," Bruce said sternly. "But in the meantime, IH have a word with the girl. An accident is one thing, but to let it go on for four months without reporting the matter!"
"No woman gives up a child easily, Tom."
"No? Then I'll have more than a word," he said. "If there are other cases, the best way to make sure we catch them early is to make an example of this silly litde Mizuno bitch."
"Pour encourager les autres?"
murmured Helen.
He eyed her sharply. "All right—what would you suggest? Should I recommend her for a good-conduct medal, maybe?"