“Incredible,” Nikka said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’d hardly believe this was a scientific expedition at all. It seems more like—”
“A political road show, yes. Makes one wonder why our schedule has been so frequently interrupted.”
Nikka looked puzzled. “Our shed-yool?”
“Yes, you say sked-jule, don’t you? What I mean is that we seem to get interrupted on our shift a great deal, more than the other teams. We lost several hours today from that electric high tension, for example—”
“High tension?”
“In American that’s, uh, high voltage.” “You’ve never lost your Englishisms.” “We invented the language.”
“Say, could I have some more of that…” “So soon?”
“It has some aspects…”
“So it does. Think I’ll indulge in a nip.”
“Exotic slang. Old World charm.”
Nigel collected the papers and piled them on the floor, feeling his heels lift and float beneath him. The room was so cramped there wasn’t space for a desk.
When he lofted back to his bunk he was surprised to find Nikka there. She kissed him.
Nigel made a formal gesture, not totally explicit, currently fashionable throughout Europe. Nikka raised an eyebrow in reply. She came to him as an eddy of warmth.
“You’re enough to stiffen a priest,” he said admiringly. “Haven’t tried.”
She unfastened the brass buckle at her side. Forthright, he thought. Direct.
She hovered over him and her small, elegantly peaked breasts swayed slowly. The period of oscillation, he thought distantly, depended on the square root of the acceleration of gravity. An interesting fact. Something stirred within him and he saw her diffused in the mellow cabin light, a new continent in the air. His clothes had evaporated. She knelt and his stomach muscles convulsed as a warm wave enclosed his penis. He blinked, blinked and merged into billowing yellow cloudbanks of philosophy.
TWELVE
They went for hikes outside, laboring up the hillsides, slipping in the powdery dust. Nigel wanted to see Earth and he had not realized until he arrived here that Mare Marginis was aptly named, for it appeared from Earth on the very margin of the moon, only a third of it visible. To see the Earth they had to scale a steep hill. Nikka was concerned that the exercise might overtax him, but she had not allowed for his training; he panted continuously but did not slow until near the summit.
“Beautiful,” he said, stopping with hands on hips. His voice rasped over the suit radio.
“Yes. I can see home.”
“Where?”
“Yokohama. There.”
“Right. And there’s the western United States.” “Clouds over California.”
“But not Oregon.”
“Where your Mr. Ichino is?”
“Right. I wonder why I haven’t heard anything from him.”
“Ummm. Even that enormous blast crater is invisible from here. Funny. But, look, isn’t it too soon to expect results?”
“Probably. He may be snowed in, too.”
“After all, he hasn’t gotten a peep out of you, either.” “True. We’ve been so damned busy.”
“And censored.”
“Dead on,” he said with a dry chuckle.
“No way around it.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Oh? How?”
“I’m thinking of getting an unbreakable channel through to Kardensky.”
“That will be difficult.”
“But not impossible. Maybe we can route it through someplace else.”
“On Earth?”
“No, here. The moon. How about Hipparchus Base?” “It’s only an outpost. When they struck the ice lode at Alphonsus, Hipparchus became a backwater.”
“Um.” He fell silent.
