For a moment he thought of his interrogation by Tug Wynne. If he could see me now! Kinsman grinned at the irony of it. Sleeping next to a pregnant woman. He did not have to reach down to his crotch to know what was happening. I'm not impotent. Stupid, maybe. But not really impotent.
Several times his eyes closed and he drifted toward sleep. But each time he saw the cosmonaut drifting in silent space, her dead arms reaching out toward him.
McGrath took Mary-Ellen and their two children back to Pennsylvania, where they would stay while he flew to Florida and the new space shuttle that would take the VIPs to the dedication ceremonies aboard Space Station Alpha.
Kinsman spent the weekend doing Murdock's work for the Colonel. He pulled a fistful of Pentagon strings and became a VIP, much to the disappointment of a one-star general at Wright-Patterson Aerospace Force Base, who received a sudden phone call informing him that he had been bumped from the Alpha dedication junket.
Before flying down to Kennedy Space Center, Kinsman visited Walter Reed Hospital, where Fred Durban was. The old man was a permanent invalid now, in the cardiac ward. Kinsman sat beside his bed, the smell of antiseptics and quiet death everywhere; the clean, efficient, coldly impersonal feel of the hospital setting his nerves on edge. Durban's room was bright with flowers. The window looked out on leafy trees and a bright lovely blue sky. But the bed next to his held a retired admiral engulfed by life-support equipment that snaked wires and tubes into every part of his body. He was more machine than man.
It did not bother Durban, though. "I know it looks awful," he said cheerfully, "but that's just what I want them to do for me when I'm sinking below the red line. None of this 'death with dignity' for me! I intend to fight for every minute I can get."
He was painfully emaciated. His once-reddish hair was now nothing more than a wisp of white. His arms were bone-thin, his skin translucent. He belongs in a china shop, 212 not a hospital, Kinsman thought. But those shaggy eyebrows were still formidable, and Durban's voice was doggedly optimistic.
"I'm just trying to hang on long enough so that you youngsters can build my lunar hospital. Up there I'll be a whole lot better. I've warned the staff here that they better keep me alive until they can transfer me to Moonbase."
Kinsman nodded and tried to smile for him. "We're working on it. Working hard."
"Damned right. Wish they had room to set up a hospital section aboard the new space station, though. I'd settle for that, right now."
"I'm going up there tomorrow."
"To Alpha? Good! Tell me about it when you get back."
'Twill."
"But how's our Moonbase program working out?"
Kinsman shrugged. "The usual snags with Congress. Committees . . . you know."
Durban closed his eyes. "I've spent my entire damned life arguing with those shortsighted bastards. Anything far- ther downstream than the next election—forget it, as far as they're concerned."
"They don't have much foresight, that's true."
Durban lay quiet for a moment. The conversation stalled. Then he asked, "But the survey work ... the site selection and the preliminary planning . . . that's all been done, hasn't it?"
"Yessir. I can bring you the reports, if you like. Once we get the appropriation for the coming fiscal year we can begin actual construction."
"Good." Durban smiled. "In a couple of years I'll be on the Moon, getting my second wind."
