"What's so funny?"
"You are. You're getting very touchy about this whole thing."
"I'm going to stay touchy for a long time to come. Those guys'll hound me about this for years."
"You could always tell lies."
"About you? No, I don't think I could do that. If the girl were anonymous, that's one thing. But they all know you, where you work . . ."
"You're a gallant officer. I suppose that kind of story would get back to New York."
He grimaced. "You'd be on the cover of Penthouse, like that Miss America was."
She laughed at that. "They'd have a hard time finding nude pictures of me."
"Careful now." Kinsman put up a warning hand. "Don't stir up my imagination any more than it already is. It's tough enough being gallant, under these circumstances."
They remained apart, silent. Kinsman cleated firmly at the control desk, Linda drifting back toward the galley, nearly touching the curtain that screened off the sleeping area.
Patrick Air Force Base called in and Kinsman gave a terse report. When he looked at Linda again she was hovering 98 by the observation window across the aisle from the galley. Looking back at him, her face was troubled, her eyes—he was not sure what he saw in her eyes. They looked different: no longer ice-cool, no longer calculating. They looked aware, concerned, almost frightened.
Still Kinsman stayed silent. He checked and double- checked the control board, making absolutely certain that every valve and transistor aboard the station was functioning perfectly. He glanced at the digital clock blinking below the main display screen. Five more minutes before Ascension calls. He started checking the board again.
Ascension called precisely on schedule. Feeling his in- nards tightening. Kinsman gave his standard report in a deliberately calm and detached way. Ascension signed off.
With a last long look at the controls. Kinsman pushed himself away from the desk and drifted, hands faintly touch- ing the grips along the aisle, toward Linda.
"You've been awfully quiet," he said, standing next to her.
"I've been thinking about what you said a while ago." What was it in her eyes? Anticipation? Fear? "It . . . it is a damned lonely life, Chet."
He took her arm and gently pulled her toward him. He kissed her.
"But . . ."
"It's all right," he whispered. "No one will bother us. No one will know."
She shook her head. "It's not that easy, Chet. It's not that simple."
"Why not? We're here together . . . what's so compli- cated?"
"But life is complicated, Chet. And love—there's more to life than having fun."
"Sure there is. But it's meant to be enjoyed, too. What's wrong with taking a chance when it comes along? What's so damned complicated or important? We're above the cares and worries of the Earth. Maybe it's only for a few more hours, but it's here and it's now. It's us. Alone. They can't touch us, they can't force us to do anything or stop us from doing what we want to. We're on our own. Understand? Completely on our own."
She nodded, her eyes still wide with the look of a frightened doe. But her hands slid around him and together they drifted back toward the control desk. Wordlessly, Kins- man turned off all the lights so that all they saw was the glow from the control board and the flickering of the computer as it murmured to itself. They were in their own world now, their private universe, floating freely and softly in the darkness. Touching, drifting, caressing, searching the new seas and continents, they explored their world.
Jill stayed in her bedroll until Linda entered the sleeping area, quietly, to see if she had awakened yet. Kinsman went to the control desk feeling, not tired, yet strangely numb.
