CAFETERIA
Freshly showered, his hair and beard neatly combed, Grant walked briskly through Farside’s central corridor from his quarters toward the cafeteria.
He had thought about knocking on Trudy’s door on the way, but decided against it. Trudy had said she’d meet him in the cafeteria and he was content to leave things that way. This dinner is her idea, don’t push it. We’re just having a friendly dinner together, don’t make more of it than is really there.
The cafeteria was crowded with people lining up at the dispensing machines and staking out territorial claims at the long tables.
And there was Trudy, sitting at the far end of the farthest table, chatting with Josie Rivera and Harvey Henderson. The place opposite Trudy was empty. Obviously she was saving it for him.
She jumped to her feet when she spotted Grant approaching. He said hello to Harvey and Josie, who gave him a sidelong glance and a smile that Grant thought was damned close to being a smirk.
As he sat opposite Trudy, Grant asked, “Am I late?” over the buzz of two dozen conversations.
“No, I got here early to make sure we’d get seats together,” said Trudy.
“You look all slicked up, Grant,” Josie said, her voice purring. “You clean up nice.”
He forced a grin. “Yeah, I take a shower every month, whether I need it or not.”
They all laughed, and then the four of them went through the lines at the dispensing machines together. Trudy pulled an in-vitro steak dinner for herself and Grant did the same. Harvey complained that it was the last steak dinner in the machine but Josie told him the next machine still had plenty of soysteaks.
“That’s okay, I’ll take the soy veal cutlet, instead,” Harvey said good-naturedly.
“They all taste pretty much the same,” said Josie.
Trudy dominated their dinner conversation, bubbling about Sirius C and its atmosphere.
“The team at the Southern Hemisphere Observatory, in the Andes, made an indirect observation of the planet’s atmosphere,” she told them. “When Sirius C transited across the star’s disc they saw that the planet’s edge was fuzzy, not sharp the way it would be if it was airless.”
Grant watched the animation of her childlike face, the excitement and sheer delight she took in her work. Harvey nodded in the right places, but put most of his attention into shoveling food into his mouth. Josie’s eyes flicked back and forth from Trudy to Grant, and she smiled knowingly.
She thinks Trudy and I are involved, Grant realized. And with an inner jolt he thought, Maybe we are. Or will be.
“But with the ’scope out at Mendeleev I detected the planet’s atmosphere directly,” Trudy announced proudly. “First shot out of the box, I got it!”
“You saw clouds or something?” Josie asked, hunching toward her.
“No, not imagery,” Trudy said. “We’ll need the other two ’scopes working together before we can produce imagery.”
“Then what?”
Speaking slowly, deliberately, as if she were making a case before a judge and jury, Trudy said, “I got absorption spectra of water vapor … and oxygen! Very strong oxygen lines. The planet’s atmosphere must be like eighteen, twenty percent oxygen. Just like Earth!”
Even Harvey looked up from his plate. “Just like Earth?”
“Within spitting distance of each other,” said Trudy. “Sirius C is really just like Earth! The news media are right. It’s New Earth!”
“Wow,” Josie said.
“And there’s more to it than that,” Trudy went on eagerly. “That much oxygen in the planet’s atmosphere means the atmosphere is way out of chemical equilibrium.”
Henderson looked at her quizzically.
“On Earth the oxygen in our atmosphere comes from green plants. Without living plants the oxygen would disappear from the atmosphere in less than a millennium, an eyeblink, geologically speaking.”
Grant broke in. “That means that there must be photosynthetic plant life on New Earth.”
Bobbing her head up and down, Trudy agreed. “There must be at least some plant life on Sirius C. Or something like it that’s continuously pumping oxygen into the atmosphere.”
“Hot damn,” said Josie.
Grant smiled at Trudy. “Congratulations. Uhlrich must be delirious.”
“He’s pretty damned happy,” Trudy agreed.
Once they finished dinner, Grant walked Trudy back to her quarters and she invited him in.
“I’m too excited to sleep,” she said happily as Grant stepped into her room. It was tidy and clean, the bed made up neatly, nothing out of place.
“I, uh … I can’t stay long,” Grant heard himself say. “Lots to do tomorrow.”
“Me too,” said Trudy. She crossed the room and went to the kitchenette. “You want something to drink, Grant? Coffee, tea, fruit juice?”
“Juice, I guess,” he said, heading for the sofa.
She poured two glasses of orange juice. “Fresh from Selene’s hydroponics farm,” she said as she carried them to the coffee table and sat beside Grant.
He smiled at her, but her face went serious. “All right now, what’s the real reason why you didn’t want me to go out to Mendeleev?”
Grant blinked with surprise. She’s like a Gila monster: she won’t let go.
A pretty nice-looking Gila monster, he told himself as he looked at her.
“It’s like I told you, Trudy. I can work outside. I’ve got the experience; you don’t. It’s that simple.”
“And you’ve got nanobugs in your body to protect you,” she said, almost whispering.
Nodding solemnly, he said, “Yep. They’re allowing me to cut down on the steroids and the anti-radiation meds.”
“Steroids are harmful in the long run, aren’t they?”
“They can be, yeah.”
“I’m glad you’re getting off them.”
“Me too,” Grant replied. “The side effects can be pretty bad.”
“Like ’roid rage?”
“You heard about that too, eh?”
Trudy nodded solemnly. “You had quite a reputation. I heard you got into a fight once with three other guys and beat up all three of them.”
“And spent a week in the infirmary getting my ribs to heal up,” he said, trying to make it sound light.
Trudy didn’t smile.
“That was when I first got here,” Grant said, as if that explained anything. “When I was young and foolish.”
“And now?” she prompted.
“Now I take aromatase inhibitors,” he said. “They cut down on the aggressive feelings that the steroids cause. I’m not a victim of ’roid rage anymore.”
“And the nanobugs,” she said.
Grant laughed uneasily. “And the nanobugs,” he admitted.
“But why?” Trudy asked. “Why endanger yourself?”
“Kris Cardenas says the nanomachines won’t cause any harmful side effects. I’ll just have to keep on taking them, that’s all.”
“But why?” she repeated.
“So that I can work outside, work better and longer than anybody else. That’s what counts. That’s how I got the job here at Farside. The Ulcer doesn’t have the budget for a big staff; he needed somebody who could ride herd on a small team of techie types. Once he found out about the meds I was taking he wasn’t pleased. Looked like he wanted to puke. I thought he was going to fire me. But I get the work done and that’s what counts. He needs me and he hasn’t regretted keeping me on.”
“But he doesn’t know about your nanos.”
“Not yet,” Grant said. And he wondered all over again if somehow the nanomachines in his body were the cause of Winston’s death.
In a very small voice Trudy said, “I’m glad the professor’s kept you on.”
“Really?”
“You came out and rescued me, remember? You’re officially a hero, as far as I’m concerned.”
For a long moment Grant stared into her cool green eyes, unsure of what was going on behind them. Then he broke the spell by reaching for his glass of juice. Trudy picked up hers and they clinked glasses.
“Ad astra,” Grant said.
“To the stars,” Trudy translated.
They sipped, then Grant put his glass down and got up from the sofa.
“Big day tomorrow,” he muttered.
Trudy stood up beside him. She’s no taller than my shoulder, he realized. A little elf. A kid.
“Do you have to go so soon?” she asked.
“If I stay I’ll probably make a fool of myself and get you angry with me.”
“I won’t be angry, Grant,” she whispered.
He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He stood there mute, paralyzed, awash in conflicting emotions. Don’t get yourself involved, a voice in his head warned. This is too small a facility for personal relationships. Yet the visceral need was there, he could feel it surging through his body.
“After all,” Trudy said, sliding her arms around his neck, “you’re not going to go berserk, are you? You’ve got the ’roid rage under control, haven’t you?”
“I … think so.”
She giggled. “Maybe not under total control?”
He grasped her about the waist and pulled her slim body to him. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”
It was in bed, when they were both pleasantly drained and weary, that Trudy asked him, “With the nanos, you’ll be able to stop the steroids altogether?”
“That’s what Kris Cardenas says.”
“That’s good, Grant,” she said sleepily. “I’m happy for you.”
And Grant felt happy, too. For the first time since he’d fled from Earth, he felt happy.