The Sam Gunn Omnibus Read online

  I accepted a prepared tray from the machine and went to the table where Spence was sitting. There were only ten tables in the galley, and most of them were empty.

  “Experienced workers bring their own food up with them and microwave it,” Sam kept rattling on. “Of course, when I open the hotel I’ll have a cordon bleu chef up here and the best by-damn food service you ever saw. Cocktail lounge, too, with real waitresses in cute little outfits. None of those idiot robots like they have down at the Cape....”

  He chattered and babbled straight through our meager dinner. In truth, the food was not very appetizing. The soy burger was too cool and the iced tea too warm. I am sure it was nutritious, but it was also bland and dull.

  Spence could barely get a word in, the way Sam was nattering. I was content to let him do the talking. Suddenly I felt extremely tired, worn out. It had been a demanding day, with the flight from the Cape and Sam’s zero-gee acrobatics. I had barely slept the night before and had arisen with the dawn.

  I yawned in Sam’s face. And immediately felt terribly embarrassed. “Sorry,” I apologized. “But I am very tired.”

  “Or bored,” Sam said, without a trace of resentment.

  “Tired,” I repeated. “Fatigued. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Too much excitement,” Sam said.

  Spence said nothing.

  “I must get some sleep,” I said, pushing my chair back.

  “Can you find your room all right?” Spence asked.

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll walk you to your door,” he said, getting to his feet.

  Sam remained seated, but he glanced first at me and then at Spence. “I’ve got a few things to attend to,” he said, “soon as I finish this glorious Rockledge repast.”

  So Spence walked with me along the sloping corridor toward the area where the sleeping compartments were.

  “Sam works very long hours, even up here,” I said.

  Spence chuckled. “He’s working on a couple of Rockledge people. Of the female variety.”

  “Oh?”

  “The little guy’s always got something going. Although I’ve got to admit,” Spence added, “that he gets a lot of dope about what Rockledge is doing from his—uh, contacts.”

  “A sort of masculine Mata Hari?” I asked.

  Spence laughed outright.

  As we neared the door to my compartment I heard myself asking

  Spence, “Why don’t they have windows in the compartments? It makes them feel so small and confined.”

  Even as I spoke the words I wondered if I wanted to delay the moment I must say good-night to Spence, or if there was another reason.

  “The station’s spinning, you know,” he replied, completely serious. “If you had a window in your compartment you’d see the stars looping around, and then the Earth would slide past, and maybe the Moon, if it was in the right position. Could make you pretty queasy, everything spinning by like that.”

  “But Sam said the view was magnificent.”

  “Oh, it is! Believe me. But that’s the view from outside, or down at the observation blister in the hub.”

  “I see.”

  “Sam plans to put a video screen in each of his hotel rooms. It’ll look like a window that gives you a steady view of the Earth or whatever else you’d like to see.”

  So after all his talk about seeing “the real thing,” Sam was prepared to show his hotel guests little more than video images of the Earth from space. That was just like the gringo capitalist exploiter, I told myself.

  Yet I heard myself asking Spence, “Is the view truly magnificent?”

  “Sam didn’t show you?”

  “No.”

  His face lit up. “Want to see it now? You’re not too tired, are you? It’ll only take—”

  “I’m not too tired,” I said eagerly. “I would like very much to see this fabulous view.”

  All the way along the long tube leading to the station’s hub a voice in my mind reprimanded me. You know why you asked him about the windows, it scolded. You wanted Spence to take you to the zero-gee section.

  We floated into the big padded gym. Spence propelled himself to a particular piece of the padding and peeled it back, revealing a small hatch. He opened it and beckoned me to him. I pushed off the curving wall and swam to him, my heart racing so hard I feared it would break my ribs.

  Spence helped me wriggle through the narrow hatch, then followed me into a small, cramped dome. There was barely room enough for the two of us. He swung the hatch shut and we were in total darkness.

  “Hang on a minute....” he mumbled.

  I heard a click and then the whir of an electric motor. The dome seemed to split apart, opening like a clamshell. And beyond it—

  The Earth. A huge brilliant blue curving mass moving slowly, with ponderous grace, below us. The breath gushed out of me.

  Spence put his arm around my shoulders and whispered, “Lord, I love the beauty of thy house, and the place where thy glory dwells.”

  It was—there are no words to do it justice. We huddled together in the transparent observation blister and feasted our eyes on the world swinging past, immense and glorious beyond description. Deep blue seas and swirling purest white clouds, the land brown and green with wrinkles of mountains and glittering lakes scattered here and there. Even the dark night side was spectacular with the lights of cities and highways outlining the continents.

  “No matter how many time you’ve seen it,” Spence said, “it still takes your breath away. I could watch it for hours.”

  “It’s incredible,” I said.

  “We’ll have to build more observation blisters for the hotel guests. Stud the whole zero-section with them.”

  The panorama was ever-changing, one spectacular scene blending imperceptibly into another. We saw the sun come up over the curving horizon, shooting dazzling streamers of red and orange through the thin layer of the atmosphere. I recognized the isthmus of Panama and the curving bird’s head of the Yucatan.

  “Where is Ecuador?” I asked.

  “Too far south for us to see on this swing. Why do you want to see Ecuador?”

  In my excitement I had forgotten that I was supposed to be from Los Angeles.

  “Ricardo Quevedai,” I temporized quickly. “He told me was born in Ecuador.”

  By the time we were watching our second sunrise, nearly two hours later, I had melted into Spence’s arms. I turned my face up to his, wanting him to kiss me.

  He understood. He felt the same passion that I did.

  But he said, very gently, “I’m a married man, Juanita.”

  “Do you love Bonnie Jo?”

  “I used to. Now...” He shook his head. In the light from the glowing Earth I could see how troubled and pained he was.

  “I love you, Spence,” I told him.

  He smiled sadly. “Maybe you think you do, but it isn’t a smart move. I wouldn’t be very good for you, kid.”

  “I know my own heart,” I insisted.

  “Don’t make it any tougher than it has to be, Juanita. I’m old enough to be your father and I’m married. Not happily, true enough, but that’s my fault as much as Bonnie Jo’s.”

  “I could make you happy.”

  “You shouldn’t be getting yourself involved with old married men. Pay some attention to guys your own age, like Ric.”

  “Queveda? That... that would-be revolutionary?”

  He looked totally surprised. “Revolutionary? What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing,” I snapped. “Nothing at all.”

  The mood was shattered, the spell broken. I had confessed my love to Spence and he had treated me like a lovesick child.

  “We’d better leave,” I said coldly.

  “Yeah,” Spence said. “We could both use some sleep.”

  But I did not sleep. Not at all. I seethed with anger all night. Spence had not only rejected me, he had belittled me. He did not see me as a desirable wom
an; he thought of me as a child to be lectured, to be palmed off on some young puppy dog whose only passion is to avenge his miserable family’s supposed honor.

  What a fool I had been! I did not love Spence. I hated him! I spent the whole night telling myself so.

  WHEN WE BOARDED the Clipper for the return flight to Florida, Sam was not with us.

  “Where is he?” I asked Spence.

  “He left a message. Went off to visit a buddy of his in the old Mac Dac Shack.”

  “The what?”

  “One of the smaller stations. It’s a medical center now.”

  “Sam needs medical attention?”

  Spence broke into a grin. “Maybe after last night, he does, after all.”

  I did not find that funny.

  Sam did not appear at the office until three days later, and when he did finally show up he was grinning like a cat who had feasted on canaries.

  He breezed into the mission control center while I was monitoring our latest repair mission. Ricardo Queveda sat in the left-hand chair, busily removing a set of computer boards that had to be replaced with upgrades.

  “I’ve got everything lined up for the hotel,” Sam announced loudly, plopping himself into the chair on my right.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “Yep. Finally got Rockledge to agree to a reasonable leasing fee. Got my buddy Omar set to handle the logistics up in orbit. Contractors, a personnel outfit to hire the staff—everything’s in place.”

  He smiled contentedly and leaned back in the little swivel chair. “All I need is the money.”

  I had to smile at him. “That would seem to me to be a major consideration.”

  “Nah.” Sam waved an arm in the air. “I’ll get the board to approve it at the next stockholder’s meeting. That’s only six weeks away.”

  He popped to his feet and strode confidently out of the center, whistling in his usual off-key fashion.

  “Gringo imperialist,” muttered Ricardo Queveda.

  “You accept his paychecks,” I taunted.

  He gave me a dark look. “So do you.”

  “I don’t call him names.”

  “No. But you don’t need his money, do you? You live in a fine condo and drive a fancy sports car. Your clothing costs more than your salary.”

  “You’ve been spying on me?”

  He laughed bitterly. “No need for spying. You are as obvious as an elephant in a china shop.”

  “So my family has money,” I said. “What of it?”

  “You don’t come from Los Angeles and you don’t need this job, that’s what of it. Why are you here?”

  I could not answer. My brain froze in the laser beams of his dark eyes.

  “Is it because you are Sam’s mistress?”

  “No!”

  He smiled tightly. “But you are in love with Spence, aren’t you?”

  “No I am not!”

  “It’s obvious,” Ricardo said.

  “I hate him!”

  “Yes,” he said. “Anyone can see that.”

  THE ANNUAL STOCKHOLDERS’ meeting took place six weeks later. In that time I had become quite expert at running the mission control board. During my first weeks on the job I merely sat alongside Gene Redding and watched how he handled the job. Within two weeks he was allowing me to take over when he took a break. Within a month we were sharing the duty on long, ten and even twelve-hour shifts.

  Sam needed more mission controllers because the volume of work was increasing rapidly. As he had predicted, the money was beginning to pour in to VCI. The ability to repair malfunctioning commsats and to replenish the fuel they used for their attitude-control thrusters suddenly made VCI a major force in the communications satellite industry. Instead of replacing aging commsats the corporations could get VCI to refurbish them, at a fraction of the replacement cost.

  Spence worked closely with us, handling most of the remotely controlled missions himself, operating the unmanned OTVs that now ran regular repair-and-refurbishment missions to GEO.

  Sam practically danced with joy. “I’ll be able to declare a dividend for the stockholders,” he told us, “and still have a wad of moolah to get the hotel started.”

  Bonnie Jo frowned at him. “We could give the stockholders a bigger dividend if you’d forget about your orbital sex palace.”

  Sam laughed. “Are you kidding? My hotel’s gonna be the biggest moneymaker you’ve ever seen in space. I’ve even got an advertising motto for it: ‘If you like water beds, you’re gonna love zero-gee!’“

  Bonnie Jo huffed.

  Spence spent more time in the simulator than at home with Bonnie Jo. Sam was frugal when it came to hiring more staff; he might take on a very junior computer programmer from Los Angeles, but astronauts and mission controllers carried much higher price tags, and he refrained from hiring them. We worked extremely long hours, and Sam himself “flew” many of the remote missions; Spence did the rest of them—more than Sam did, by actual count.

  It seemed to me that Spence was glad of the excuse to spend so much time away from his wife. Anyone could sense that their marriage was ripping apart. It made me sad to see him so unhappy, and I had to remind myself often that he had treated me like a schoolgirl and I hated him. For her part, Bonnie Jo seemed perfectly content to have Spence spend most of his time on the remote missions. She herself began to fly back to Salt Lake City every weekend.

  Naturally, with my duties as the second mission controller and his as principal operator of the remote satellite repairs, we were together quite a bit.

  Well, not together in the physical sense, precisely. Spence was in another room, some twenty meters down the hall from my mission control desk. But somehow, when I was not on duty I often found myself walking down that hallway to watch him at work. He sat in an astronaut’s contoured couch, his hands covered with metallic gloves that trailed hair-thin fiber-optic cables, the top half of his handsome face covered by the stereo screens that showed him what the OTV’s cameras were seeing.

  I told myself that I was studying his moves, learning how to sabotage the repair missions. When the time came I would strike without mercy. When I was not hanging by the doorway to the remote manipulator lab, studying him like a avenging angel, I was at my mission control console, actually speaking with Spence, connected electronically to him, closer to him than anyone else in the world. Including his wife. I wanted to be close to him; that made it easier to find a way to sabotage his work, his company, his life.

  “You planning to attend the stockholders’ meeting?” Spence asked me during a lull in one of the missions.

  I was startled that he asked a personal question. “Say again?” I asked, in the professional jargon of a mission controller.

  Spence chuckled. “It’s okay, Juanita. The OTV’s still in coast mode. It’ll be another hour before we have to get to work. Loosen up.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.”

  “You bought some stock, didn’t you?”

  “A few shares,” I said. In actuality I was spending my entire salary on shares of VCI. If there had been a way to buy up all the existing shares I would have done it, using my father’s treasury to deliver the company into his hands.

  As fate would have it, the annual stockholders’ meeting took place on the same day that my father gave his famous speech at the United Nations.

  He told me about the speech the night before the meeting. As usual, I had driven to the consulate late at night and called him on the videophone. At least he had the good sense to receive my calls in his office, when he knew I was going to contact him.

  My father was glowing with pride. His smile was brilliant, the shoulders of his suit wider than ever. He had even faced the necessity of replacing his thinning hair. Although his new mane of curly brown hair looked as if it had been stolen from a teenaged rock star, it was so wild and thick, it obviously made him feel younger and more vigorous.

  “With Brazil in the chair at the Security Council and the Co
mmittee of the Twelve Equatorial Nations lining up support among the small nations in the General Assembly, I have high hopes for our cause.”

  “And your speech?” I asked him. “What will you say?”

  His smile became even wider, even more radiant. “You must watch me on television, little one. I want you to be just as surprised as the rest of the world will be.”

  He would tell me no more. I of course reported in full to him about VCI’s continuing success in repairing and refurbishing satellites remotely. And of the growing strains in the company’s management.

  “You still have the capability of destroying their spacecraft?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I replied, thinking of how much damage I could do to Spence.

  “Good,” said my father. “The time is fast approaching when we will strike.”

  “Will it be necessary—”

  But his attention was suddenly pulled away from me. I heard an aide shouting breathlessly at him, “The rebels have ambushed General Quintana’s brigade!”

  “Ambushed?” my father snapped, his eyes no longer looking at me. “Where? When?”

  “In the mountains of Azuay, south of Cuenca. The general has been captured and his troops are fleeing for their lives!”

  My father’s face went gray, then red with fury. He turned back to me. “Excuse me, daughter. I have urgent business to attend to.”

  “Go with God,” I mumbled, feeling silly at using such an archaic phrase. But it was all I could think to say.

  The rebels were very clever. They must have known that my father was scheduled to fly to New York to deliver his speech to the United Nations. Now he either had to cancel his speech and admit to the world that his nation was in the throes of a serious internal conflict, or go to New York and leave his army leaderless for several days.

  I COULD NOT sleep that night. When I arrived at the stockholders’ meeting my eyes were red and puffy, my spirits low. How can I help my father? I kept asking myself. What can I do? He had sent me here to help him triumph over Sam Gunn and these other gringos. But he was being threatened at home and I was thousands of kilometers away from him. I felt miserable and stupid and helpless.

  Spence noticed my misery.