“Why do you treat me like this?” she threw at him. “Why?”
“Treat you?” He looked down at her.
“Oh, you wooden man!” Her lips skinned back over her perfect teeth. “What’re you afraid of—that I’ll eat you up?”
“Wouldn’t you?” he asked her quite seriously—and she checked at his answer.
“Come on. Let’s go fishing!” she cried, and whirled about and ran down toward the dock.
So, they went fishing. But even slicing through the water in pursuit of a twisting fish at sixty fathoms depth, Donal’s mind was not on the sport. He let the small jet unit on his shoulders push him whither the chase led him; and, in the privacy of his helmet, condemned himself darkly for his own ignorance. For it was this crime of ignorance which he abhorred above all else—in this case his ignorance of the ways of women—that had led him to believe he could allow himself the luxury of a casual and friendly acquaintanceship with a woman who wanted him badly, but whom he, himself, did not want at all.
She had been living here, in this household, when Galt had brought him here as a personal aide. She was, by some intricate convolution of Freiland inheritance laws, the marshal’s responsibility; in spite of the distance of their relationships and the fact that her own mother and some other relatives were still living. She was some five years older than Donal, although in her wild energy and violence of emotion, this difference was lost. He had found her excitements interesting, at first; and her company a balm to what—though he would not admit it to himself in so many words—was a recently bruised and very tender portion of his ego. That had been at first.
“You know,” she had said to him in one of her peculiar flashes of directness. “Anybody would want me.”
“Anybody would,” he admitted, considering her beauty. It was not until later that he discovered, to his dismay, that he had accepted an invitation he had not even suspected was there.
For four months now, he had been established at the marshal’s estate, learning some of the elements of Freilander Staff Control; and learning also, to his increasing dismay, some of the intricacies of a woman’s mind. And, in addition to it all, he found himself puzzled as to why he did not want her. Certainly he liked Elvine Rhy. Her company was enjoyable, her attractiveness was undeniable, and a certain brightness and hunger in her personality matched similar traits in his own. Yet, he did not want her. No, not the least bit, not at all.
They gave up their fishing after several hours. Elvine had caught four, averaging a good seven or eight kilograms. He had caught none.
“Elvine—” he began, as he went up the steps of the terrace with her. But, before he could finish his carefully thought out speech, an annunciator hidden in a rosebush chimed softly.
“Commandant,” said the rosebush, gently, “the doorbot announces a Senior Groupman Tage Lee to see you. Do you wish to see him?”
“Lee—” murmured Donal. He raised his voice. “From Coby?”
“He says he is from Coby,” answered the rosebush.
“I’ll see him,” said Donal, striding quickly toward the house. He heard the sound of running feet behind him and Elvine caught at his arm.
“Donal—” she said.
“This’ll just take a minute,” he answered. “I’ll see you in the library in a few minutes.”
“All right—” She let go and fell behind him. He went in and to the entrance hall.
Lee, the same Lee who had commanded his Third Group, was waiting for him.
“Well, Groupman,” said Donal, shaking hands. “What brings you here?”
“You do, sir,” said Lee. He looked Donal in the eye with something of the challenge Donal had marked the first time Donal had seen him. “Could you use a personal orderly?”
Donal considered him.
“Why?”
“I’ve been carrying my contract around since they let us all go after that business with Killien,” said Lee. “If you want to know, I’ve been on a bat. That’s my cross. Out of uniform I’m an alcoholic. In uniform, it’s better, but sooner or later I get into a hassle with somebody. I’ve been putting off signing up again because I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted. Finally, it came to me. I wanted to work for you.”
“You look sober enough now,” said Donal.
“I can do anything for a few days—even stop drinking. If I’d come up here with the shakes, you’d never have taken me.”
Donal nodded.
“I’m not expensive,” said Lee. “Take a look at my contract. If you can’t afford me yourself, I’ll sign up as a line soldier and you pull strings to get me assigned to you. I don’t drink if I’ve got something to do; and I can make myself useful. Look here—”
He extended his hand in a friendly manner, as if to shake hands again, and suddenly there was a knife in it.
“That’s a back-alley, hired killer trick,” said Donal. “Do you think it’d work with me?”
“With you—no.” Lee made the knife vanish again. “That’s why I want to work for you. I’m a funny character, commandant. I need something to hang to. I need it the way ordinary people need food and drink and home and friends. It’s all there in the psychological index number on my contract, if you want to copy it down and check on me.”
“I’ll take your word for it, for now,” said Donal, “What is wrong with you?”
“I’m borderline psycho,” Lee answered, his lean face expressionless. “Not correctable. I was born with a deficiency. What they tell me is, I’ve got no sense of right or wrong; and I can’t manage just by abstract rules. The way the doctors put it when I first got my contract, I need my own, personal, living god in front of me all the time. You take me on and tell me to cut the throat of all the kids under five I meet, and that’s fine. Tell me to cut my own throat—the same thing. Everything’s all right, then.”
“You don’t make yourself sound very attractive.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I can’t tell you anything else. I’m like a bayonet that’s been going around all my life looking for a rifle to fit on to; and now I’ve found it. So, don’t trust me. Take me on probation for five years, ten years—the rest of my life. But don’t shut me out.” Lee half-turned and pointed one bony finger at the door behind him. “Out there is hell for me, commandant. Anything inside here is heaven.”
“I don’t know,” said Donal, slowly. “I don’t know that I’d want the responsibility.”
“No responsibility.” Lee’s eyes were shining; and it struck home to Donal suddenly that the man was terrified: terrified of being refused. “Just tell me. Try me, now. Tell me to get down and bark like a dog. Tell me to cut my left hand off at the wrist. As soon as they’ve grown me a new one I’ll be back to do whatever you want me to do.” The knife was suddenly back in his hand. “Want to see?’
“Put that away!” snapped Donal. The knife disappeared. “All right, I’ll buy your contract personally. My suite of rooms are third door to the right, the head of the stairs. Go up there and wait for me.”
Lee nodded. He offered no word of thanks. He only turned and went.
Donal shook himself mentally as if the emotional charge that had crackled in the air about him the last few seconds was a thing of physical mass draped heavily upon his shoulders. He turned and went to the library.
Elvine was standing looking out the great expanse of open wall at the ocean, as he came in. She turned quickly, at the sound of his steps and came to meet him.
“What was it?” she asked.
“One of my soldiers from the Harmony business,” he said. “I’ve taken him on as my personal orderly.” He looked down at her. “Ev—”
Instantly, she drew a little away from him. She looked out the wall, one hand tailing down to play with a silver half-statuette that sat on a low table beside her.
“Yes?” she said.
He found it very hard to get the words out.
“Ev, you know I’ve been around here a long time,” he said.
r /> “A long time?” At that, she turned to face him with a slight look of startlement. “Four months? It seems like hours, only.”
“Perhaps,” he said, doggedly. “But it has been a long time. So perhaps it’s just as well I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” Her eyes shot wide; hazel eyes, staring at him. “Who said you were leaving?”
“I have to, of course,” he said. “But I thought I ought to clear something up before I go. I’ve liked you a great deal, Ev—”
But she was too quick for him.
“Liked me?” she cried. “I should think you should! Why, I haven’t hardly had a minute to myself for entertaining you. I swear I hardly know what it looks like any more outside of this place! Liked me! You certainly ought to like me after the way I’ve put myself out for you!”
He gazed at her furious features for a long moment and then he smiled ruefully.
“You’re quite right,” he said “I’ve put you to a great deal of trouble. Pardon me for being so dense as not to notice it.” He bent his head to her. “I’ll be going now.”
He turned and walked away. But he had hardly taken a dozen steps across the sunlit library before she called his name.
“Donal!”
He turned and saw her staring after him, her face stiff, her fists clenched at her side.
“Donal, you ... you can’t go,” she said, tightly.
“I beg your pardon?” He stared at her.
“You can’t go,” she repeated. “Your duty is here. You’re assigned here.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Ev. This business of Oriente’s come up. I’m going to ask the marshal to assign me to one of the ships.”
“You can’t.” Her voice was brittle. “He isn’t here. He’s gone down to the Spaceyard.”
“Well, then, I’ll go there and ask him.”
“You can’t. I’ve already asked him to leave you here. He promised.”
“You what!” The words exploded from his lips in a tone more suited to the field man to this quiet mansion.
“I asked him to leave you here.”
He turned and stalked away from her.
“Donal!” He heard her voice crying despairingly after him, but there was nothing she, or anyone in that house could have done, to stop him then.
He found Galt examining the new experimental model of a two-man anti-personnel craft. The older man looked up in surprise as Donal came up.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Could I see you alone for a minute, sir?” said Donal. “A private and urgent matter.”
Galt shot him a keen glance, but motioned aside with his head and they stepped over into the privacy of a tool control boom.
“What is it?” asked Galt.
“Sir,” said Donal. “I understand Elvine asked you if I couldn’t continue to be assigned to your household during the upcoming business we talked about with Patrol Chief Lludrow earlier today.”
“That’s right. She did.”
“I did not know of it,” said Donal, meeting the older man’s eyes. “It was not my wish.”
“Not your wish?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh,” said Galt. He drew a long breath and rubbed his chin with one thick hand. Turning his head aside, he gazed out through the screen of the control booth at the experimental ship. “I see,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”
“No reason why you should,” Donal felt a sudden twist of emotion inside him at the expression on the older man’s face. “I should have spoken to you before sir.”
“No, no,” Galt brushed the matter aside with a wave of his hand. “The responsibility’s mine. I’ve never had children. No experience. She has to get herself settled in life one of these days; and ... well, I have a high opinion of you, Donal.”
“You’ve been too kind to me already, sir,” Donal said miserably.
“No, no ... well, mistakes will happen. I’ll see you have a place with the combat forces right away, of course.”
“Thank you,” said Donal.
“Don’t thank me, boy.” Abruptly, Galt looked old. “I should have remembered. You’re a Dorsai.”
Staff Liaison
“Welcome aboard,” said a pleasant-faced Junior Captain, as Donal strode through the gas barrier of the inner lock. The Junior Captain was in his early twenties, a black-haired, square-faced young man who looked as if he had gone in much for athletics. “I’m J.C. Allmin Clay Andresen.”
“Donal Graeme.” They saluted each other. Then they shook hands.
“Had any ship experience?” asked Andresen.
“Eighteen months of summer training cruises in the Dorsai,” answered Donal. “Command and armament—no technical posts.”
“Command and armament,” said Andresen, “are plenty good enough on a Class 4J ship. Particularly Command. You’ll be senior officer after me—if anything happens.” He made the little ritual gesture, reaching out to touch a close, white, carbon-plastic wall beside him. “Not that I’m suggesting you take over in such a case. My First can handle things all right. But you may be able to give him a hand, if it should happen.”
“Be honored,” said Donal.
“Care to look over the ship?”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“Right. Step into the lounge, then.” Andresen led the way across the small reception room, and through a sliding bulkhead to a corridor that curved off ahead of them to right and left. They went through another door in the wail of the corridor directly in front of them, down a small passage, and emerged through a final door into a large, pleasantly decorated, circular room.
“Lounge,” said Andresen. “Control center’s right under our feet; reversed gravity.” He pressed a stud on the wall and a section of the floor slid back. “You’ll have to flip,” he warned, and did a head-first dive into the hole.
Donal, who knew what to expect, followed the J.C.’s example. The momentum of his dive shot him through and into another circular chamber of the same size as the lounge, in which everything would have been upside down and nailed to the ceiling, except for the small fact that here the gravity was reversed; and what had been down, was up, and up was down instead.
“Here,” said Andresen, as Donal landed lightly on the floor at one side of the opening, “is our Control Eye. As you probably saw when you were moving in to come aboard, the Class 4J is a ball-and-hammer ship.”
He pressed several studs and in the large globe floating in the center of the floor, that which he had referred to as the Control Eye, a view formed of their craft, as seen from some little distance outside the ship. Half-framed against the star-pricked backdrop of space, and with just a sliver of the curved edge of Freiland showing at the edge of the scene, she floated. A sphere thirty meters in diameter, connected by two slim shafts a hundred meters each in length to a rhomboid-shape that was the ship’s thrust unit, some five meters in diameter at its thickest and looking like a large child’s spinning top, pivoted on two wires that clamped it at the middle. This was the “hammer.” The ship, proper, was the “ball.”
“No phase-shift equipment?” asked Donal. He was thinking of the traditional cylinder shape of the big ships that moved between the stars.
“Don’t fool yourself,” answered Andresen. “The grid’s there. We just hope the enemy doesn’t see it, or doesn’t hit it. We can’t protect it, so we try to make it invisible.” His finger stabbed out to indicate the apparently bare shafts. “There’s a covering grid running the full length of the ship, from thrust to nose. Painted black.”
Donal nodded thoughtfully.
“Too bad a polarizer won’t work in the absence of atmosphere,” he said.
“You can say that,” agreed Andresen. He flicked off the Eye. “Let’s look around the rest of the ship by hand.”
He led out a door and down a passage similar to the one by which they had entered the lounge. They came out into a corridor that was the duplicate of the curv
ing one they had passed in the other half of the ship.
“Crew’s quarters, mess hall, on the other one,” explained Andresen. “Officer’s quarters, storage and suppliers, repair section, on this one.” He pushed open a door in the corridor wall opposite them and they stepped into a section roughly the size of a small hotel room, bounded on its farther side by the curving outer shell of the ship, proper. The shell in this section was, at the moment, on transparent; and the complicated “dentist’s chair” facing the bank of controls at the foot of the transparency was occupied; although the figure in it was dressed in coveralls only.
“My First,” said Andresen. The figure looked up over the headrest of the chair. It was a woman in her early forties.
“Hi, All,” she said. “Just checking the override.” Andresen made a wry grimace at Donal.
“Antipersonnel weapons,” he explained. “Nobody likes to shoot the poor helpless characters out of the sky as they fall in for an assault—so it’s an officer’s job. I usually take it over myself if I’m not tied up with something else at the moment. Staff Liaison Donal Graeme—First Officer Coa Benn.”
Donal and she shook hands.
“Well, shall we get on?” asked Andresen. They toured the rest of the ship and ended up before the door of Donal’s stateroom in Officer’s Country.
“Sorry,” said Andresen. “But we’re short of bunk space. Full complement under battle conditions. So we had to put your orderly in with you. If you’ve no objection—”
“Not at all,” said Donal.
“Good,” Andresen looked relieved. “That’s why I like the Dorsai. They’re so sensible.” He clapped Donal on the shoulder, and went hurriedly off back to his duties of getting his ship and crew ready for action.
Entering his stateroom, Donal found Lee had already set up both their gear, including a harness hammock for himself to supplement the single bunk that would be Donal’s.