"Because when we get to Sitdown there's just eight of us and a lot of them. If we can't depend on each other, I don't give us much chance."
"So now, you hurting me and all, it's for us to be chums? Houk, stay off me but guard my back? Is that it?"
Actually his statement wasn't unfair. Carefully, Lisele said, "And the other way, too, don't forget. I guard yours. We all do that, every one of us. If we want to stay alive."
She could see him thinking about it, before he said, "All right. We don't need to like, just to trust. I can do that." He made a grimace. "You said I should have a haircut!"
"Yes; I did." Not especially wanting the job, Lisele borrowed scissors from Alina and trimmed deWayne Houk's hair to something like UET-officer standards.
She saw no point in telling anyone about the incident, so she didn't. Houk, she decided, probably thought she had; any time they met in line of duty, he had a way of looking first at her and then at anyone else who was present, as if looking for signs of telltale knowledge.
Well, that was his problem.
Near the middle of Lisele's second watch trick, as scheduled, the time came for Turnover. Because this was a short haul, most of the gear had been kept battened down pretty well. Still, Anders Kobolak directed a last-minute inspection before the crew strapped in. He wanted Limmer and Brower on duty with Lisele and himself, so the other four drew lots for the two remaining seats. Looking sulky, as usual, Alys Molyneux followed Alina Rostadt as the two losers went to strap down in bunks.
A fullsized ship, Lisele knew, could make Turnover by pivoting on any chosen transverse axis. All it took was proper
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balancing of the three side-thrusting aux-Drive nodes that made a hexagon with the main ones. A scoutship, though, carried only one lateral thrustor, so the rotational axis was fixed.
Out in clear space and on a straightline course, the restriction wouldn't matter. But now their course was curved, a geodesic, and to keep navigation simple, rotation had to be in the geodesic's plane. Well ahead of time, then, she slowly and gently turned the scout around its long axis, until side-thrust would be in that plane. Then she looked over to Anders. "Alignment complete, sir. Ready to swing ship, on the count."
To her surprise, he was grinning. "Didn't realize you knew that part. In another five minutes or so, I was expecting to talk you through it. When did you-"
She shook her head. "I can't remember. On Shaarbant, sometime, though. Sitting around a fire, probably, done with eating but too early for sleep. We did a lot of talking, that way. And some of the best of it was Tregare telling us all kinds of things. Like this move I just made." Thinking back, she said, "You have to understand: that was one peace-twisting long walk we took, there."
Twenty minutes later, Lisele made Turnover as if she d been doing it all her life.
Working different watch tricks, Lisele and Arlen didn't see each other very much. When they did, it was usually in the small dining area, with others coming and going. She knew he wanted a private talk, here on the scout before they went groundside and had the Uties-oops, the Patton's crew- to deal with. But the occasion didn't arise.
So during Kobolak's final watch on this journey, when Eduin Brower joined the two of them just as Arlen had begun to ask a question, Lisele took the initiative. "Arlen, I haven't logged a Drive inspection yet. We're supposed to make at least one. Have you done yours?"
First he looked puzzled; then his expression cleared. It might take Arlen a little while, she thought, but he did catch on. He said, "No, I haven't. Should we take care of it now?"
She made a show of checking her wrist chrono. "Might as well." She stood, saying to Brower, "See you, Chief." Then she and Arlen went downship to the cramped Drive room.
Entering, Arlen said, "You sure Houk won't turn up?"
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"He's asleep. So are Gray and Molyneux. So- Then he was hugging her, and began a kiss.
She cooperated for a time, then gently pulled back. "All right, Arlen. We've talked about us, some, before. I expect you want to know where we stand. Now, I mean. Before we all get mixed up in the groundside problems."
He nodded. "Yes. It was bad enough, you hedging all the time. But then Chief Houk started hanging around. I can't think what you see in that one, but-"
Involuntarily, she laughed. "I don't. See anything in him, I mean." How to put this? Without telling Arlen what had actually happened? After a pause, she said, "Don't worry about the Chief. He may have had some ideas for a little while, but he must have gotten over them. Hasn't bothered me lately, anyway."
"Well, then." Arlen didn't pull her close again, but his grasp firmed. "Where do we stand, Lisele?"
She thought. He was acting more grown up now. More in control of himself, and at the same time, not trying so much to dominate her.
She made up her mind. Showing him the bio-age reading on her wrist chrono, she said, "Until I'm a bio-sixteen I won't be lovers with you or anybody else. When I get to that mark, then if we both still want to, we can try it." Brows drawn down, she looked at him, waiting for what he would say.
"Still want to, you said."
"Yes."
"That's all right, then." Smiling, he initiated one of the best kisses he'd ever shown her. Then, as Lisele wondered if perhaps she shouldn't have made her terms a bit more flexible, Arlen released her and reached to take two sheets from a bulkhead-mounted clipboard. "Inspection forms. Anders won't expect these, but Comm Chief Brower might."
Again, Lisele had to laugh.
Even if she'd wanted to bed with Arlen just now, the mechanics of the situation would have been too embarrassing. The scout had five single bunks in a dormitory setup, plus a larger one in the more private compartment unofficially known as the "love cubby." As a matter of course, Anders and Alina sometimes disappeared for a time from public view, and Lisele wasn't certain that deWavne Houk and Naomi Crav
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hadn't been jointly absent now and then. But for herself, circumstances would have to be considerably less public!
Not far short of Sitdown, Anders Kobolak had Pilot seat. When Lisele came in, he moved to the aux position. "You sit First Pilot, but you don't have to do anything for a time. Until we're close to landing I'll run things from here."
She sat, and checked her indicators. "All right." His statements, and the monitors also, she meant.
An idea came; she said, "Anders? We've named this world Sitdown. But we don't live there; they do. I wonder what they've named it."
Kobolak shook his head. Eduin Brower said, "That first fella, on the wornout record, mostly called it Hellhole."
Soft-voiced, Alina Rostadt put in, "It hardly matters. People living on a world seldom refer to it by name; they don t need to."
When time for landing came, Lisele worried a little. But the scout behaved exactly the same as it had on simulations. A few minutes short of plowing air, Brower had begun calling groundside, but only the long-ago-recorded voice of On'al Sprague answered. So, homing in, Lisele dropped the scout nearly to ground, a couple of kilometers from the dead ship, and hovered.
Kobolak began a query, but Lisele waved it away. Then, tilting the scout a half-radian but still hovering, she "walked" it a few hundred meters toward the Patton before going vertical and landing. Her move blew hell out of the ground below-which was exactly what she had in mind.
As the scoutship came to rest, the terrain she'd blasted lay hidden under the cloud of dust and larger chunks her Drive had blown free; when it cleared, the scout's path showed as a wide, flat-bottomed, smoking trench.
"What the Almighty was that about?" said Eduin Brower.
Anders was smiling, so Lisele realized he already knew the answer. But to Brower and the others, she said, "It's another thing Tregare told me about. He used it sometimes, when he had reason. I wanted to know if I could do it."
"And if I could- " She nodded toward where the Patton sat. "-I wanted them to know, too."
Right out loud, Anders Kobolak laughed.
Then he got down to business. "The time of day it is, here, we can't transmit to March Hare for at least the next twenty
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