“I see,” said Westfall. A hint of a smile curled the corners of her mouth. “I presume you have Yeager suitably enamored of your charms.”
Deirdre almost laughed in her face, remembering how easy it had been to get information out of Max.
Dorn had told her about the meeting in Archer’s office when he’d met Deirdre in the clinic for her immunization therapy. The cyborg didn’t have to be there, the clinic had a sufficient sample of his blood on hand, but somehow he seemed to show up whenever Deirdre had to get her shots.
“I appreciate your moral support,” she’d said to him as they left the clinic.
“That seems to be my main function these days,” said Dorn. He told her about Max’s need for support in the meeting with Dr. Archer.
Once she was alone in her quarters Deirdre phoned Max.
“I hear you had a big meeting,” she said to the engineer’s image in her phone screen. “I hope it went well.”
Yeager put on a toothy smile. “I’ll tell you all about it over dinner.”
“Fine,” said Deirdre.
Yeager looked surprised, but he broke into his usual leering grin and replied happily, “I’ll pick you up at eighteen hundred hours. Okay?”
“Fine,” Deirdre repeated.
The station’s galley was hardly a romantic trysting place, but Yeager found a table for two and spent most of dinner talking about the meeting and the decision to send
“Can you do that?” Deirdre asked. “I mean, can the ship function without a crew?”
Yeager popped a forkful of apple tart into his mouth and nodded wordlessly as he chewed it quickly and then swallowed it down.
“She’ll run fully automated,” he said at last. But his expression was far from happy.
“Is there something wrong with that?”
He looked down at his plate. Nothing there but crumbs. Without looking up at Deirdre he muttered, “I don’t like it.”
“Your dessert?” She giggled. “You didn’t leave much of it.”
“Not the dessert,” he said, meeting her eyes at last. “I don’t like sending her down there alone. Without a crew.”
“Why not?”
He hesitated a couple of heartbeats, then explained, “She’ll have to go down so deep we’ll lose contact with her. We won’t be able to run her remotely, from here in the station. She’ll have to run fully automated, completely on her own. She’ll be all alone down there!”
“But you said the ship’s designed to operate that way, if it has to.”
Shaking his head, Yeager said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Hell, I designed her! I know what she can do! I even set up a human analog file into her main program; silly thing to do, but I did it anyway.”
“A human analog program?”
“Yeah.” Yeager looked almost ashamed of himself. “Aphorism, adages … that sort of thing. So she wouldn’t feel all alone down there.”
Deirdre smiled at him. “Max, you’re just a big softie. That program isn’t going to make the computer feel better. Computers don’t have emotions.”
“I know. But I do.”
“The ship will do fine, Max.”
“I know. I know.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I just don’t like it. I worry about her. I’d feel a lot better if I was there with her.”
“Golly, Max, you sound as if you’re talking about a child of yours.”
“I am,” he said. “She’s my baby, Dee. I’m scared for her.”
Once they’d left the galley and walked along the passageway toward their living quarters, Yeager fell silent. Deirdre thought that all his bluster and loud confidence in his design was really a front. He was worried that his vessel might fail, that it might never return from its uncrewed mission into the Jovian ocean.
Are his insinuations about me nothing more than bravado, too? she wondered. She realized that she was going to find out.
“Well,” she said, once they’d reached her door, “thanks for an interesting dinner, Max.”
His familiar lecherous smirk returned. “The night is young, fair one.”
Deirdre decided to follow her hunch. “That’s true, it is.”
Yeager was a big, burly man, she realized. But his eyes were a meltingly soft brown. He stood before Deirdre, suddenly tongue-tied.
“Would you like to come in?” she asked, in a breathy whisper.
“I … uh…”
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything to drink.”
“Yeah, well…”
“We could just sit and talk for a while. Or watch videos.”
Yeager licked his lips, shifting slightly from one foot to the other, like a little boy.
Deirdre stepped so close to him that her body touched his. “Or whatever,” she whispered.
“Uh … Dee…” Something close to panic flashed in Yeager’s eyes. “I’m old enough to be your father, you know.”
“Do you want me to call you Daddy?”
He gulped hard. “I … I’ve got two kids your age … older,” he stuttered. “My ex-wife has custody of them. Back in Arizona.”
“That’s a long way from here,” Deirdre murmured.
“I gotta go!” Yeager said. “I gotta review the simulation data and get ready for a meeting tomorrow with the launch crew.”
“Do you have to?” Deirdre importuned.
“See you!” said Yeager. He turned and hurried down the passageway. Deirdre smiled knowingly as she watched him, a big hulking figure shambling along, running away from her. The more they talk, she knew, the less they act.
Katherine Westfall misunderstood her smile.
“You enjoyed your time with Dr. Yeager, it seems,” Westfall said.
Deirdre sighed. “He’s a dear man. A very dear man.”
Westfall eyed her carefully for several silent moments. Then, “How’s your therapy going?”
Startled by the sudden change of subject, Deirdre said, “Dr. Mandrill says my condition is under control.”
“That’s good. And as long as you continue to keep me informed about your colleagues’ progress, we’ll be able to keep your condition under control.”
Deirdre saw perfectly well what she really meant. She’ll be able to keep
LAUNCH
“
“I am,” said Linda Vishnevskaya, standing before Yeager and looking up at him with unflappable tenacity. She was a tiny woman, barely as tall as Yeager’s shoulder and elfin slim. Her curly golden hair was like a sunburst in the drab control center, her violet eyes calm and steady.
Almost truculently, Yeager asked, “How many launches have you directed?”
“Every one of them, since I first came to the station four years ago.”
