as they drew nearer the station. He had succeeded in forgetting about it while on Mars-other things, like bare survival, helped him forget. But now it all came back to him and the sense of hopelessness and dread ballooned as the transport streaked toward rendezvous.
Surely, even God-if he existed, which Spence was not yet willing to admit despite what Kyr and Adjani believed-even their God could not help him now. And if he did exist he would not have allowed him to get into such a mess in the first place. That was how he thought about it. Case closed. …
SPENCE HALF EXPECTED THE docking bay to be filled with wives and sweethearts and screaming children all waiting eagerly for their husbands and lovers to return from their voyage. It surprised him to discover that, aside from a few girlfriends of cadets and the docking crew, the area was empty. No cheering crowds, no joyous welcomes.
The absolute routineness of their deboarding disappointed him, but he knew that it was best if he was seen by as few people, as possible on his return. It was for that very reason he had donned a cadet's uniform. He also reminded himself that since he was supposed to be missing, no one would be meeting him. Still, as he disembarked and walked quickly through the milling cadets he found himself searching the faces for one in particular he hoped to see.
He hoped Ari would be there, though he felt foolish for even thinking it. He also remembered with a shock that she most likely considered him dead.
What have I done to her? What have I put her through?
He resolved to go to her at once and started off to find her, but checked himself before running ten steps. It would be dangerous to be seen too soon. He would have to wait and arrange a meeting at a safe place.
Feeling like a spy, and not a particularly glamorous one, he slunk away unobtrusively, lugging his travel frame with him. He regretted not thinking of a way to bind his flightmates to secrecy about his reappearance. That, if it could have been accomplished, might have been a valuable card in his hand. On further thought, however, it would have increased the interest in his case which would have spotlighted him. The best course, the one he was on, was just to lay low and keep out of sight.
He at last reached his quarters; after trying various means to determine whether anyone waited for him inside the lab, he had pressed his ear against the panel and listened for a long time before punching the access plate. The panel slid open at once – there had been no entry code entered in his absence.
He went in.
The rooms, dark and quiet, seemed unusually so to Spence. No one waited for him; the control booth was empty. He guessed no one had been around for several weeks.
He had ignored Adjani's protests to stay far away from the lab; he wanted to see it, to see if it was as he had left it. He would not feel he had made it back until he saw his own room. He would join Adjani later.
He moved across the lab silently and went into his personal quarters to look around. Everything appeared exactly as he had left it-that is, as far as he could remember that he left it. Yet the room looked strange and new. Everything was the same, yet altered and different. Spence felt a telescoping of time upon entering, like he had just left it but a few minutes before and now had returned to find it subtly changed. All that happened since he lest stood in the room now belonged to a weird, fantastic dream. He awakened from the dream to find himself in his own room, but a room he no longer knew it had not been a dream. If he doubted its reality he had only to dip his hand into the inner breast pocket of his jumpsuit to pat the smooth shell-like object Kyr gave him. No, it was no dream.
He slipped his travel frame under the bed without bothering to unpack and sat down in his chair to decide how best to reach Ari. He decided to leave a message for her to meet him in the garden near the fountain.
Spence tapped the message into the ComCen panel and signed it Mary D.-one of Ari's friends. He hoped it would bring her without question. Then he lay on the bed and fell asleep.
He awoke in a better mood and shrugged off his clothes and stopped himself from putting them in the laundry chute. Instead he threw them under his bed and stepped into the sanibooth and just as quickly out to don a fresh blue and gold jumpsuit. Then he crept from his rooms into the main trafficway and hurried down to meet Ari in the garden.
By the time he reached the garden level his heart was tripping along at an alarming rate. He glanced guiltily around and then stepped off the pathway and into a shaded nook out of sight to wait for her.
He heard steps along the pathway and voices and peered from his seclusion to see two members of the secretarial section gaily flouncing along in full gossip. He swallowed hard and noticed a lump in his throat; he had not been so affected by meeting someone since fifth form when he asked Beatrice Mercer to the Young Astronaut's Annual Dinner Dance. The absurd feeling that at any minute his onetime dancing partner would appear grew unbearable. He shrank back further into the shadows.
He waited; beads of perspiration formed on his forehead from the humidity and his hands grew clammy. I'm falling to pieces. I'm acting like a fourteen-year-old on his first date. He forced himself to take deep calming breaths, and then felt woozy, and mildly hyperventilated.
When he felt he could no longer stand the waiting he heard the crisp, unmistakable footsteps of Ari pattering along the pathway. She had come. He smelled the fresh scent of lemons a split second before he saw her and stepped from the bower.
It was to Ari's credit that she did not collapse in a dead faint on the spot. Her hands fluttered like frightened birds to her mouth; her eyes grew round, showing white all around; her lovely jaw dropped open and a little pinched scream passed her lips.
'Eeee!'
'Hello, Ari.' He had tried to think of something in some way appropriate for this meeting, but that was the best he could come up with.
'You… how? Oh!'
The next instant she was in his arms, her trembling hands touching his face, squeezing his flesh as if to make certain that it was solid, alive. He clung to her and filled his soul with her living, breathing essence.
'Spence, oh Spence…' she said over and over.
He felt a wet spot on his neck and when he pulled her from him to look at her at arm's length he saw the tears rolling down her cheeks.
'Forgive me,' he murmured, drawing her to him once more. 'There was no other way. I had to-'
'Shh, don't talk. Don't say anything. Oh, darling. They said you were-oh, you're not. You're here!'
'I'm here.'
'I never thought I'd see you again.' She broke from him and expressions of pain, anger, and mingled joy crossed her face in complex patterns. 'I never hoped, never dreamed… I cried for you. How I cried for you. For so long no word. Nothing.'
She looked about to stomp off in anger at his thoughtlessness. He groped for the words to tell her of his own sorrow at hurting her, but there were no words. He hung his head.
The next moment he felt her cool hand on his cheek and he raised his eyes to meet hers. 'I never thought I'd see you again, either,' he said. 'I-I'm sorry. I love you.'
Ari pressed herself to him in a tight embrace. 'I love you, too, Spencer. Never leave me again.'
'We have to get away somewhere private where we can talk. No one else on Gotham knows I've returned-yet. I'd like to keep it that way for a little while longer if I can.'
'Come on, I know a secret place here in the garden where we can be alone. I discovered it when I first came here. No one else seems to know about it.'
She led him along, his hand clamped tightly in her own, to a place where one of the little artificial creeks bubbled out from a fern-covered bank. She parted the ferns and jumped lightly across the water. Spence followed her and found himself in a cool green shade sweet with the smell of gardenias. He looked around and saw bushes of the fragrant flowers, luminous against their waxy dark green leaves.
Ari pulled him down onto a soft bed of long grass. For a moment all he heard was the burbling of the brook nearby and the rush of his own pulse in his ears. Then he was kissing her and nothing else in the world existed but the moment and the kiss.
When they parted Ari looked at him, drinking in his presence with dark blue eyes now sparkling with happy excitement.
'Now, then,' she said, drawing her knees to her chin and circling them in her arms. 'Tell me everything. I want
