into the ocean, as if the seas were a bottomless dumping ground. It was fortunate that they had begun to get the picture before the damage had become irreparable.
Turning from the window, he wandered the room, running a fingertip along the walls, over the bedspread, the bedposts. Certainly the textures were interesting, and yet . . .
He paused when he spotted a picture framed in what appeared to be silver. The frame itself would have caught his attention, but it was the picture that drew him. His brother, smiling. He was wearing a tuxedo and looking very pleased with himself. His arm was around the woman called Libby. She had flowers in her hair and wore a white full-sleeved dress that laced to the throat.
A wedding dress, Jacob mused. In his own time the ceremony was coming back into style after having fallen into disfavor in the latter part of the previous century. Couples were finding a new pleasure in the old traditions. It had no basis in logic, of course. There was a contract to seal a marriage, and a contract to end one. Each was as easily forged as the other. But elaborate weddings were in fashion once more.
Churches were once again the favored atmosphere for the exchange of rings and vows. Designers were frantically copying gowns from museums and old videos. The gown Libby wore would have drawn moans of envy from those who admired the fuss and bother of marriage rites.
He couldn’t imagine it. The entire business puzzled him, and it would have amused him if not for the fact that it involved his brother. Not Cal, who had always been enamored of women in general but never of one in particular. The idea of Cal being matched was illogical. And yet he was holding the proof in his hand.
It infuriated him.
To have left his family, his home, his world. And for a woman. Jacob slammed the picture down on the dresser and turned away. It had been madness. There was no other explanation. One woman couldn’t change a life so drastically. And what else was there here to tempt a man? Oh, it was an interesting place, certainly. Fascinating enough to warrant a few weeks of study and research. He would undoubtedly write a series of papers on the experience when he returned to his own time. But . . . what was the ancient saying? A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
He would put Caleb in his right mind again. Whatever the woman had done to him he would undo. No one knew Caleb Hornblower better than his own brother.
They had been together not so long ago. Time was relative, he thought again, but without humor. The last evening they had spent together had been in Jacob’s quarters at the university. They’d played poker and drank Venusian rum—a particularly potent liquor manufactured on the neighboring planet. Cal had commandeered an entire case from his last run.
As Jacob remembered, Cal had lost at cards, cheerfully and elaborately, as was his habit.
They had both gotten sloppy drunk.
“When I get back from this run,” Cal had said, tipping back in his chair and yawning hugely, “I’m going to spend three weeks on the beach—south of France, I think—watching women and staying drunk.”
“Three days,” Jacob had told him. He’d swirled the coal-black liquor in his glass. “Then you’d go up again. In the last ten years you’ve been in the air more than on the ground.”
“You don’t fly enough.” With a grin, Cal had taken Jacob’s glass and downed the contents. “Stuck in your lab, little brother. I tell you it’s a lot more fun to bounce around the planets than to study them.”
“Point of view. If I didn’t study them, you couldn’t bounce around them.” He had slid down in his chair, too lazy to pour himself more rum. “Besides, you’re a better pilot than I am. It’s the only thing you do better than I do.”
Cal had grinned again. “Point of view,” he had tossed back. “Ask Linsy McCellan.”
Jacob had stirred himself enough to raise a brow. That particular woman, a dancer, had generously shared her attributes with both men—on separate occasions. “She’s too easily entertained.” His smile had turned wicked, “In any case, I’m here, on the ground, with her, a great deal more than you are.”
“Even Linsy—” he lifted his glass “—bless her, can’t compete with flying.”
“With running cargo, Cal? If you’d stayed with the ISF you’d be a major by now.”
Cal had only shrugged. “I’ll leave the regimentation for you, Dr. Hornblower.” Then he had sat up, sluggish from drink but still eager. “J.T., why don’t you give this place the shake for a few weeks and come with me? There’s this club in the Brigston Colony on Mars that needs to be seen to be believed. There’s this mutant sax player— Anyhow, you’ve got to be there.”
“I’ve got work.”
“You’ve always got work,” Cal had pointed out. “A couple of weeks, J.T. Fly up with me. I can make the transport, show you a few of the seedier parts of the colony, then I can call in to base before we watch those women on the beach. You just have to name the beach.”
It had been tempting, so tempting that Jacob had nearly agreed. The impulse had been there, as always. But so had the responsibilities. “Can’t.” Heaving a sigh, he’d lunged for the bottle again. “I have to finish these equations before the first of the month.”
He should have gone, Jacob thought now. He should have said the hell with the equations, with the responsibilities, and jumped ship with Cal. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been along. Or, if it had, at least he would have been there, with his brother.
The video report on Cal’s wounded ship had shown exactly what Cal had been through. The black hole, the panic, the helplessness as he’d been sucked toward the void and battered by its gravitational field. That he had survived at all was a miracle, and a tribute to his skill as a pilot. But if he’d had a scientist on board he might have avoided the rest. And he would be home now. They would both be home. Where they belonged.
Calming himself, he turned from the window. In a few weeks, they would be. All he had to do was wait.
To pass the time, he began to toy with the clunky computer sitting on the desk in the corner. For an hour he amused himself with it, dismantling the keyboard and putting it together again, examining switches and circuits and chips. For his own entertainment he slipped one of Libby’s disks into the drive.
It was a long, involved report on some remote tribe in the South Pacific. Despite himself, Jacob found himself caught up in the descriptions and theories. She had a way of turning dry facts about a culture into a testament to the people who made it. It was ironic that she had focused on the effects of modern tools and technology on what was to her a primitive society. He had spent a great deal of time over the last year wondering what effect the technology he had at his fingertips would have on her time and place.
She was intelligent, he admitted grudgingly. She was obviously thorough and precise when it came to her work. Those were qualities he could admire. But that didn’t mean she could keep his brother.
Shutting the machine down, he went back downstairs.
Sunny didn’t bother to look up when she heard him come down the stairs. She wanted to think she’d forgotten he was there at all as she’d pored over her law books. But she hadn’t. She couldn’t complain that he was noisy or made a nuisance of himself. Except that he did make a nuisance of himself just by being there.
Because she wanted to be alone, she told herself as she glanced up and watched him stroll into the kitchen. That wasn’t true. She hated to be alone for long periods of time. She liked people and conversation, arguments and parties. But he bothered her. Tapping her pen against her pad, she studied the fire. Why? That was the big question.
Heathcliff, she thought, and laughed at herself. It was Libby who was the romantic one. Libby would always
