the atmosphere with the spectrometer reading from orbit. If there’s no methane signature there’s no life, so I don’t have to worry.”
“There’s no mammalian life, and you do have to worry. What about insects? Reptiles? Dluglatches?”
“Dluglatches?”
“A word I just made up to describe a kind of life we’ve never heard of that doesn’t generate methane in its gut but eats people.”
“Oh, sure. All right, I’ll take a sidearm and twenty rounds of soft-nosed ammo. Give me another one.”
And so we went on. When we first started rehearsing each other what we usually said at a point like that was either, “Well, I won’t have to worry, because you’ll be there with me anyway,” or “Kiss me, you fool.” But we’d kind of stopped saying that.
In spite of it all, we graduated. All of us.
We gave ourselves a graduation party, Sheri and me, and all four of the Forehands, and the others who had come up from Earth with us and the six or seven who had appeared from one place or another. We didn’t invite any outsiders, but our teachers weren’t outsiders. They all showed up to wish us well. Klara came in late, drank a quick drink, kissed us all, male and female, even the Finnish kid with the language block who’d had to take all his instruction on tapes. He was going to have a problem. They have instruction tapes for every language you ever heard of, and if they don’t happen to have your exact dialect they run a set through the translating computer from the nearest analogue. That’s enough to get you through the course, but after that the problem starts. You can’t reasonably expect to be accepted by a crew that can’t talk to you. His block kept him from learning any other language, and there was not a living soul on Gateway who spoke Finnish.
We took over the tunnel three doors in each direction past our own, Sheri’s, the Forehands’ and mine. We danced and sang until it was late enough for some of us to begin to drop off, and then we dialed in the list of open launches on the PV screen. Full of beer and weed, we cut cards for first pick and I won.
Something happened inside my head. I didn’t sober up, really. That wasn’t it. I was still feeling cheerful and sort of warm all over and open to all personality signals that were coming in. But a part of my mind opened up and a pair of clear-seeing eyes peered out at the future and made a judgment. “Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll pass my chance right now. Sess, you’re number two; you take your pick.”
“Thirty-one-oh-nine,” he said promptly; all the Forehands had made up their minds in family meeting, long since. “Thanks, Rob.”
I gave him a carefree, drunken wave. He didn’t really owe me anything. That was a One, and I wouldn’t have taken a One for any price. For that matter, there wasn’t anything on the board I liked. I grinned at Klara and winked; she looked serious for a minute, then winked back, but still looked serious. I knew she realized what I had come to understand: all these launches were rejects. The best ones had been snapped up as soon as they were announced by returnees and permanent-party.
Sheri had drawn fifth pick, and when it came her turn she looked directly at me. “I’m going to take that Three if I can fill it up. What about it, Rob? Are you going to come or not?”
I chuckled. “Sheri,” I said, sweetly reasonable, “there’s not a returnee that wants it. It’s an armored job. You don’t know where the hell it might be going. And there’s far too much green in the guidance panel to suit me.” (Nobody really knew what the colors meant, of course, but there was a superstition in the school that a lot of green meant a superdangerous mission.)
“It’s the only open Three, and there’s a bonus.”
“Not me, honey. Ask Klara; she’s been around a long time and I respect her judgment.”
“I’m asking you, Rob.”
“No. I’ll wait for something better.”
“I’m not waiting, Rob. I already talked to Willa Forehand, and she’s agreeable. If worse comes to worst we’ll fill it out with- anybody at all,” she said, looking at the Finnish kid, smiling drunkenly to himself as he stared at the launch board. “But — you and I did say we were going out together.”
I shook my head.
“So stay here and rot,” she flared. “Your girlfriend’s just as scared as you are!”
Those sober eyes inside my skull looked at Klara, and the frozen, unmoving expression on her face; and, wonderingly, I realized Sheri was right. Klara was like me. We were both afraid to go.
Chapter 11
I say to Sigfrid, “This isn’t going to be a very productive session, I’m afraid. I’m just plain exhausted. Sexually, if you know what I mean.”
“I certainly do know what you mean, Rob.”
“So I don’t have much to talk about.”
“Do you remember any dreams?”
I squirm on the couch. As it happens, I do remember one or two. I say, “No.” Sigfrid is always after me to tell him my dreams. I don’t like it.
When he first suggested it I told him I didn’t dream very often. He said patiently, “I think you know, Rob, that everyone dreams. You may not remember the dreams in the waking state. But you can, if you try.”
“No, I can’t. You can. You’re a machine.”
“I know I’m a machine, Rob, but we’re talking about you. Will you try an experiment?”
“Maybe.”
“It isn’t hard. Keep a pencil and a piece of paper beside your bed. As soon as you wake up, write down what you remember.”
“But I don’t ever remember anything at all about my dreams.”
“I think it’s worth a try, Rob.”
Well, I did. And, you know, I actually did begin to remember my dreams. Little tiny fragments, at first. And I’d write them down, and sometimes I would tell them to Sigfrid and they would make him as happy as anything. He just loved dreams.
Me, I didn’t see much use in it… Well, not at first. But then something happened that made a Christian out of me.
One morning I woke up out of a dream that was so unpleasant and so real that for a few moments I wasn’t sure it wasn’t actual fact, and so awful that I didn’t dare let myself believe it was only a dream. It shook me so much that I began to write it down, as fast as I could, every bit I could remember. Then there was a P-phone call. I answered it; and, do you know, in just the minute I was on the phone, I forgot the whole thing! Couldn’t remember one bit of it. Until I looked at what I had written down, and then it all came back to me.
Well, when I saw Sigfrid a day or two later, I’d forgotten it again! As though it had never happened. But I had saved the piece of paper, and I had to read it to him. That was one of the times when I thought he was most pleased with himself and with me, too. He worried over that dream for the whole hour. He found symbols and meanings in every bit of it. I don’t remember what they were, but I remember that for me it wasn’t any fun at all.
As a matter of fact, do you know what’s really funny? I threw away the paper on the way out of his office.
