Ben Bova: Nursery Sam

Pete turned in his pilot’s chair and grinned at me.

“And then you got into your suit, with little T.J., and rescued Pierre D’Argent’s only son. You’re going to be a hero.”

“Pete is D’Argent’s son?” I must have hit high C.

“In return for your bravery in this thrilling rescue, D’Argent will let you have the space-sickness cure. So everything works out fine.”

Like I said, I was just the tool of a superior brain.

“Now,” said Jill, “you’d better help Pete to make rendezvous with the station and reberth this pod.” And with that she blew me a kiss, then slid the hatch of the equipment locker shut.

It didn’t work out exactly as Jill had it figured. I mean, D’Argent was furious, at first, that I’d let his kid into one of the pods and then left him alone. But his wife was enormously grateful, and Pete played his role to a tee. He lied with a straight face to his own father and everybody else. I figured that one day, when D’Argent realized how his son had bamboozled him, he’d be truly proud of the lad. Probably send him to law school.

In the meantime, D’Argent did indeed let me have the space-sickness cure. Grudgingly. “Only for a limited period of testing,” he growled. Mrs. D’Argent had prodded him into it, in return for my heroic rescue of their only son. She got a considerable amount of help from Jill—who sneaked off the pod after all the commotion had died down.

Larry and Melinda didn’t know whether they should be sore at me or not. They had been scared stiff when T.J. turned up missing, and then enormously relieved when I handed him their little bundle of joy, safe and sound, gurgling happily. I knew Larry had forgiven me when he reminded me, almost sheepishly, about changing the name of the magnetic bumpers to Karsh Shields.

So we all got what we wanted. Or part of it, at least.

The space-sickness cure helped Heaven a lot. The hotel staggered into the black, not because honey-mooners took a sudden fancy to it, but because the word started to spread that it was an ideal spot for children! It still cost more than your average luxury vacation, but wealthy families started coming up to Heaven. My zero g sex palace eventually became a weightless nursery. And—many years later—a retirement home. But that’s another story.

I licensed the Karsh Shields to Rockledge. A promise is a promise, and the money was good because Rockledge had the manufacturing capacity to make three times as many of the shields as I could. And, once the hotel started showing a profit, I let D’Argent buy it from me. He’s the one who turned it into a nursery. I was long gone by then.

With Jill’s help I raised enough capital to start a shoestring operation in lunar mining. It was touch-and-go for a while, but the boom in space manufacturing that I had prophesied actually did come about and I got filthy rich.

Of course, I more or less had to marry Jill. I owed her that, she had been so helpful. Why she wanted to marry me was a mystery to me, but she was damned determined to do it.

Of course, I was just as damned determined not to get married. So I—but that’s another story.