Walter Miller - Dark Benediction

After about five minutes, he quit talking and beckoned the rest of them back to the runabout.

“That was Brodanovitch,” he said after they were inside and the pressure came up again. “So the circuit break must be on up ahead.”

“Oh, hell, we’ll nevah get a look at those ladies!”

“Calm down. We’re going back—” He paused a moment until the elated whooping died down. “Suds says let them send a crew out of Copernicus to fix it. I guess there’s no hurry about moving those people out of there.”

“The less hurry, the bettuh… hot dawg! C’mon, Joe, roll it!” Bama and Lije sat rubbing their hands. Only Relke seemed detached, his enthusiasm apparently cooled. He sat staring out at the meteor display on the dust-flats. He kept rubbing absently at the ring finger of his left hand. There was no ring there, nor even a mark on the skin. The pusher’s eye fell on the slow nervous movement.

“Fran again?” Joe grunted.

The lineman nodded.

“I got my Dear John note three years ago, Relke.”

Relke looked around at him in surprise. “I didn’t know you were married, Joe.”

“I guess I wasn’t as married as I thought I was.”

Relke stared outside again for awhile. “How do you get over it?”

“You don’t. Not up here on Luna. The necessary and sometimes sufficient condition for getting over a dame is the availability of other dames. So, you don’t.”

“Hell, Joe!”

“Yeah.”

“The movement’s not such a bad idea.”

“Can it!” the pusher snapped.

“It’s true. Let women come to Crater City, or send us home. It makes sense.”

“You’re only looking at the free love and nickel beer end of it, Relke. You can’t raise kids in low gravity. There are five graves back in Crater City to prove it. Kids’ graves. Six feet long. They grow themselves to death.”

“I know but…” He shrugged uncomfortably and watched the meteor display again.

“When do we draw?” said Lije. “Come on Joe, less draw for who goes to talk ouah way onto the ship.”

Relke: “Say, Joe, how come they let dames in an entertainment troupe come to the moon, but they won’t let our wives come? I thought the Schneider-Volkov Act was supposed to keep all women out of space, period.”

“No, they couldn’t get away with putting it like that. Against the WP constitution. The law just says that all personnel on any member country’s lunar project must be of a single sex. Theoretically some country—Russia, maybe—could start an all-girl lunar mine project, say. Theoretically. But how many lady muckers do you know? Even in Russia.”

Lije: “When do we draw? Come on, Joe, less draw.”

“Go ahead and draw. Deal me out.”

Chance favored Henderson. “Fastuh, Joe. Hell, less go fastuh, befo’ the whole camp move over theah.”

Novotny upped the current to the redline and left it there. The long spans of transmission line, some of them a mile or more from tower to tower, swooped past in stately cadence.

“There she is! Man!”

“You guys are building up for a big kick in the rump. They’ll never let us aboard.”

“Theah’s two more cabs pahked over theah.”

“Yeah, and still nobody in sight on the ground.”

Novotny pulled the feelers off the trolleys again. “OK, Lije, go play John Alden. Tell ’em we just want to look, not touch.”

Henderson was bounding off across the flats moments after the cabin had been depressurized to let him climb out. They watched him enviously while the pressure came up again. His face flashed with sweat in the sunlight as he looked back to wave at them from the foot of the ladder.

Relke glanced down the road toward the rolling construction camp. “You going to call in, Joe? Ought to be able to reach their antenna from here.”

“If I do, Brodanovitch is sure to say ‘haul ass on back to camp.’”

“Never mind, then! Forget I said it!”

The pusher chuckled. “Getting interested, Relke?”

“I don’t know. I guess I am.” He looked quickly toward the towering rocket.

“Mostly you want to know how close you are to being rid of her, maybe?”

“I guess—Hey, they’re letting him in.”

“That lucky ole bastuhd!” Bama moaned.

The airlock opened as Lije scaled the ladder. A helmet containing a head of unidentifiable gender looked out and down, watching the man climb. Lije paused to wave. After a moment’s hesitancy, the space-suited figure waved back.

“Hey, up theah, y’all mind a little company?”

The party who watched him made no answer. Lije shook his head and climbed on. When he reached the lock, he held out a glove for an assist, but the figure stepped back quickly. Lije stared inside. The figure was holding a gun. Lije stepped down a rung. The gun beckoned impatiently for him to get inside. Reluctantly Lije obeyed.

The hatch closed. A valve spat a jet of frost, and they watched the pressure dial slowly creep to ten psi. Lije watched the stranger unfasten his helmet, then undid his own. The stranger was male, and the white goggle marks about his eyes betrayed him as a spacer. His thin dark features suggested Semitic or Arabic origins.

“Parlez-vous français?”

“Naw,” said Lije. “Sho’ don’t. Sorry.”

The man tossed his head and gave a knowing snort. “It is necessaire that we find out who you are,” he explained, and brandished the weapon under Lije’s nose. He grinned a flash of white teeth. “Who send you here?”

“Nobody send me. I come unduh my own steam. Some fell as in my moonjeep pulled cands, and I—”

“Whup! You are—ah ein Unteroffizier? Mais non, wrong sprach—you l’officiale? Officer? Company man?”

“Who, me? Land, no. I’m juss a hot-stick man on B-shif’. You muss be lookin’ fo’ Suds Brodanovitch.”

“Why you come to this ship?”

“Well, the fellas and I heard tell theah was some gals, and we—”

The man waved the gun impatiently and pressed a button near the inner hatch. A red indicator light went on.

“Yes?” A woman’s voice, rather hoarse. Lije’s chest heaved with sudden emotion, and his sigh came out a bleat…

The man spoke in a flood of French. The woman did not reply at once. Lije noticed the movement of a viewing lens beside the hatch; it was scanning him from head to toe.

The woman’s voice shifted to an intimate contralto. “OK, dearie, you come right in here where it’s nice and warm.”

The inner hatch slid open. It took Lije a few seconds to realize that she had been talking to him. She stood there smiling at him like a middle-aged schoolmarm. “Why don’t you come on in and meet the girls?” Eyes popping, Lije Henderson stumbled inside.

He was gone a long time.

When he finally came out, the men in Novotny’s runabout took turns cursing at him over the suit frequency. “ Fa chrissake, Henderson, we’ve been sitting here using up oxy for over an hour while you been horsing around…” They waited for him with the runabout, cabin depressurized.

Lije was panting wildly as he ran toward them. “ Lissen to the bahstud giggle,” Bama said disgustedly.

“Y’all juss don’ know, y’all juss don’ KNOW!” Lije was chanting between pants.

“Get in here, you damn traitor!”

“Hones’, I couldn’ help myself. I juss couldn’.”

“Well, do the rest of us get aboard her, or not?” Joe snapped.

“Hell, go ahead, man! It’s wide open. Evahthing’s wide open.”

“Girls?” Relke grunted.

“Girls, God yes! Girls.”

“You coming with us?” Joe asked.