Larry Niven - Lucifer's Hammer

“You little bastard, I’ll cut your goddamn balls off! You want to watch? You’ll sure to God watch? Stand there and if you say one word, I’ll cut your prick off!”

He’d watched. And his mother had let that man—

The window came alight. She was home! Fred held his breath. Was she alone? Was she?

She was carrying a big bag of groceries, which she took to the kitchen. Now she’ll have her drink, Fred thought. I wish she wouldn’t drink so much. She looks tired. He watched as the girl mixed a martini. She carried the pitcher with her to the kitchen. Fred didn’t follow with the telescope, although he could have. Instead he teased himself, waiting.

Her face was triangular, with high cheekbones and a small mouth and big dark eyes. Her long, flowing blond hair was tinted; her pubic hair was very dark. Fred had forgiven her that small deception, but he’d been shocked.

She came back with the pitcher and a glass spoon. There was a silver-handled martini spoon in the gift shop down the street, and Fred had often stared at it, trying to get up the nerve to buy it for her. Maybe she’d invite him to her apartment. Only she wouldn’t until he’d given her gifts, and he couldn’t do that because he knew what she liked and she’d want to know how he knew that. Fred Lauren reached out to touch her through the magic mirror of his telescope… but only in his mind, only in his hopeless yearning.

Now. Now she’d do it. She didn’t have many dresses good enough to wear to work. She worked in a bank, and although the banks let the girls wear trousers and all the ugly things girls were wearing lately, she didn’t. Not Colleen. He knew her name. He wanted to keep his money in her bank, but he didn’t dare. She dressed well to win promotions, and she’d been promoted to New Accounts, and Fred couldn’t talk to her there. He was proud of her promotion, but he wished she’d stayed a teller, because then he could come in and go to her window and…

She took off the blue frock and carefully hung it in the only closet. Her apartment was very small, only one room with a bathroom and kitchen alcove. She slept on the couch.

Her slip was frayed. He’d watched her mending the straps at night. Under the slip she wore lacy black underpants. He could see the color through the slip. Sometimes she wore pink ones with black stripes.

Soon she’d be taking her bath. Colleen took long baths; Fred could be knocking at her door before she finished. She’d open the door. She trusted people. Once she’d opened the door wearing nothing but a towel, and the man outside had been a telephone man, and another time it was the building superintendent, and Fred knew he could imitate the super’s voice. He’d followed the super to a bar and listened to him. She would open the door…

But he couldn’t do it. He knew what he’d do if she opened her door to him. He knew what would happen afterward. This would be his third time. Third sex offense. They’d lock him up with those men, those animals. Fred remembered what the caged men had called him and how they had used him; he whimpered, throttling the sound as if she might hear.

She put on her robe. Her dinner was in the oven, and she sat in the robe and turned on the TV set. Fred scurried across the room to turn on his own set and tune it to the same channel, then moved quickly back to the telescope. Now he could watch over her shoulder, watch her own TV, and hear the sound, and it was as if Fred and his girl were watching TV together.

It was a program about a comet.

The stocky man’s hands were large and smooth, slender, stronger than they looked. They moved over Maureen, knowingly, cunningly. “Purr,” said Maureen. She pulled him suddenly against her, and arched sideways, wrapping him in her long legs.

He gently pushed her away and continued to stroke her, playing her like… the attitude jets on a Lunar Lander. The bizarre image stuck in her mind, jarring. His lips moved against her breast, his tongue darting. Then it was time, and she could lose herself in him. She had no thought of technique now. But he had; he was always in control. He wouldn’t be finished until she was, and she could depend on it, and now there was no time for thought, only the waves of shuddering feeling.

She came home from a long way away.

They lay together, breathing each other’s breath. Finally he stirred against her. She caught a handful of curly hair and tilted his face up. Standing, he was just her height; astronauts are generally short. Lying above her, his head reached her throat. She lifted herself to kiss him, and sighed contentment.

But now her mind was turned on again. I wish I loved him, she said to herself. Why don’t I? Because he’s too invulnerable? “Johnny? Does your mind ever turn off?”

He thought it through before answering. “There’s a story they tell about John Glenn…” He rolled onto an elbow. “The space medicine boys were trying to find out what we could go through and still function. They had John Glenn wired with widgets so they could watch his heartbeat and perspiration while he went through a program on the Gemini flight simulator. Right in the middle of it they dropped a shitload of scrap iron onto a tilted iron plate, right behind him. The whole room rang with it, and it went on and on. Glenn’s heartbeat went blip!” Johnny’s finger sketched a tepee shape. “He never even twitched. He went through the whole sequence, and then he said, ‘You sons of bitches…’ ”

He watched her laugh, and then he said a bit sadly, “We can’t get distracted.” He sat up. “If we’re going to watch your program we ought to be getting up.”

“Yes. I suppose. You first.”

“Right.” He bent to kiss her again, then left the bed. She heard the shower running and thought of joining him. But he wouldn’t be interested now. She’d said the wrong thing, and now he’d be remembering his ruined career; ruined not by any mistake of his, but by America’s retreat from space.

She found his robe where he’d left it for her. Forethought. We can’t get distracted. One thing at a time, and do that perfectly. Whether it was crawling along a ruined Skylab and repairing it in orbit, or conducting a love affair, he did it right. And he was never in a hurry.

When they met, Baker had been in the Astronaut Office in Houston and was assigned as liaison to Senator Jellison and party. Johnny Baker had a wife and two teen-age kids, and had been a perfect gentleman, taking Maureen to dinner when the Senator was called away, keeping her company for the week the Senator was in Washington, taking her to the launch in Florida…

A perfect gentleman up to the time they’d had to go back to her motel room for her purse — and she still wasn’t sure who had seduced whom. She didn’t sleep with married men. She didn’t like sleeping with men she didn’t love, for that matter. But, love aside, he had something, and Maureen had no defense against it. He had a single goal and the ability to go after it no matter what.

And she was young and had been married once and had taken no vow of chastity and the hell with what you’re thinking, girl! Maureen rolled off the bed fast and switched on the TV with a vicious click. Just to break the chain of thought.

But I am not a tramp.

His divorce is final next week, and I had nothing to do with that. Ann never knew. Ann doesn’t know now. But maybe he wouldn’t have let her go? If that’s my fault, all right, but Ann never knew. We’re still good friends.

“He’s not the same anymore,” Ann had told her. “Not since he flew the mission. Before that it was always tough here, he was on training missions all the time, and I had only a little part of him — but I had something. And then he got his chance, and everything worked fine, and my husband’s a hero — and I don’t have a husband anymore.”