Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

How wrong he had been to think badly of the Vulcan Nexus. It was one of the most delightful spots in the solar system. Ten more minutes of quiet peace, and Alice could perhaps go about ordering something to eat. But then, regrettably, after breakfast Jack Eckart would bid her a fond farewell and Danny would leave the Vulcan Nexus for a rendezvous with Chan Dalton.

Eyes still closed, he reached out to where Alice lay in the bed. His left hand wandered around over the downy surface and found nothing.

So she was up already. Maybe taking a shower, maybe in the other room making a breakfast selection. Danny yawned, stretched luxuriously, and opened his eyes. The bedchamber was large, with a high, vaulted ceiling. Alice was nowhere to be seen. He stood up slowly, with wobbly legs — it had been quite an evening, and quite a night — and wandered through to the living room. There was no sign of Alice.

He walked back to the bedroom and through into the bathroom. She was not there, either. As he relieved himself, he realized that he could see no sign of the clutter of toiletries with which his female companions ordinarily decorated the premises. Alice was indeed an unusual woman.

Still naked, he stepped back out into the bedroom. He found his underwear where he had abandoned it, on the floor along with his shoes. His suit? He looked around. He had dropped that on the floor, too, but it wasn’t there now. Alice must have hung it up in the closet. Good for her. In Danny’s experience, rich women seldom made good housewives.

He walked over to the closet, opened it, and peered inside.

No suit. Then where was it?

He walked back to the dimly lit living room. Still no suit, but a piece of paper sitting on the low table next to the couch.

A note. Danny turned on a light and picked it up.

Dear Jack (or may I call you Danny?),

What a wonderful evening, and a wonderful night! I will remember it always, but unfortunately I must now be on my way.

In picking up your suit from the floor, where in our delicious haste we had abandoned it, I noticed in two hidden compartments a substantial number of trade crystals. The lining also held several samples of “Yang diamond,” which I trust are genuine. I was obliged to take the crystals, samples, and the money that I found in your wallet, in order to defray certain incidental expenses of my own.

I also took the liberty of removing the suit itself. The color does not favor your complexion, and the cut makes you look much older than you are (or than you act!). Naturally, I needed the use of your travel bag in order to transport the suit, trade crystals, and wallet.

This suite is yours until midday. Unfortunately I was not able to make payment for it, or for my meal and a few other trifles that I purchased and charged this morning, so I leave you to settle the tab.

I do not think that we will meet again, Danny, so let me express once more my appreciation for a fabulous twenty-four hours. Believe me, had it been possible for me to stay longer I would have done so.

Yours in gratitude, Alice Tannenbaum.

P.S. In case you should feel an inclination to try to find me, I would not recommend it. It would surely be a waste of time. I feel confident that I left none of my possessions in the suite; also, as you may by this time have guessed, my name is not Alice Tannenbaum.

Danny read the note. Then he sat down on the couch and read it again. He had his underwear and his shoes. He lacked money, trade crystals, diamond samples, and outer garments. He owed whatever was the cost of this suite and Alice’s “few other trifles.” Considerable, he felt sure. Alice settled for nothing but the best.

Danny went back to the bedroom. He put on his underwear and shoes and looked at himself in the full-length mirror. It was no way to face the management, or anyone else in the known universe. He picked up the bed’s outer coverlet from the floor, wrapped it around himself, and sat down at the suite’s communications center.

He needed to do three things. Two of them could be done at once: arrange for a transfer of credit from Chan Dalton, to cover the bill here; and contact a local clothing outlet and have a suit delivered.

The third thing would have to wait until they returned from the Geyser Swirl. Then he would tackle the difficult problem of tracking down “Alice Tannenbaum.”

Suppose that it took a long time, and involved a considerable effort. Would he still do it?

Danny, already calling Chan Dalton’s personal ID, nodded to himself. He certainly would. A woman like Alice came along once in a lifetime, and any man would be insane to let her go.

The ocean of Limbo seemed as peaceful as ever, but Bony made a careful survey of his surroundings as he drifted out of the airlock.

No sign of bubble creatures. Small purple objects like floating umbrellas opened and closed to jet rapidly away from him, but they seemed more afraid of Bony than he was of them. He waved to Liddy, peering from the airlock, to join him. While she was doing it he made sure that the line connecting him to the Mood Indigo was clear, then cracked open the suit’s internal pressure valve. His buoyancy became slightly greater, enough to begin a slow rise through limpid water.

He looked down. Liddy was following him upward, her slim figure hidden within the bloat of her over-inflated suit. One of the annoyances of the situation was that radios meant for space use were no good under water. Although Bony could talk to Friday Indigo at long distance via the wire connection to the ship, underwater he could speak to Liddy only when they were close enough for sound waves to move directly between them. That meant they could not afford to get too far apart. He brushed his glove across his faceplate to rid it of the annoying layer of tiny bubbles that coated it after a minute or two in the superaerated ocean. High oxygen content must help the native sea-creatures, but to humans in suits it was a nuisance — like moving inside a gigantic bottle of soda water.

The light level was steadily growing brighter, just as it had when he ascended the undersea ridge. In the cumbersome suit it was difficult to bend his head to look upward. He craned back for a quick look and fancied that he could make out moving variations in intensity above him. Wave patterns, travelling across the surface? That would mean the ship could not be more than thirty meters down.

Before he could confirm that guess, his head burst through into dazzling sunlight. The photoreceptors in his helmet recorded an overdose of ultraviolet and modified the faceplate at once to screen out most of it. As he floated at the surface, chest-deep and feet-down, Liddy’s suit bobbed up a few meters away. A long, sluggish wave gently lifted them and then lowered them as they paddled toward each other.

Bony tried the radio circuit. “Liddy?”

“I hear you. My suit shows a really high light level. Does yours?”

“Yes. It’s real. There’s the culprit.” He raised an arm and pointed at the sun. “It’s a blue giant type. That’s really strange.”

“You mean it looks strange. That’s not surprising.”

“No. I mean it is strange. For a planet around a blue giant star, every astronomer will tell you that there should be no life-forms. A star can’t stay in a blue giant stage long enough for anything alive to develop on its planets.”

“Tell that to those funny little umbrella things down near the seabed. They don’t seem to know much astronomy. Bony, can Friday hear us?”

“Only when I have something we want to transmit. Do you need to talk to him? The circuit is off at the moment.”