Robert Heinlein - The Rolling Stones

The others had been kissed good-by inside and told to stay there. Lowell had cried and tried to keep his mother from enter­ing the lock. He had not been told what was going on, but the emotions of the others were contagious.

Roger Stone was saying anxiously, "Now see here, the minute you have this under control, back you come - you hear?"

She shook her head. "I'll see you on Mars, dearest."

"No indeed! You -"

"No, Roger. I might act as a carrier. We can't risk it."

"You might act as a carrier corning back to us on Mars, too. Don't you ever expect to come back?"

She ignored the rhetorical question. "On Mars there will be hospitals. But I can't risk a family epidemic in space."

"Edith I've a good mind to refuse to-"

"They're ready for me, dear. See?"

Over their heads, two hundred yards away, a passenger lock on the rotation axis of the mighty ship had opened; two small figures spilled silently out, flipped neatly to boot contact, stood on the ship's side, their heads pointing 'down' at Mr. and Mrs Stone. Roger Stone called into his microphone, " War God!"

"WarGod aye aye! "

" Are you ready?"

"Whenever you are."

"Stand by for transfer."

Acting Captain Rowley had proposed sending a man over to conduct Dr. Stone across the gap. She had refused, not wishing to have anyone from the infected ship in contact with the Rolling Stone. Now she said, "Are my lines free for running, Roger?"

"Yes, dearest." He had bent several lines together, one end to her waist, the other to a padeye.

"Will you do my boots, dear?"

He kneeled and unzipped her magnetic boots without speak­ing, his voice having become uncertain. He straightened and she put her arms around him. They embraced awkwardly, hampered by the suits, hampered by the extra back pack she carried. "Adios, my darling," she said softly. "Take care of the children."

"Edith! Take care of yourself!"

"Yes, dear. Steady me now."

He slipped his hands to her hips; she stepped out of the boots, was now held against the ship only by his hands.

"Ready! One! Two!" They crouched down together. "Three!" She jumped straight away from the ship, her lines snaking after her. For long, long seconds she sailed straight out over his head, closing the gap between her and the liner. Presently it became evident that she had not leapt quite straight; her husband got ready to haul her back in.

But the reception committee was ready for the exigency. One of them was swinging a weighted line around his head; he let the end of it swing farther and farther out. As she started to move past the side of the War God he swung it against her safety line; the weighted end wrapped itself around her line. Back at the Rolling Stone Roger Stone snubbed her line and stopped her; the man on the liner gently pulled her in.

The second man caught her and snapped a hook to her belt, then unfastened the long line from the Stone. Before she entered the lock she waved, and the door closed.

Roger Stone looked at the closed door for a moment, then pulled in the line. He let his eyes drop to the pair of little boots left standing empty beside him. He pulled them loose, held them to him, and plodded back to his own airlock.

The twins kept out of their father's way for the next several days. He was unusually tender and affectionate with all of them but he never smiled and his mood was likely to flare suddenly and unexpectedly into anger. They stayed in their bunkroom and pretended to study they actually did study some of the time. Meade and Hazel split the care of Lowell between them; the child's feeling of security was damaged by the absence of his mother. He expressed it by temper tantrums and demands for attention.

Hazel took over the cooking of lunch and dinner; she was no better at it than Meade. She could be heard twice a day, burning herself and swearing and complaining that she was not the domestic type and never had had any ambitions that way. Never!

Dr. Stone phoned once a day, spoke briefly with her husband, and begged off from speaking to anyone else for the reason that she was much too busy. Roger Stone's explosions of temper were most likely to occur shortly after these daily calls.

Hazel alone had the courage to quiz him about the calls. On the sixth day at lunch she said, "Well, Roger? What was the news today? Give."

"Nothing much. Hazel, these chops are atrocious.'.

"They ought to be good; I flavored 'em with my own blood." She held out a bandaged thumb. "Why don't you try cooking? But back to the subject. Don't evade me, boy."

"She thinks she's on the track of something. So far as she can tell from their medical records, nobody has caught it so far who is known to have had measles."

Meade said, "Measles? People don't die of that, do they?"

"Hardly ever," agreed her grandmother, "though it can be fairly serious in an adult."

"I didn't say it was measles," her father answered testily, "nor did your mother. She thinks it's related to measles, a mutant strain maybe more virulent."

"Call it "neomeasles"," suggested Hazel. "That's a good question-begging tag and it has an impressive scientific sound to it Any more deaths, Roger?"

"Well, yes."

"How many?"

"She wouldn't say. Van is still alive, though, and she says that he is recovering. She told me," he added, as if trying to convince himself, "that she thought she was learning how to treat it."

"Measles," Hazel said thoughtfully. "You've never had it, Roger."

"No."

"Nor any of the kids."

"Of course not," put in Pollux. Luna City was by long odds the healthiest place in the known universe; the routine child­hood diseases of Earth had never been given a chance to establish.

"How did she sound, Son?"

"Dog tired." He frowned. "She even snapped at me."

"Not Mummy!"

"Quiet, Meade." Hazel went on, "I've had measles, seventy or eighty years ago. Roger, I had better go over and help her."

He smiled without humor. "She anticipated that. She said to tell you thanks but she had all the unskilled help she could use."

""Unskilled help!" I like that! Why, during the epidemic of '93 there were times when I was the only woman in the colony able to change a bed. Hummph!"

Hazel deliberately waited around for the phone call the next day, determined to get a few words at least with her daughter-in-law. The call came in about the usual time; Roger took it. It was not his wife.

"Captain Stone? Turner, sir Charlie Turner. I'm the third engineer. Your wife asked me to phone you."

"What's the matter? She busy?"

"Quite busy."

"Tell her to call me as soon as she's free. I'll wait by the board."

"I'm afraid that's no good, sir. She was quite specific that she would not be calling you today. She won't have time."

"Fiddlesticks! It will only take her thirty seconds. In a big ship like yours you can hook her in wherever she is."

The man sounded embarrassed. "I'm sorry, sir. Dr. Stone gave strict orders not to be disturbed."

"But confound it, I -"

"I'm very sorry, sir. Good-by." He left him sputtering into a dead circuit.

Roger Stone remained quiet for several moments, then turned a stricken face to his mother. "She's caught it."

Hazel answered quietly, "Don't jump to conclusions, Son." But in her own heart she had already reached the same con­clusion. Edith Stone had contracted the disease she had gone to treat.

The same barren stall was given Roger Stone on the following day; by the third day they gave up the pretence. Dr. Stone was ill, but her husband was not to worry. She had already, before she gave into it herself, progressed far enough in standardizing a treatment that all the new cases - hers among them - were doing nicely. So they said.