Ben Bova - The Sam Gunn Omnibus

I got it. Get close to the sourpuss and she’ll let you get close to the sex goddess. There was method in Sam’s madness. He seemed to spend all his spare time trying to melt Arlene’s heart of steel. I thought he had even lost interest in rigging the skipper’s CERV test so that it would be John J. Johnson who got fired off the station, not Sam Gunn.

Sam practically turned himself inside out for Arlene. He became elfin, a pixie, a leprechaun whenever she came to the galley or wardroom.

And it seemed to be working. She let him eat dinner at the same table with her one night.

“After all,” I overheard Sam tell her, “we little people have to stick together.”

“Don’t get ideas,” Arlene replied. But her voice had lost some of its sharp edge. She damned near smiled at Sam.

The next morning Johnson called Sam to his command console. “You are relieved of your normal duties for the next few days,” the skipper said. “You will report to the lab module and assist Ms. Gold in testing her equipment.”

I shot a surprised glance at Larry, who was at his console, next to mine. His eyebrows were rising up to his scalp. Sam just grinned and launched himself toward the hatch. The commander smiled crookedly at his departing back.

“So what’s with you two?” I asked him a couple nights later. He had just spent eighteen hours straight in the lab module with Arlene and her video gear.

“What two?”

“You and Arlene.”

Sam cocked his head to one side. “With us? Nothing. She needs a lot of help with all that video gear. Damned studio sent her here by herself. They expect her to muscle those lasers and camera rigs around. Hell, even in zero-gee that’s a job.”

I got the picture. “So when Gloria Lamour finally shows up you’ll be practically part of the family.”

I expected Sam to leer, or at least grin. Instead he looked kind of puzzled. “I don’t know if she’s coming up here at all. Arlene’s pretty touchy about the subject.”

Just how touchy we found out a couple nights later.

Larry and I were in the wardroom replaying Super Bowl XXIV on the computer simulator. I had lost the coin flip and gotten stuck with the Broncos. We had the sound turned way down so we wouldn’t annoy the commander, who was staying up late, watching a video drama over in his corner: Halloween XXXIX.

Anyway, I had programmed an old Minnesota Vikings defense into the game, and we had sacked Montana four times already in the first quarter. The disgusted look on his face when he climbed up from the fourth burial was so real you’d think we were watching an actual game instead of creating a simulation. The crowd was going wild.

Elway was just starting to get hot, completing three straight passes, when Arlene sailed into the wardroom, looking red in the face, really pissed off. Sam was right behind her, talking his usual blue streak.

“So what’d I say that made you so sore? How could I hurt your feelings talking about the special-effects computer? What’d I do, what’d I say? For chrissakes, you’re breaking the Fifth Amendment! The accused has got a right to be told what he did wrong. It’s in the Constitution!”

Arlene whirled in midair and gave him a look that would have scorched a rhinoceros. “It’s not the Fifth Amendment, stupid.”

Sam shrugged so hard he propelled himself toward the ceiling. “So I’m not a lawyer. Sue me!”

Larry and I both reached for the HOLD button on our tabletop keyboard. I got there first. The game stopped with the football in midair and Denver’s wide receiver on the ten-yard line behind the Forty-Niners’ free safety.

Arlene pushed herself to the galley while Sam hovered up near the ceiling, anchoring himself there by pressing the fingertips of one hand against the overhead panels. Commander Johnson did not stir from his corner, but I thought his eyes flicked from Arlene to Sam and then back to his video screen.

Before Larry and I got a chance to restart our game, Arlene squirted some hot coffee into a squeezebulb and went to the only other table in the wardroom, sailing right past Sam’s dangling feet. The commander watched her. As she slipped her feet into the floor restraints he turned off his video screen and straightened up to his full height.

“Ms. Gold …” he began to say.

She ignored Johnson and pointed up at Sam with her free hand. “You’re hanging around with your tail wagging, waiting for Gloria Lamour to get here.”

“Ms. Gold,” the commander said, a little louder.

Sam pushed off the ceiling. “Sure. We all are.”

“Sure,” Arlene mimicked. “We all are.” She gave Larry and me a nasty stare.

Sam stopped himself about six inches off the floor. How he did that was always beyond me. Somehow he seemed able to break Newton’s First Law, or at least bend it a little to make himself feel taller.

Johnson disengaged himself from his foot restraints and came out from behind his video set. He was staring at Arlene, his own face pinched and narrow-eyed.

“Ms. Gold,” he repeated, firmly.

Arlene ignored him. She was too busy yowling at Sam, “You’re so goddamned transparent it’s pathetic! You think Gloria Lamour would even bother to glance at a little snot like you? You think if she came up here she’d let you wipe her ass? Ha!”

“Ms. Gold, I believe you are drunk,” said our fearless skipper. The look on his face was weird: disapproval, disgust, disappointment, and a little bit of disbelief.

“You’re damned right I’m drunk, mon capitain. What th’ fuck are you gonna do about it?”

Instead of exploding like a normal skipper would, the commander surprised us all by replying with great dignity, “I will escort you to your quarters.”

But he turned his beady-eyed gaze toward Sam.

Sam drifted slowly toward the skipper, bobbing along high enough to be eye-to-eye with Johnson.

“Yes, sir, she has been drinking. Vodka, I believe. I tried to stop her but she wouldn’t stop,” Sam said.

The commander looked utterly unconvinced.

“I have not touched a drop,” Sam added. And he exhaled right into Commander Johnson’s face hard enough to push himself backward like a punctured balloon.

Johnson blinked, grimaced, and looked for a moment like he was going to throw up. “I will deal with you later, Mr. Gunn,” he muttered. Then he turned to Arlene again and took her by the arm. “This way, Ms. Gold.”

She made a little zero-gee curtsy. “Thank you, Commander Johnson. I’m glad that there is at least one gentleman aboard this station.” And she shot Sam a killer stare.

“Not at all,” said the commander, patting her hand as it rested on his arm. He looked down at her in an almost grandfatherly way. Arlene smiled up at him and allowed Commander Johnson to tow her toward the hatch. Then he made his big mistake.

“And tell me, Ms. Gold,” said the skipper, “just when will Gloria Lamour arrive here?”

Arlene’s face twisted into something awful. “You too? You too! That’s all you bastards are thinking about, isn’t it? When’s your favorite wet dream going to get here.”

The commander sputtered, “Ms. Gold, I assure you …”

She pulled free of his arm, sending herself spinning across the wardroom. She grabbed a table and yelled at all of us:

“Lemme tell you something, lover boys. Gloria Lamour ain’t comin’ up here at all. Never! This is as good as it gets, studs. What you see is what you got!”

The commander had to haul her through the hatch. We could hear her yelling and raving all the way down the connecting passageway to the lab module.

“Where’d she get the booze?” Larry asked.

“Brought it up with her,” said Sam. “She’s been drinking since five o’clock. Something I said ticked her off.”