Citizen in Spase. Stories / Гражданин в Космосе. Рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

I could have said the same of her, with considerable approval. She was a slender girl, for the most part, with hair the reddish blond color of a flaring jet, a pert, dirt-smudged face and brooding blue eyes. On Earth, I would gladly have walked ten miles to meet her. In space, I wasn’t so sure.

“Could you give me something to eat?” she asked. “All I’ve had since we left is raw carrots.”

I fixed her a sandwich. While she ate, I asked, “What are you doing here?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, between mouthfuls.

“Sure I would.”

She walked to a porthole and looked out at the spectacle of stars – American stars, most of them – burning in the void of American Space.

“I wanted to be free,” she said.

“Huh?”

She sank wearily on my cot. “I suppose you’d call me a romantic,” she said quietly. “I’m the sort of fool who recites poetry to herself in the black night, and cries in front of some absurd little statuette. Yellow autumn leaves make me tremble, and dew on a green lawn seems like the tears of all Earth. My psychiatrist tells me I’m a misfit.”

She closed her eyes with a weariness I could appreciate. Standing in a potato sack for fifty hours can be pretty exhausting.

“Earth was getting me down,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it – the regimentation, the discipline, the privation, the cold war, the hot war, everything. I wanted to laugh in free air, run through green fields, walk unmolested through gloomy forests, sing —”

“But why did you pick on me?”

“You were bound for freedom,” she said. “I’ll leave, if you insist.”

That was a pretty silly idea, out in the depths of space. And I couldn’t afford the fuel to turn back.

“You can stay,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said very softly. “You do understand.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “But we’ll have to get a few things straight. First of all —” But she had fallen asleep on my cot, with a trusting smile on her lips.

Immediately I searched her handbag. I found five lipsticks, a compact, a phial of Venus V perfume, a paper-bound book of poetry, and a badge that read: Special Investigator, FBI.

I had suspected it, of course. Girls don’t talk that way, but Spies always do.

It was nice to know my government was still looking out for me. It made space seem less lonely.

The ship moved into the depths of American Space. By working fifteen hours out of twenty-four, I managed to keep my spacewarp drive in one piece, my atomic piles reasonably cool, and my hull seams tight. Mavis O’day (as my Spy was named) made all meals, took care of the light housekeeping, and hid a number of small cameras around the ship. They buzzed abominably, but I pretended not to notice.

Under the circumstances, however, my relations with Miss O’day were quite proper.

The trip was proceeding normally – even happily – until something happened.

I was dozing at the controls. Suddenly an intense light flared on my starboard bow. I leaped backward, knocking over Mavis as she was inserting a new reel of film into her number three camera.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Oh, trample me anytime,” she said.

I helped her to her feet. Her supple nearness was dangerously pleasant, and the tantalizing scent of Venus V tickled my nostrils.

“You can let me go now,” she said.

“I know,” I said, and continued to hold her. My mind inflamed by her nearness, I heard myself saying, “Mavis – I haven’t known you very long, but —”

“Yes, Bill?” she asked.

In the madness of the moment I had forgotten our relationship of Suspect and Spy. I don’t know what I might have said. But just then a second light blazed outside the ship.

* * *

I released Mavis and hurried to the controls. With difficulty I throttled the old Star Clipper to an idle, and looked around.

Outside, in the vast vacuum of space, was a single fragment of rock. Perched upon it was a child in a spacesuit, holding a box of flares in one hand and a tiny spacesuited dog in the other.

Quickly we got him inside and unbuttoned his spacesuit.

“My dog —” he said.

“He’s all right, son,” I told him.

“Terribly sorry to break in on you this way,” the lad said.

“Forget it,” I said. “What were you doing out there?”

“Sir,” he began, in treble tones, “I will have to start at the start. My father was a spaceship test pilot, and he died valiantly, trying to break the light barrier. Mother recently remarried. Her present husband is a large, black-haired man with narrow, shifty eyes and tightly compressed lips. Until recently he was employed as a ribbon clerk in a large department store.

“He resented my presence from the beginning. I suppose I reminded him of my dead father, with my blond curls, large oval eyes and merry, outgoing ways. Our relationship smouldered fitfully. Then an uncle of his died (under suspicious circumstances) and he inherited holdings in British Space.