Footfall

“Oh, sure, and next you’ll tell me I’m the reason you never married,” Or have you?

Roger spread his hands in an exaggerated gesture. “Dunno. There must be some reason,”

“You’re too busy chasing stories. That’s all you see in me, a news source.”

“Come on, now.”

“Will you promise you won’t try to get information from me?”

“Of course not.”—

“See? Good. I don’t like it when you lie to me. So what do we do now?”

He glanced at his watch. “A bit early for dinner. What say we take a drive through the Virginia countryside? I know a nice restaurant in Fairfax.”

“And then?”

“Up to you.” Roger stood and came around to hold her chair.

“I’ve got to be going,” Linda said. She started to push back her chair from Roger’s kitchen table, but Roger stood behind her and blocked her way.

He put his hands under the bathrobe. She felt her nipples erect in the warmth of his palms. “What’s the hurry?”

“Stop that-no, don’t stop that. Roger, what will I tell Aunt Rhonda?”

“Party at the Thai Embassy. Got late. Some senator from the Appropriations Committee insisted on quizzing you about the space program.”

“But—”

“There really is a big party there, so big that you could have been there and been lost in the crowd.” He bent around her, took her nipple in his mouth.

She thought she was thoroughly satiated, but his tongue reawakened sensations all through her body. Roger had always been a tiger-they’d made love three times that afternoon after JPL, all those years ago. Are you serious?”

He straightened. “Possibly not.”

Linda giggled suddenly.

“Certainly not, then,” Roger said. “What is it?”

“I never did get Nat Reynolds’s autograph.”

“Nat-oh. Yeah. Damn, damn, damn. That ship was there all the time we were looking at Saturn. The twisted F-ring. ‘Haven’t you ever seen three earthworms in love?’ ‘You’ve a wicked sense of humor, Darth Vader.’ Remember? The drive flame from that thing must have roiled the whole ring system. It settled down before Voyager Two got there.”

Linda stroked his hand, then put it back on her breast. He stood very close to her. “And even if you’d known, if you’d said anything, they’d have put you away for a nice rest.”

“Heh. Yes. I might have gone digging. Found some astronomical photographs. Something. I didn’t know enough science, then. I’ve done some studying since.”

She grinned and looked up at him without raising her head. “I hadn’t noticed.” Actually it’s not funny. Nothing you could learn, nothing will ever bring back that afternoon. I know that; why do I go on looking? “It was a wonderful day, Roger. All of it. All those Scientists, and the writers-you’ve been studying science; are you going to write science fiction?”

“Hadn’t intended to. Maybe I should. Most of the SF writers have disappeared.” He wet one finger and traced a complex pattern on her breast,

“What?”

“Well, not all of them. The ones who make up their own science are being interviewed all over the place. The ones who stick to real science are getting hard to find. Know anything about it?”

“Not really.”

He straightened and stepped away from her. “My God, you do know something! What?”

“Roger, I said—”

“Bat shit! I can tell! You know something. Linda, what is it?”

“Well, it’s not important. Jenny said something about going to meet the sci-fi people. In Colorado Springs. It wasn’t a secret.”

“Colorado Springs. NORAD or the Air Academy?”

8. LAUNCH

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.

—BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Henrietta Temple

COUNTDOWN: H MINUS ONE WEEK

“I don’t know. Aunt Rhonda would know-she’d have Jenny leave her phone number in Colorado Springs. Speaking of Aunt Rhonda, Roger, I really do have to leave. Now let me get up.”

“Well, all right, if you insist. I’ll call you tomorrow.

Say no. Tell him no. “Fine.”

The house perched on stilts above a crag in the Los Angeles hills.

For years the engineers had worried that it would slide down in a heavy rainstorm, but it never did.

Wes Dawson poked about the storage area built by enclosing the stilts. In a normal house it would have been called a basement.

“It’s getting late,” Carlotta called down the stairs.

“I know.” He opened an old trunk, Junk, clutter; memories leapt up at him. Wait a minute, I used to use this a lot… the Valentine card she’d handed him one January morning after a fight

So that’s where that went! The huge mug that would hold two full bottles of beer, but the chipped rim kept gashing his lip. A T-shirt faded almost to gray, but he recognized the print on the chest: an American flag with a whirlpool galaxy in the upper left corner. A hundred billion stars…

No time! He closed the lid on memories and went up the stairs.

The house looked half empty, with anything valuable or breakable packed away.

“Aren’t you packed?” she asked. “I mean, what could you take?”

He grinned. “Remember my old baseball cap?”

“Good God! Whatever did you—”