Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

The little man shrugged, spreading slender hands. “Confidential, I will tell you. I had heard such colorful tales of outpost life. But the only result is that I am now a married man⁠—not that I have anything but praise for my dear Mei-Hua, but it is not the abandonment one had hoped for.”

Gilchrist chuckled. Outer-planet stations did have a slightly lurid reputation, and no doubt it had been justified several years ago.

After all⁠—The voyage was so long and costly that it could not be made often. You established a self-sufficient colony of scientists and left it there to carry on its researches for years at a time. But self-sufficiency includes psychic elements, recreation, alcohol, entertainment, the opposite sex. A returning party always took several children home.

Scientists tended to be more objective about morals, or at least more tolerant of the other fellow’s, than most; so when a hundred or so people were completely isolated, and ordinary amusements had palled, it followed that there would be a good deal of what some would call sin.

“Not Triton,” said Gilchrist. “You forget that there’s been another cultural shift in the past generation⁠—more emphasis on the stable family. And I imagine the Old Man picked his gang with an eye to such attitudes. Result⁠—the would-be rounders find themselves so small a minority that it has a dampening effect.”

“Sí. I know. But you ’ave never told me your real reason for coming here, Thomas.”

Gilchrist felt his face grow warm. “Research,” he answered shortly. “There are a lot of interesting problems connected with Neptune.”

Alemán cocked a mildly skeptical eyebrow but said nothing. Gilchrist wondered how much he guessed.

That was the trouble with being shy. In your youth, you acquired bookish tastes; only a similarly oriented wife would do for you, so you didn’t meet many women and didn’t know how to behave with them anyhow. Gilchrist, who was honest with himself, admitted he’d had wistful thoughts about encountering the right girl here, under informal conditions where⁠—

He had. And he was still helpless.

Suddenly he grinned. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I also came because I don’t like cold weather.”

“Came to Neptune?”

“Sure. On Earth, you can stand even a winter day, so you have to. Here, since the local climate would kill you in a second or two, you’re always well protected from it.” Gilchrist waved at the viewport. “Only I wish they didn’t have that bloody window in my lab. Every time I look out, it reminds me that just beyond the wall nitrogen is a solid.”

“Yo comprendo,” said Alemán. “The power of suggestion. Even now, at your words, I feel a chill.”

Gilchrist started with surprise. “You know, somehow I have the same⁠—Just a minute.” He went over to a workbench. His inframicrometer had an air thermometer attached to make temperature corrections.

“What the devil,” he muttered. “It is cooled off. Only 18 degrees in here. It’s supposed to be 21.”

“Some fluctuation, in temperature as in ozone content and humidity,” reminded Alemán. “That is required for optimum health.”

“Not this time of day, it shouldn’t be varying.” Gilchrist was reminded of his cigarette as it nearly burned his fingers. He stubbed it out and took another and inhaled to light it.

“I’m going to raise Jahangir and complain,” he said. “This could play merry hell with exact measurements.”

Alemán trotted after him as he went to the door. It was manually operated, and the intercoms were at particular points instead of every room. You had to forego a number of Earthside comforts here.

There was a murmuring around him as he hurried down the corridor. Some doors stood open, showing the various chemical and biological sections. The physicists had their own dome, on the other side of the Hill, and even so were apt to curse the stray fields generated here. If they had come this far to get away from solar radiations, it was only reasonable, as anyone but a chemist could see, that⁠—

The screen stood at the end of the hall, next to the tunnel stairs. Gilchrist checked himself and stood with a swift wild pulse in his throat. Catherine Bardas was using it.

He had often thought that the modern fashion of outbreeding yielded humans more handsome than any pure racial type could be. When a girl was half Greek and half Amerind, and a gifted biosynthesizer on top of it, a man like him could only stare.

Mohammed Jahangir’s brown, bearded face registered more annoyance than admiration as he spoke out of the screen. “Yes. Dr. Bardas,” he said with strained courtesy. “I know. My office is being swamped with complaints.”

“Well, what’s the trouble?” asked the girl. Her voice was low and gentle, even at this moment.

“I’m not sure,” said the engineer. “The domes’ temperature is dropping, that’s all. We haven’t located the trouble yet, but it can’t be serious.”

“All I’m asking,” said Catherine Bardas patiently, “is how much longer this will go on and how much lower it’s going to get. I’m trying to synthesize a cell, and it takes precisely controlled conditions. If the air temperature drops another five degrees, my thermostat won’t be able to compensate.”

“Oh, well⁠ ⁠… I’m sure you can count on repair being complete before that happens.”

“All right,” said Catherine sweetly. “If not, though, I’ll personally bung you out the main airlock sans spacesuit.”

Jahangir laughed and cut off. The light of fluorotubes slid blue-black off the girl’s shoulder-length hair as she turned around. Her face was smooth and dark, with high cheekbones and a lovely molding of lips and nose and chin.

“Oh⁠—hello, Tom,” she smiled. “All through here.”

“Th-th-th⁠—Never mind,” he fumbled. “I was only g-going to ask about it myself.”

“Well⁠—” She yawned and stretched with breathtaking effect. “I suppose I’d better get back and⁠—”

“Ah, why so, señorita?” replied Alemán. “If the work does not need your personal attention just now, come join me in a leetle drink. It is near dinnertime anyhow.”

“All right,” she said. “How about you, Tom?”

He merely nodded, for fear