Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [29]
But now her mind was turned on again. I wish I loved him, she said to herself. Why don't I? Because he's too invulnerable? "Johnny? Does your mind ever turn off?"
He thought it through before answering. "There's a story they tell about John Glenn … " He rolled onto an elbow. "The space medicine boys were trying to find out what we could go through and still function. They had John Glenn wired with widgets so they could watch his heartbeat and perspiration while he went through a program on the Gemini flight simulator. Right in the middle of it they dropped a shitload of scrap iron onto a tilted iron plate, right behind him. The whole room rang with it, and it went on and on. Glenn's heartbeat went blip!" Johnny's finger sketched a tepee shape. "He never even twitched. He went through the whole sequence, and then he said, 'You sons of bitches' … "
He watched her laugh, and then he said a bit sadly, "We can't get distracted." He sat up. "If we're going to watch your program we ought to be getting up."
"Yes. I suppose. You first."
"Right." He bent to kiss her again, then left the bed. She heard the shower running and thought of joining him. But he wouldn't be interested now. She'd said the wrong thing, and now he'd be remembering his ruined career; ruined not by any mistake of his, but by America's retreat from space.
She found his robe where he'd left it for her. Forethought. We can't get distracted. One thing at a time, and do that perfectly. Whether it was crawling along a ruined Skylab and repairing it in orbit, or conducting a love affair, he did it right. And he was never in a hurry.
When they met, Baker had been in the Astronaut Office in Houston and was assigned as liaison to Senator Jellison and party. Johnny Baker had a wife and two teen-age kids, and had been a perfect gentleman, taking Maureen to dinner when the Senator was called away, keeping her company for the week the Senator was in Washington, taking her to the launch in Florida …
A perfect gentleman up to the time they'd had to go back to her motel room for her purse—and she still wasn't sure who had seduced whom. She didn't sleep with married men. She didn't like sleeping with men she didn't love, for that matter. But, love aside, he had something, and Maureen had no defense against it. He had a single goal and the ability to go after it no matter what.
And she was young and had been married once and had taken no vow of chastity and the hell with what you're thinking, girl! Maureen rolled off the bed fast and switched on the TV with a vicious click. Just to break the chain of thought.
But I am not a tramp.
His divorce is final next week, and I had nothing to do with that. Ann never knew. Ann doesn't know now. But maybe he wouldn't have let her go? If that's my fault, all right, but Ann never knew. We're still good friends.
"He's not the same anymore," Ann had told her. "Not since he flew the mission. Before that it was always tough here, he was on training missions all the time, and I had only a little part of him—but I had something. And then he got his chance, and everything worked fine, and my husband's a hero—and I don't have a husband anymore."
Ann couldn't understand it. I can, Maureen thought. It wasn't flying the mission, it was that there aren't any more missions, and if you're Johnny Baker and all your life you've worked and trained to do one thing, and nobody's ever going to do that again …
One goal in life. Tim Hamner had a touch of that. Johnny had it, and maybe she had tried to borrow a piece of it. And now look: Johnny had used up his one goal, and the most important thing in Maureen Jellison's life was a fight with a silly Washington hostess.
It still bothered her every time she thought of it.
Annabelle Cole was liberated. Six months ago it had been the threatened extinction of the