Lagrange Habitat Jefferson

THE DINING ROOM IN ALPHA’S ZERO-GRAVITY SECTION WAS actually a self-service galley. Malone helped Jade to fill her tray with prepackaged courses, then they fit their slippered feet into loop restraints on the spindly legs of a table, Jade using the highest level of the plastic loops, long-legged Malone the lowest.

Their dinner together was relaxed and pleasant. Malone recommended for dessert what he called “the Skylab bomb”: a paper-thin shell of vanilla ice cream filled with strawberries.

“You can only make it this thin in zero-gee,” he pointed out.

As they finished their squeezebulbs of coffee, Malone said, “Y’know, there’s a guy over in the new habitat at L-5, the one they’ve named Jefferson. You’d do well to talk to him.”

Jade turned on her belt recorder to get the man’s name and location.

“Yeah. Spence Johansen,” Malone continued. “He knew Sam when they were both astronauts with the old NASA. Then they went into business together.”

“What kind of business?” Jade asked.

Malone grinned at her. “Junk collecting.”

“IT’S JUST A small increment on the fare,” Jade said to Raki’s image on the phone screen. She was leaning against the side wall of the cubicle she had rented aboard Alpha, her bags packed, ready to head back to Selene by way of habitat Jefferson.

Raki had a strange smile on his darkly handsome face. “You got the story from this man Malone?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s really good, Raki. Very personal stuff. Great human interest. And Malone told me about this Spencer Johansen who’s living at Jefferson. I can get there on the transfer ship that’s leaving in half an hour.”

He shook his head. “What would you do if I said no?”

She grinned at his image. “I’d go there anyway; the difference in fare is so small I’d pay it myself.”

He puffed out a sigh. “Do you realize how far out on a limb I am with you? The CEO hates Sam Gunn. If Sam were alive today the old man would want to have him murdered.”

Jade said nothing. She merely hung there weightlessly, her back plastered to the wall to prevent her from drifting out of range of the phone’s camera eye.

“All right,” Raki said finally, with a little shrug of acquiescence. “I think it’s crazy. I think maybe I’m crazy. But go ahead, get everything you can.”

“Thanks!” Jade said. “You won’t regret it, Raki.”

“I already regret it.”

“CALL ME SPENCE,” he said, dropping his lanky, sweaty frame onto the bench beside her.

In spite of herself, Jade felt her heart skip a couple of beats. She was breathless, but not merely from the exertion of a hard game of low-g tennis.

Spencer Johansen was tall and lean, with the flat midsection and sharp reflexes that come only from constant exercise. His eyes were sky blue, his face handsome in a rugged, clean-cut, honest way. When he smiled, as he was doing now, he looked almost boyish despite his silver-gray hair. He was older than Raki, she knew. Yet he seemed more open; innocent, almost.

His smile was deadly. Jade had to remind herself that this man was the subject of an interview, not an object of desire. She was here to get a story out of him, and he was refusing to talk.

Jefferson was the newest of the Lagrange habitats being built at the L-4 and L-5 libration points along the Moon’s orbit. A vast tube of asteroidal steel, twenty kilometers long and five wide, its interior was landscaped to look like a pleasant Virginia countryside, with rolling wooded hills and picturesque little villages dotting the greenery here and there. Best of all, from Jade’s point of view, was that Jefferson rotated on its long axis only fast enough to give an almost lunar feeling of weight inside. The entire habitat, with its population of seventy-five thousand, was pleasantly low-gee.

“Why Sam?” Johansen asked, still smiling. But those clear blue eyes were wary, guarded.

They were both still puffing from their punishing game. Out on the huge low-gee court, safely behind a shatterproof transparent wall, the next two players were warming up with long slow low-gravity lobs and incredible leaps to hit the ball five meters above the sponge metal surface of the court.

“Solar Network wants to do his biography,” Jade replied, surreptitiously pressing the microswitch that activated the recorder built into her belt buckle.

“Solar, huh?” Spencer Johansen huffed.

“Well... it’s really me,” Jade confessed. “I’ve become fascinated by the man. I want to get Solar to do a special on him. I need all the help I can get. I need your story.”

Johansen looked down at her. Sitting beside him she looked small, almost childlike, in a loose-fitting sleeveless gym top and shorts of pastel yellow.

“You’re not the first woman to be fascinated by ol’ Sam,” he muttered. His own tennis outfit was nothing more than an ancient T-shirt and faded denim cutoffs.

“Couldn’t you tell me something about him? Just some personal reminiscences?”

“We made a deal, you and me.”

She sighed heavily. “I know. And I lost.”

His smile returned. “Yeah, but you played a helluva game. Never played in low-g before?”

“Never,” she swore. “There’s no room for tennis courts in Selene. And this is my first time to a Lagrange habitat.”

He seemed to look at her from a new perspective. The smile widened. “Come on, hit the showers and put on your drinking clothes.”

“You’ll give me the interview? Even though I lost the game?”

“You’re too pretty to say no to. Besides, you played a damned good game. A couple days up here and you’ll be beating me.”