CHAPTER 6 SO BEGAN WAITING IT OUT. They gave him a first lieutenant and a sergeant who knew reverything that was needed to know to keep his office run ning. There wene about fifteen nunutes' worth of decisions he had to make daily; after that there was nothing for him to do. He was in Procurement and Supplies, and very junior in that, as far as he decisions went, anyway. The paperwork he put his signature to was either for things that obviously had to be ordered, or for things that, if they represented a bad decision, Iit was a bad decision that would not prove itself to be so for months or even years. He listened to the advice of his heuten- ant and his sergeant, especially that of the sergeant, and in consequence he could have done the job in his sleep. Like all Frontier pilots, he was used to playing hard, fast 1and furious during his time off. But now, for all practical purposes, almost all his tirne was time off. He could run, swim, play tennis or golf, go to the gym and work out, or go and camp in the Officers' Club night and day, if that was what he wanted. He did it all. The Officers' Club was not emltty in the daylight hours of the ordinary work week, because there were always people working night and off-shifts of various kinds, Iand people coming and going fiom the Base. But by compari- Ison to the S P.M. to closing hours, it was deserted. Of course, there were likely to be Frontier pilots in there at almost any time of the night or day; and when he ran into those he had instant companionship. But his pleasure in even this grew thin. As the weeks went by, and he became more and more removed from his own time of being out on the Frontier, he became less and les' one of them. Also, they were out for the same reasons he had been out, to play, to find women and raise hell generally, as a relief from a tension he no longer shared; and he found that what once had been rare and precious, became dull and tasteless when it was available all the time. He could not go off Base with the other pilots, which can- celled him out of most of their adventures and the chance of finding female playmates, anyway. He learned that Mollen had been only too correct in forecasting that only a need to report to someone in Washington or an equal occasion of duty was considered sufficiently important a reason to allow him past the gates of the Base. And he also found, gradually, that he did not really enjoy being with half-drunk friends before noon, even with his Frontier sidekicks~that he did not enjoy being with them before dinner time-that, indeed, he no longer enjoyed being in the usual sort of Earthside celebration Iof survival at any time at all. He, at least, had nothing to celebrate. He became more and more solitary. The physical activities remained open to him, and he found himself retreating more and more into them. He had set himself a solid program of activity to make sure he stayed in physical shape to be let back into space. But with time on his hands, this program ex panded. He ran fifteen miles instead of five. Swam five miles 'ill instead of one. Worked out on the exercise equipment for two hours instead of half an hour. At the same time he began to discover an indifference in hem to food. He was active enough to want to eat, but from being the satisfaction of a keen appetite, his eating became simply another duty that had to be performed. On paper he stayed in excellent physical shape, but visibly, he began to grow lean and stringy, solitary and withdrawn. His fellow pilots, led by those who had been In his Wing, worried about him and tried to come up with ways to lighten his mood. They diagnosed his trouble as being primarily due to a lack of women. Being what they were, with a Frontier pilot's attitude toward rules and regulations, they concocted elaborate schemes to circumvent regulations; and, first, to get him off Base so they could get him to bed with some attractive female; and, second-when he proved to be too tightly under observation for that-to smuggle some likely lady on Base for him and provide the proper quarters and privacy for them. His lack of enthusiasm for this and their other schemes for him worried them even more. In any case, they were unsuc- cessful, for he was truly guarded like a national treasure-to which, perhaps, In some minds he was. He had been made lieutenant colonel, as Mollen had promised, shortly after his return with La Chasse Gallerie. After a little more than half a year he was promoted to full bird colonel-interestingly, Mollen had become a two-star general just a few months be- fore-and his pilot friends seized the opportunity to put on an elaborate celebration for him at the Officers' Club and in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters. At this celebration he presided like a ghost at a banquet. In vain they kept tryIng to spike his ginger ale with vodka and trick him into empty rooms with attractive females who had been given the mission of seducing him. After that, they pretty well gave up and left him alone. On his part, he increased his solitary exercising and became stringier and more somber than ever. In fact, they had been using the wrong bait. His first month after he had moved into the building that held the residence quarters that were part of Mary Gallegher's lab-but completely apart from the lab and served by an en tirely separate entrance from outside-he had heard nothing more from her in spite of her suggestion that she might need him from time to time for experimental purposes. At the end of the first month he had felt relieved rather than otherwise. He did not relish the role of laboratory rat. But when the second month began to trickle away without a summons from her, he began to wait and watch for one. It was not, he told himself, that he had a particular interest in her us mg him, but that his being called into the laboratory proper where she worked might give him a chance to get to And- Friend once again. Finally, toward the end of the second month, a call came, and he reported happily, only to find himself hustled directly up into one of the lab rooms in the inner tower of the building. He had only a glimpse from a second-story balcony walk way, down into the main open area of the building where he had seen the two ships on his previous visit. To his disap pointment, what seemed to be a large tent of opaque plastic fabric had been erected over the section of the floor where they lay, so that he could see nothing of either one of them. It turned out he had only been wanted to wear his space suit while a couple of Mary's staff made some tests of either him or it-the two women doing it were not informative and he had no idea what they were up to. Being once more en- closed in the suit with its familiar, ancient smells brought on him a nostalgia almost too strong to bear. After that he was called in about once a week for different tests, but the plastic tent was always in place and he was unable to learn for certain even whether the two ships were let alone in the same positions and conditions in which he had last seen them. The back of his head began to evolve wild dreams in which He somehow got into the lab, stole AndFriend and took off into space. Eventually he literally began to dream such dreams, when sleeping. Meanwhile, he was working himself physically to the bone, to pass the days and bring about sleep of any kind-which had been harder and harder to come by, in the same measure as his disinterest in food grew. He could and did hide from his friends that it was not wine, women and song he needed, but An~nend and space. He was certain he had also hidden it successfully from Mollen, and from Mary-whom, in any case, he had not seen in per- son since that first night in the lab. What concerned him more was whether he was being successful in keeping the depth of his need hidden from the physician to whom he had to report almost daily. It was evidently part of the whole package of surveillance, control and so forth set up around him, that his state of health -he monitored and recorded on what was effectively a twenty- four hour a day basis. The Medical Officer, also a full colo- nel, who examined him three times a week or more, was prob- ably the one person to whom Jim talked at all openly. Part of this was because there was no one else Jim felt safe talking to about himself. The other part was that whatever the physician's actual specialty was-and he had told Jim once, when the visits had first started, but Jim had since forgotten -Jim gradually came to feel that there was something about the other that hinted at a touch of the psychiatrist in him. Not that Jim had any experience with psychiatrists; but there was a way the other man had of listening to him that seemed differ- ent from the listening of other doctors to whom Jim had gone. He told himself he had an unduly suspicious mind. None theless, he found himself saying more than he had intended, so that he was surprised to hear the words coming from his own mouth. The procedures daring Jim's visits were ordinarily route. Unless there were lab samples to be taken from him, it was merely a matter of Jim's being scanned by a number of eso- teric instruments, after which he sat down for a few words Up with the physician before being turned loose once more. "You're losing weight again," said the physician, checking through the papers that were the hard copy of Jim's file and lay on the desk before him. He was a tall, gangling man in his early fifties with a high forehead, a straight nose and a sur prisingly gende, small smile that came at unexpected mo ments. "All right, Doc," said Jim. "I'll eat more." The doctor glanced up at him from the papers. "You could try exercising less," he said. "And then what'd I do with my time?" "There's always your job," said the doctor. "What job?" The doctor smiled his small smile. "I don't know what to do with you," he said, sitting back with a sigh. "The first person I've ever treated who tried to kill himself with good health. But, you know, I'm serious about your cutting back on the physical activity." "For God's sake, Doc," said Jim. "Don't ask me to do that. The only tirne I can forget about things is when I'm riir~g or swimming or sweating it out to the point where I haven't got any energy left over to think with. I'll get morefood down rne. I don't mind eating; it's just that it's kind of a chore these days." The doctor scribbled on a prescription pad, tore off the sheet he had written on and handed it to Jim. "Take these, two a day, when you get up and when yo. go to bed," he said. "They ought to increase your appetite." Jim looked at the piece of paper in his hand, dubiously. He was not a pill~taker by preference. "It won't make me dopey, will it, Doc?" he asked. "I mean, it isn't some sort of tranquilizer?" "I guarantee it won't inake you dopey. let's just hope it makes you more interested in food," said the physician. "Well, that's it, then. See you Thursday." "Right," said Jim, getting up. He left. At first it did seem that theplils gave him a little more appetite. At any rate, he made a point of getting more food Iinside him whether his body craved it or not, and his weight came back up a few pounds. But then he leveled off and stayed where he was on the scale in the doctor's office each time he came in. He suggested once to the doc-since the pills had given him no feeling from taking them at all-that he was willing to up the dosage, if that would do any good. "I think not," said the physician. "You're taking about what you should of that, right now." So, he kept forcing the food. It was a problem, because he did not sleep better. Sometime about this period, also, his hours of slumber began to be occupied not so much by dreams of his stealing AndFriend and escaping into space, as with nightmares in which the lab suddenly burnt down and people would not let him go in and help keep the fire away from AndFriend-which bothered him even though he knew an ordinary fire would not harm the ship. Or he would dream that there had been a sudden earthquake that opened a fissure right under Mary's lab. Ml that was needed was someone to go in and hook a cable around AndFriend to keep her from being dropped into the lava-hot interior of the earth, but they held him back from doing so because it was "too dangerous." Meanwhile, Mary's staff-he still had not seen her in per- son since that first visit to the lab-began to call him in more and more fiequendy. They were on a new kick now, as he entered the ninth month of his captivity on the Base. This one had him still wearing his space suit while listening, over and over again, to the voice recordings of himself, Mary and Raoul Penard when they had taken his Wing out to meet La Chasse Gallerie in Laagi territory, and convoy her home hete to the Base. When he had listened to it all the way through, they would ask him questions about who had said what to who It was like being on the witness stand in an endless court trial. When they got him to the point where he knew the record- ings by heart, they switched to having him work with record- ings in which one of the voices was edited out, and he spoke the words of that speaker; and it finally ended with him play- ing, over and over again, the part of Raoul. They kept it up until, among his other dreams, he began to dream that he actually was Raoul; or rather what was left of Raoul as a mind, locked in the sliced and broken metal that was La Chasse Gallerie. Curiously, these dreams were not unpleasant. But finally his appetite gave up for good. He would get to sleep, sleep for about two or three hours, dream- ing nightmares, and then wake. Only getting out under the night sky in his running gear and covering four or five miles would rub out the memories of those dreams and let him get to solid sleep for a few hours. He even tried the desperate mea sure of getting drunk to make himself sleep, but that did not work either. "Alcohol may help put you out," his doctor told him, '~bui after a few hours, it turns around and makes you wakeful -again." "I've gol to do something. Can't you just givc me a ing pill, Doc?" "That's only a temporary solution and this is a continuing problem," said the doctor. "Maybe that medication I gave you for your appetite is working against you now, instead of for you. let's try taking you off it." So Jim went off the pills. The first night he slept marvel- ously, the next night not so well. By the end of a week he was back with the dreams and the starlit runs again. He could feel himself beginning to lose his grip; and he found himself taking it out on the physician in a way he would never have consid- ered doing, a year previously. "It's this goddamned bird-in-a-gilded-cage life they've got rne living!" he said. "I could take it if I could only get a taste, just a taste of space, once in a while. If they'd only let me take AndFriend out once a week-once a month, even! If they'd only let me see her!" "You might be right," said the doctor. "But I don't have any say about that. Have you tried putting in a formal request to visit your former ship?" "Ever since this thing started. Ten months now!" said Jim. "I put in a written request through channels two and three times a week. All they do is come back disapproved." "Bring the next one to me. I'll add a letter and sign it," said the doctor. Jim did. It came back disapproved. He called Mollen and was told that the general could not be reached right now, but that his request to talk to the general would be passed on to the general. Mollen did not call back that day or the next. Jim called again. That day Mollen did not call back, either. Jim called again. Still, there was no call-back from Mol len's office, and Mollen had made no other effort to contact him. That night, after one more of the innumerable sessions in Mary's lab in which Jim was made again to play through the conversation of Raoul's rescue, saying what Raoul had been heard to say while this was going on, he had a new nightmare. This time when he was Raoul, however, on becoming aware of AndFriend and the rest of the Wander Wing that was convoying him back to Base, he broke off his litany of poetry and recitation. "No, you don't!" he howled out the eatphones of all their suits, s'uung La Chasse Gallerie in a hundred and eighty de gree turn and headed away from Earth, back into enemy terri tory. The dream changed, without reason but without surprising Jim, as dreams have a habit of doing. He found himself still in his space suit, standing on the observation platform of one of the big command ships on the Frontier, watching in a screen as AndFriend drove across into Laagi territory. "What're you doing?" Jim shouted at the gunnery com- mand officer, standing next to him and also watching. "There's a whole flight of Laagi ships coming up on her!" "Oh, I thought they told you," the gunnery command of- ficer answered cheerfully. "They were through with her in the lab, so they decided to get some use out of her as an un- manned drone to draw Laagi fire, so we can make a study of how the aliens attack. Look at them now, will you? They're moving in, now. Now they're really starting to slice her up." "Unmanned? No!" cried Jim. His gaze was back on the sct'een, which now showed AndFriend being killed and de- stroyed. "Baby, don't just run straight like that. Cut! Cut and run! Fire back...." In his mind's eye he saw his own empty command chair, with the buuons he could have touched if he was there, the controls he could have used, if he was in the seat. Sweat sprang out all over him; and meanwhile, beside him, the gun nery command officer continued his cheerful chatter about how badly AndFriend was being destroyed, as if it was a game, an entertainment.... Jim woke, throwing off the bedcovers in one wild move ment. The underwear which years of ship's duty had condi- tioned him to use as nightwear was glued to him by the perspiration that soaked it. Still caught up in the emotions of seeing AndFriend destroyed while he ached to save her, he stripped off the sodden T shirt and shorts and stumbled into the shower to pour gallons of water on his shaking body. After which he dressed in his running clothes and went out under the unchanging stars to run the streets through the Base until he was limp with exhaustion. The next day he went in person to Mollen's offices. The general was out, he was told. -#~Ii a He said he would wait. He was told politely that he was not allowed to wait. "Then send for the Military Police," he told them, taking a chair, "because I'm waiting!" He waited. There was a good deal of excitement with of ficers of various ranks up to and including a one-star general who came and told him he could not stay. He did not answer, merely sat. Eventually they left him as he was. The day wore on. No one came out or went in through the door to Mollen's inner, private office. Clearly he was not there. He did not come in from the corridor door, either. The afternoon passed. Jim was not conscious of the hours passing either slowly or fast. It was simply time to be put in. He did not read. Re did not think. Re simply sat and waited. At last, with the afternoon far advanced, the captain on at the desk in the outer office got up and went out briefly. When he returned, he was accompanied by two tall MPs with holstered sidearms and the flaps buttoned down. No mghtsticks. The captain cleaned up his desk. He went out and the door closed behind him. The two MPs took positions, standing one on each side of the closed door. Jim hardly paid them any attention. Together the three of them spent the night. On the rare occasions when Jim got up to go to the men's room down the corridor, one of the MPs went with him and came back with him. Toward morning, Jim may have dozed in his chair. But he was not conscious of having slept, and if he had, he had not dreamed while he was asleep. At dawn two other MPs replaced the Military Police who had been there all night. One of them brought a plastic cup of coffee and put it on the chair next to Jim's. Jim looked at it and realized he was thirsty. He drank it; but he could not have said, a second after finishing it, whether it had been black, or whether it had had cream and sugar in it. A little before 7 A.M., the corridor outside began to sound with the feet of incoming workers. At a little after seven, the corridor door opened between the two MPs and Mollen strode m, followed by the same captain who had sat at the outer desk yesterday. Mollen jerked his head at Jim. Jim got to his feet, awkwardly. He was dully aurprised to find how stiff his body was after his long sitting. He followed the general into the private office. This office had padded armchairs before its one large desk. Mollen took the chair behind the desk and gestured Jim to one of the facing, padded ones. They looked at each other. "Well?" said Mollen. "You ready to go back into space again?" Jim stared at him dumbly and the silence lengthened out between them, unlil Jim realized that the question had been for the record. And for the record, which was undoubtedly a voice and picture recording going on at the moment, he would have togive an answer. "Yes sir," Mollen opened the he croaked. wide drawer in the middle of his desk, fished around and came up with a document that seemed to consist of half a dozen or so sheets of paper, heat-stapled together. He passed it across to Jim "Sign this." Jim took it and blinked at it. He tried to read through it, but his brain was almost as numb as his body. It read something like the document he had been required to sign upon getting his commission, about the Official Secrets Act and penalties for his disregarding it. Essentially these papers before him, once signed, put him completely at his government's disposal -which seemed like doing the thing twice-over, since as a Frontier pilot he was already the government's, to use or throw away. In any case, it did not matter. AndFnend and space were all that mattered. He signed it with a pen the general handed him and passed both pen and document back. Mollen waved it for a second in the air. "You can have another look at the file storing this any time you want to," the general said, "unless you ever become a civilian again or you're put on a different status. Then that file'll be closed to you. Understand?" "I understand, sir." "Good." Mollen's voice became more gental "From now on you report every morning to the lab proper-Mary's work area For now, for God's sake get back to your quarters and get some sleep."