Grand Tour 16 Venus by Ben Bova

Author:Ben Bova [Bova, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9780340728468
Google: E2aZmAEACAAJ
Amazon: 0340728469
Publisher: ‎Tor Books
Published: 2000-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

MUTTERINGS

I stayed at the hatch, clinging to Marguerite, for what seemed like hours. The ship kept bucking and shuddering, riding the massive wave that was driving us halfway across the planet.

But although my body was still, my mind was working furiously. This subsolar wave was like a moving wall that pushed us away from the daylit side of Venus. If the wreckage of Phosphoros and Alex’s body were on that side of the planet it was going to be next to impossible to reach them, unless the wave truly did peter out at lower altitude. If it didn’t, we would have to wait a month or more for the planet’s ponderously slow rotation to swing the Aphrodite region to the nightside.

I doubted that Fuchs had supplies enough for us to dawdle down here for several weeks. I know that Hesperos certainly hadn’t. I wondered if Lucifer, overdesigned though it was, could physically survive in Venus’s thick, hot atmosphere for a month.

We must have stood there at the hatch for hours. It wasn’t until the next watch showed up and pushed past us that Fuchs looked sternly at me and said, “Get back to your quarters, Humphries. You too, Marguerite.”

The ship’s motion had smoothed out considerably, although Lucifer was still pitching up and down enough to make my stomach uneasy.

“You heard me!” Fuchs snapped. “When I give an order I want it obeyed! Move!”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and led Marguerite down the passageway toward her compartment.

She slid her door open, then hesitated. Turning to me, she asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” I said. Beyond her I could see the compartment Fuchs had given her. It was spare, utilitarian, probably the quarters for the first mate who had been killed trying to save Rodriguez. It was next to Fuchs’s more luxurious quarters, but there was no connecting door, I saw.

“No problems with the anemia?” she asked.

“We have more immediate problems to worry about,” I said. As if to emphasize my point, the deck lurched, throwing her against me. I held her with both arms.

She disengaged herself, gently, perhaps even reluctantly, I thought. But she did pull away from me.

Yet she seemed genuinely concerned about me. “We have no way of knowing how long the transfusion will help you … .”

“Never mind that,” I said. “What’s he doing to you?”

Her back stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“Fuchs. What’s he doing to you?”

“That’s not your concern,” Marguerite said.

“Isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You’re trying to protect me, aren’t you?”

“By sleeping with him, you mean?”

“Yes.”

For an instant I thought I was looking at her mother; her expression went cold, hard as steel.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said.

I felt anger flaring through me. “Then you’re sleeping with him to protect yourself.”

“Is that what you think?”

Exasperated, I shot back, “What else can I think?”

Icily, Marguerite said, “I am not responsible for what goes on in your mind, Van. And what is happening between Captain Fuchs and me is our business, not yours.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, “I—”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said, her voice venomously low.

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