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 ...
Januszek66