Torch Ship Hermes
THE TWO WOMEN WERE SITTING ALONE IN THE COMFORTABLE lounge aboard the fusion torch ship as it accelerated at a half-g toward the outer reaches of the solar system.
Jade felt mildly uncomfortable at the gravity load, three times what she was accustomed to on the Moon, but the medics had assured her that her bones could stand the strain—although not much more.
Jill Meyers looked startlingly like Sam Gunn, Jade thought: short, almost elfin in stature, with a plain round face and a snub nose sprinkled with freckles. But her eyes were a clear and steady tawny gold, and she wore her straight mousy-brown hair shoulder length.
“I really appreciate your inviting me to make this trip with you,” Jade began.
Meyers shrugged lightly. “You’ve earned it. I watched your entire series, beginning to end. I don’t remember when I’ve laughed so much—and cried, too.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“You really captured Sam, Ms. Inconnu.”
“Please call me Jade.”
“Good. And I’m Jill.”
Jade had been stunned by Meyers’s invitation to accompany her on this flight to the Kuiper Belt. It had come as she was leaving the Emmy ceremonies in Beijing and starting back to Selene. Does she know that Sam might be my father? Jade asked herself immediately. She reasoned that Jill Meyers didn’t know, couldn’t know. Sam himself didn’t know it. Still, she wondered.
“Your quarters are satisfactory?” Meyers asked her.
“Completely! Spence says it’s the best honeymoon suite he’s ever seen.”
Meyers laughed graciously and Jade figured she had no idea how many honeymoon suites Spence had actually used.
“So what can I tell you about Sam that you don’t already know?”
Jade clicked her belt recorder and pretended to think about the question for a few moments. Then she answered, “You were involved when Sam tried to sue the Pope, weren’t you?”
“More than that, Jade. Much more than that. After all, I knew Sam back in the days when we were both astronauts working for the old NASA.”
“Just how old is Sam?”
“His age? Well, Sam must be just about my own age. Never mind what that is. Suffice to say we’ve both been around a long time. And neither of us is anywhere near finished yet. I never did believe that he died out at that mini-black hole beyond Pluto’s orbit. Not Sam.
“That’s why I’m riding out there. He promised to marry me, even though I haven’t seen the little sonofagun in almost twenty years.”
Jade looked down at her wrist computer.
“What’re you doing, trying to calculate his age? Or my age? If you want me to tell you about Sam you’d better pay attention and stop the figuring. All right, Sam must be nearly a hundred, maybe more. It’s hard to tell. He acts like he’s twelve or thirteen, most of the time. I’m younger, of course.
“Yes, he’s a womanizer. And yes, he’s made and lost more fortunes than I’ve got freckles on my nose. So what? He’s Sam Gunn, the one and only.
“You want to know about the time he tried to sue the Vatican?”
Jade nodded vigorously.
“All right. But stop trying to calculate my age!”