Executive Read Free

apartments. I understood the necessity, but nonetheless felt the psychological impact. We were still falling, the pressure rising outside. How much could the hull take? Would Coral get the shield restored in time? Of course she would—but my alarm would not be quieted.
    Each person, I suspect, has his own special fear. Many planetary-bubble inhabitants fear the empty reaches of deep space, and depressurization is their ultimate horror. Navy personnel, in contrast, understand space but tend to fear the horrendous pressures of the planetary environment and are appalled at the notion of implosion. I was born and raised to age fifteen on Callisto, which is termed a planet (technically a moon of Jupiter), but it had no atmosphere, no threat of pressure. Then I joined the Navy, for another fifteen years. Thus my fear aligned with that of the spaceman. Vacuum I could handle; a good suit would protect against it. But pressure—simple holing at normal level would mean an increase to five bars, and that would stifle all Navy personnel, for true space suits were not constructed to withstand that. The pressure suits would, but my conditioned reaction did not quite accept that, and, of course, those seldom-used suits are not perfectly reliable. That was why we had had to seal ourselves in our cabins; they were rated at six bars and would save us from such pressure.
    But, if the bubble imploded, so would the cabins. It would take ten or more bars to implode the bubble, because it was spherical and sturdy—but when it happened, it would be virtually instant. One moment we would be alive and nervous; the next we would be crushed, more or less literally, to pulp. We were surely approaching the limit now. That notion insinuated itself right into my consciousness and knocked the props from under my courage, leaving me a coward.
    Then I thought of Megan, now alone in the next chamber, and was horrified for her as well. Even if we survived this ordeal, she would not be mine. She had left me for the soundest of all her reasons: the philosophical. She accepted the necessity of what was to be termed the Tyrancy but could not support it personally. So she had freed me to do what I had to do—and left me desolate. What the fear of implosion did to my physical courage, the knowledge of my loss of Megan did to my emotional courage.
    Shelia knew. She had invisible antennae that resonated to human distress, and she knew me as well as an executive secretary of fifteen years could. “Hope—here,” she said in the darkness.
    I got to my knees and leaned over her wheel and armrest. Her arms came up to enclose me, to draw my head to her bosom. She held me there and stroked my hair while I sobbed.
    “It had to be, it had to be...” she murmured over and over. Of course, she was right; this was a necessary pass. But a necessary thing is not necessarily a pleasant thing.
    Then there was illumination of a sort, and I lifted my head and looked at her face. “Helse,” I said.
    “I always come to you when you need me,” she replied.
    “You always do,” I agreed.
    Helse was my first love. She had been sixteen, I fifteen when we met, thirty-five years before. She had taught me love. She had died on the eve of our wedding, helping me survive. Death had changed her only in this: She had not aged from that moment. She was always sixteen, for me. Always lovely, always understanding. Always there for me, in the recess of reality.
    And I was always fifteen, for her. Always the innocent, loving her and grateful for her kindness.
    “If I am to die,” I said, “this is the way I would do it.”
    “It has to be,” she agreed.
    I got to my feet and reached my arms down around her and lifted her out of the chair, I set her on the bed, her head on the pillow, and gently, methodically stripped her of her clothing. My subsequent experience advised me that there were women more thoroughly endowed than Helse, and I had possessed more than one of them, but none was