"And we get moving a couple days after that?"
"If all the tests show positive, A.J." Hathaway's grin came back. "And if the cops don't arrive to haul you away for assault and battery."
A.J. flushed again. "Hey, look, the guy practically shoved his camera into Helen's soup. Goddammit—"
He broke off. Jackie Secord had entered the chamber.
She was an arresting sight. Partly because she was floating straight at them, her face leading the way; partly because she was oriented at a ninety-degree angle; but, mostly, because of her grin. She reminded Helen of a shark, nearing its prey.
Jackie was holding something in her hand, which she brought forward and extended toward A.J.
"Oh, puh-leeeeeeze, Mr. Baker, can I have your autograph?"
Helen looked down at the thing and burst into laughter. It was a copy of the front page of the tabloid in question. Half of it was a huge photograph of A.J., looking like an enraged skinny gorilla and glaring at the camera through the shattered window of a restaurant.
A.J. in a Fury!
His Love Nest With Helen Exposed!
"At least they finally dropped the headlines about you," she chortled.
Jackie rolled her eyes. "Thank God! Bad enough when I was trying to convince the people who knew me that A.J. wasn't my boyfriend. Convincing half the world, with headlines like Jackie Green-eyed With Jealousy . . ."
She shook her head. "I think they had me on the brink of suicide for eight months straight. And, A.J., I still want your autograph."
"I don't have a pen," he grumbled. "And that's a terrible picture of me, anyway."
"I think it's pretty good, myself," Hathaway chimed in. He ignored A.J.'s glare and waved his hand toward the lock Jackie had come through. "But now—the tour!"
Having had her joke, Jackie folded up the copy and stuffed it into a pocket of her jumpsuit. She then added her handwave to Ken's. "You first, A.J."
As Helen followed him, she and Jackie exchanged a smile.
"Who woulda guessed, huh?" Jackie asked. "Bless you, Helen, for being the flypaper for the rest of us."
I never would have guessed, that's for sure, Helen mused. To her astonishment, in the year and a half since Glendale's press conference had made the Phobos expedition front page news, the crew of the Nike had become as famous as movie or rock stars. And—alas— it hadn't taken the tabloids more than a month to figure out that A.J. and Helen were the ideal target for their attentions.
A.J. claimed that was because of Helen's good looks. Helen herself thought that only accounted for—at most—two percent of the paparazzi's interest. Measured by any standard criteria, both Jackie Secord and Madeline Fathom were better-looking than Helen. Not to mention much younger.
No, most of the interest was in A.J. More precisely, the fact that A.J. could be goaded into saying or doing something publicly that made splendid tabloid headlines. Which—
He had. Many times.
But it was all over now, thankfully. Whether or not the Nike was a fast horse out of Dodge, it was for sure and certain a refuge from the tabloids. And would be, for quite a long time.
So, Helen put aside all thoughts of smashed windows—not to mention an awkward photo of herself wearing, well, not much of anything—and concentrated on Ken's guided tour.
Hathaway was leading them down a long corridor, floating from handhold to handhold with a grace that Helen envied. She hoped she'd be able to get the hang of that soon. A.J. wasn't as good as Hathaway, but definitely better than she was.
"Here you're seeing some generic hallway," Hathaway said. "The habitat ring is made up of sixty sections a bit less than fifteen meters long, about ten meters thick, and thirty meters across. These sections come in two flavors: twenty of them have viewing areas, ports, on them—although they can be sealed off and shielded from behind— and the other forty have no such provisions. The sections all interlock together firmly and are connected to the main body by a sort of bicycle-spoke arrangement. At intervals there are also direct corridors connecting us to the main body."
It was a measure of A.J.'s excitement that he didn't make a single sarcastic remark to the effect that Hathaway was telling them stuff they already knew perfectly well. By now, Helen could have drawn a diagram of most sections of the ship, from memory alone. A.J. could probably draw a diagram and a schematic of the electrical system.
Somehow it didn't matter. Seeing the huge ship in person was a completely different experience than studying it in images and blueprints.
Hathaway snagged a handhold and brought himself to a halt before a door. Expertly, he evaded Helen and A.J. as they failed to grab other handholds and had to stop themselves some distance farther along and return.