Seas of Venus(41)

The sergeant's face split in a grin. "Hearty meals for the condemned, you mean, sir?" he said.

"Don't laugh, boyo," Dan called back through the closing door. "You're going too, you know."

"Indeed I am, sir," Britten said in a muffled voice. "You didn't think you could keep me away from an operation this bughouse crazy, did you?"

Britten sounded cheerful; Johnnie was scared.

Not scared of the jungle, exactly, though his view of their likelihood of success in reaching the harbor by the back way was nowhere near as sanguine as the one Uncle Dan had polished in Admiral Bergstrom's office. . . . And not scared about the risks involved in first capturing a dreadnought, then sailing away in it while pursued by at least three other battleships. Johnnie hadn't been able to think that far ahead.

He wasn't afraid the operation would fail: he was afraid it would fail because of him.

"Are you sure you're all right, John?" his uncle said.

"I don't want to mess up, Uncle Dan."

"Join the club," the older man replied; and again, there was very little humor in his smile.

The office was smaller than the Senator's—Commander Cooke had no need to impress anyone here. The walls were cream-colored, enlivened neither with real windows nor by holographic views like that of the living room.

The desk was double-sided. A light-pen lay in front of the identical consoles which faced one another; a similar pen was in its holder at the other station. Three visicubes aligned with the long axis of the slate-colored expanse were the only other ornamentation.

"Well, sit down," Dan said as he slid into one of the consoles. "I didn't really figure the Admiral would agree to fifty men—the second submarine doubles that aspect of the risk, after all—but I think thirty will be sufficient for what we need to do."

The senior officer's right hand played over the keypad while his left removed the pen from its holder. Columns of names and figures, the Blackhorse personnel roster, glowed in the air between them. The holograms shifted as they began to sort themselves according to skills and efficiency ratings.

Johnnie was staring at the visicubes.

"You won't know the men, of course," Dan said, "but—"

He looked at his nephew and paused.

"I'm sorry," Johnnie blurted in embarrassment, raising his eyes.

"Oh, they're worth looking at, lad," his uncle said with an honest laugh.

Each cube held the image of a different woman: a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette with white skin and almond eyes. The blonde was a statuesque beauty; the redhead was heavier than some men's taste, though Titian would have painted her as Venus; and the brunette was bone-thin.

Their expressions were equally alluring, even frozen in the visicubes.

"Go ahead, touch them," Dan said.

"Are they all your . . ."

"Friends?"

"Wives, I meant," Johnnie said.

His index finger tapped the touch-sensitive patch at the bottom of the first cube. The blonde's face suddenly brightened in a smile. Her voice, lilting despite the limits of the reproduction medium, said, "Hello, Dan. I'm really looking forward to seeing you again, so don't do anything foolish. All right?"

The image blew a kiss.

"Companions, yes," his uncle agreed without expression.

Johnnie touched the second cube, as much as anything so that he had something to look at instead of the older man. "Do they . . . know about each other?"

"Dan," said the plump redhead, "You don't want to hear how much I love you . . . but when you come home, I'll make you as happy as a woman can make a man."

"They'd almost have to, wouldn't they, lad?" Dan said coolly. "I don't volunteer any information, and they don't ask me. But sure, I assume they know, all three of them."

The dark-haired woman lifted an eyebrow, then adjusted the scooped neckline of her violet blouse. She grinned, but the image did not speak.

"Don't they care?" Johnnie said. He looked up. "Don't they care?"

"Johnnie," said his uncle, "life isn't simple. I don't put any restrictions on them that I wouldn't keep myself. They find that acceptable, I suppose, or they'd find someone else."

He licked his dry lips. "But that's me, and them. We're individuals. And my sister—your mother—is an individual too, living her own sort of life. With men and women, there aren't certainties for everybody. Not the way your father thought there ought to be; and not the way I live my life, either."

Dan reached out and squeezed the younger man's hand against the desktop.

"Sorry," Johnnie said. He twisted his hand palm-up and returned the grip.

Uncle Dan grinned impishly. "These cubes can be programmed to take a double message, you know?" he said. "And keyed to a particular fingerprint as to which they play."