«Charlie! Where you going?»
Members of the rocket crew, passing, called.
Charles Willis did not answer.
He took the vacuum tube down through the friendly humming bowels of the spaceship. He fell, thinking: This is the grand hour.
«Chuck! Where travelling?» someone called.
To meet someone dead but alive, cold but warm, forever untouchable but reaching out somehow to touch.
«Idiot! Fool!»
The voice echoed. He smiled.
Then he saw Clive, his best friend, drifting up in the opposite chute. He averted his gaze, but Clive sang out through his seashell ear-pack radio:
«I want to see you!»
«Later!» Willis said.
«I know where you're going. Stupid!»
And Clive was gone up away while Willis fell softly down, his hands trembling.
His boots touched surface. On the instant he suffered renewed delight.
He walked down through the hidden machineries of the rocket. Lord, he thought, crazy. Here we are one hundred days gone away from the Earth in Space, and, this very hour, most of the crew, in fever, dialing their aphrodisiac animatronic devices that touched and hummed to them in their shut clamshell beds. While, what do I do? he thought. This.
He moved to peer into a small storage pit.
There, in an eternal dusk, sat the old man.
«Sir,» he said, and waited.
«Shaw,» he whispered. «Oh, Mr.George Bernard Shaw.»
The old man's eyes sprang wide as if he had swallowed an Idea.
He seized his bony knees and gave a sharp cry of laughter.
«By God, I do accept it all!»
«Accept what, Mr.Shaw?»
Mr.Shaw flashed his bright blue gaze upon Charles Willis.
«The Universe! It thinks, therefore I am! So I had best accept, eh? Sit.»
Willis sat in the shadowed areaway, clasping his knees and his own warm delight with being here again.
«Shall I read your mind, young Willis, and tell you what you've been up to since last we conversed?»
«Can you read minds, Mr.Shaw?»
«No, thank God. Wouldn't it be awful if I were not only the cuneiform-tablet robot of George Bernard Shaw, but could also scan your head-bumps and spell your dreams? Unbearable.»
«You already are, Mr.Shaw.»
«Touche. Well, now.» The old man raked his reddish beard with his thin fingers, then poked Willis gently in the ribs. «How is it you are the only one aboard this starship who ever visits me?»
«Well, sir, you see ―»
The young man's cheeks burnt themselves to full blossom.
«Ah, yes, I do see,» said Shaw. «Up through the honeycomb of the ship, all the happy male bees in their hives with their syrupy wind-up soft-singing nimble-nibbling toys, their bright female puppets.»
«Mostly dumb.»
«Ah, well. It was not always thus. On my last trip the Captain wished to play Scrabble using only names of characters, concepts and ideas from my plays. Now, strange boy, why do you squat here with this hideous old ego? Have you no need for that soft and gentle company abovestairs?»
«It's a long journey, Mr.Shaw, two years out beyond
Pluto and back. Plenty of time for abovestairs company. Never enough for this. I have the dreams of a goat but the
genetics of a saint.»
«Well said!» The old man sprang lightly to his feet and paced about, pointing his beard now toward Alpha Centauri, now toward the nebula in Orion.
«How runs our menu today, Willis? Shall I preface Saint Joan for you? Or…?»
«Chuck…?»
Willis's head jerked. His seashell radio whispered in his ear. «Willis! Clive calling. You're late for dinner. I know where you are. I'm coming down. Chuck ―»
Willis thumped his ear. The voice cut off.
«Quick, Mr.Shaw! Can you-well-run?»
«Can Icarus fall from the sun? Jump! I shall pace you with these spindly cricket legs!»
They ran.
Taking the corkscrew staircase instead of the air-tube, they looked back from the top platform in time to see dive's shadow dart into that tomb where Shaw had died but to wake again.
«Willis!» cried his voice.