VIII

Oh, fuck me, Jerry thought. Since he was breathing through the mouthpiece, he couldn’t say the words out loud, but he thought them at the top of his lungs. He had no idea whether the door had slid aside, irised open, or simply disappeared. Whatever had happened, the obstruction wasn’t there anymore.

He also realized he hadn’t been steamed, broiled, or turned into a Popsicle. He was damn glad he hadn’t, not that he could have done anything about it if he had. If viruses were penetrating his suit and trying to infect him with the Alien Itch, he couldn’t do anything about that, either.

He peered down the entranceway. It looked … dark and blurry. Maybe he should have thought about contact lenses before he signed up for this mad jaunt. Maybe he shouldn’t have signed up to begin with.

But then somebody else would be looking down this tube. Or maybe the CIA would have got someone who didn’t have The Lord of the Rings infused in him the way hot water had Lipton’s. In that case, Humpty Dumpty might still be a closed book.

Steve came up, eyes wide and staring behind his mask. He held up his scratch pad. How did you do that? he’d written.

Clean living and no fried food, Jerry answered. Aboard the Glomar Explorer, at least, the second half of that was bound to be a lie.

Do we go inside? Steve asked. He didn’t try to give orders. Jerry had easily done what he must have thought hard or impossible. To Steve, that had to mean Jerry knew what he was up to and deserved to decide things.

It’d be nice if that were true, Jerry thought. He’d tried it mostly because it was quick, simple, and nondestructive. When it actually worked … He still felt dazed. Too much was happening too fast.

But the answer wouldn’t wait. I guess we do, he wrote. He showed Steve the paper, then tore it off, folded it, and stuck it in a pocket. These conversations were supposed to be preserved for history, assuming history gave a damn about contemporary maundering.

Gulping and hoping like hell he didn’t tear the protective suit, he scrambled up into the airlock, if that was what it was. As soon as he did, the inner walls in the corridor—all curved and rounded, not with hard, human-style right angles—started to glow softly. Humpty Dumpty sensed it had company. That was beautiful and scary at the same time.

Jerry turned around and held out a hand to help Steve in. The man from the RAND Corporation wasn’t so young anymore and might not be up to climbing into things. Latex met latex as Stephen Dole grabbed hold of him and scrambled into the spaceship, too.