UNDERESTIMATION

Written with Algis Budrys. Originally published in Rocket Stories, Sept. 1953, under the pseudonym “Alger Rome.”

RAM—E/M 3 lifted gravs from Flushing Spaceport and headed Marsward. When the last jet cut out, the girl staggered into the control room. The sound of her unsteady footsteps, together with her sick moan, spun Gerris back from the manual control board.

“No!”

“’Fraid so,” the girl said. She wiped a smear of blood away

from her nostrils and grinned at him.

Gerris cursed under his breath. “I suppose you know the law on stowaways?” he said, grimacing.

“Uh-huh. So either push me out the airlock or turn around and land me.” Despite the fact that her face was gray and her knees were obviously trembling, the grin widened into a challenge.

Gerris’s expression had nothing in it of either laughter or response. His mouth set itself in a narrow line.

“Obviously, you don’t know just exactly what kind of a fix you’re in,” he said. “Do you know where this ship’s headed?”

“Haven’t got the faintest idea, Handsome,” the girl said, leaning against a bulkhead. “I don’t care much, either. Anything’s better than the House of Correction. I wasn’t doing any picking and choosing when I hit the field last night, believe me.”

Gerris frowned. “This ship is officially designated as ‘Robot and/or Manual—Earth/Mars Vessel Number 3.’ It’s intended for robot operation at least ninety percent of the time. She’s not equipped with full manual controls. All I can do is duck away from a meteor, or make a few other minor course changes. What’s more, there’s no airlock. I can’t turn around, and I can’t push you out without wasting a shipful of air. Does that make you happy?”

“Sure does.”

For the first time, Gerris smiled—a tough, ironical twitch of his lips. “How much do you know about the setup on Mars?”

“Not a damn thing. Got a cigarette?”

“You have a talent for bypassing the significant and proceeding forcefully to the irrelevant, haven’t you?” Gerris threw her his pack.

“You wouldn’t say you’d ever seen me clean out a till,” the girl replied, flashing the same challenging grin.

In spite of himself, Gerris laughed. The girl broke into a laugh of her own, throwing her head back and parting her lips away from her teeth. Something about the self-confident way in which her hands rode her hips called to a yearning that should have been obscured by the thought of a wife and two children waiting in Marsdome. Perhaps because of this, Gerris’s laugh became a stern frown.

“Listen—”

“Marilyn.”

“Listen, Marilyn, you don’t seem to understand what you’ve gotten into.”

“Look, Handsome, I don’t care what I’ve gotten into. What counts is what I’m out of, and that I’m getting farther away from Earth every minute.” The wild, laughing light that never left her eyes completely, brightened again. “What’s more, on a ship with a very cute pilot. The situation bids fair to be one of the most pleasant in months.” She did not change her position against the bulkhead, but the effect was the same as if she moved over to him and run her hand down his cheek.

He coughed and shifted his weight. “I’ll have you know I’m married,” he said, conscious of his sham dignity. “Not only that, I’ve got two children. Moreover, I’m a meteorologist, and I’ve been one long enough to sublimate any wild urges into involved monographs on altocirrus cloud formations.”

Marilyn raised an eyebrow. “Maybe,” she said. “On the other hand, you just might be getting bored with it all.” She studied his face. “In fact—”

She moved up and kissed him with her mouth open and her arms tight. Gerris found himself looking at her short, copper-colored hair with surprisingly limpid eyes.

Marilyn moved her head until it rested against his shoulder. “Altocirrus clouds, huh?” she murmured. “Put that in your monograph and publish it.”

Gerris had not been kissed in that way for some years. He discovered that a violent reaction was taking place within him. He turned back to the controls with an abrupt twist of his body.

“Let’s cut that out right now,” he said harshly.

“Anything you say, Handsome,” Marilyn said, her tone of voice implying precisely the opposite. She blew smoke against the back of his head. “What’s your name, lover?” she asked.

“James Gerris.” He pushed his face against the binocular periscope eyepiece. His fingers were shaking.

“That James Gerris, huh? You are weather-controlling Mars, or something, aren’t you?”

“I’m drawing up a tentative plan for an experimental attempt on a local scale, if that’s what you mean, yes.”

“Well, I am in distinguished company.”

“You’re going to be in a lot more of it. In fact, you’re going to be extremely, close to it.” He was as much intrigued by the thought as he was apprehensive.

“How do you mean?”

“Just what do you know about conditions on Mars?” he asked.

“Damn little. In fact, all I know is that you people on the research staff live in a pressurized dome, and that the twenty adults and few-odd kids of you are all the life there is on Mars.”

Gerris twitched his mouth. “It doesn’t sound so bad, when you say it fast, that way. Actually, if you had any idea of what it’s like to live in a dome, you’d know how appalling it was.”

“How so?”

“The entire operation is strictly run on a shoestring. U of K’s a rich school, but even so, it’s terrifically expensive to maintain the dome. Do you have any idea of what it’s costing, just to keep an atmosphere in this ship, heat it, air-condition it, stock it with food, and run a course with no kinks in it a human being couldn’t stand, at an acceleration below the human critical level? It’s roughly double what robot operation costs. It takes three months to set up authorization for a human passenger.

“And that’s just an example. The dome itself is about as far removed from a luxury hotel as it can get. It’s split up into two lobes, with the pile in the center. One lobe is crammed full of labs. The other one has ten cubicles in it. Each couple, and their children if they have any, lives in one cubicle. Space is so limited that the larger families sleep in shifts.”

He turned around to see Marilyn’s reaction. She was displaying no sign of any emotion, or understanding.

“That’ doesn’t leave me much room, does it?” she said casually.

Gerris smiled grimly. “It leaves you no room. Every inch of space is taken up. We live like pigeons in a bank of coops.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll sleep in the ship.”

“No, you won’t. The supplies’ll be unloaded the minute we land,

our samples and reports will be stowed aboard, and the ship reset to automatic control. She’ll take off again in about six hours.”

“Rig me a shelter somewhere, then. I don’t care.”

“Rig you a shelter? Out of what—cornflakes boxes? We haven’t got any structural materials to spare, and the wind-storms will knock anything else flat. Besides, how’d you insulate it? Or are you planning to requisition some of our oxygen to keep a fire going at night? To say nothing of keeping a mask on all the time.”

This time, it seemed to penetrate.

“There must be someplace for me!” Marilyn said petulantly, grinding her cigarette out on the deck with an angry twist of her foot.

“Sure. Right on top of the pile.”

She pouted at him.

Gerris sighed. “Honey, you got yourself into this. All the vamping in the world isn’t going to change the fact that there is simply no room for you.” He shook his head in frustration. “Don’t worry about it, though. Once we land, twenty highly trained minds are going to have to drop everything else and devote themselves entirely to solving your problem for you.”

Marilyn’s expression brightened, and she raised her hand to push back a strand of hair.

“Sex appeal has nothing to do with it,” Gerris said.

“No?”

“No. It just so happens that we’d have to do the same even if you were a hundred and fifty years old and were on your fifth set of false teeth.” He cracked his knuckles savagely. “You see, woman, we can’t send you back for three months, at the soonest.”

“You can’t send me back, period. If you think you can, just try it.” Her blue eyes sparkled angrily.

“When we can, we will, even if it means all of us have to hold you down and strap you in. But before we do, we’ve got to get authorization to run a human-amenable course and passage. I told you that was a tough proposition.”

“Fine. The longer it takes, the better.”

“God! No wonder you landed in a reformatory! What a brain—or rather, lack of one!” Gerris clenched a fist and sighed in frustrated anger. “Can’t you understand the basic difficulty? There simply isn’t any place to put you! You can’t stay on the ship, you can’t stay in the dome, you can’t stay on the surface of Mars, and you can’t return to Earth.” He made an angry sound in his throat. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.”

Marilyn had had time to recover her shell of bravado. “I know,” she said.

“What?”

“I’ll marry one of the men.”

Gerris stared at her incredulously. Hadn’t she understood, when he described life in the dome? Probably not, he decided.

“You’ll have to arrange a divorce from his wife, first,” he said.

That one staggered the girl for only a minute. She cocked an eyebrow and grinned maliciously. “I might just do that.”

“It still wouldn’t solve the problem of finding room for you.”

“Hell, it wouldn’t. You’d have to figure out what to do with his ex-wife, though.” She smiled broadly, and looked Gerris over “I might consider raising the kids myself,” she said.

* * * *

Gerris spent a restless eight hours in the control chair while Marilyn slept in the single bunk. He would drop off to sleep for a few minutes, then wake up again, his brain churning.

Life on Mars had been hard, and presented a constant battle for survival. Working under those conditions was almost inconceivably difficult—far different from calculations and deductions arrived at in the sheltered quiet of an Earthside lab. Recaps and analyses of preliminary data, too, were more easily accomplished in a hidden office than in a cubicle apartment with two young children to furnish distraction.

All that, however, was in the line of duty. His skill and training were designed to overcome just such obstacles.

The problem of Marilyn was something else again. The girl was attractive—he stirred uneasily in the chair—and her impact on the male members of the dome staff would have behind it the combined shock of a new female face, after two to four years of contact with no strange women, and the friction which would undoubtedly be set off immediately between bemused husbands and jealous wives. Particularly if Marilyn actually did make room for herself by what, admittedly, was the best method he could think of, from a practical standpoint. If the girl did set her cap for one of the men… He felt a quiver of dread.

He banged his hand on the chair’s arm in frustration. No matter what happened, it was obvious that the staff would be completely disrupted as any sort of an effective research unit.

He cursed aloud, wondering if Marilyn had meant it when she implied that he was the object of her intentions. Gerris was not accustomed to kidding himself—he could very easily be attracted to the girl, without necessarily losing any affection for his wife. He wondered, however, if he could stand up before the concentrated attack Marilyn could undoubtedly institute, and stand up to it well enough to preserve his home.

He pushed himself out of the chair and took his wife’s picture from his wallet.

“I love my wife, but Oh You Kid!” Marilyn jeered from behind him.

He spun around, pushing the photograph into his pocket.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Marilyn laughed. “Okay, Simon Pure. Okay. But don’t forget to look at wifey’s snapshot once in a while, just to keep your morale up.”

“Go on back to your cabin.” Gerris was badly frightened. Marilyn apparently slept in her underwear.

She grinned lazily. “Sure. I just wondered what you were doing out here, all by yourself and lonely.”

“I was thinking of a way to get rid of you,” he snapped.

“Fat chance, Handsome.” She turned slowly and walked away. As she reached the companionway, she looked back over her shoulder. “But remember—never underestimate the power of a woman.” She stepped into the companionway and disappeared from sight.

* * * *

The last day of the passage finally came, and Gerris was a sleepless wreck. Whenever he dozed off, he was liable to be awakened by the feel of Marilyn’s mouth against his lips.

When they ate at the one food-unit on the ship, her thigh would press his. He was haunted by the devilish twinkle in her eyes.

When the ship completed turnover, he was grateful for the excuse it gave him to order the girl to strap herself into the bunk. He lashed himself into the control chair with a definite thankfulness that a few more hours would see them landed, with the problem at least partially off his hands.

Mars filled the periscope lens, rushed up, resolved from a red haze to a patch of dun ground blotted by vegetation, and finally became the blast-obscured surface of the ravaged landing area. The ship rocked into quiescence, and Gerris cut the switches with a sigh of relief.

He climbed down to Marilyn’s cabin and unstrapped her.

“Come on, Bombshell. Let’s get it over with.” He picked up his suitcase, handed Marilyn a spare mask, and slipped his own down over his nose and mouth. “Just breathe naturally,” he said, his voice rattling through the filter. “The valve’ll adjust to Mars pressure automatically.”

“Never fear, Handsome. I always breathe naturally. It’s you that pants once in a while.”

“Can’t you relax for a minute?” he said wearily. He could picture the look that was going to be on his wife’s face.

“Stowaway, huh?” Margaret would say, two lines appearing at the corners of her nostrils. “Ah—huh.”

Carson, the nominal chief of the dome’s staff, would clamp down hard on the pipe he couldn’t smoke outside, but jammed through his mask’s filter anyway. “Well, what’re you going to do about her?” he’d say, and then it would be up to Gerris to admit he didn’t know, and throw the problem to the entire staff. No matter what happened, he wouldn’t be very popular on Mars any more. He doubted if any of the women would ever speak to him again.

“Well, let’s go, lover,” Marilyn said. Her jawbones showed behind the mask’s edges as she grinned.

“All right.” He led her to the hatch, opened it, and dropped the folding ladder. They climbed down, into the cup formed by the semicircle of people who had come out of the dome when the ship landed. The scientists—male and female—stared at Marilyn as she stood there, enjoying the situation. Gerris could feel the awkward expression on his face.

His wife stepped forward.

“Hello, Madge,” he said.

“Hello.”

“I—”

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“Uh—sorry. Marilyn, this is Madge. My wife, Madge—Marilyn.”

Margaret took Marilyn’s hand. “How do you do?”

Marilyn said “How do you do?” Gerris noticed that some of the confidence in her voice was wavering.

“I didn’t know there was a new staff member coming in on the ship,” Margaret said.

“This—uh—that is, Marilyn isn’t exactly a staff member. She—well…” He explained the situation as rapidly as possible. Margaret wrinkled her brow. She looked over at Marilyn, who was posing prettily.

Margaret turned and took one of the other women by the arm. The woman—Carson’s wife—was looking from Marilyn to a slightly dazed Carson with a cryptic expression on her face. The two women moved away from the rest of the group for a moment, held a low-voiced consultation, and returned.

“It’s all fixed,” Margaret said brightly.

Gerris was astonished. “How? Where’re you going to put her?” he asked, knowing that merely finding a place for Marilyn to stay wasn’t solving more than half the problem.

“Phil Carson’s going to move into our cubicle with you. I’ll move in with June—they don’t have any children, thank God—and Marilyn moves in with us. One of us will have to sleep in the daytime, of course, but two of us will be awake—” he smiled meaningfully under her mask. “Marilyn, and either June or myself.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gerris said. “That’s it!” And it was. Until they got authorization to ship the girl back, she’d either be asleep or in the constant company of one of the women.

“Never underestimate the power of a woman,” he said in an awed voice. “I never thought of that!”

That fixes everything, thought happily. Things are fine.

He kept right on thinking so, until the first time he tried to kiss his wife.