The Voices of Heaven by Frederik Pohl Page A

amount. It was enough to screw up a whole planet if anything went wrong, so I made damn sure nothing did.
    There weren't any real problems in the fueling, except for Rannulf Enderman. I had reconciled myself, very easily, to the thought that I would never see the man again, but he showed up on the last shuttle and he wanted to see me. He chased around until he found where I was, then hailed me. "I'd like to talk to you, Barry."
    I gave him a suspicious look. "What about?"
    "About Alma," he said, looking somber and self-righteous. "Barry? Alma and I had a little talk. She's a good woman, you know. She wants to be a good mother. I think she ought to get married pretty soon, don't you? Her clock's ticking away, and if she's going to start a family there's no better time than now."
    For one nasty, in fact unpardonable, moment I wondered just how he and Alma had said good-bye, but I got that thought out of my head pretty fast. Still, I didn't like the idea of Rannulf giving me advice on whether I should marry his ex-girl. I started to tell him I was too busy, and then I changed my mind. I don't know what made me agree—maybe just good sportsmanship, the winner gracious to the loser—but I said gruffly, "All right, I'll come see you when I'm through."
    That didn't mean that I liked the man. I didn't. I especially didn't like his butting in, but what he said about Alma stuck in my mind because it was true. And besides, by then I'd actually made up my mind; as soon as I got back to the lunar surface I would find Alma and ask her to marry me.
    All that was a major decision. It filled my thoughts. Rannulf s request for a talk hardly entered my mind. In fact, I might have skipped my date with Rannulf entirely, except that when I was finished I had just missed one possible drop point and had plenty of time before the next one.
    So I went to the freezer chambers to look for him, and there he was.
    Most of the capsules were already occupied, because all the other volunteers had already been numbed and canned and were in the process of slowly cooling to the liquid-gas temperature that would keep them fresh for their arrival on Pava. Rannulf seemed to be the last one left out. He was hanging to a wall strap with one hand as he waited for me, gazing at a screen that showed the surface of the Moon as it rolled beneath us. His expression was mournful, almost as though he were sentimentally attached to that bleak and gloomy place.
    It was a little late, I thought, for Rannulf to be having second thoughts. I interrupted his reverie. "All right," I said. "What was it you wanted to tell me about Alma?"
    He sighed and turned toward me. "Have a drink," he said.
    "I don't much want a drink," I told him.
    "Sure you do," he said, taking two bulbs from a wall rack. "Call it a farewell toast. You're off duty now, aren't you?"
    I was. I did what he asked, not for any good reason, just because he'd already filled the bulbs and because I felt sorry for the poor wimp. When I had swallowed most of mine I gave him a get-on-with-it look. "I can't stay here forever," I mentioned.
    "I know. I appreciate your taking the time. The thing is, Barry," he said, swallowing the last of his drink, "until you came along Alma was my girl."
    "Yes?"
    "So if you weren't around," he said, "she probably would be again, don't you think?"
    It was around then that I realized the question wasn't entirely hypothetical, because it was around then that I began to feel so very sleepy. Too sleepy to ask him what he was talking about. Too sleepy, in fact, to do anything except go right off to sleep.
     
    I don't know what the little rat put in my drink. I don't remember being prepped, or being lifted into the capsule, or being frozen. The first thing I remember after that was waking up to the sound of Captain Garold Tscharka's angry voice. "Damn," he said. "One more thing gone wrong. What are you doing here, di Hoa?"
    When I saw him staring in bafflement down at me, and realized that what