The Sam Gunn Omnibus

Diamond Sam

“A thief,” said Grigori Aleksandrovich Prokov. “A thief and a blackmailer”

He said it flatly, without emotion, the way a man might observe that the sky is blue or that grass is green. A fact of life. He said it in excellent English, marred only slightly by the faint trace of a Russian accent.

Jade wrinkled her nose slightly. There was neither blue sky nor green grass here in the Leonov Center for Retired Heroes of the Russian Federation, although there was a distinctly earthy odor to the place.

“Sam Gunn,” Prokov muttered. His voice seemed weak, almost quavering. The weakening voice of a dying old man. Then he gave a disdainful snort. “Not even the other capitalists liked him!”

They were sitting on a bench made of native lunar stone near the edge of the surface dome, as far away from the yawning entrance to the underground retirement center as possible. To Jade, that dark entrance looked like the opening of a crypt.

The floor of the dome was bare lunar rock that had been glazed by plasma torches and smoothed to a glassy finish. She wondered how many elderly Heroes of the Russian Federation slipped and broke their necks. Was that their government’s ultimate retirement benefit?

The wide curving window in front of the bench looked out on absolute desolation: the barren expanse of the Ocean of Storms, a pockmarked undulating surface without a sign of life as far as the eye could see. Nothing but rocks and bare lunar regolith broiling in the harsh sunlight. The sky remained black, though, and above the strangely close horizon hung the tantalizing blue and white-streaked globe of Earth, a lonely haven of color and life in the stark cold darkness of space.

For the tenth time in the past ten minutes Jade fumbled with the heater control of her electrified jumpsuit. She felt the chill of that merciless vacuum seeping through the tinted glassteel of the big window. She strained her ears for the telltale hiss of an air leak. There were rumors that maintenance at the Leonov Center was far from top-rate.

Prokov seemed impervious to the cold. Or perhaps, rather, he was so accustomed to it that he never noticed it anymore. He was very old, his face sunken in like a rotting Jack-o’-lantern, wrinkled even across his utterly bald pate. The salmon-pink coveralls he wore seemed brand new, as if he had put them on just for this visit from a stranger. Or had the managers of the Center insisted that he wear new clothes whenever a visitor called? Whichever, she saw that the outfit was at least a full size too big for the man. He seemed to be shrinking, withering away before her eyes.

But his eyes glittered at her balefully. “Why do you ask about Sam Gunn? I was given to understand that you were only a student doing a thesis on the history of early space flight.”

“That was a bit of a white lie,” Jade said, trying to keep the tremble of fear out of her voice. “I—I’m actually trying to do a biography of Sam Gunn.”

“That despicable money-grubber,” Prokov muttered.

“Would you help me? Please?”

“Why should I?” the old man snapped.

Jade made a little shrug.

“I have never spoken to anyone about Sam Gunn. Not in more than thirty years.”

“I know,” Jade said.

Frowning, Prokov examined her intently. A little elf, he thought. A child-woman in a pale green jumpsuit. How frightened she looks! Such beautiful red hair. Such entrancing green eyes.

“Ah,” he sighed. “If I were a younger man …”

Jade smiled kindly at him. “You were a hero then, weren’t you? A cosmonaut and a Hero of the Russian Federation.”

His eyes glimmered with distant memories.

“Sam Gunn,” he repeated. “Thief. Liar. Warmonger. He almost caused World War III, did you know that?”

“No!” said Jade, truly surprised. She checked the recorder in her belt buckle and slid a few centimeters closer to the old man, to make certain that the miniaturized device did not miss any of his words.

There was hardly any other noise in the big, dark, gloomy dome. Far off in the shadows sat a couple of other old people, as still as mummies, as if frozen by time and the indifference that comes from having oudived everyone you loved.

“A nuclear holocaust, that’s what your Sam Gunn would have started. If not for me” Prokov tapped the folds of cloth that covered his sunken chest, “the whole world might have gone up in radioactive smoke thirty years ago.”

“I never knew,” said Jade.

Without any further encouragement Prokov began to speak in his whispery trembling voice.

You must realize that we were then in the grip of what the media journalists now call the Neo-Cold War. When the old Soviet Union broke up, back in the last century, Russia nearly disappeared in chaos and anarchy. But new leaders arose, strong and determined to bring Russia back to its rightful position as one of the world’s leading powers. We were proud to be part of that rebirth of Russian strength and courage. I was proud to be part of it myself.

I was commander of Mir 5, the largest Russian space station ever. Not like that political compromise, the International Space Station. Mir 5 was Russian, entirely Russian.

My rank was full colonel. My crew had been in space for 638 days and it was my goal to make it two full years—730 days. It would be a new record, fourteen men in orbit for two full years. I would be picked to command the Mars mission if I could get my men to the two-year mark. A big if.

Sam Gunn, as you know, was an American astronaut at that time. Officially he was a crew member of the NASA space station Freedom. Secretly he worked for the CIA, I am certain. No other explanation fits the facts.

You must understand that despite all the comforts that Russian technology could provide, life aboard Mir 5 was—well, spartan. We worked in shifts and slept in hot beds. You know, when one man finished his sleep shift he got out of his zipper bag and a man who had just finished his work shift would get into the bag to sleep. Sixteen hours of work, eight of sleep. Four bunks for twelve crewmen. It was all strictly controlled by ground command.

Naturally, as colonel in command I had my own bunk and my own private cubicle. This was not a deviation from comradely equality; it was necessary and all the crew recognized that fact. My political officer had his own private cubicle as well.

Believe me, after the first eighteen months of living under such stringencies life became very tense inside Mir 5. Fourteen men cooped up inside a set of aluminum cans with nothing but work, no way to relieve their tedium, forced to exercise when there were no other tasks to do—the tension was becoming dangerously high. Sam must have known that. I was told that the CIA employed thousands of psychologists in those days.

His first visit to our station was made to look like an accident. He waited until I was asleep to call us.

My second-in-command, a thickheaded technician from Omsk named Korolev, shook me awake none too gently.

“Sir!” he said, pummeling my zippered bag. “There’s an American asking us for help!”

It was like being the toothpaste in a tube while some big oaf tries to squeeze you out.

“An Ameri—Stop that! I’m awake! Get your hands off me!”

Fortunately, I slept in my coveralls. I simply unzippered the bag and followed Korolev toward the command center. He was a bulky fellow, a wrestler back at home and a decent electronics technician up here. But he had been made second-in-command by seniority only. His brain was not swift enough for such responsibilities.

The station was composed of nine modules—nine aluminum cylinders joined together by airlocks. It was all under zero gravity. The Americans had not even started to build their fancy rotating stations yet.

We floated through the hatch of the command center, where four more of my men were hovering by the communications console. It was cramped and hot; six men in the center were at least two too many.

I immediately heard why they had awakened me.

“Hey, are you guys gonna help me out or let me die?” a sharp-edged voice was rasping on our radio receiver. “I got a dead friggin’ OTV here and I’m gonna drift right past you and out into the Van Allen Belt and fry my cojones if you don’t come and get me.”

That was my introduction to Sam Gunn.

Zworkin, my political officer, was already in contact with ground control, reporting on the incident. On my own authority—and citing the reciprocal rescue treaty that had been in effect for many decades—I sent one of our orbital transfer vehicles with two of my best men to rescue the American.

His vehicle’s rocket propellant line had ruptured, with the same effect as if your automobile fuel line had split apart. His rocket engine died and he was drifting without propulsion power.

“Goddamn cheap Hong Kong parts.” Sam kept up a running monologue all through our rescue flight. “Bad enough we gotta fly birds built by the lowest goddamn bidders, but now they’re buying parts from friggin’ toy manufacturers! Whole goddamn vehicle works like something put together from a Mattel kit by a brain-damaged chimpanzee. Those mother-humpers in Washington don’t give a shit whose neck they put on the mother-humpin’ line as long as it ain’t theirs.”

And so on, through the entire three hours it took for us to send out our transfer vehicle, take him aboard it, and bring him safely to the station.

Once he came through the airlock and actually set foot inside Mir 5 his tone changed. I should say that “set foot” is a euphemism. We were all weightless, and Sam floated into the docking chamber, turned himself a full three-hundred-sixty degrees around, and grinned at us.

All fourteen of us had crowded into the docking chamber to see him. This was the most excitement we had had since Boris Malenovsky’s diarrhea, six months earlier.

“Hey!” said Sam. “You guys are as short as me!”

No word of thanks. No formal greetings or offers of international friendship. His first words upon being rescued dealt with our heights.

He was no taller than my own 160 centimeters, although he claimed 165. He pushed himself next to Korolev, the biggest man of our crew, who stood almost 173 centimeters, according to the medical files. Naturally, under zero-gravity conditions Korolev—and all of us—had grown an extra two or three centimeters.

“I’m just about as tall as you are!” Sam exulted.

He flitted from one member of our crew to another comparing heights. It was difficult to make an accurate measurement because he kept bobbing like a floating cork, thanks to the zero gravity. In other words, he cheated. I should have recognized this as the key to his character immediately. Unfortunately, I did not.

Neither did Zworkin, although he later claimed that he knew all along that Sam was a spy.

All in all, Sam was not unpleasant. He was friendly. He was noisy. I remember thinking, in those first few moments he was aboard our station, that it was like having a pet monkey visit us. Amusing. Diverting. He made us laugh, which was something we had not done in many weeks.

Sam’s face was almost handsome, but not quite. His lips were a bit too thin and his jaw a little too round. His eyes were bright and glowing like a fanatic’s. His hair bristled like a thicket of wires, brownish red. His tongue was never still.

Most of my crew understood English well enough so that Sam had little trouble expressing himself to us. Which he did incessantly. Sam kept up a constant chatter about the shoddy construction of his orbital transfer vehicle, the solid workmanship of our station, the lack of aesthetics in spacecraft design, the tyranny of ground controllers who forbade alcoholic beverages aboard space stations, this, that and the other. He even managed to say a few words that sounded almost like gratitude.

“I guess giving you guys a chance to save my neck makes a nice break in the routine for you, huh? Not much else exciting going on around here, is there?”

He talked so much and so fast that it never occurred to any of us, not even to Zworkin, to ask why he had been flying so near to us. As far as I knew, there were no Western satellites in orbits this close to our station. Or there should not have been.

Next to his machine-gun dialogue the thing that impressed my men most about this American astronaut was his uniform. Like ours, it was basically a one-piece coverall, quite utilitarian. Like us, he bore a name patch sewn over his left chest pocket. There the similarities ended.

Sam’s coveralls were festooned with all sorts of fancy patches and buttons. Not merely one shoulder patch with his mission insignia. He had patches and insignia running down both sleeves and across his torso, front and back, like the tattooed man in the circus. Dragons, comic-book rocket ships, silhouettes of naked women, buttons that bore pictures of video stars, strange symbols and slogans that made no sense to me, such as “Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life down here” and “King Kong died for our sins.”

Finally I ordered my men back to their duties and told Sam to accompany me to the control center.

Zworkin objected. “It is not wise to allow him to see the control center,” he said in Russian.

“Would you prefer,” I countered, “that he be allowed to roam through the laboratories? Or perhaps the laser module?”

Most of my own crew was not allowed to enter the laser module. Only men with specific military clearance were permitted there. And most of the laboratories, you see, were testing systems that would one day be the heart of our Red Shield antimissile system. Even the diamond manufacturing experiment was a Red Shield program, according to my mission orders.

Zworkin did not reply to my question. He merely stared at me sullenly. He had a sallow, pinched face that was blemished with acne—unusual for a man of his age. The crew joked behind his back that he was still a virgin.

“The visitor stays with me, Nikolai Nikolaivich,” I told him. “Where I can watch him.”

Unfortunately, I had to listen to Sam as well as watch him.

I ordered my communications technician to contact the NASA space station and allow Sam to tell them what had happened. Meanwhile Zworkin reported again to ground control. It was not a simple matter to transfer Sam back to the NASA station. First we had to apprise ground control of the situation, and they had to inform Moscow, where the American embassy and the International Astronautics Commission were duly briefed. Hours dragged by and our work schedule became hopelessly snarled.

I must admit, however, that Sam was a good guest. He handed out trinkets that he fished from the deep pockets of his coveralls. A miniature penknife to one of the men who had rescued him. A pocket computer to the other, programmed to play a dozen different games when it was connected to a display screen. A small flat tin of rock candy. A Russian-English dictionary the size of your thumb.

That dictionary should have alerted my suspicions. But I confess that I was more concerned with getting this noisy intrusion off my station and back where he belonged.

Sam stayed a day. Two days. Teleconferences crackled between Washington and Moscow, Moscow and Geneva, Washington and Geneva, ground control to our station, our station to the NASA station. Meanwhile Sam had made himself at home and even started to learn how to tell jokes in Russian. He was particularly interested in dirty jokes, of course, being the kind of man he was. He began to peel off some of the patches and buttons that adorned his coveralls and hand them out as presents. My crewmen especially lusted after the pictures of beautiful video stars.

He had taken over the galley, where he was teaching my men how to play dice in zero gravity, when I at last received permission to send him back to the American station. Not an instant too soon, I thought.

Still, dear old Mir 5 became suddenly very quiet and dreary once we had packed him off in one of our own reliable transfer craft. We returned to our tedious tasks and the damnable exercise machines. The men growled and sulked at each other. Months of boredom and hard work stretched ahead of us. I could feel the tension pulling at my crew. I felt it myself.

But not for long.

Less than a week later Korolev again rousted me from my zipper bunk.

“He’s back! The American!”

This time Sam did not pretend to need an emergency rescue. He had flown an orbital transfer vehicle to our station and matched orbit. His OTV was hovering a few hundred meters alongside us.

“Permission to come aboard?” His voice was unmistakable. “Unofficially?”

I glanced at Zworkin, who was of course right beside me in the command center. Strangely, Nikolai Nikolaivich nodded. Nothing is unofficial with him, I knew. Yet he did not object to the American making an “unofficial” visit.

I went to the docking chamber while Sam floated over to us. The airlock of his craft would not fit our docking mechanism, so he went EVA in his pressure suit and jetted across to us using his backpack maneuvering unit.

“I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d drop by for a minute,” Sam wisecracked once he got through our airlock and slid up the visor of his helmet.

“Why are you in this area?” Zworkin asked, eyes slitted in his pimpled face.

“To observe your laser tests,” replied Sam, grinning. “You guys don’t think our intelligence people don’t know what you’re up to, do you?”

“We are not testing lasers!”

“Not today, I know. Don’t worry about it, Ivan, I’m not spying on you, for chrissakes.”

“My name is not Ivan!”

“I just came over to thank you guys for saving my ass.” Sam turned slightly, his entire body pivoting weightlessly toward me. He reached into the pouches on the legs of his suit. “A couple of small tokens of my gratitude.”

He pulled out two small plastic jewel cases and handed them to me. Videodiscs.

“Latest Hollywood releases,” Sam explained. “With my thanks.”

In a few minutes he was gone. Zworkin insisted on looking at the videos before anyone else could see them. “Probably capitalist propaganda,” he grumbled.

I insisted on seeing them with him. I was not going to let him keep them all for himself.

One of the videos was the very popular film, Rocky XVIII, in which the geriatric former prizefighter is rejuvenated and gets out of his wheelchair to defeat a nine-foot-tall robot for the heavyweight championship of the solar system.

“Disgusting,” spat Zworkin.

“But it will be good to show the crew how low the capitalists sink in their pursuit of money,” I said.

He gave me a sour look but did not argue.

The second video was a rock musical that featured decadent music at extreme decibel levels, decadent youths wearing outlandish clothes and weird hairdos, and decadent young women wearing hardly any clothes at all. Their gyrations were especially disturbing, no matter from which point of view you looked at them.

“Definitely not for the crew to see,” said Zworkin. None of us ever saw that video again. He kept it. But now and then I heard the music, faintly, from his private cubicle during the shifts when he was supposed to be sleeping. Mysteriously, his acne began to clear up.

Almost two weeks afterward Sam popped up again. Again he asked permission to come aboard, claiming this time he was on a routine inspection mission of a commsat in geosynchronous orbit and had planned his return to the NASA station to take him close to us. He was a remarkable pilot, that much I must admit.

“Got a couple more videos for you,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

Zworkin immediately okayed his visit. The rest of my crew, who had cheered the rejuvenated Rocky in his proletarian struggle against the stainless-steel symbol of western imperialism (as we saw it), welcomed him aboard.

Sam stayed for a couple of hours. We fed him a meal of borscht, soysteak and ice cream. With plenty of hot tea.

“That’s the best ice cream I’ve ever had!” Sam told me as we made our weightless way from the galley back to the docking chamber, where he had left his pressure suit.

“We get fresh supplies every week,” I said. “Our only luxury.”

“I never knew you guys had such great ice cream.” He was really marveling over it.

“Moscow is famous for its ice cream,” I replied.

With a shake of his head that made his whole body sway slightly, Sam admitted, “Boy, we got nothing like that back at the NASA station.”

“Would you like to bring some back to your station?” I asked. Innocent fool that I am, I did not realize that he had maneuvered me into making the offer.

“Gee, yeah,” he said, like a little boy.

I had one of the men pack him a container of ice cream while he struggled into his pressure suit. Zworkin was off screening the two new videos Sam had brought, so I did not bother him with the political question of offering a gift in return for Sam’s gift.

As he put his helmet over his head, Sam said to me in a low voice, “Each of those videos is a double feature.”

“A what?”

Leaning close to me, so that the technician in charge of the docking airlock could not hear, he whispered, “Play the disks at half speed and you’ll see another whole video. But you look at them yourself first. Don’t let that sourball of a political officer see it or he’ll confiscate them both.”

I felt puzzled, and my face must have shown it. Sam merely grinned, patted me on the shoulder and said, “Thanks for the ice cream.”

Then he left.

It took a bit of ingenuity to figure out how to play the disks at half speed. It took even more cleverness to arrange to look at them in private, without Zworkin or any of the other crew members hanging over my shoulders. But I did it.

The “second feature” on each of the tapes was pornographic filth. Disgusting sexual acrobatics featuring beautiful women with large breasts and apparently insatiable appetites. I watched the degrading spectacles several times, despite stern warnings from my conscience. If I had been cursed with acne these videos would undoubtedly have solved the problem overnight. Especially the one with the trapeze.

For the first time since I had been a teenager buying contraband blue jeans I faced a moral dilemma. Should I tell Zworkin about these secret pornographic films? He had seen only the normal, “regular” features on each tape: an ancient John Wayne western and a brand-new comedy about a computer that takes over Wall Street.

In my own defense I say only that I was thinking of the good of my crew when I made my decision. The men had been in orbit for nearly 650 days with almost two full months to go before we could return to our loved ones. The pornographic films might help them to bear their loneliness and perform better at their tasks, I reasoned.

But only if Zworkin did not know about them.

I decided to chance it. One by one I let the crew in on the little secret.

Morale improved six hundred percent. Performance and productivity rose equally. The men smiled and laughed a lot more. I told myself it was just as much because they were pulling one over on the puritanical Zworkin as because they were watching the buxom Oral Roberta and her insatiable girlfriend Electric (AC/DC) Edna.

Sam returned twice more, swapping videos for ice cream. He was our friend. He apparently had an inexhaustible supply of videos, each of them a “double feature.” While Zworkin spent the next several weeks happily watching the regular features on each disk and perspiring every time he saw a girl in a bikini, the rest of watched the erotic adventures of airline stewardesses, movie starlets, models, housewife-hookers, and other assorted and sordid specimens of female depravity.

The days flew by with each man counting the hours until Sam showed up with another few videos. We stopped eating ice cream so that we would have plenty to give him in return.

Then Sam sprang his trap on us. On me.

“Listen,” he said as he was suiting up in the docking chamber, preparing to leave, “next time, how about sticking a couple of those diamonds you’re making into the ice cream.”

I flinched with surprise and automatically looked over my shoulder at the technician standing by to operate the airlock. He was busy admiring the four new videocassettes Sam had brought, wondering what was in them as he studied their labels.

“What are you talking about?” I meant to say it out loud but it came out as a whispered croak.

Sam flashed a cocky grin at me. “Come on, everybody knows you guys are making gem-quality diamonds out of methane gas in your zero-gee facility. Pump a little extra methane in and make me a couple to sell Earthside. I’ll split the profits with you fifty-fifty.”

“Impossible,” I snapped. Softly.

His smile became shrewd. “Look, Greg old pal, I’m not asking for any military secrets. Just a couple of stones I can peddle back on Earth. We can both make a nice wad of money.”

“The diamonds we manufacture are not of gemstone quality,” I lied.

“Let my friends on Forty-seventh Street decide what quality they are,” Sam whispered.

“No.”

He puffed out a sad sigh. “This has nothing to do with politics, Greg. It’s business. Capitalism.”

I shook my head hard enough to sway my entire body.

Sam seemed to accept defeat. “Okay. It’s a shame, though. Hell, even your leaders in the Kremlin are making money selling their biographies to western publishers. Capitalism is swooping in on you.”

I said nothing.

He pulled the helmet over his head, fastened the neck seal. But before sliding down his visor he asked, quite casually, “What happens if Zworkin finds out what’s on the videos you guys have been watching?”

My face went red. I could feel the heat flaming my cheeks.

“Just a couple of little diamonds, pal. A couple of carats. That’s not so much to ask for, is it?”

He went through the airlock and jetted back to his own craft. I would have gladly throttled him at that moment.

Now I had a real dilemma on my hands. Give in to Sam’s blackmail or face Zworkin and the authorities back on the ground. It would not only be me who would be in trouble, but my entire crew. They did not deserve to suffer because of my bad decisions, but they would. We would all spend the rest of our lives shoveling cow manure in Siberia or running mining machines on the Moon.

I had been corrupted and I knew it. Oh, I had the best of motives, the loftiest of intentions. But how would they appear next to the fact that I had allowed my crew to watch disgusting pornographic films provided by a capitalist agent of the CIA? Corruption, pure and simple. I would be lucky to be sentenced to Siberia.

I gave in to Sam’s demands. I told myself it was for the sake of my crew, but it was to save my own neck, and to save my dear family from disgrace. I had the technicians make three extra small diamonds and embedded them in the ice cream when Sam made his next visit.

That was the exact week, naturally, when the Russian Federation and the western powers were meeting in Geneva to decide on deployment of space weapons. Our own Red Shield system and the American Star Wars system were well into the testing phase. We had conducted a good many of the tests ourselves aboard Mir 5. Now the question was, should each side begin to deploy its own system or should we hammer out some method of working cooperatively?

Sam returned a few days later. I did not want to see him, but was afraid not to. He seemed happy and cheerful, as usual, and carried no less than six new videos with him. I spoke to him very briefly, very coldly. He seemed not to be bothered at all. He laughed and joked. And passed me a note on a tiny scrap of paper as he handed me the new videos.

I read the note in the privacy of my cubicle, after he left. “Good stuff. Worth a small fortune. How many can you provide each week?”

I was accustomed to the weightlessness of zero gravity, but at that instant I felt as if I were falling into a deep, dark pit, falling and falling down into an utterly black well that had no bottom.

To make matters worse, after a few days of progress the conference at Geneva seemed to hit a snag for some unfathomable reason. The negotiations stopped dead and the diplomats began to snarl at each other in the old Cold War fashion. The world was shocked. We received orders to accelerate our tests of the Red Shield laser that had been installed in the laboratory module at the aft end of our station.

We watched the TV news broadcasts from every part of the world (without letting Zworkin or ground control know about it, of course.) Everyone was frightened at the sudden intransigence in Geneva.

Zworkin summed up our fears. “The imperialists want an excuse to strike us with their nuclear missiles before our Red Shield defense is deployed.”

I had to admit that he was probably right. What scared me was the thought that we might strike at them before their Star Wars defense was deployed. Either way it meant the same thing: nuclear holocaust.

Even thickheaded Korolev seemed worried. “Will we go to war?” he kept asking. “Will we go to war?” No one knew.

Needless to say, it was clear that if we did go to war Mir 5 would be a sitting duck for Yankee anti-satellite weapons. As everyone knew, the war on the ground would begin with strikes against space stations and satellites.

To make matters even worse, in the midst of our laser test preparations Sam sent a radio message that he was on his way and would rendezvous with our station in three hours. He said he had “something special” for us.

The crisis in Geneva meant nothing to him, it seemed. He was coming for “business as usual.” Zworkin had been right all along about him. Sam was a spy. I was certain of it now.

A vision formed in my mind. I would personally direct the test of the Red Shield laser. Its high-energy beam would happen to strike the incoming American spacecraft. Sam Gunn would be fried like a scrawny chicken in a hot oven. A regrettable accident. Yes. It would solve my problem.

Except—it would create such a furor on Earth that the conference in Geneva would break up altogether. It could be the spark that would lead to war, nuclear war.

Yet—Sam had no business flying a Yankee spacecraft so close to a Soviet station. Both the U.S. and the Russian Federation had clearly proclaimed that the regions around their stations were sovereign territory, not to be violated by the other side’s craft. Sam’s visits to Mir 5 were strictly illegal, secret, clandestine, except for his first “emergency” visit. If we fried him we would be within out legal rights.

On the other hand—could the entire crew remain silent about Sam’s many visits? Would Zworkin stay silent or would he denounce me once we had returned to Mother Russia?

On the other hand—what difference would any of that make if we triggered nuclear war?

That is why I found myself sweating in the laser laboratory, a few hours after Sam’s call. He knew that we were going to test the laser, he had to know. That was why he was cheerfully heading our way at this precise point in time.

The laboratory was chilly. The three technicians operating the giant laser wore bulky sweaters over their coveralls and gloves with the fingers cut so they could manipulate their sensitive equipment properly.

This section of the station was a complete module in itself; it could be detached and de-orbited, if necessary, and a new section put in its place. The huge laser filled the laboratory almost completely. If we had not been in zero gravity it would have been impossible for the technicians to climb into the nooks and crannies necessary to service all the hardware.

One wide optical-quality window gave me a view of the black depths of space. But no window could withstand the incredible intensity of the laser’s high-power beam. The beam was instead directed through a polished copper pipe to the outside of the station’s hull, which is why the laboratory was always so cold. It was impossible to keep the module decently warm; the heat leaked out through the laser beam channel. On the outer end of that channel was the aiming mirror (also highly polished copper) that directed the beam toward its target—hypothetical or actual.

One day we would have mirrors and a laser output window of pure diamond, once we had learned how to fabricate large sheets of the stuff in zero gravity. That day had not yet come. It seemed that ground control was more interested in growing gem-quality diamonds than large sheets.

I had calculated Sam’s approach trajectory back at the control center and pecked the numbers into my hand computer. Now, as the technicians labored and grumbled over their big laser I fed those coordinates into the laser aiming system. As far as the technicians knew, they were firing their multi-megawatt beam into empty space, as usual. Only I knew that when they fired the laser its beam would destroy the approaching Yankee spacecraft and kill Sam Gunn.

The moments ticked by as I sweated coldly, miserable with apprehension and—yes, I admit it freely—with guilt. I had set the target for the laser’s aiming mirror. The big slab of polished copper hanging outside the station’s hull was already tracking Sam’s trajectory, turning ever so slightly each second. The relays directing its motion clicked inside the laboratory like the clicks of a quartz clock, like the tapping of a Chinese water torture.

Then I heard the sighing sound that happens when an airtight hatch between two modules of the station is opened. Turning, I saw the hatch swinging open, its heavy hinges groaning slightly. Zworkin pushed through and floated over the bulky master control console to my side.

“You show an unusual interest in this test,” he said softly.

My insides blazed as if I had stuck my hand into the power outlet. “There is the crisis in Geneva,” I replied. “Ground control wants this test to proceed flawlessly.”

“Will it?”

I did not trust myself to say anything more. I merely nodded.

Zworkin watched the muttering technicians for a few endless moments, then asked, “Do you find it odd that the American is approaching us exactly at the time our test is scheduled?”

I nodded once again, keeping my eyes fixed on the empty point in space where I imagined the beam and Sam’s spacecraft would meet.

“I received an interesting message from Moscow, less than an hour ago,” Zworkin said. I dared not look into his face, but his voice sounded tense, brittle. “The rumor is that the Geneva conference has struck a reef made of pure diamond.”

“What?” That spun me around. He was not gloating. In fact he looked just as worried as I felt. No, not even worried. Frightened. The tone of voice that I had assumed was sarcasm was actually the tight dry voice of fear.

“This is unconfirmed rumor, mind you,” Zworkin said, “but what they are saying is that the NATO intelligence service has learned we are manufacturing pure diamond crystals in zero gravity, diamond crystals that can be made large enough to be used as mirrors and windows for extremely high-power lasers. They are concerned that we have moved far ahead of them in this key area of technology.”

Just at that instant Sam’s cocky voice chirped over the station’s intercom speakers. “Hey there friends and neighbors, here’s your Hollywood delivery service comin’ atcha.”

The laser mirror clicked again. And again. One of the technicians floated back to the console at my side and pressed the three big red rocker switches that turn on the electrical power, one after the other. The action made his body rise up to the low ceiling of the laboratory each time. He rose and descended slowly, up and down, like a bubble trapped in a sealed glass.

A low whine came from the massive power generators. Even though they were off in a separate module of the station I felt their vibration.

In my mind’s eye I could see a thin yellow line that represented Sam’s trajectory approaching us. And a heavier red line, the fierce beam of our laser, reaching out to meet it.

“Got something more than videos, this trip,” Sam was chattering. “Managed to lay my hands on some really neat electronic toys, interactive games. You’ll love ’em. Got the latest sports videos, too, and a bucketful of real-beef hamburgers. All you do is pop ’em in your microwave. Brought mustard and ketchup too. Better’n that soy stuff you guys been eating….”

He was talking his usual blue streak. I was glad that the communications technicians knew to scrub his transmissions from the tapes that ground control monitored. Dealing with Zworkin was bad enough.

Through his inane gabbling I could hear the mirror relays clicking like the rifles of a firing squad being cocked, one by one. Sam approached us blithely unaware of what awaited him. I pictured his spacecraft being hit by the laser beam, exploding, Sam and his videos and hamburgers all transformed instantly into an expanding red-hot ball of bloody vapor.

I reached over and pounded the master switch on the console. Just like the technician I bounded toward the ceiling. The power generators wound down and went silent.

Zworkin stared up at me open mouthed as I cracked my head painfully and floated down toward him again.

I could not kill Sam. I could not murder him in cold blood, no matter what the consequences might be.

“What are you doing?” Zworkin demanded.

Putting out a hand to grasp the console and steady myself, I said, “We should not run this test while the Yankee spy is close enough to watch.”

He eyed me shrewdly, then called to the two dumbfounded technicians. “Out! Both of you! Until your commander calls for you again.”

Shrugging and exchanging confused looks, the two young men left the laboratory module. Zworkin pushed the hatch shut behind them, leaning against it as he gave me a long quizzical stare.

“Grigori Aleksandrovich,” he said at last, “we must do something about this American. If ground control ever finds out about him—if Moscow ever finds out…”

“What was it you said about the diamond crystals?” I asked. “Do you think the imperialists know about our experiments here?”

“Of course they know! And this Yankee spy is at the heart of the matter.”

“What should we do?”

Zworkin rubbed his chin but said nothing. I could not helping thinking, absurdly, that his acne had almost totally disappeared.

So we allowed Sam aboard the station once again and I brought him immediately to my private cubicle.

“Cripes!” he chirped. “I’ve seen bigger coffins. Is this the best that the workers’ paradise can do for you?”

“No propaganda now,” I whispered sternly. “And no more blackmail. You will not return to this station again and you will not get any more diamonds from me.”

“And no more ice cream?” He seemed entirely unconcerned with the seriousness of the situation.

“No more anything!” I said, straining to make it as strong as I could while still whispering. “Your visits here are finished. Over and done with.”

Sam made a rueful grin and wormed his right hand into the hip pocket of his coveralls. “Read this,” he said, handing me a slip of paper.

It had two numbers on it, both of them in six digits.

“The first is your private bank account number at the Bank of Zurich, in Switzerland.”

“Russian citizens are not allowed to …”

“The second number,” Sam went on, “is the amount of money deposited in your account, in Swiss francs.”

“I told you, I am not—” I stopped and looked at the second number again. I was not certain of the exchange ratio between Swiss francs and rubles, but six digits are six digits.

Sam laughed softly. “Listen. My friends in New York have friends in Switzerland. That’s how I set up the account for you. It’s your half of the profit from those little stones you gave me.”

“I don’t believe it. You are attempting to bribe me.”

His look became pitying. “Greg, old pal, three-quarters of your Kremlin leaders have accounts in Switzerland. Don’t you realize that the big conference in Geneva is stalled over—”

“Over your report to the CIA that we are manufacturing diamonds here in this station!” I hissed. “You are a spy, admit it!”

He spread his hands in the universal gesture of confession. “Okay, so I’ve passed some info over to the IDA.”

“Don’t you mean CIA?”

Sam blinked with surprise. “CIA? Why in hell would I want to talk to those spooks? I’m dealing with the IDA.”

“Intelligence Defense Agency,” I surmised.

With an annoyed shake of his head, “Naw—the International Diamond Association. The diamond cartel. You know, DeBeers and those guys.”

I was too stunned with surprise to say anything.

“The cartel knew you were doing zero-gravity experiments up here, but they thought it was for diamond film and optical quality diamond to use on your high-power lasers. Once my friends in New York saw that you were also making gem-quality stones, they sent word hotfooting to Amsterdam.”

“The international diamond cartel..

“That’s right, pal,” said Sam. “They don’t want to see diamonds manufactured in space kicking the bottom out of their market.”

“But the crisis in Geneva,” I mumbled.

Sam laughed. “The argument in Geneva is between the diamond cartel and your own government. It’s got nothing to do with Star Wars or Red Shield. They’ve forgotten all about that. Now they’re talking about money!”

I could not believe what he was saying. “Our leaders would never stoop—”

Sam silenced me with a guffaw.

“Your leaders are haggling with the cartel like a gang of housewives at a warehouse sale. Your president is talking with the cartel’s leaders right now over a private two-way fiber-optic link.”

“How do you know this?”

He reached into the big pocket on the thigh of his suit. “Special video recording. I brought it just for you.” With a sly smile he added, “Can’t trust those guys in Amsterdam, you know.”

It was difficult to catch my breath. My head was swimming.

“Listen to me, Greg. Your leaders are going to join the diamond cartel; they’re just haggling over the price.”

“Impossible!”

“Hard to believe that good socialists would help the evil capitalists rig world prices for diamonds? But that’s what’s going on right now, so help me. And once they’ve settled on their terms, the conference in Geneva will get back to dealing with the easy questions, like nuclear war.”

“You’re lying. I can’t believe that you are telling me the truth,”

He shrugged good-naturedly. “Look at the video. Watch what happens in Geneva. Then, once things settle down, you and I can start doing business again.”

I must have shaken my head without consciously realizing it.

“Don’t want to leave all those profits to the cartel, do you? We can make a fair-sized piece of change—as long as we stay small enough so the cartel won’t notice us. That’s still a lot of money, pal.”

“Never,” I said. And I meant it. To do what he asked would mean working against my own nation, my own people, my own government. If the secret police ever found out!

I personally ushered Sam back to the docking compartment and off the station. And never allowed him back on Mir 5 again, no matter how he pleaded and wheedled over the radio.

After several weeks he finally realized that I would not deal with him, that when Grigori Aleksandrovich Prokov says “never” that is exactly what I mean.

“Okay friends,” his radio voice said, the last time he tried to contact us. “Guess I’ll just have to find some other way to make my first million. So long, Greg. Enjoy the workers’ paradise, pal.”

The old man’s tone had grown distinctly wistful. He stopped, made a deep wheezing sigh, and ran a liver-spotted hand over his wrinkled pate.

Jade had forgotten the chill of the big lunar dome. Leaning slightly closer to Prokov, she asked:

“And that was the last you saw or heard of Sam Gunn?”

“Yes,” said the Russian. “And good riddance, too.”

“What happened after that?”

Prokov’s aged face twisted unhappily. “What happened? Everything went exactly as he said it would. The conference in Geneva started up again, and East and West reached a new understanding. My crew achieved its mission goal; we spent two full years in Mir 5 and then went home. The Russian Federation became a partner in the international diamond cartel.”

“And you went to Mars,” Jade prompted.

Prokov’s wrinkled face became bitter. “No. I was not picked to command the Mars expedition. Zworkin never denounced me, never admitted his own involvement with Sam, but his report was damning enough to knock me out of the Mars mission. The closest I got to Mars was a weather observation station in Antarctica!”

“Wasn’t your president at that time the one who—”

“The one who retired to Switzerland after he stepped down from leading the nation? Yes. He is living there still like a bloated plutocrat.”

“And you never dealt with Sam Gunn again?”

“Never! I told him never and that is exactly what I meant. Never.”

“Just that brief contact with him was enough to wreck your career.”

Prokov nodded stonily.

“Yet,” Jade mused, “in a way it was you who got Russia into partnership with the diamond cartel. That must have been worth hundreds of millions each year to your government.”

The old man’s only reply was a bitter, “Pah!”

“What happened to your Swiss bank account? The one Sam started for you?”

Prokov waved a hand in a gesture that swept the lunar dome and asked, “How do you think I can afford to live here?”

Jade felt herself frown with puzzlement. “I thought the Leonov Center was free….”

“Yes, of course it is. A retirement center for Heroes of the Russian Federation. Absolutely free! Unless you want some real beef in your Stroganoff. That costs extra. Or an electric blanket for your bed. Or chocolates—chocolates from Switzerland are the best of all, did you know that?”

“You mean that your Swiss bank account…”

“It is an annuity,” said Prokov. “Not much money, but a nice little annuity to pay for some of the extra frills. The money sits there in the bank and every month the faithful Swiss gnomes send me the interest by e-mail. Compared to the other Heroes living here I am a well-to-do man. I can even buy vodka for them now and then.”

Jade suppressed a smile. “So Sam’s bank deposit is helping you even after all these years.”

Slowly the old man nodded. “Yes, he is helping me even after his death.” His voice sank lower. “And I never thanked him. Never. Never spoke a kind word to him.”

“He was a difficult man to deal with,” said Jade. “A very difficult personality.”

“A thief,” Prokov replied. But his voice was so soft it sounded almost like a blessing. “A blackmailer. A scoundrel.”

There were tears in his weary eyes. “I knew him for only a few months. He frightened me half to death and nearly caused nuclear war. He disrupted my crew and ruined my chance to lead the Mars expedition. He tricked me and used me shamefully….”

Jade made a sympathetic noise.

“Yet even after all these years the memory of him makes me smile. He made life exciting, vibrant. How I wish he were here. How I miss him!”