Time and Again

drunk.
    "When I get back from this run," Cal had said, tipping back in his chair and yawning hugely, "I'm going to spend three weeks on the beach-south of France, I think-watching women and staying drunk."
    "Three days," Jacob had told him. He'd swirled the coal-black liquor in his glass. "Then you'd go up again. In the last ten years you've been in the air more than on the ground."
    "You don't fly enough." With a grin, Cal had taken Jacob's glass and downed the contents. "Stuck in your lab, little brother. I tell you it's a lot more fun to bounce around the planets than to study them."
    "Point of view. If I didn't study them, you couldn't bounce around them." He had slid down in his chair, too lazy to pour himself more rum. "Besides, you're a better pilot than I am. It's the only thing you do better than I do."
    Cal had grinned again. "Point of view," he had tossed back. "Ask Linsy McCellan."
    Jacob had stirred himself enough to raise a brow. That particular woman, a dancer, had generously shared her attributes with both men-on separate occasions. "She's too easily entertained." His smile had turned wicked. "In any case, I'm here, on the ground, with her, a great deal more than you are."
    "Even Linsy-" he lifted his glass "-bless her, can't compete with flying."
    "With running cargo, Cal? If you'd stayed with the ISF you'd be a major by now."
    Cal had only shrugged. "I'll leave the regimentation for you, Dr. Hornblower." Then he had sat up, sluggish from drink but still eager. "J.T., why don't you give this place the shake for a few weeks and come with me? There's this club in the Brigston Colony on Mars that needs to be seen to be believed.
    There's this mutant sax player-Anyhow, you've got to be there."
    "I've got work."
    "You've always got work," Cal had pointed out. "A couple of weeks, J.T. Fly up with me. I can make the transport, show you a few of the seedier parts of the colony, then I can call in to base before we watch those women on the beach. You just have to name the beach."
    It had been tempting, so tempting that Jacob had nearly agreed. The impulse had been there, as always.
    But so had the responsibilities. "Can't." Heaving a sigh, he'd lunged for the bottle again. "I have to finish these equations before the first of the month."
    He should have gone, Jacob thought now. He should have said the hell with the equations, with the responsibilities, and jumped ship with Cal. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if he'd been along. Or, if it had, at least he would have been there, with his brother.
    The video report on Cal's wounded ship had shown exactly what Cal had been through. The black hole, the panic, the helplessness as he'd been sucked toward the void and battered by its gravitational field.
    That he had survived at all was a miracle, and a tribute to his skill as a pilot. But if he'd had a scientist on board he might have avoided the rest. And he would be home now. They would both be home. Where they belonged.
    Calming himself, he turned from the window. In a few weeks, they would be. All he had to do was wait.
    To pass the time, he began to toy with the clunky computer sitting on the desk in the corner. For an hour he amused himself with it, dismantling the keyboard and putting it together again, examining switches and circuits and chips. For his own entertainment he slipped one of Libby's disks into the drive.
    It was a long, involved report on some remote tribe in the South Pacific. Despite himself, Jacob found himself caught up in the descriptions and theories. She had a way of turning dry facts about a culture into a testament to the people who made it. It was ironic that she had focused on the effects of modern tools and technology on what was to her a primitive society. He had spent a great deal of time over the last year wondering what effect the technology he had at his fingertips would have on her time and place.
    She was intelligent, he admitted grudgingly. She was obviously thorough and precise when it came to her work. Those were qualities he could admire. But that didn't mean she could keep his brother.
    Shutting the machine down, he went back downstairs.
    Sunny didn't bother to look up when she heard him come down the stairs. She wanted to think she'd forgotten he was there at all as she'd pored over her law books. But she hadn't. She couldn't complain that he was noisy or made a nuisance of himself. Except that he did make a nuisance of himself just by being there.
    Because she wanted