Oh, oh! The air-vents were doing it, the air currents from them pressing me into a more curving trajectory which would probably graze Gladys' orbit.
I was passing the chitchat bench. I flailed out for it, missed, and my movement seemed to twist my trajectory even more. I looked at Gladys and she was smiling warmly, welcomingly. I thought of Helene and felt like a louse. An airborne louse. Without wings, like a louse should be. You need wings to fly. If I'd had them I think I'd have flown. Elsewhere.
Sure, you can let your conscience be your guide but what can you do when you're helplessly warped into a collision orbit with one of the loveliest women in the world, a welcoming planet in a closed system of your own peculiar manufacture?
The visio started buzzing then and I wondered agonizingly if it were Helene. On the other hand, it might be Jim O'Brien wondering why Gladys hadn't come back. With no answer, he might come over, but I doubted it. Jim's a bachelor and somewhat of a hermit.
Ah, missed on this go-round, but it was close. Gladys' smile told me she was paying no heed to the buzzing visio at all.
The sun-chandelier—I could reach it! I caught at one of its sunburst's rays. It promptly snapped off, but the action had changed my orbit.
Changed it—and how! Now I was in precisely the same orbit as Gladys and gaining! She smiled back over her nicely rounded shoulder. It wasn't fair!
I hadn't heard a sound outside, what with the visio buzzing away like mad, but the front door was suddenly opened and there was Helene starting to come in, a big package in her arms.
"Stay out!" I cried. "Don't come in, Helene!"
I was a split second too late; her foot hit the null-grav area and she was suddenly orbiting, her package tumbling off on a trajectory of its own, her pocketbook a satellite beside her.