Nelsen passed through an airlock, where live steam and a special silicone oil accomplished the all-important disinfection of his Archer, his bubb, and the outside of his small, sealed baggage roll. Armor and bubb he left racked with rows of others.
It wasn't till he got into the reception dome lounge that he saw Nance Codiss. She didn't rush at him. Reserve had dropped over them both again as if in reconsideration of a contact made important too suddenly. He clasped her fingers, then just stood looking at her. Lately, they had exchanged a few pictures.
"Your photographs don't lie, Nance," he said at last.
"Yours do, Frank," she answered with complete poise. "You look a lot less grim and tired."
"Wait," he told her. "I'll be right back..."
He went with Ed Huth to ditch his roll in his sleeping cubicle, get cleaned up and change his clothes.
She was beautiful, she had grave moods, she was wearing his fabulous bracelet—if only not to offend him. But when he returned, he met two of the girls who had come out to Mars with [p. 124] her—a nurse and another lab technician. They were the bubbly type, full of bravado and giggles for their strange, new surroundings. For a moment he felt far too old at twenty-four for Nance's twenty. He wondered regretfully if her being here was no more than part of his excuse for getting away from the Belt and from the sense of ultimate human disaster building up.
But much of his feeling of separation from her disappeared as they sat alone in the lounge, talking—first about Jarviston, then about here. Nance had available information about the thickets pretty well down pat.
"You can't keep those plants alive here at the Station, Frank," she said quietly. "They make study difficult by dying. It's as if they knew that they couldn't win here. So they retreat—to keep their secrets. But Dr. Pacetti, our head of Medical Research, says that we can never know that they won't find a way to attack us directly. That's what the waiting napalm line is for. I don't think he is exaggerating."
"Why do you say that?" Nelsen asked.