The Gently Orbiting Blonde

                        By JOHN VICTOR PETERSON

                         Illustrated by ENGLE

                       _Anti-gravity may be hard
                        to handle--but a woman
                       scorned is still harder!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                         Infinity, April 1957.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Maybe Helene's right in saying that I shouldn't tell exactly how our
living room became the training station for Space Satellite One. If I
don't, though, I'm afraid she'll let it slip out as a deep dark secret
to one of her tri-dielectronic bridge friends and it'll be all over the
Project as quickly as a pile past critical mass. It certainly wouldn't
help my reputation at the labs, especially if in the retelling the
facts should become distorted about Gladys, the gently orbiting blonde.

Some of it was accidental, certainly, but didn't Wilhelm Roentgen get
brushed by the breeze of chance?

I must have been on the right track, anyhow!

I'll leave it to you....

It's true, I _do_ get absorbed in things. So it happened on the night I
was married. But I did, after all, carry Helene across the threshold.
Can I help it that, as I was fetching her a toast, I just happened to
glance up at the sun-chandelier in our cathedral-ceilinged living room
and got reminded of the Project and decided I just had to go down into
my lab in the basement and change one little bit of circuitry? When
you're working on something as elusive as anti-gravity, you've got to
seize upon every minute of inspiration.

I told her I'd be right back and dashed downstairs. I guess I should
have kissed her first. I forgot. I'm sorry now. In a way. If I had,
maybe--But, let's face it, I forgot.

You could ask old Ruocco, my psych prof. He always says I've
supernormal powers of concentration.

There I was in the basement. One thing led to another. I rearranged the
circuitry on the psionic machine and found then that changes in the
gyrorotors were indicated.

Something intruded vaguely on my mind but I ignored it, enmeshed as I
was in magnetostriction lines. This just might work!

It didn't. My concentration was disrupted. I glanced at my watch. _Oi_!
I thought, _Helene!_

And my subconscious told me with sickening certainty that the near
disturbance I had had, had been the slamming of a door--of the front
door by someone on the way out.

I went upstairs. Helene was gone, complete with pocketbook. Her valises
had been in the car and I saw from the living room window that she'd
taken that.

She'd gone home to Mom, I guessed. She'd have no trouble getting off
the reservation; she had a nonsensitive job on the Project. Not like
me; I couldn't get pried out of White Sands by less than Presidential
order.

It'd be hours before I could try visioing her. Mom's way up in
Connecticut, quite a hop even by jetliner.

I sat on the chitchat bench, felt sorry for myself for a second and
then got concentrating on the starchart on the ceiling above the
sun-chandelier and decided that if man was to start exploring upward
I'd better continue my exploring downstairs.

But I couldn't concentrate. I fiddled around rewiring the psionic
machine just to have something to do.

The front door banged again with the loveliest, most satisfying
solid bang--and I dropped my soldering iron on a printed circuit and
something went _whoosh_ which wasn't just me going up the stairs.
Simultaneously a feminine scream came to meet me.

       *       *       *       *       *

I went up the stairs but when I got to the top I
didn't--couldn't--stop. I kept going up, making climbing motions and
touching nothing at all until my head ricocheted off the curving
ceiling and I bounced down upon my contour chair. I didn't stop there
but bounced right back up again, vaguely aware that the recoiling chair
was slowly following me.

During this time I was seeing considerably more stars than you'd see
from Palomar on a good clear night.

The stars began to blink out of focus, and me in. And then, in the
midst of marveling over the undeniable fact that I'd discovered--well,
what about Roentgen?--_discovered_ anti- or at least _null_-gravity, I
remembered (a) the door slamming and (b) the scream.

I bounced off the ceiling, cartwheeled a bit, glanced off a picture of
a Viking rocket on the wall which took off on a trajectory of its own,
and then spun in my orbit and got a look at the blonde.

Now, anyone under normal conditions would have taken a good look at the
blonde. I was, however, performing what is known in aeronautics as a
barrel-roll, and my viewing of the blonde was the sweeping scan of a
surveillance radar.

Not that I hadn't seen the blonde before. I knew her well. Her name is
Gladys. She's the most gorgeously put-together creature at the Sands.
Most of the boys would ride bareback on a Nike if she gave them the
smile she was giving me then.

Gladys was in a gentle orbit as nearly circular as that of Venus. Her
primary was the sun-chandelier.

I thought then of another Venus. Only Gladys has arms. Her arms were
bare. In fact, a lot of Gladys was bare and there's a lot of Gladys,
all nicely proportioned, of course. The sunsuit's designer had
indubitably been inspired by a Bikini.

I bounced off a sofa, which absorbed some of my inertia, and through
some frictional freak stopped my axial rotation. I went then into
an elliptical orbit grazing the chitchat bench at aphelion and the
chandelier at perihelion.

The thought of Helene crossed my mind in a peculiarly guilty manner,
and I was rather glad at that moment that Gladys and I weren't on a
collision orbit.

"Now that you've stopped pingponging," Gladys said, "you might tell
me how we're going to get out of this fix. And I don't mind behaving
like an electron but you might make like a positron and come a little
closer; it's getting cold in here! By the way, where's Helene?"

I don't know why, but I told her. And maybe I did put on an aggrieved
husband act a bit, but who could blame me?

"Oh, Bill, I'm sorry," she said throatily. "You're so attractive, so
fine. To think you've been snared by someone who doesn't appreciate
your worth, your handsomeness, your manly strength. Oh, why couldn't
you just have given poor little me a glance? After all, we've been
together in the Project Lab every day. I _know_ you, Bill, and I'm _so_
sorry!"

And she moved on, lovely, graceful in her gentle orbit, and my heart
swelled with recognition of her compassion.

I started to make a self-effacing remark, stammered, and finally
changed my mind and asked, "But how did you happen to come here?"

She sighed. "Business, I'm sorry to state. Jim O'Brien wants you at
the lab. Thinks he's on the track of anti-grav--and here you have it
already! Gee, Bill, it _is_ getting cold in here!"

I hadn't noticed.

Just then the thermostat did notice, and the air-conditioning unit cut
in. Warm air started to blow from the baseboard outlets.

"Bill--"

"Yeah," I answered, trajecting past the chitchat bench and wondering
if by stretching real hard I could reach it on the next trip round and
drag myself to it. Then, if it didn't come unplugged I could ground
(now _that_ was a silly thought!)--I could _stop_ myself and maybe work
out of the living room along the edge of the tacked-down carpet.

"Bill, if Helene doesn't come back, do you think, maybe--"

I thought, maybe.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hey, was I imagining things or was my orbit changing? And was Gladys
smiling more warmly?

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.

Helene was startled, certainly, but not beyond speech. "Bill Wright,"
she cried, "you're a beast! You bring me home on our wedding night and
leave me for your silly machine and without a single solitary drop
to drink in the servomech and I go out for something and come back
to find you flying after that blonde hussy!" She swept up around the
chandelier, her orbit grazing it at perihelion but apparently destined
to be far remote at aphelion.

"But, dear--" I started.

"Don't dear me!" she cried, and went out of my range of vision just as
I overtook Gladys and her outflung arms caught me painfully by the
neck.

Which is when Helene's orbit mercifully turned out to be a collision
orbit with Gladys'--and she took Gladys away from me like a super-Nike
taking out a stratojet-bomber. They bounced against the ceiling. Gladys
took the impact. Rearward. Fortunately Mother Nature had been kind.

Helene bounced away from Gladys. Strands of blonde hair went with her.

"Dark roots!" Helene cried triumphantly.

Gladys said a bad word.

I conjectured.

"Say," I said, but the girls were shouting. I yelled, "Hey!"

They quieted but kept glaring balefully at each other and circled like
a couple of female wrestlers waiting--but wholly unable--to pounce.

"We're in a pickle," I started.

"_You're_ in a pickle," Helene corrected me.

"Oh, stop it!" I said.

"I didn't start it," Helene said.

Logic!

"Now, look," I said, "we've got to get down. If one of us could only
manage to grasp something that's fastened--the carpet, a window, a
doorknob--"

I didn't finish; it was too painfully obvious that none of our orbits
took us that close to the finite boundaries of my null-grav living
room. Helene's, I noticed, was the closest. A germ of an idea came into
my mind as I observed that Helene's handbag was still in a tight orbit
around her.

"Honey," I said.

She raged at that and made futile fluttering motions as though she
thought she just might be able to fly.

Perhaps formality was indicated.

"Mrs. Wright," I tried.

Gladys laughed and the irate Mrs. Wright, sweeping close to Gladys'
orbit at perihelion, made a vicious swipe which neatly tore away a
considerable portion of the upper part of Gladys' sunsuit, which
portion went fluttering away on a bat-like trajectory of its own. I
forgot the portion; the point of departure was more absorbing.

Helene gasped and told me to concentrate on getting us down; but my
powers of concentration were rather difficult to influence since I was
in a fixed orbit and, like Mercury or old Luna, my face was turned
inward and Gladys' orbit was now considerably tighter than mine.

"Well, do something, will you!" Helene cried. "At least, stop leering!"

Now I'm a reasonable man even when befuddled by null-grav, so I tried
to forget about orbiting hemispheres and to attack the problem of
reaching terra firma.

I closed my eyes, but promptly became so unoriented that I almost
became ill; so I opened them again and concentrated on my primary, the
sun-chandelier.

The visio had stopped buzzing. I hoped that meant that Jim O'Brien--if
it had been Jim--had figured that something was amiss and was now
hurrying over in his Caddicopter. He could throw us a line and haul us
out. Then I threw that hope away. Jim's severely practical; and this
_was_ to have been my wedding night.

Oh, well....

       *       *       *       *       *

Could one of us somehow reach the sun-chandelier and short it, thereby
shorting the machine downstairs? Mentally reconstructing the house's
electrical circuitry, I concluded that my lab was on a separate circuit.

_Hey! I am confused_, I thought. Helene's handbag! I'd thought of it
before. Of course! Women carry all sorts of things.

"Helene," I said, "do you have a squeeze bottle in your bag? Perfume or
hair spray or deodorant, maybe?"

"Bill Wright, if you think for one minute that I'm going to--"

"Have you?" I cut in.

She spluttered. "Perfume," she finally said grudgingly. "Though with
that eau-de-whatever Gladys is wearing, I should think--"

"Oh, stop it! Now will you please get the perfume out!"

She did; then she went wandering off to aphelion in her orbit and
momentarily out of my line of sight. When she came back toward
perihelion with the chandelier, I said, "Now, look, wriggle around a
little axially if you can--"

That did it. Helene exploded into a verbal nova. "You lecherous beast!"
she cried. "It isn't enough for you to dally with this shameless blonde
hussy on our wedding night. Not enough for you to float along looking
like a blissful ogling ogre, making mental mockery of your wedding
vows. No, you--you BEM!--you have to ask your meek and retiring, your
quiet and unassuming, your defenseless and self-effacing wife to act
like a bumping and grinding burlesque queen!"

And my meek, retiring, quiet, unassuming, etc., wife went on
etcetera-ing ad practically infinitum.

When swiftly trajecting Helene's tirade paused for lack of words and/or
breath, I said meekly above the gently orbiting blonde's chuckles, "But
I was only trying to get us out of this mess. I wanted you to perform
a slight axial rotation so that you could aim your--er--posterior
at the cellar door when you next reach aphelion near it. Do you
understand?"

"No," she said, but did manage by some completely feminine and to me
quite incomprehensible maneuvers (girdle girding procedure, maybe?) to
twist ninety degrees axially.

"When I say 'go,' squeeze the spray bottle," I directed, "and keep
squeezing it hard and keep it pointing straight away from your
longitudinal axis."

"My _what_? Now, look, what do you think you'll accom--"

"Wait!" I cut her off. "For every action there's an equal and opposite
reaction, right? I hope you'll widen your orbit when the reaction sets
in."

She was nearing aphelion. "Go!" I cried.

She did squeeze the spray bottle, and kept squeezing it quickly and
strongly, but so far as I could judge her orbit wasn't effected one
whit. Something was accomplished, however, that made our situation more
desperate: those little droplets of potent perfume proceeded to bounce,
scatter, splatter and ricochet all over the place. The scent spread.
Overpoweringly.

"And _you_ talked about _my_ perfume!" Gladys cried and began to giggle
again.

My gaze wandered toward the lovely albeit space-happy blonde.

"Bill!" Helene cried as she swept across my line of sight. She looked
like an avenging angel, a very lovely one. She made me feel humble and
contrite; I went dutifully back to the problem.

       *       *       *       *       *

It seemed rather hopeless. Both Gladys and I were orbiting nearly
parallel to the floor in what I was calling the plane of the ecliptic.
My brief encounter with the chandelier had twisted me into the plane as
had Gladys' unfortunate but exhilarating encounter with my irate bride.

Helene's orbit was still tilted from the plane, like Pluto's, and was
curiously elliptical like a comet's. Currents created by the allegedly
draftless air-conditioning system must have caused and must be
maintaining the ellipse. Being a newcomer to our tight little system,
Helene also still had considerable orbital speed whereas air resistance
would soon bring Gladys and me to a midair stop, probably in inferior
opposition. I knew what Helene would think of that.

I decided we couldn't do anything individually or jointly unless an
outside agent were introduced or full advantage taken of something
already present.

We had cosmic debris, for sure: the flipflopping chaise longue which
was in a tight orbit near the peak of the cathedral ceiling; the
framed picture of the Viking rocket (could I ever use a little of
_its_ thrust now!) fluttering close to the flapping torn part-away of
the sunsuit down below the plane of the ecliptic; and the big package
Helene had brought. The last suddenly proved to be on a collision orbit
with Gladys, curving in then to bump against her derriere. Reaching
back swiftly she caught it like an errant salesman's hand. I waited
expectantly.

"Wonderful!" she commented. "Wonderful!" And pulled out a bottle of
Scotch. I watched in fascinated, gleeful anticipation as she unscrewed
the cap, and moved the bottle up toward celestial north to reach a
normal drinking position. Naturally the contents promptly departed;
then splashed against the arch of the ceiling and went into a thousand
odd orbits, of which many made moist contact with my own. The
perfume-Scotch combination--_yoicks!_

"Glad," I said.

"Oh, it's _Glad_ now!" Helene burst.

I ignored her.

"Glad, get the package in your hands like a basketball--"

"Yes, conceal your shame!" Helene cut in acidly.

"Will you stop it?" I cried. "Now, Glad, listen, aim it toward my
orbit. Lead me a little--there, that ought to do it. Now when I count
down to zero give it a shove. Ready? Three, two, one--_zero_!"

It was dead on!

I looked in the bag, hoping to find a newly charged carbonation unit
for the servomech bar. I didn't, but I found something else!

"Helene," I said, "I love you!"--and I drew forth the loveliest magnum
of champagne you'd ever hope to see.

"But, Bill," Helene cried, "that's to celebrate our wedding night!"

I appreciated the present tense but said nothing, working on the wire
which bound the cork.

"Bill, remember what happened to the Scotch," Gladys warned me.

I ignored them both, thinking furiously. It _had_ to be Helene! She
would sweep to the apogee of her cometlike orbit near the cellar door
again in seconds. I shook the magnum as violently as I could. Its cork
went whooshing off on a ricochet romance with the Scotch cap. The freed
and deeply disturbed champagne blasted off straight for the most remote
point in Helene's orbit--and Helene was there! On target!

I went whirling backward with the reacting magnum against my chest,
bounced against a wall, smacked against the chandelier, flipflopped
a few times and found myself orbiting directly below Gladys. I
re-oriented myself with some effort and found by twisting my head
sharply that I could see the results of the improvised jet blast:
Helene, drenched with champagne, stood in gravity on the cellar stairs.

"Dear," I ventured, "just go down and ease off on the rheostat; that'll
cancel this out gradually and let us down easily."

She made a spluttering noise and went downstairs.

I made a quick survey for a possible safe touchdown area just in case
Helene inadvertently cut the power too fast; chances were good that
we'd hit one of the several sofas.

Gladys and I were celestially north of the chitchat bench when Helene
completely killed the null-grav. The bench, with visio, suffered
complete collapse; it wasn't meant for sitting down on from twelve feet
up. Especially with a blonde dropping immediately into one's lap. Lucky
for me both were nicely padded.

"I'm sorry, Bill," Gladys said, _September Morn_-ing, and hurrying,
dishevelled and forlorn, out the front door. I heard her car start up
as Helene came up from the basement.

I ruefully surveyed the shattered visio amid the other debris.

"Null-grav," I said. "Real null-grav. Jim's got to know--but the
visio's ruined. I've got to go out and call him."

"Oh, no, you don't!" Helene burst. "Null-grav _and_ Jim O'Brien can
wait until tomorrow!"

She kissed me tenderly then.

"How right you are," I said, getting re-oriented fast.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now you must excuse me; I've got to degravitize the living room.
They're due here for training in a few minutes--the Satellite One
Cadets. I worked out a keyer that remotely controls the null-grav's
rheostat; it's calibrated to permit creating any sub-gravitational
effect from one G down to null-G. Those boys are really getting trained.

Someday I'll duplicate the null-grav over at the Project--Jim O'Brien
and I have nearly got the circuitry licked--and we'll have the living
room all to ourselves. Jim and his blushing bride--Gladys--come over
almost every evening after the Cadets are through. We play null-grav
polo, orbital chess and some other games we've adapted. Our favorite,
though, is "Pick Your Planet" where we take turns imitating the orbit
of one of Sol's planets, planetoids, moons or visiting comets, and
pantomiming other clues.

Funny, but most often Helene or Gladys chooses Venus. With them, poor
cold old Pluto's out.

Women are funny that way.