Spatial Relationship
Fantasy & Science Fiction – August 1962
(1962)*
Randall Garrett

	"She's the perfect woman," said Thorston, with an expression of idiot bliss on his face. "She's all 1 ever dreamed a woman to be!"

	Greymoor looked at him with a cynical smile and shook his head slowly, with affected sadness. "If you really mean that, he said, you ought to have your head examined."

—THE IDLE WORSHIPPERS 
by R. Phillip Dachboden

-

	The little metal sphere fell towards the bright dot in space with ever decreasing velocity. From the viewpoint of the passengers aboard the spaceship itself, the bright dot was becoming perceptibly brighter with every passing day. Eventually, it would cease to be a point of light; it would become a tiny disc that would grow until it became the old familiar sun.

	It had only been for the past few days that those aboard the ship had been able to see the sun directly. Not until the little ship had slowed until its velocity was less than that of light had the nearing star been detectable except by the instruments on the control panels.

	When the ship was twenty-four hours out from Earth, James New-house rubbed his hands together and said: "Let's have a party! A homecoming celebration! Just the four of us. Tomorrow, there will be poking and prodding and questioning and all sorts of assorted hells to go through. The medics will want to know if our blood is still red, and the astronomers will be hounding us for explanations of the photographs, and we won't have a moment's peace for the next six weeks. But we have a right to a celebration.

	Roger Gundersen, his big, thickly-muscled body relaxed in one of the two heavily-padded chairs, scratched thoughtfully at the side of his big nose. "I'm in favor," he said after a moment "We got enough booze left?"

	"Plenty," said Newhouse. "It would be a shame to waste it."

	"Waste it?"

	"Sure. If we go back to Earth with three bottles left over, they'd put it back in stock, and we'll never see it again. I call that wasteful."

	"Agreed," Gundersen said. "Besides, I think we deserve it. We haven't had a real whingding in a long time. Three or four months, I guess."

	"Then that settles it," said Newhouse firmly, a smile of anticipation on his dark, handsome face.

	"Don't we have anything to say about it?" It was Betty's voice, smooth, soft, lovingly warm.

	Newhouse turned his head, still smiling. He saw her leaning against the bulkhead near the door to the sleeping quarters. Her golden blonde hair looked just slightly tousled, and she was wearing the smooth-fitting pink dress that Newhouse liked. It was that shocking pink that only a blonde can wear properly.

	"Why, as long as you agree," he said, "you girls can say anything you like. Right, Rog?"

	"Right. Absolutely." Gundersen grinned. "Did I hear any objections from the female half of this expedition?"

	Newhouse saw Evelyn put her head through the door, her dark hair falling in waves down the curve of her throat. Two voices chorused: "No. No objections."

	"Then I suggest we get started immediately," Newhouse said. "We have to be sober when we land—and no hangovers, either."

	Gundersen was up and moving toward the fight rheostat. "Soft fights, sweet music, and fair women make the exploration of space almost worthwhile."

	"Rog, you blither too much." Betty's voice had enough humor in it to take the edge off the remark. Gundersen paid no attention. He was good-natured about that sort of thing, Newhouse thought. He always took Betty's kidding that way. She'd make some remark like that—something that Newhouse would never say to Gundersen, even though he often thought such things—but she'd say it in such a way that it was easy for Gundersen to shrug it off, to act as though he hadn't even heard it. Once in a great while, if Gundersen did something that was particularly irritating—as happens even in the most smoothly oiled social group—Betty would give him a tongue-lashing, and Gundersen would take that the same way.

	But such outbursts were never directed towards Newhouse. For him, her voice was always gentle and pleasant.

	"I love you," Newhouse said softly to Betty as he took the brandy bottles out of the liquor locker.

	"What?" said Gundersen. He was fiddling with the controls of the player, selecting a music program.

	"Not you, bugbrain," Newhouse said. "I was talking to the most beautiful blonde in the known universe."

	"Thank you, kind sir," Betty's voice came softly.

	"Oh," said Gundersen absently.

	He pushed a button, and the caressing strains of Velanda's Cloudwalker filled the room. "How's that?" he asked.

	"Beautiful," said Newhouse. "It's just the thing, eh, Betty?"

	"I've always loved that piece, Jim." Her voice had a dreamy sound. She touched him on the shoulder, a gentle touch, as caressing as the music. "That was the piece we played on our first night out, three years ago. Remember?"

	He remembered. Three years, he thought. It didn't seem that long. How long would it have seemed without Betty? he wondered. What would it have been like if just he and Gundersen had been cooped up together aboard the ship for three years—just the two of them? He and Gundersen would have been at each other's throats long ago, Newhouse thought.

	The psychologists, he thought, had picked the crew perfectly. He got along well with Gundersen, Evelyn was quietly unobtrusive, and—

	And he had fallen in love with Betty.

	He took four glasses from the cabinet, ice from the freezer, and a bottle of charged water from the refrigerator. "Shall I mix, chilluns?"

	"Mix," said Gundersen. "Who wants sandwiches?"

	"Not I," said Newhouse. "Betty?"

	"Nope. Too fattening. I've got to watch my figure for the wedding." Her face was suddenly in front of him, looking up. Her blue eyes were laughing, even though her mouth was expressionless. "Just think, darling—in twenty-four hours you can make an honest woman of me."

	He didn't answer. He kissed her instead. He could feel the warmth and the velvety smoothness of her lips and the supple strength of her body in his arms. And then they were dancing, their feet moving gracefully in time to the music. Newhouse had never thought himself much of a dancer, but with Betty he felt like an expert. Her movements were so carefully matched to his that she seemed almost weightless in his arms.

	The last lingering chords of Cloudwalker died away, and the player was silent for a moment before it began an older piece, a sparkling bit of twentieth-century jazz that Newhouse didn't recognize.

	"Let's sit this one out," he whispered. "I'm thirsty. Will you join me in a glass of brandy and soda?"

	"Is there room for both of us?"

	They laughed together. It was an old joke, one that they both liked, silly as it was.

	They ignored Gundersen, who was very busy saying sweet nothings to Evelyn.

	As far as Newhouse was concerned, the party was a smashing success. It was wonderful just to be near Betty, and the anticipation of something even more wonderful to come added sparkle and fire.

	Newhouse finished his first drink and started on his second. For his second drink, he switched glasses with Betty. They always did that. It was just one of those little touches that was a part of their life together.

	Three years was a long time for a small group of human beings to spend together in a spaceship that was really only big enough for two people to move around comfortably in, but, thanks to the careful choice of personnel and the efforts of the psychologists to secure a matching of personality, there had been very little friction during the long trip out to Procyon, the surveying of the planetary system, and the return. All things considered, it had been a very happy three years.

	They had circled the star, taking photographs of the seven inner planets, paying special attention to the fourth planet out, which looked as though it might be very much like Earth. They hadn't landed; that would come later, after the first survey data had been carefully checked. Mankind was just putting out its first feelers to the stars. As Gundersen had put it, "Look but don't touch."

	And now they were on their way home, on their last day in space. It would be odd, Newhouse thought, to see other people after all that time, to hear other voices than those he was used to.

	They didn't finish the three bottles of brandy. One was quite enough. By the time they were halfway through it, Newhouse was feeling a very pleasant glow. By the time they finished it, the conversation had become hilariously incoherent.

	And when the party finally broke up, Newhouse found himself alone in his room with his arms around Betty, whispering endearments through a slightly alcoholic haze and making love to her with wild abandon and tenderly violent passion.

-

	Newhouse was slightly hung over when he awoke, but not badly so. When the warning alarm went off, he cursed it because of the effect it had on his ears, and he could hear Gundersen muttering under his breath when he went into the control room.

	The operation of the ship was almost fully automatic. As it approached Sol, the increasing brightness of the nearing star gave the autopilot its reckonings of distance and velocity. If everyone aboard had been dead or unconscious or otherwise unable to control the vessel, it would have put itself into an orbit between the orbits of Earth and Mars and sent out a strong signal that could be picked up anywhere within half a billion miles. Instead of landing, then, ships would have been sent up to find the homecoming interstellar explorer.

	But that was unnecessary. Both Newhouse and Gundersen were at the chairs of the control board to guide the ship in toward Earth.

	By the time the ship had been put in a parking orbit a thousand miles above the surface of Earth, the effects of the previous night's party had completely worn off. Gundersen was in contact with the landing field at Central Sahara, and the two men grinned at each other when Ed Wales' voice came over the speaker.

	"Welcome home, wanderers! Everything okay?"

	"Absolutely," Gundersen said. "Couldn't be better! It's great to hear your voice!"

	"Same here. We're locked on with the landing beams now. Cut your autopilot back in, and we'll bring her down for you."

	The little sphere began to spiral in toward the surface of Earth. When it had finally settled into its landing cradle, there was a wild scramble for the airlock door.

	As the two men stepped out, they were met by Ed Wales. Before they could say anything but a few wild hello's, Wales said: "This is the end of the line, boys. You come with me, and the girls will go to Building X."

	For some reason, when he said that, Newhouse felt his hangover return in force. His head felt heavy and painful, and his mind felt clogged. He shook his head and forced his mind back to clarity. It seemed as if nausea were about to overtake him, and his mind felt blurry. He thought of Betty's golden hair and soft mouth, as though it were something solid in a suddenly dreamlike world. He swallowed and felt better.

	He heard Gundersen say something, but he couldn't make sense out of the words.

	"Come on, boys," Wales said. "The shock'll wear off in a little while. Let's go."

	He climbed into a car with Wales, and they drove off toward the nearby cluster of buildings.

	Fifteen minutes later, New-house was sitting in a chair in Wales' office. He grinned at the psychologist. "Well, Ed, are we all right?"

	"You seem to be reasonably sane," Wales said amiably. "How did Gundersen behave during the trip?"

	"Fine, as far as I could tell. No trouble." He knew that Gundersen was undergoing the same sort of interview with Larry deVernier in another office. He wondered how the girls were faring with their quizzing.

	"Of course," Wales went on, "we won't know everything until we've run a whole battery of tests, which we will begin almost immediately."

	"Ugh," said Newhouse. "I knew we'd be in for that sort of thing. Whatever happened to the good old days, when a man was considered sane unless he thought he was Napoleon or had a penchant for running naked in the streets?"

	Wales grinned back. "Whatever happened to the buggy whip? Seriously, though, how do you feel? Subjectively, what's your opinion?"

	"My opinion? I feel slightly hung over. We had a party last night."

	Wales laughed. "That's not unusual. Tell me, is it much of a shock to you to realize that it was a farewell party?"

	"Farewell party?" Newhouse looked blank for an instant. Then his face cleared. "Farewell to space, eh? Yeah, I guess it was. I won't be going out again, naturally. Betty and I are going to get married as soon as we can get through all this red tape. What do you think of that, Dan Cupid?"

	A very odd look came over Wales' face. After a moment, he leaned forward and said, very deliberately: "This is the end of the line, hoys. You come with me, and the girls will go to Building X"

	A mild wave of nausea swept over Newhouse, then subsided. "You have already said that, Ed. Why repeat it?"

	The smile came back on the psychologist's face, but there was still a lingering ghost of the odd-ness that had manifested itself a few seconds before. "Nothing. What were you saying about— Betty?"

	Newhouse looked at him puzzledly. "I said I was going to marry her. And I have a hunch Rog and Evelyn will be looking for a license, too. What's so odd about that? Haven't you ever had a couple of your explorers fall in love before?"

	"Well," said the psychologist, choosing his words carefully, "I never had one tell me he was going to get married right off the bat."

	Unobtrusively, his left foot found a button on the floor behind his desk. He shifted his weight slightly and pressed the button.

-

	"I don't quite understand what happened," said Roger Gundersen. "You mean you've kept Jim locked up for the past week because he's insane?"

	"No," said Wales positively. "Not insane. Not in the accepted psychological sense of being psychotic. To say that he is psychotic now would be to say that both of you were psychotic for three years."

	"Well," said Gundersen stubbornly, "weren't we?"

	"Psychologically speaking," Wales said, "there is a difference between a hypnotically induced delusion and a psychosis."

	"How much of a difference?"

	"Mmmmm. The line is hard to draw," the psychologist admitted, "but it's a matter of control."

	"It looks to me as though you lost control of Jim," Gundersen said.

	"In a way, yes." He frowned. "We thought we had a solution. So far, the engineers haven't been able to build an interstellar ship that will hold more than two people comfortably for any length of time. And that isn't enough. Two men will drive each other off the deep end pretty quickly—so will two women. A man and a woman together last a little longer, but they eventually get violent. It's a matter of the absolute necessity of having company and having some outlet for the sex drive. We thought we had it whipped.

	"The hypnotically induced delusion that there are two women aboard besides the two crew members seemed the ideal solution. Your 'Evelyn', for instance, was your own special creation. Your dream girl, as it were. If Newhouse said or did something that irritated you, 'Evelyn' could call him names or dress him down, and that satisfied your desire to hit back. Newhouse, naturally, couldn't hear her. His girl friend did the same for him, you see."

	"I remember," said Gundersen. "In a way, I kind of miss her."

	"Sure. But the key phrase— the one about the girls going to Building X—dissipated the delusion. You were completely freed from it. No after effects, no regrets. Right?"

	"Right. But your phrase didn't work with Jim?"

	Wales shook his head. "No. There's a deep-seated, well-hidden narcissism there that we didn't spot. Psychology isn't a perfect science yet, by a long way."

	"You mean he fell in love with himself?"

	"In a way, yes. He refused to believe that the perfect woman he had constructed for himself wasn't real"

	"I don't know what he saw in her," Gundersen said. "As I remember, she was just an ordinary-looking dishwater blonde." He grinned wryly.

	Wales grinned back. "Naturally. That was your delusion. Your Evelyn wasn't particularly impressive to him, either. We couldn't have you making passes at each other's girls, you know."

	"And yet we both had to see both girls to keep up the farce," Gundersen said. "We even clued each other in on conversations that weren't even going on. I still say it's induced psychosis."

	Wales shrugged. "Call it that, if you want. It works. It gets a two-man crew out and back with a minimum of friction. And it makes antoeroticism—shall we say, more completely satisfying?"

	"We shall, indeed," said Gundersen dryly. "Maybe that's what Jim doesn't want to let go of."

	"Partly, yes. As you know, the delusion is vividly real."

	"And you can't get Jim to snap out of it at all?"

	"We have, to a certain extent," Wales said. "He's willing to admit that 'Betty' was merely a hypnotically induced hallucination—but he insists that the hallucination only applied to her physical appearance. He still insists that he was making love to a real flesh and blood human being."

	"I see," said Gundersen. "He thinks we put some homely dame aboard and foisted off the face and figure of Helen of Troy on him by hypnosis. Look, Ed, why don't you let me talk to him? I know him pretty well, and I think I could maybe help bring him around."

	The psychologist shook his head emphatically. "No. I'm afraid that would not do at all. Not yet. You see, he now realizes that there were only two people aboard that ship. He does not think we put some—er—homely dame on board."

	Gundersen stared while the thought took hold. "You can't mean ..." he began. Wales shrugged, pressed a tab on his two-way 3-D set. Newhouse's face, as he sat in his hospital room, bore a scowl. Then he caught sight of his former space-partner. The scowl gave way to a twisted leer. He flapped his wrist. "Yoo-hoo!" he called, his voice awkwardly high-pitched and heavy with contempt.

	Wales flicked the screen off.

	"I'm afraid," he said judiciously, "that Jim Newhouse does not hold a very high opinion of you at the moment."

The End