"Both. Double zero hit, and Burt put this enormous stack on black and hit, and left it there and hit, and moved it to red and hitÄ and the croupier sent for the pit boss. Burt wanted to go for broke but the pit boss limited him to five kilobucks."

            "Peasants. Gestapo. Hired menials. Not a gentleman sportsman in their entire casino. I took my patronage elsewhere."

            "And lost it all," said Goldie.

            "Goldie m'old frien', you do not show proper respec'."

            "He might have lost it all," agreed Annie, "but I saw to it that he followed the pit boss's advice. With six of the casino's sheriffs around us we went straight to their casino's office of the Lucky Strike State Bank and deposited it. Otherwise I would not have let him leave. Imagine carrying a half a megabuck from the Flamingo to the Dunes in cash. He wouldn't have lived to cross the street."

            "Preposterous! Vegas has less violent crime `nany other city North Amer'ca. Anna, m'true love, you are a bossy, notional woman. A henpecker. I shall not marry you even when you fall on your knees at Fremont `n' Main `n' beg me to. Instead I shall take your shoes away from you and beat you and feed you on crusts."

            "Yes, dear. You can put your own shoes on now because you are going to feed all three of us. On crusts of caviar and truffles."

            "And champagne. But not because you are henpeckering me. Ladies. Friday, Goldie, my true lovesÄwill you help me celebrate my f'nanchal genius? With libations and pheasant under glass and gorgeous show girls in fancy hats?"

            "Yes," I answered.

            "Yes before you change your mind. Anna, did you say `half a megabuck'?"

            "Burt. Show them."

            Burt produced a new bankbook, let us look at it while he buffed his nails on his stomach and looked smug. Bk 504,000. Over half a million in the only hard currency in North America. Uh, slightly over thirty-one kilos of fine gold. No, I wouldn't want to carry that much across the street, eitherÄnot in bullion. Not without a wheelbarrow. It would mass almost half as much as I do. A bankbook is more convenient.

            Yes, I would drink Burt's champagne.

            Which we did, in the theater at the Stardust. Burt knew how much cumshaw to give the captain of waiters to get us ringsides (or paid too much, I don't know which) and we sopped up champagne and had a lovely dinner centered around Cornish game hen but billed as squab and the show girls were young and pretty and cheerful and healthy and smelled freshly bathed. And they had show boys with stuffed codpieces for us women to look at, only I didn't, not much, because they didn't smell right and I got the feeling that they were more interested in each other than they were in women. Their business, of course, but on the whole I preferred the show girls.

            And they had a swell magician who plucked live pigeons out of the air the way most magicians pluck coins. I love magicians and never understand how they do it and I watch them with my mouth hanging open.

            This one did something that had to involve a pact with the Devil. At one point he had one of the show girls replace his pretty assistant. His assistant was not overdressed but the show girl was wearing shoes at one end and a hat at the other and just a smile in between.

            The magician started taking pigeons from her.

            I don't believe what I saw. There isn't that much room and it would tickle. So it didn't happen.

            But I'm planning on going back to watch it from a different angle. It simply can't be true.

            When we got back to the Dunes, Goldie wanted to catch the lounge show but Anna wanted to go to bed. So I agreed to sit with Goldie. Burt said to save him a seat as he would be right back after he took Anna up.

            Only he didn't. When we went up I was unsurprised to find the door to the other room closed; before dinner my nose had warned

me that it was unlikely that Burt would soothe my nerves two nights in a row. Their business and I had no kick coming. Burt had done nobly by me when I really needed it.

            I thought perhaps Goldie would have her nose out of joint but she didn't seem to. We simply went to bed, giggled over the impossibility of where he got those pigeons, and went to sleep. Goldie was snoring gently as I dropped off.

            Again I was awakened by Anna but this morning she was not looking sober; she was radiant. "Good morning, darlings! Pee and brush your teeth; breakfast will be up in two jounces. Burt is just getting out of the bath, so don't dally."

            Along toward the second cup of coffee Burt said, "Well, dear?"

            Anna said, "Shall I?"

            "Go ahead, hon."

            "All right. Goldie, FridayÄ We hope you can spare us some time this morning because we both love you both and want you to be with us. We're getting married this morning."

            Goldie and I put on fine exhibitions of utter astonishment and great pleasure, along with jumping up and kissing each of them. In my case the pleasure was sincere; the surprise was faked. With Goldie I thought that it might have been reversed. I kept my suspicions to myself.

            Goldie and I went out to buy flowers with arrangements to meet at the Gretna Green Wedding Chapel laterÄand I was relieved and pleased to find that Goldie seemed to be just as happy about it out of their presence as in it. She said to me, "They're going to be very good for each other. I never did think well of Anna's plans to become a professional grandmother; that's a form of suicide." She added, "I hope you didn't get your nose out of joint."

            I answered, "Huh? Me? Why in the world would I?"

            "He slept with you night before last; he slept with her last night. Today he's marrying her. Some women would be quite upset."

            "Fer Gossake, why? I'm not in love with Burt. Oh, I do love him because he was one of you who saved my life one busy night. So night before last I tried to thank himÄand he was awfully sweet to me, too. When I needed it. But that's no reason for me to expect Burt to devote himself to me every night or even a second night."

            "You're right, Friday, but not many women your age can think that straight."

            "Oh, I don't know; I think it's obvious. You didn't get your feelings hurt. Same deal."

            "Eh? What do you mean?"

            "Exactly the same deal. Night before last she slept with you; last night she slept with him. Doesn't seem to fret you."

            "Why should it?"

            "It should not. But the cases are parallel." (Goldie, please don't take me for a fool, dear. I not only saw your face but I smelled you.) "Matter of fact, you surprised me a little. I didn't know you leaned that way. Of course I knew that Anna didÄshe surprised me a bit in taking Burt to bed. I wasn't aware that she did. Men, I mean. Hadn't known that she had ever been married."

            "Oh. Yes, I suppose it could look that way. But it's much what you said about Burt: Anna and I love each other, have for yearsÄ and sometimes we express it in bed. But we're not `in love.' Each of us leans heavily toward men . . . no matter what impression you gained the other night. When Anna practically stole Burt out of your arms, I cheeredÄdespite fretting a bit about you. But not fretting too much because you always have a pack of men sniffing around after you whereas with Anna it had become a seldom thing. So I cheered. Hadn't expected it to lead to marriage but it's grand that it has. Here's the Golden OrchidÄwhat shall we buy?"

            "Wait a moment." I stopped her outside the florist shop. "Goldie

ù . . at great risk to her life somebody went charging up to the bedroom of the farmhouse, carrying a basket stretcher. For me."

            Goldie looked annoyed. "Somebody talks too much."

            "I should have talked sooner. I love you. More than I love Burt for I've loved you longer. Don't need to marry him, can't marry you. Just love you. All right?"

XXVI

Maybe I did marry Goldie, sort of. Once we had Anna and Burt formally married, we all went back to the hotel; Burt moved them into the "bridal suite" (no mirror on the ceiling, interior decorations white and pink instead of black and red, otherwise much the sameÄbut much more expensive), and Goldie and I moved out of the hotel and sublet a little crackerbox near where Charleston slants into Fremont. This placed us in walking distance of the slidewalk connecting the Labor Mart with town and that gave Goldie transportation to any of the hospitals and made it easy for me to shopÄ otherwise we would have had to buy or rent a horse and buggy, or bicycles.

            Location was that house's sole virtue, maybe, but to me it was a fairy-tale honeymoon cottage with roses over the door. It had `no roses and was ugly and the only thing modern in it was a limitedservice terminal. But for the first time in my life I had a home of my own and was a "housewife." My home in Christchurch had never truly been mine; I certainly was never mistress of that household, and I had been steadily reminded in various ways that I was a guest rather than a permanent fixture.

            Do you know what fun it is to buy a saucepan for your very own kitchen?

            I was a housewife at once as Goldie was called on that very day and went on watch at twenty-three hundred to work all night to ohseven hundred. The following day I cooked my first dinner while

Goldie slept. . . and burned the potatoes beyond salvage and cried, which is, I understand, a bride's privilege. If so, I've used mine up against the day when I'm really a bride if everÄand not a phony bride as in Christchurch.

            I was a proper housewife; I even bought sweet-pea seeds and planted them in lieu of that missing climbing rose over the doorÄ and discovered that gardening has more to it than sticking seeds in the ground; those seeds did not germinate. So I consulted the Las Vegas library and bought a book, a real book with looseleaf pages and pictures of what the compleat gardener should do. I studied it. I memorized it.

            One thing I did not do. Although enormously tempted I did not get a kitten. Goldie might ship out any day; she warned me that, if I was out of the house, she might be gone without saying good-bye (as I had warned GeorgesÄand did do).

            Were Ito get a kitten I would be honor-bound to keep it. A courier can't carry a kitten everywhere in a travel case; that's no way to bring up a baby. Someday I would ship out. So I did not adopt a kitten.

            Aside from that I enjoyed all the warm delights of being a housewife. . . including ants in the sugar and a waste pipe line that broke in the night, two delights that I don't care to repeat. It was a very happy time. Goldie slowly got my cooking straightened outÄI had thought I knew how to cook; now I do know how. And I learned to stir a martini exactly the way she preferred it: Beefeater gin threepoint-six to one of Noilly Prat dry vermouth, a twist, no bittersÄ while I took Bristol Cream on rocks. Martinis are too rugged for me but I can see why a nurse with tired feet would want one the minute she is home.

            Swelp me, had Goldie been male, I would have had my sterility reversed and happily have raised children and sweet peas and cats.

            Burt and Anna left for Alabama early in this period and we all made careful arrangements not to lose track of each other. They did not intend to live there but Anna felt that she owed her daughter a visit (and owed herself, I think, a chance to show off her new husband). Thereafter they intended to sign up with a military or quasimilitary, one that would take both of them and contract to keep them together. In combat. Yes. Both were tired of desk work; both were willing to take a bust in grade to leave staff and join a combat

Host MotherÄUnlimited License, Bonded by TransAmerica

and/or Lloyd'sÄno extra charge for multiple births up to

quadruplets. Fee by arrangement. Standard interview

fee with physical examination by your-choice physiometricist.

BABIES UNLIMITED, Inc.

LV 7962M 4/3

team. "Better one crowded hour of life than a cycle of Cathay." Maybe so. It was their life.

            I kept in touch at the Labor Mart because the day was coming when I not only would want to ship out but would have to ship out. Goldie was working quite steadily and she tried to insist on paying all the household expenses. I laid my ears back and insisted on paying half right down the middle. Since I was keeping track of every buck, I knew exactly what it cost to live in Las Vegas. Too much, even in a crackerbox. When Goldie left, I could live there a few months, then I would be broke.

            But I would not do so. A honeymoon cottage is a no-good place to live alone.

            I continued to try to reach Georges and Ian and Janet, and Betty and Freddie, but I limited myself to twice a month; the terminal charges were considerable.

            Twice a week I spent half a day at the Labor Mart, checking everything. I no longer expected to find a courier job even half as good as the one I had had with Boss but I still checked the multinationalsÄwho did indeed use experienced couriers. And I checked all other job opportunities, looking for something, anything, to match my decidedly odd talents. Boss had hinted that I was some sort of a supermanÄif so, I can testify that there is very little demand for supermen.

            I considered going to school to become a croupier or dealerÄ then moved that possibility to the bottom of the pile. A skilled dealer or stick man or wheel man can work for many years at good wages

            but to me it would be a treadmill. A way to stay alive but not a life. Better to join up as a private and buck for field rank.

            But there were other possibilities I had never thought about. Consider these:

WANTED: 90-day wife for off-planet vacation.

All expenses, luxury 9 +, guild bonus scale. Phys. range

S/Vv', temperament sanguine 8, amativeness scale 7 or above.

Client holds procreation license Chicago Imperium, will

surrender it to holiday wife if she becomes pregnant or both

will undergo 120-day sterilization, her choice.

See Amelia Trent, Licensed Sex Broker,

#18/20 New Cortez Mezzanine.

URGENTLY NEEDEDÄTwo Time-Space Engineers, any sex,

experienced in n-dimensional design. Must be willing to

risk nonreversible temporal dislocation.

ParticipationÄAmenitiesÄAssurance

Terms to be negotiated

Babcock and Wilcox, Ltd.

Care Wall Street Journal, LV Lbr Mrt

            I could try to sign with Babies Unlimited or I could freelance. My conditional sterility would be a selling point, as the thing customers of host mothers are most leery of is the host mother who slips one over on the clientÄgets pregnant on her own just before submitting herself for hosting. Sterility is no handicap as bringing down an ovum is not the purpose; the technologist simply manipulates to change the body chemistry to make the field ripe for implantation. Ovulation is simply a nuisance.

            Having babies for other people could be only a stopgapÄbut a possible one; it paid well.

            Not a bad deal for someone who wanted a three-months' vacation and enjoyed Russian roulette. To me, pregnancy was no danger and my horny scale rating is higher than sevenÄmuch! But the doxy bonus scale in the Free State is not high enough to make the accumulated pay enough to justify losing chances at more permanent workÄand that faceless client was almost certainly a crashing bore or he wouldn't consider hiring a stranger for his holiday bed.

            The above is exactly the sort of job I wanted. The only hitch was that I was in no slightest degree qualified.

The First Plasmite Church ("In the Beginning was Plasma, without form and void") off the Mall had a sign advertising times of services. A smaller notice with movable letters included in it caught my eye:

"The Next Virgin Will Be Sacrificed at 0251 Oct 22"

            That looked like a permanent position but again not one for which I was qualified. It fascinated me. While I was gawking, a man came out and changed the sign and I realized that I had missed last night's sacrament and the next altar sacrifice was two weeks away, which left me undismayed. But my curiosity got me, as usual. I asked him: "Do you actually sacrifice virgins?"

            He answered, "Not me. I'm just an acolyte. ButÄ Well, no, they don't actually have to be virgins. But they do have to look like virgins." He looked me up and down. "I think you could make it. Want to come in and talk to the priest?"

            "Uh, no. Do you mean that he actually sacrifices them?"

            He looked at me again. "You're a stranger here, aren't you?"

            I admitted it. "Well, it's like this," he went on. "If you were to advertise that you were casting for a snuff film, you could cast every part by noon and not one of `em would ask if they were actually going to be snuffed. It's that kind of a town."

            Maybe so. More likely I'm a yokel come to town. Or both.

            There were lots of ads for off-planet jobs or concerning off-planet matters. I did not expect to hire out for an off-planet job because I did expect to go off planet as a colonist so lavishly subsidized that I would have free choice of any colony, from Proxima, almost in our laps, to The Realm, so far away that both cargo and people went by n-shipÄexcept that the late word on The Realm was that The First Citizen had closed it to migrants at any price, except certain artists and scientists by individual negotiation. Not that I wanted to go to The Realm, rich as it is reputed to be. Too far! But the Proximates are our close neighbors; from South Island their sun is right overhead, a big bright star. Friendly.

            But I read all the ads:

            Transuranics Golden Division on Golden around Procyon-B wanted experienced mining engineers to supervise kobolds, fiveyear renewable, bonuses, perks. The ad did not mention that on Golden an unmodified human person seldom lives five years.

            HyperSpace Lines was hiring for the run to The Realm via Proxima, Outpost, Fiddler's Green, Forest, Botany Bay, Halcyon, and Midway. Four months round trip horn Stationary Station, one month paid leave Earthside or Luna, and repeat. I skipped over the requirements and pay for ultra-astrogator and warp engineer and supercargo and communicator and medical officer but looked at the other ratings:

            Waiter, room steward, maintenance carpenter, electrician, plumber, electronicist, electronicist (computer), plumber, cook, baker, sous chef, pantryman, chef, specialty cook, bartender, croupier/dealer, social director, holographer/photographer, dental assistant, singer, dance instructor, games supervisor, companionsecretary-maid/valet, cruise director's assistant, art instructor, cards instructor, cruise hostess, swimming instructor, hospital nurse, children's nurse, master-at-arms (armed), master-at-arms (unarmed), director/bandmaster, theatrical director, musician (twentythree instruments named but doubling on two or more required), cosmetician, barber, masseur, stores clerk, retail sales clerk, sales manager, excursion escortÄ

            Äand that's just a sample. In general, if they do it on the ground, they do it or something like it in the sky. Some of the jobs concerned uniquely with spaceship matters I can't even translateÄwhat in the world (or out of it) is an "over kippsman 2/c"?

            One profession not listed is "doxy" despite the fact that HyperSpace Lines is an Equal Opportunity Employer. By word of mouth I learned how very equal this is. If you want to be hired for any of the not so very technical jobs, it helps enormously to be young, handsome/pretty, healthy, horny, bisexual, money-hungry, and open to any reasonable proposition.

            The Port Captain himself has two left feet and was purser of the old Newton, up from room steward. In his sky-voyaging days he made certain that his first-class passengers got anything they wantedÄand that they paid well for it. As Port Captain this is still his

purpose. He is said to favor married couples or equivalent over any single if they can work as a team both in and out of bed. I heard a story around the Mall of one gigolo/doxy team who made themselves rich in only four tripsÄdance instructors in the morning, swimming instructors in the afternoon, dancing host and hostess before and after dinner, a singing and comedy act, then private entertainment singly or as a team at nightÄfour voyages and ready to retire . . . and had to retire because they were fired, as they were no longer very attractive, no longer brimming with vitality; they had maintained this impossible pace on uppers and downers.

            I don't think money can tempt me that much. I'll stay awake all night most anytime I'm asked but I do want to catch up on sleep the next day.

            I wondered how it was that HyperSpace Lines, with only four passenger liners, was apparently hiring all their many ratings all the time. The line's assistant hiring agent said to me, "You really don't know?"

            I told her I did not.

            "At each of three of the stops it takes lots and lots of what makes the world go round to buy your way in. Three more are not cheap although some skills are accepted in lieu of contribution. Only one is a bounty planet. So desertion is a major problem. Fiddler's Green is so desirable a place that the first officer of the Dirac jumped ship there a few years back. The company does not have too much trouble with crew recruited here . . . but suppose your home was Rangoon or Bangkok or Canton and you were working cargo on Halcyon and the pusher took his eyes off you just long enough. What would you do?"

            She shrugged and went on, "I'm telling you no secrets. Anybody who thinks about it knows that the only possible way for most people to get off EarthÄeven to LunaÄis to sign on as crew of a spaceship, then jump ship. I'd do it myself if I could."

            "Why don't you?" I asked.

            "Because I have a six-year-old son."

            (I should learn to mind my own business!)

            Some of the ads stirred my imagination; this was one:

New Planet Just OpeningÄType T-8 Guaranteed Maximum Danger

            Couples or Groups Only Augmented Survival Plan Churchill and Son, Realtors Las Vegas Labor Mart 96/98

            I remembered something Georges had said, that anything above Terran scale eight called for a big bonus or bounty. But I knew more about that scale now; eight was Earth's own basic rating. Most of this planet wasn't too easy to tame. Most of it had to be worked over, rebuilt. This very land I stood on had been fit only for gila monsters and desert crawlies until it had been treated with tons of money and many, many tons of water.

            I wondered about that "maximum danger." Was it something that called for the talents of a woman who was fast on her feet when triggered? I really didn't yearn to be a platoon leader of Amazons because some of my girls would get killed and I wouldn't like that. But I wouldn't mind tackling a saber-toothed tiger or equivalent because I felt certain that I could move in, clobber him, and back off while he was still finding out that something was up.

            Maybe a raw T-8 would be a better place for Friday than a manicured place like Fiddler's Green.

            On the other hand that "maximum danger" might derive from too many volcanoes or too much radioactivity. Who wants to glow in the dark? Find out first, Friday; you won't get two chances.

I stayed quite late at the Mall that day because Goldie was again on the night shift. I had served her dinner when she got home that morning, put her to bed about ten, and hoped that she would sleep till at least eighteen. So I dallied until the Mall offices started closing.

            When I got home our house was dark, which pleased me as it tended to indicate that Goldie had slept straight through. With luck I could get her breakfast before she woke up. So I let myself in most

quietly . . . and realized that the house was empty. I won't try to define this but an empty house doesn't feel, smell, sound, or taste like one with a person sleeping in it. I went straight to the bedroom. Empty bed. Empty bath. I switched on lights and presently I found it, a long printout for me in the terminal:

Dearest Friday, It looks now as if you won't be home before I leaveÄand that is probably just as well because we would just cry on each other and that's no help.

            My job came through but not as expected. Keeping in touch with my former boss paid off; Dr. Krasny called me shortly after I went to bed. He is CO. of a brand-new MASH being set up to serve the Sam Houston Scouts. An expanded Scouts of course; each battalion is cadre for a triangular combat team, a pony brigade. I am not supposed to tell you where we are mounting or where we will go but (burn this printout after you read it!) if you were to go west from Plainview, you might run across us in Los Llanos Estacados, before you reach Portales.

            Where are we going? That's really classified! But if we don't hit Ascension, some wives will draw a pension. I called Anna and Burt; they are meeting me in El Paso at ten past eighteen

already in Texas. Oh, dear!]

because Dr.

Krasny assured me that they would have jobs, either as combat troops or as auxiliary medical if any hitch develops. There is a job for you, too, my dear oneÄcombat if that's what you want. Or I'll rate you medtech-3 and use you myself and upgrade you to master sergeant (medadmin) in nothing flat, as I know your quality and so does Colonel Krasny. It would be good to have all four of usÄfive, I meanÄ back together again.

            But I'm not trying to twist your arm. I know you have things troubling you about your Canadian friends who disappeared. If you feel that you must stay loose to look for themÄbless you and good luck. But if you want to get in a little action with bonus pay, come straight to El Paso. The address is Panhandle Investments, El Paso Division, Field Operations Office, Environmental Factors, Attention John

Krasny, Chief EngineerÄand don't laugh; just memorize it and destroy it.

            Once this operation is in the news you can reach any of us openly through the Houston office of the Scouts. But in the meantime I am "personnel chief clerk" in "Environmental Factors."

May a gracious God watch over you and keep you safe from harm.

All my love,

Goldie

XXVII

I burned it at once. Then I went to bed. I didn't feel like eating dinner.

            Next morning I went to the Labor Mart, looked up Mr. Fawcett, agent for HyperSpace Lines, and told him that I wanted to sign on as a master-at-arms, unarmed.

            The supercilious slob laughed at me. I glanced at his assistant for moral support but she kept her eyes averted. I restrained my temper and said gently, "Would you mind explaining the joke?"

            He stopped his raucous cawing and said, "Look, chicken, `master' as in `master-at-arms' designates a male. Although we might be able to hire you as `mistress' in some other department."

            "Your sign says Equal Opportunity Employer. The fine print under it states that `waiter' includes `waitress,' `steward' includes `stewardess,' and so forth. Is that true?"

            Fawcett stopped grinning. "Quite true. But it also says: `physically able to carry out the normal duties of the position.' Master-atarms is a police officer aboard ship. Master-at-arms, unarmed, is a cop who can keep order without having to resort to weapons. He can wade into a fight and arrest the center of the disturbance, barehanded. Obviously you can't. So don't give me any quack about taking it to the union."

            "I shan't. But you didn't read my brag sheet."

            "Can't see that it matters. HoweverÄ" He glanced casually down

the page. "Says here you're a combat courier, whatever that is."

            "That means that when I have a job to do, nobody stops me. If somebody tries too hard, he's dog meat. A courier goes unarmed. I sometimes carry a laser knife or one-shot tear gas. But I depend on my hands. Note my training."

            He looked it over. "Okay, so you've been to a martial-arts school. That still doesn't mean that you can cope with some big bruiser over a hundred kilos heavier and a head taller than you are. Don't waste my time, girlie; you couldn't even arrest me."

            I went over his desk, then turkey-walked him to the door and turned him loose before anyone outside could see. Even his assistant did not see itÄshe most carefully did not see it.

            "There," I said, "that's how I do it without hurting anyone. But I want to be tested against your biggest male master-at-arms. I'll break his arm. Unless you tell me to break his neck."

            "You grabbed me when I wasn't looking!"

            "Of course I did. That's how to handle a nasty drunk. But you're looking now, so let's run through it again. Are you ready? This time I might have to hurt you a little but not much. I won't break any bones."

            "Stay where you are! This is ridiculous. We don't hire masters-atarms merely because they've been trained in some Oriental tricks; we hire big men, men so big they carry authority just by their size. They don't have to fight."

            "Okay," I said. "Hire me as a plainclothes cop. Put me into an evening dress; call me a dance hostess. When somebody about my size and hopped up on sleet pokes your big cop in his solar plexus and he goes down, I stop pretending to be a lady and go in and rescue him.

            "Our masters-at-arms don't need to be protected."

            "Maybe. A really big man is usually slow and clumsy. He hardly ever knows much about fighting because he's never really had to fight. He's okay to keep order at a card party. Or to handle one drunk. But suppose the Captain really needs help. A riot. A mutiny. Then you need someone who can fight. Me."

            "Leave your application with my assistant. Don't call us; we'll call you."

I went home and thought about where else I could lookÄor should I go to Texas? I had made the same silly, unpardonable mistake with Mr. Fawcett that I had made with Brian. . . and Boss would have been ashamed of me. Instead of picking up his challenge I should have insisted on a fair testÄbut I should never have laid a finger on the man I was asking to hire me. Stupid, Friday, stupid!

            It was not losing that job that bothered me; it was losing any chance of getting a spaceside job with HyperSpace Lines. I was going to have to have a job pretty soon to accomplish the sacred duty of seeing to it that Friday eats (let's face it; I eat like a pig) but it didn't have to be this job. I had decided to ship out with HyperSpace because one voyage with them would let me size up more than half of the colonized planets in explored space.

            While I had made up my mind to migrate as Boss had advised, the idea of picking a planet solely from brochures written by advertising copywritersÄwith no return-and-exchange privilegeÄbothered me. I wanted to shop first.

            For example: Eden has received more favorable publicity than any other colony in the sky. Hearken to its virtues: A climate much like Southern California over most of its land mass, no dangerous predators, no noxious insects, surface gravity 9 percent less than Earth, oxygen content of air 11 percent higher, metabolic environment compatible with Terran life and soil so rich that two or three bumper crops a year are routine. Scenery delightful no matter where you look. Population today just under ten million.

            So what's the catch? I found out one evening in Luna City through letting a ship's officer pick me up and take me to dinner. The company placed a high price on Eden from the time it was discovered and touted it as the perfect retirement home. And it is. After the pioneer party had prepared it, nine-tenths of the people who moved there were elderly and wealthy.

            The government is a democratic republic but not one like the California Confederacy. To be eligible to vote a person must be seventy Terran years old and a taxpayer (i.e., landowner). Residents from ages twenty to thirty perform public service, and if you think that means waiting on the elderly hand and foot you are utterly right, but it includes also anything else unpleasant that needs to be

done and therefore would command high wages if it were not done by conscript labor.

            Is any of this in any of the company brochures? Hollow laugh!

            I needed to know the unadvertised facts about each colonial planet before buying a one-way ticket to one of them. But I spoiled my best chance by "proving" to Mr. Fawcett that an unarmed female can place a come-along on a male bigger than she isÄthat merely got me on his blacklist.

            I do hope I grow up before Cheyne-Stokes breathing sets in.

Boss scorned crying over spilt milk quite as much as he despised self-pity. Having killed my chances of being hired by HyperSpace it was time to leave Las Vegas while I was still solvent. If I couldn't make the Grand Tour myself, there was still a way to get the ungarnished word about colonial planets the way I had acquired the truth about Eden: cultivate ships' crew members.

            The way to do that was by going to the one place where I was sure to find them: Stationary Station, up the Beanstalk. Freighters were not likely to come farther down Earth's gravity well than to Eli-Four or -FiveÄthat is, to Lunar orbit without the disadvantage of entering Luna's own gravity well. But passenger ships usually touched at Stationary Station. All of HyperSpace Lines' giant liners, Dirac, Newton, Forward, and Maxwell, left from there, returned there, received maintenance and chandlery there. Shipstone complex had a branch there (Shipstone Stationary) primarily to sell power to ships and especially these big ships.

            Officers and ratings going on leave arrived and left from there; those not on leave might sleep in their ships but they were likely to drink and eat and party a bit in the Station.

            I dislike the Beanstalk and I don't care much for the twenty-fourhour Station. Aside from its spectacular and always changing view of Earth it has nothing to offer but high prices and cramped quarters. Its artificial gravity surges uncomfortably and always seems to go out just in time to put soup in your face.

            But there are jobs to be had there if you are not fussy. I should be able to support myself there long enough to be sure that I received

frank opinions concerning each of the colonized planets from one or more jaundiced spacemen.

            It was even possible that I might bypass Fawcett an~I ship out from there with HyperSpace. Ships are reputed always to sign on a few at the last minute to fill unexpected vacancies. If such a chance opened up, I would not compound my follyÄI would not ask for a master-at-arms billet. Waitress, scullery, chambermaid, bath attendantÄif the job would swing me around the Grand Tour, I would grab it.

            Having thus picked my new home, I looked forward to boarding the same ship, by choice, as a luxury-class passenger, passage paid under the odd terms of my foster father's will.

            I gave notice to the leaseholder of the mousetrap I lived in, then took care of some chores before leaving for Africa. AfricaÄ Would I have to cross via Ascension? Or would SBs be running again? Africa made me think of Goldie, and Anna and Burt, and sweet Doe Krasny. I might reach Africa before they did. Irrelevant as there was only one probable war there now (that I knew of) and I intended to shun that area like the plague.

            Plague! I must at once prepare a report on plague for Gloria Tomosawa and for my friends at EI1-Five, Mr. and Mrs. Mortenson. It seemed preposterously unlikely that anything I could say would persuade them or anyone else that a Black Death epidemic was coming in only two and a half yearsÄI hadn't believed it myself. But, if I could make responsible people uneasy enough so that antirat measures were tightened and health checks at CHI barriers be made more than a meaningless ritual, it mightÄit just mightÄsave space colonies and Luna.

            UnlikelyÄ But I had to try.

            The only other thing I had to do was make one more check on my missing friends . . . then let the matter rest until I came down from Stationary Station or (one may hope!) returned from the Grand Tour. Surely one can call Sydney or Winnipeg or anywhere from Stationary Station. . . but at much higher cost. I had learned lately that wanting something and being able to pay for it were not the same.

            I punched the Tormeys' Winnipeg call code, resigned to hearing:

"The code you have signaled is temporarily out of service at the subscriber's request."

            What I got was: "Pirates Pizza Palace!"

            I muttered, "Sorry, I punched wrong," and cleared the board. Then I punched again, most carefullyÄ

            Äand got: "Pirates Pizza Palace!"

            This time I said, "I'm sorry to bother you. I'm in Las Vegas Free State and have been trying to reach a friend in WinnipegÄbut twice I've reached you. I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

            "What code did you punch?','

            I told the friendly voice. "That's us," she agreed. "Best giant pizzas in British Canada. But we opened just ten days ago. Maybe your friend used to have this call code?"

            I agreed with that, thanked the pleasant voice, and clearedÄsat back and thought. Then I punched ANZAC Winnipeg while wishing mightily that this minimum-service terminal could bring in a picture from farther away than Las Vegas itself~ in trying to play Pinkerton it helps to watch faces. Once ANZAC's computer answered, I asked for the operations duty officer, I having become somewhat more sophisticated in how to handle that computer. I told the woman who answered, "I'm Friday Jones, a New Zealand friend of Captain and Mrs. Tormey. I tried to call their home and could not reach them. I wonder if you can help me?"

            "I'm afraid not."

            "Really? Not even a suggestion?"

            "I'm sorry. Captain Tormey resigned. He even cashed in his pension rights. I understand that he's sold his house, so I assume that he is gone for good. I do know that the only address we have for him is his brother-in-law's address at the University of Sydney. But we can't give out addresses."

            I said, "I think you mean Professor Federico Farnese, Biology Department, at the University."

            "That's right. I see you know it."

            "Yes, Freddie and Betty are old friends; I knew them when they lived in Auckland. Well, I'll wait till I'm home to call Freddie and that will get me Ian. Thanks for being so helpful."

            "My pleasure. When you talk to Captain Tormey, please tell him that Junior Piloting Officer Pamela Heresford sends her best."

            "I will remember."

            "If you are going home soon, I have good news for you. The semi schedule for Auckland is now fully restored. We've rim ten days of cargo-only and we are now certain that there is no longer any way our ships can be sabotaged. We are offering a forty percent discount on all fares now, too; we want to get our old friends back."

            I thanked her again but told her that, since I was in Vegas, I expected to leave from Vandenberg, then switched off before I had to improvise more lies.

            Again I sat and thought. Now that the SBs were running should I go to Sydney first? There wasÄor used to beÄa weekly trajectory from Cairo to Melbourne, and vice versa. If it was not running it was possible to go by tube and float craft via Singapore, Rangoon, Delhi, Teheran, Cairo, then down to NairobiÄbut it would be expensive, long, and uncertain, with squeeze at every move and always the chance of being grounded by some local disturbance. I might wind up in Kenya without money enough to go up the Beanstalk.

            A last resort. A desperate one.

            I called Auckland, was unsurprised to be told by the computer that Ian's call code was not operative. I checked to see what time it was in Sydney, then called the university, not doing it the routine way through its admin office but punching straight through to its biology department, a call code I had obtained a month back.

            I recognized a familiar Strine accent. "Marjorie Baldwin here, Irene. Still trying to find my lost sheep."

            "My word! Luv, I tried, I did try, to deliver your message. But Professor Freddie never did come back to his office. He's left us. Gone."

            "Gone? Gone where?"

            "You wouldn't believe how many people would like to know! I'm not even supposed to be telling you this. Somebody cleaned out his desk, there's no hide nor hair in his flatÄgone! I can't tell you more than that, because nobody knows."

            After that dismaying call I sat still and thought, then called the Winnipeg Werewolves Security Guards. I went as high as I could, to a man who described himself as Assistant Commandant, and told him truthfully who I was (Marjorie Baldwin), where I was (Las Ve

gas), and what I wanted, a lead to my friends. "Your company was guarding their home before it was sold. Can you tell me who bought it, or who the agent was who sold it, or both?"

            Then I certainly wished for vision as well as sound! He answered, "Look, sister, I can smell a cop even through a terminal. Go back and tell your chief that he got nothing off us last time and he gets nothing off us this time."

            I held my temper and answered quietly, "I am not a cop although I can see why you might think so. I really am in Las Vegas, which you can confirm by calling me back, collect."

            "Not interested."

            "Very well. Captain Tormey owned a matched pair of black Morgans. Can you tell me who bought them?"

            "Copper, get lost."

            Ian had shown excellent judgment: The Werewolves really were loyal to their clients.

            If I had plenty of time and money, I might dig up something by going to Winnipeg and/or Sydney and rooting at it myself. If wishes were horsesÄ Forget it, Friday; you are at last totally alone; you've lost them.

            Do you want to see Goldie badly enough to get involved in a war in East Africa?

            But Goldie did not want to stay with you badly enough to stay out of that warÄdoesn't that tell you something?

            Yes, it tells me something I know but always hate to admit: I always need people more than they need me. It's your old basic insecurity, Friday, and you know where it comes from and you know what Boss thought about it.

            All right, we go to Nairobi tomorrow. Today we write up the Black Death report for Gloria and for the Mortensons. Then get a full night's sleep and leave. Uh, eleven hours time difference; try to get an early start. Then don't worry about Janet and Co. until you get back from the Beanstalk with your mind made up about where to colonize. Then you can afford to spend your last gram in a flatout attempt to find them. . . because Gloria Tomosawa will handle things once you tell her what planet you have picked.

            I actually did get a long night's sleep.

            The next morning I had packedÄsame old jumpbag, nothing

much in itÄand was puttering around the kitchen, dumping some items and saving others with a note to my landlord, the leaseholder, when the terminal buzzed.

            It was the nice gal with the six-year-old boy at HyperSpace. "Glad I caught you," she said. "My boss has a job for you."

            (Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.) I waited.

            Fawcett's silly face showed. "You claim to be a courier."

            "I'm the best."

            "In this case, you had better be. This is an off-planet job. Okay?"

            "Certainly."

            "Take this down. Franklin Mosby, Finders, Inc., suite six hundred, Shipstone Building, Beverly Hills. Now hurry; he wants to interview you before noon.,,

            I didn't write down the address. "Mr. Fawcett, that costs you one kilobuck, plus round-trip tube fare. In advance."

            "Huh? Ridiculous!"

            "Mr. Fawcett, I suspect that you may hold a grudge. It might strike you as funny to send me on a wild-goose chase and cause me to waste a day and the price of a round-trip fare to Los Angeles."

            "Funny girl. Look, you can pick up your fare here at the officeÄ after the interview; you've got to leave now. As for that kilobuck.

shall I tell you what to do with it?"

            "Don't bother. For master-at-arms I would expect only master-atarms wages. But as courier . . . I am the best and if this man really does want the best, he will pay my interview fee without a second thought." I added, "You're not serious, Mr. Fawcett. Good-bye." I cleared.

            He called back seven minutes later. He talked as if it hurt him. "Your round trip and the kilobuck wifl be at the station. But that kilobuck is against your salary and you pay it back if you don't get the job. Either way, I get my commission."

            "It will not be paid back under any circumstances, and you get no commission from me because I have not appoi~ted you my agent. Perhaps you can collect something from Mosby but, if so, it does not come out of my salary or my interview fee. And I'm not going down to the station to wait around like a boy playing snipe hunt. If you mean business, you'll send the money here."

            "You're impossible!" His face left the screen but he did not clear

it. His assistant came on. "Look," she said, "this job really does have heat behind it. Will you meet me at the station under the New Cortez? I'll get there as fast as I can make it and I'll have your fare and your fee."

            "Certainly, dear. A pleasure."

            I called my landlord, told him I was leaving the key in the refrigerator and be sure to salvage the food.

            What Fawcett did not know was that nothing could have induced me not to keep this appointment. The name and address was that which Boss had caused me to memorize just before he died. I had never done anything about it because he had not told me why he wanted me to memorize it. Now I would see.

XX VIII

All the sign on the door said was FINDERS, INC. and SPECIALISTS IN OFF-PLANET PROBLEMS. I went in and a live receptionist said to me, "They filled the job, deane; I got it."

            "I wonder how long you will keep it. I'm here by appointment to see Mr. Mosby."

            She looked me over carefully, in no hurry. "Call girl?"

            "Thank you. Where do you get your hair dyed? Look, I'm sent here by HyperSpace Lines, Las Vegas office. Every second is costing your boss bruins. I'm Friday Jones. Announce me."

            "You're kidding." She touched her console, spoke into a hushphone. I stretched my ears. "Frankie, there's a floozie out here says she has an appointment with you. Claims to be from Hypo in Vegas."

            "God damn it, I've told you not to call me that at work. Send her in."

            "I don't think she's from Fawcett. Are you two-timing me?"

            "Shut up and send her in."

            She pushed aside the hushphone. "Sit down over there. Mr. Mosby is in conference. I'll let you know as soon as he is free."

            "That isn't what he told you."

            "Huh? Since when do you know so much?"

            "He told you not to call him Frankie at work, and to send me in. You gave him some backtalk and he told you to shut up and to send me in. So I'm going in. Better announce me."

            Mosby appeared to be about fifty trying to look thirty-five. He had an expensive tan, expensive clothes, a big, toothy smile, and cold eyes. He motioned me toward a visitor's chair. "What took you so long? I told Fawcett I wanted to see you before noon."

            I glanced at my finger, then at his desk clock. Twelve-oh-four. "I've come four hundred and fifty kilometers plus a crosstown shuttle since eleven o'clock. Shall I go back to Vegas and see if I can beat that time? Or shall we get down to business?"

            "I told Fawcett to see to it that you caught the ten o'clock. Oh, well. I understand you need a job."

            "I'm not hungry. I was told that you needed a courier for an offplanet job." I took out a c'py of my brag sheet, handed it to him. "Here are my qualifications. Look it over and, if I am what you want, tell me about the job. I'll listen and tell you whether or not I'm interested."

            He glanced at the sheet. "The reports I have tell me that you are hungry."

            "Only in that it is getting on toward lunchtime. My fee schedule is on that sheet. It is subject to negotiationÄupwards."

            "You're pretty sure of yourself." He looked again at my brag sheet. "How's Kettle Belly these days?"

            "Who?"

            "It says here that you worked for System Enterprises. I asked you, `How is Kettle Belly?' Kettle Belly Baldwin."

            (Was this a test? Had everything since breakfast been carefully calculated to cause me to lose my temper? If so, the proper response would be not to lose my temper no matter what.) "The Chairman of System Enterprises was Dr. Hartley Baldwin. I've never heard him called Kettle Belly."

            "I believe he does have some sort of a doctor's degree. But everybody in the trade calls him Kettle Belly. I asked you how he is."

            (Watch it, Friday!) "He's dead."

            "Yeah, I know. I wondered if you knew. In this business you get a lot of ringers. All right, let's see this marsupial pouch of yours."

            "Excuse me?"

            "Look, I'm in a hurry. Show me your bellybutton."

            (Just where did the leak occur? UhÄ No, we killed that gang. All

of themÄor so Boss thought. Doesn't mean it couldn't have leaked from there before we killed them. No matterÄit did leak . . . as Boss said it would.) "Frankie boy, if you want to play bellybuttons with me, I must warn you that the bleached blonde in your outer office is listening and almost certainly recording."

            "Oh, she doesn't listen. She has her instructions about that."

            "Instructions she carries out the way she carries out your injunction not to call you Frankie during working hours. Look, Mr. Mosby, you started discussing classified matters under not-secure conditions. If you want her to be part of this conference, bring her in. If not, get her out of the circuit. But let's have no more breaches of security."

            He drummed on his desk, then got up very suddenly, went into his outer office. The door was not totally soundproof; I heard angry voices, muffled. He came back in, looking annoyed. "She's gone to lunch. Now don't give me any more guff. If you are who you say you are, Friday Jones, also known as Marjorie Baldwin, formerly a courier for KettleÄfor Dr. Baldwin, managing director of System Enterprises, you have a pouch created by surgery back of your navel. Show it to me. Prove your identity."

            I thought about it. A requirement that I prove my identity was not unreasonable. Fingerprint identification is a joke, at least inside the profession. Clearly the existence of my courier's pouch was now a broached secret. It would never be useful againÄexcept that right now it could be used to prove that I was me. I was I? It sounds silly either way. "Mr. Mosby, you paid a kilobuck to interview me."

            "I certainly did! So far I've had nothing from you but static."

            "I'm sorry. I've never been asked to show my trick bellybutton before, because up to recently it has been a closely held secret. Or so I thought. Evidently it is no longer a secret, since you know of it. That tells me that I can no longer use it for classified work. If the job you have for me requires the use of it, perhaps you had better reconsider. A secret just a little bit broached is like a girl just a little bit pregnant."

            "Well . . . yes and no. Show me."

            I showed him. I keep a smooth nylon sphere one centimeter in diameter in my pouch so that the pouch won't shrink between jobs.

I popped out the sphere, letting him watch, and then replaced itÄ then let him see that it was not possible to tell my navel from a normal navel. He studied it carefully. "It doesn't hold very much."

            "Maybe you would rather hire a kangaroo."

            "It's big enough for the purposeÄbarely. You'll be carrying the most valuable cargo in the galaxy, but it won't occupy much space. Zip up and adjust your clothing; we're going to lunch and we mustn'tÄmust notÄbe late."

            "What is all this?"

            "Tell you on the way. Hurry up."

A carriage was already waiting for us. Back of Beverly Hills, in the hills that name that town, is a very old hotel that is also very swank. It has the stink of money, an odor I don't despise. Between fires and the Big Quake it has been rebuilt several times, always to look just as it did but (so I hear) the last time it was rebuilt to be totally fire- and earthquakeproof.

            It took about twenty minutes to drive, at a spanking trot, from the Shipstone Building to the hotel; Mosby used it to fill me in. "During this ride is about the only time that both of us can be sure that we don't have an Ear planted on usÄ"

            (I wondered if he believed that. I could think of three obvious places for an Ear: my jumpbag, his pockets, and the cushions of the carriage. And there were always endless unobvious places. But it was his problem. I had no secrets. None, now that my bellybutton was a window to the world.)

            "Äso let me talk fast. I'm meeting your price. Furthermore there will be a bonus on completed performance. The trip is from Earth to The Realm. That's what you're paid for; the trip back is deadhead but, since the round trip is four months, you'll be paid for four months. You collect your bonus at the far end at the imperial capital. SalaryÄone month in advance, the rest as you go. Okay?"

            "Okay." I had to avoid sounding too enthusiastic. A round trip to The Realm? My dear man, only yesterday I was anxious to make this trip at petty officer's wages. "What about my expenses?"

            "You won't have much in the way of expenses. Those luxury liners are all-expense deals."

            "Gratuities, squeeze, groundside excursions, walking-around money, Bingo and such aboard shipÄat a minimum such expenses are never less than twenty-five percent of the price 6f the ticket. If I'm going to pretend to be a rich tourist, I must behave like one. Is that my cover?"

            "Uh . . . Well, yes. All right, all rightÄnobody's going to fuss if you spend a few thousand pretending to be Miss Rich Bitch. Keep track and bill us at the end."

            "No. Advance the money, twenty-five percent of the ticket cost. I won't keep records as it would not be in character; Miss Rich Bitch would not keep track of such trivia."

            "All right already! Shut up and let me talk; we'll soon be there. You're a living artifact."

            I had not felt that cold chill in quite a while. Then I braced up and resolved to make him pay heavily for that one crude, rude remark. "Are you being intentionally offensive?"

            "No, I'm not. Don't get in a flutter. You and I know that an artificial person can't be told, offhand, from a natural person. You'll be carrying, in stasis, a modified human ovum. You will carry it in your navel pouch, where the constant temperature and the cushioning will protect the stasis. When you reach The Realm, you will catch a flu bug or some such and go to hospital. While you are in this hospital, what you are carrying will be transferred to where it will do the most good. You'll be paid the bonus and will leave the hospital . . . with the happy knowledge that you have enabled a young couple to have a perfect baby when they were dead-certain, almost, to have a defective one. Christmas disease."

            I decided that the story was mostly true. "The Dauphiness."

            "What? Don't be silly!"

            "And it is considerably more than Christmas disease, which, by itself, might be ignored in a royal person. The First Citizen himself is concerned with this since this time succession is passing through his daughter rather than through a son. This job is much more important and much more hazardous than you told me . . . so the price goes up."

            That pair of beautiful bays went clopping on up Rodeo Drive another hundred meters before Mosby answered. "All right. God help

            you if you talk. You wouldn't live long. We'll increase the bonus.

AndÄ"

            "You'll damn well double the bonus and deposit it to my account before we warp. This is the kind of a job where people grow forgetful after it's over."

            "WellÄI'll do what I can. We are about to have lunch with Mr. SikmaaÄand you are expected not to spot the fact that he is personal representative of The First Citizen with an interworld rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. Now straighten up and mind your table manners."

Four days later I was again minding my table manners at the right of the Captain of H. S. Forward. My name was now Miss Marjorie Friday and I was so offensively rich that I had been fetched up from groundside to Stationary Station in Mr. Sikmaa's own antigrav yacht and whisked through into the Forward without having to bother with anything so plebeian as passport control, health, and so forth. My luggage had come aboard at the same timeÄbox after box of expensive, stylish clothing, appropriate jewelryÄbut others took care of it; I did not have to bother with anything.

            Three of those days I had spent in Florida in what felt like a hospital but was (I knew!) a superbly equipped genetic engineering laboratory. I could infer which one it was but I kept my guesses to myself as speculation about anything was not encouraged. While I was there I was given the most thorough physical examination I have ever heard of. I did not know why they were checking my health in a style ordinarily reserved for heads of state and chairmen of multinationals but I presumed that they were jumpy about entrusting to anyone not in perfect health the protecting and delivering of an ovum that would become, in the course of years, First Citizen of the fabulously wealthy Realm. It was a good time to keep my mouth shut.

            Mr. Sikmaa used none of the sharpshooting that both Fawcett and Mosby had tried. Once he decided that I would do, he sent Mosby home and catered to me so lavishly that I had no need to dicker. Twenty-five percent for casual money?Änot enough; make that fifty percent. Here it is; take itÄin gold and in Luna City gold

certificatesÄand, if you need more, just tell the purser and sign for it, a draft on me. No, we won't use a written contract; this is not that sort of a missionÄjust tell me what you want and youshall have it. And here is a little booklet that tells you who you are and where you went to school and all the rest. You will have plenty of time in the next three days to memorize it and if you forget to burn it, don't fret; the fibers are impregnated so that it self-destroys in the next three daysÄdon't be surprised if the pages are yellow and somewhat brittle on the fourth day.

            Mr. Sikmaa had thought of everything. Before we left Beverly Hills, he brought a photographer in; she shot me from several angles, me dressed in a smile, in high heels, in low heels, in bare feet. When my luggage showed up in the Forward, every item fitted me perfectly, all the styles and colors suited me, and the clothes carried a spread of famous designer's names from Italy, from Paris, from Bei-Jing, et al.

            I'm not used to haute couture and don't know how to handle it, but Mr. Sikmaa had that covered, too. I was met at the airlock by a pretty little Oriental creature named Shizuko who told me that she was my personal maid. Since I had been bathing and dressing myself since I was five, I felt no need for a maid, but again it was time to roll with the blow.

            Shizuko conducted me to cabin BB (not quite big enough for a volley-ball court). Once there, it appeared that (in Shizuko's opinion) there was just barely time enough to get me ready for dinner.

            With dinner three hours away this struck me as excessive. But she was firm and I was going along with whatever was suggestedÄI did not need a diagram to tell me that Mr. Sikmaa had planted her there.

            She bathed me. While this was going on, there was a sudden surge in the gray control as the ship warped away. Shizuko steadied me and kept it from being a wet disaster and did it so skillfully that she convinced me that she was used to warp ships. She didn't look old enough.

            She spent a full hour on my hair and my face. In the past I had washed my face when it seemed to need it and styled my hair mostly by whacking it off enough to keep it out of way. I learned what a

bumpkin I was. While Shizuko was reincarnating me as the Goddess of Love and Beauty the cabin's little terminal chimed. Letters appeared on the screen while the same message extruded from the printout, an impudent tongue:

The Master of HyperSpaceShip Forward

Requests the Pleasure of the Company

of Miss Marjorie Friday

for Sherry and Bonhomie in the Captain's Lounge at nineteen hundred hours

regrets only

            I was surprised. Shizuko was not. She had already hung out and touched up a cocktail dress. It covered me completely and I have never been so indecently dressed.

            Shizuko refused to let me be on time. She led me to the Captain's Lounge timed so that I went through the receiving line at seven minutes after the hour. The cruise hostess already knew my (current) name and the Captain bowed over my hand. It is my considered opinion that being a VIP in a spaceship is a better deal than being a spaceship master-at-arms.

            "Sherry" includes highballs, cocktails, Icelandic Black Death, Spring Rain from The Realm (deadlyÄdon't touch it), Danish beer, some pink stuff from Fiddler's Green, and, I have no doubt, Panther Sweat if you ask for it. It also includes thirty-one different sorts (I counted) of tasty tidbits you eat with your fingers. I was a credit to Mr. Sikmaa; I really did take sherry and only one small glass, and I greatly restrained myself when offered, again and again and again and again, those thirty-one tasty temptations.

            And it is well that I resisted. This ship puts on the nosebag eight times a day (again I counted): early morning coffee (caf‚ corn pletÄ that is, with pastry), breakfast, midmorning refreshment, tiffin, afternoon tea with sandwiches and more pastry, cocktail-hour hors d'oeuvres (those thirty-one sinful traps), dinner (seven courses if you can stay the route), midnight buffet supper. But if you feel peckish at any hour, you can always order sandwiches and snacks from the pantry.

            The ship has two swimming pools, a gymnasium, a Turkish bath, a Swedish sauna, and a "Girth Control" clinic. Two and a third times around the main promenade is a kilometer. I dOn't think this is enough; some of our shipmates are eating their way across the galaxy. My own major problem will be to arrive at the imperial capital still able to find my bellybutton.

            Dr. Jerry Madsen, Junior Medical Officer, who doesn't look old enough to be a sawbones, cut me out of the mob at the Captain's sherry, then was waiting for me after dinner. (He does not eat at the Captain's table or even in the dining room; he eats with the other younger officers in the wardroom.) He took me to the Galactic Lounge, where we danced, then there was a cabaret showÄsinging, specialty dancing, and a juggler who did magic tricks on the side (which made me think of those pigeons, and of Goldie, and I felt suddenly wistful but suppressed it).

            Then there was more dancing and two other young officers, Tom Udell and Jaime Lopez, rotated with Jerry, and finally the lounge shut down and all three took me to a little cabaret called The Black Hole, and I firmly declined to get drunk but danced whenever I was asked. Dr. Jerry managed to outsit the others and took me back to cabin BB at an hour quite late by ship's time but not especially late by the Florida time by which I had gotten up that morning.

            Shizuko was waiting, dressed in a beautiful formal kimono, silk slippers, and high makeup of another sort. She bowed to us, indicated that we should sit down at the lounge endÄthe bedroom end is shut off by a screenÄand served us tea and little cakes.

            After a short time Jerry stood up, wished me a good night, and left. Then Shizuko undressed me and put me to bed.

            I did not have any firm plans about Jerry though no doubt he could have persuaded me had he worked on itÄmy heels are quite short, I know. But both of us were sharply aware that Shizuko was sitting there, hands folded, watching, waiting. Jerry did not even kiss me good-night.

            After putting me to bed, Shizuko went to bed on the other side of the screenÄsome deal with bedclothes she took out of a cupboard.

            I was never before quite so closely chaperoned, even in Christchurch. Could this be part of my unwritten contract?

XXIX

A spaceshipÄa hyperspaceshipÄis a terribly interesting place. Of course it takes very, very advanced knowledge of wave mechanics and multidimensional geometry to understand what pushes the ship, education that I don't have and probably never will (although I would like to back up and study for it, even now). RocketsÄno problem; Newton told us how. AntigravÄa mystery until Dr. Forward came along and explained it; now it's everywhere. But how does a ship massing about a hundred thousand tonnes (so the Captain told me) manage to speed up to almost eighteen hundred times the speed of light?Äwithout spilling the soup or waking anyone.

I           don't know. This ship has the biggest Shipstones I've ever seen but Tim Flaherty (he's second assistant engineer) tells me that

they are charged down only at the middle of each jump, then they finish the voyage having used only "parasitic" power (ship's heat, cooking, ship's auxiliary services, etc.).

            That sounds to me like a violation of the Law of Conservation of Energy. I was brought up to bathe regularly and to believe that There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch; I told him so. He grew just a touch impatient and assured me that it was indeed the Law of Conservation of Energy that caused it to work out that wayÄ it worked just like a funicular; you got back what you put in.

            I don't know. There aren't any cables out there; it can't be a funicular. But it does work.

            The navigation of this ship is even more confusii~g. Only they don't call it navigation; they don't even call it astrogation; they call it "cosmonautics." Now somebody is pulling Friday's leg because the engineer officers told me that the officers on the bridge (it's not a bridge) who practice cosmonautics are cosmetic officers because they are there just for appearances; the computer does all the workÄand Mr. Lopez the second officer says that the ship has to have engineering officers because the union requires it but the computer does it all.

            Not knowing the math for either one is like going to a lecture and not knowing the language.

            I have learned one thing: Back in Las Vegas I thought that every Grand Tour was Earth, Proxima, Outpost, Fiddler's Green, Forest, Botany Bay, Halcyon, Midway, The Realm, and back to Earth because that's how the recruiting posters read. Wrong. Each voyage is tailored. Usually all nine planets are touched but the only fixed feature in the sequence is that Earth is at one end and The Realm, almost a hundred light-years away (98.7 +), is at the other. The seven way stations can be picked up either going out or coming back. However, there is a rule that controls how they are fitted in: Going out the distance from Earth must be greater at each stop, coming back the distance must decrease. This is not nearly as complex as it sounds; it simply means the ship does not double backÄjust the way you would plan a shopping trip of many stops.

            But this leaves lots of flexibility. The nine stars, the suns of these planets, are lined up fairly close to a straight line. See the sketch with the Centaur and the Wolf. Looking from Earth, all those stars, as you can see, are either at the front end of the Centaur or close by in the Wolf. (I know the Wolf doesn't look too well but the Centaur has been clobbering him for thousands of years. Besides, I've never seen a wolfÄa four-legged wolf, that isÄand it's the best I can do. Come to think of it, I've never seen a Centaur, either.)

            That's the way those stars cluster in Earth's night sky. You have to be about as far south as Florida or Hong Kong to see them at all, and even then, with bare eyes you will see only Alpha Centauri.

            But Alpha Centauri (Rigil Kentaurus) really shines out, third brightest star in Earth's sky. Three stars it is, actually, a brilliant one that is the twin brother of Sol, one not as bright that it is paired with, and a distant, dim, small companion that swings around both of them about a fifteenth of a light-year away. Years ago Alpha Centauri was known as Proxima. Then somebody bothered to measure the distance to this inconsequential third cousin and found that it was a hair closer, so the title of Proxima or "Nearest" was moved to this useless chunk of real estate. Then, when we set up a colony on the third planet of Alpha Centauri A (the twin of Sol), the colonists called their planet Proxima.

            Eventually the astronomers who tried to shift the title to the dim companion were all dead and the colonists got their way. Just as well, because that dim star, while a hair closer today, will soon be farther awayÄjust hold your breath a few millennia. Being "ballistically linked" it averages the same distance from Earth as the other two in the triplet.

            Look at the second sketch, the one with "right ascension" across the top and "light-years" down the side.

            I must be the only person out of the hundreds in this ship who did not know that our first stop on this voyage would not be Proxima. Mr. Lopez (who was showing me the bridge) looked at me as if I were a retarded child who had just made another unfortunate slip. (But that did not matter because he is not interested in my brain.) I didn't dare explain to him that I had been snatched aboard at the last moment; it would have blown my cover. However, Miss Rich Bitch is not required to be bright.

            The ship usually stops at Proxima both going and coming. Mr. Lopez explained that this time they had little cargo and only a few passengers for Proxima, not enough to pay for the stop. So that cargo and those passengers were put off until the Maxwell warps next month; this trip the Forward will call at Proxima on the way home, with cargo and, possibly, passengers from the other seven ports. Mr. Lopez explained (and I did not understand) that traveling many light-years in space costs almost nothingÄmostly rations for passengersÄbut stopping at a planet is terribly expensive, so any stop has to be worthwhile on the balance sheet.

            So here is where we are going this trip (see second sketch again):

first to Outpost, then to Botany Bay, then to The Realm, on to Midway, Halcyon, Forest, Fiddler's Green, Proxima (at last!), and on home to Earth.

            I'm not unhappy about itÄquite the contrary! I will get rid of this "most valuable cargo in the galaxy" less than a month after warping away from Stationary StationÄthen the whole long trip home will be a real tourist trip. Fun! No responsibilities. Lots of time to look over these colonies squired around by eager young officers who smell good and are always polite. If Friday (or Miss Rich Bitch) can't have fun with that setup, it is time to cremate me; I'm dead.

            Now see the third sketch, declination across the top, light-years down the side. This one makes the routing seem quite reasonableÄ but if you look back at the second sketch, you will see that the leg from Botany Bay to Outpost, which seems on the third sketch to skim the photosphere of Forest's sun, in fact misses it by many lightyears. Picturing this voyage actually calls for three dimensions. You can take the data from the sketches and from the table below and punch it into your terminal and pull out a three-dimensional hologram; it all makes sense seen that way. There is one on the bridge, frozen so that you can examine it in detail. Mr. Lopez, who made these sketches (all but Joe Centaur and the sad wolf) warned me that a flat plot simply could not portray three-dimensional cosmonautics. But it helps to think of these three sketches as plan view, side view, and front elevation, as in visualizing a house from its plans; that is exactly analogous.

            When Mr. Lopez gave me a printout of this table, he warned me

that the data are of about grammar-school accuracy. If you aim a telescope by these coordinates, you will find the right star, but for science and for cosmonautics you need more decimal places, and then correct for "epoeh"Äa fancy way of saying you must bring the data up to date because each star moves. Outpost's sun moves the least; it just about keeps up with the traffic in our part of the galaxy. But the star of Fiddler's Green (Nu~2] Lupi) has a vector of 138 kilometers per secondÄenough that Fiddler's Green will have moved more than 1. 5 billion kilometers between two visits five months apart by the Forward. This can be worrisomeÄaccording to Mr. Lopez it can worry a skipper right out of his job because whether or not a trip shows a profit depends on how closely a master can bring his ship out of hyperspace to a port planet without hitting something (such as a star!). Like driving an APV blindfolded!

            But I will never pilot a hyperspaceship and Captain van Kooten has a solid, reliable look to him. I asked him about it at dinner that night. He nodded. "Ve find it. Only once haf ye had to send some of de boys down in a landing boat to buy someting at a bakery and read de signs."

            I didn't know whether he expected me to laugh or to pretend to believe him, so I asked what they bought at the bakery. He turned to the lady on his left and pretended not to hear me. (The bakeshop in the ship makes the best pastry I have ever tasted and should be padlocked.)

            Captain van Kooten is a gentle, fatherly manÄyet I have no tron~ ble visualizing him with a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other, holding off a mob of mutinous cutthroats. He makes the ship feel safe.

Shizuko is not the only guard placed on me. I think I have identified four more and I am wondering if I have them all. Almost certainly not, as I have sometimes looked around and not spotted any of themÄyet the drill seems to be to have someone near me at all times.

            Paranoid? It sounds like it but I'm not. I am a professional who has stayed alive through always noticing anything offbeat. This ship has six hundred and thirty-two first-class passengers, some sixty-odd

uniformed officers, crew also in uniforms, and the cruise director's staff of hosts and hostesses and dancing partners and entertainers and such. The latter dress like passengers but they ~re young and they smile and they make it their business to see to it that the passengers are happy.

            The passengers: In this ship a first-class passenger under age seventy is a rarityÄme, for example. We have two teen-age girls, one teen-age boy, two young women, and a wealthy couple on their honeymoon. All others in first class are candidates for a geriatrics home. They are very old, very rich, and extremely self-centeredÄ save for a bare handful who have managed to grow old without turning sour.

            Of course none of these old dodderers are my guards, and neither are the youngsters. The cruise staff I got sorted out in the first fortyeight hours, whether they were musicians or whatever. I might have suspected that some of the younger officers had been assigned to watch me were it not that all of them stand duty watches, usually eight hours out of twenty-four, and therefore can't take on another full-time job. But my nose does not play me false; I know why they follow me around. I don't get this much attention dirtside but there is an acute shortage of beddable young females in this shipÄthirty young male officers versus four young, single females in first class, other than Friday. With those odds a nubile female would have to have very bad breath indeed not to carry a train like a comet.

            But, with all these categories accounted for, I found some men not accounted for. First class? Yes, they eat in the Ambrosia Room. Business travelers? MaybeÄbut according to the first assistant purser, business travelers go second class, not as swank but just as comfortable, at half the cost.

            Item: When Jerry Madsen takes me to The Black Hole with his friends, here is this solitary bloke nursing a drink over in the corner. Next morning Jimmy Lopez takes me swimming; this same bloke is in the pool. In the card room I'm playing one-thumb with Tommy shadow is playing solitaire over on the far side.

            Once or twice can be coincidence . . . but at the end of three days I am certain that, anytime I am outside of suite BB, some one of four men is somewhere in sight. He usually stays as far from me

as the geometry of the space permitsÄbut he's there.

            Mr. Sikmaa did impress on me that I was to carry "the most valuable package any courier ever carried." But I did not expect him to find it necessary to place guards around inside this ship. Did he think that someone could sneak up and steal it out of my bellybutton?

            Or are the shadows not from Mr. Sikmaa? Was the secret broached before I left Earth? Mr. Sikmaa seemed professionally careful . . . but how about Mosby and his jealous secretary? I just don't knowÄand I don't know enough about politics in The Realm to make any guesses.

Later: Both of the young women are part of the watchful eye over me but they close in only when and where the men cannotÄthe beauty parlor, the dress shop, the women's sauna, etc. They never bother me but I'm tired of it already. I'll be glad to deliver the package so that I can fully enjoy this wonderful trip. Luckily the best part is after we leave The Realm. Outpost is such a frost (literally!) that no groundside excursions are planned there. Botany Bay is said to be very pleasant and I must see it because it is a place to which I may migrate later.

            The Realm is described as rich and beautiful and I do want to see it as a touristÄbut I won't be moving there. While it is reputed to be quite well governed, it is as absolute a dictatorship as is the Chicago ImpermumÄI ye had enough of that But for a stronger reason I would not consider asking for an immigrant's visa: I know too much. Officially I don't know any'thing as Mr. Sikmaa never admitted it and I didn't askÄbut I won't stretch my luck by asking to live there.

            Midway is another place I want to see but don't want to live. Two suns in its sky are enough to make it special . . . but it is the Popein-Exile that makes it very specialÄto visit, not to stay. It really is true that they celebrate Mass there in public! Captain van Kooten says so and Jerry tells me that he has seen it with his own eyes and that I can see it, tooÄno charge, but a contribution for charity on the part of a gentile is good manners.

            I'm tempted to do it. It's not really dangerous and I'll probably never have a chance like this again in my whole life.

            Of course I'll check out Halcyon and Fiddler's Green. Each must be extra-special or they would not command such high prices .

but I'll be looking for the joker in the deck every mimiuteÄsuch as that at Eden. I would hate to ask Gloria to pay a high fee to get me in . . . then discover that I hated the place.

            Forest is supposed to be nothing much for a touristÄno amenitiesÄbut I want to give it a very careful look. It is the newest colony, of course, still in the log-cabin stage and totally dependent on Earth and/or The Realm for tools and instruments.

            But isn't that just the time to join a colony in order to feel great gusty joy in every minute?

            Jerry just looks sour. He tells me to go look at it. . . and learn for myself that life in the forest primeval is greatly overrated.

            I don't know. Maybe I could make a deal for stopover privilege:

pick up this ship or one of her sisters some months from now. Must ask the Captain.

Yesterday there was a holo at the Stardust Theater that I wanted to see, a musical comedy, The Connecticut Yankee and Queen Guinevere. It was supposed to be quite funny, with romantic-revival music, and loaded with beautiful horses and beautiful pageantry. I avoided my swains and went alone. Or almost alone; I could not avoid my guards.

            This manÄ"number three" in my mind, although the passenger list said that he was "Howard J. Bullfinch, San Diego"Äfollowed me in and settled down right behind me . . . unusual, since they normally stayed as far away from me as the size of a room permitted. Perhaps he thought he might lose track of me after they lowered the lights; I don't know. His presence behind me distracted me. When the Queen sank her fangs into the Yankee and dragged him into her boudoir, instead of thinking about the fun going on in the holotank, I was trying to sort out and analyze all the odors that reached meÄ not easy in a crowded theater.

            When the play was over and the lights came up, I reached the side aisle just as my shadow did; he gave way. I smiled and thanked him, then made exit by the forward door; he followed. That exit leads to a short staircase, four steps. I stumbled, fell backward, and he caught me.

            "Thank you!" I said. "For that I am taking you to the Centaur Bar to buy you a drink."

            "Oh, not at all!"

            "Oh, most emphatically. You are going to explain to me why you have been following me and who hired you and several other things."

            He hesitated. "You have made some mistake."

            "Not me, Mac. Would you rather come quietly . . . or would you rather explain it to the Captain?"

            He gave a little quizzical smile. (Or was it cynical?) "Your words are most persuasive even though you are mistaken. But I insist on paying for the drinks."

            "All right. You owe me that. And then some."

            I picked a table in the corner where we could not be overheard by other customers. . . thereby ensuring that we could be overheard by an Ear. But, aboard ship, how can one avoid an Ear? You can't.

            We were served, then I said to him almost silently, "Can you read lips?"

            "Not very well," he admitted at the same low level.

            "Very well, let's keep it as low as possible and hope that random noise will confuse the Ear. Mac, tell me one thing: Have you raped any other helpless females lately?"

            He flinched. I don't think anyone can be hit that hard and not flinch. But he paid me the courtesy of respecting my brain and showed that he was a brain, too, by answering, "Miss Friday, how did you recognize me?"

            "Odor," I answered. "Odor at first; you sat too close to me. Then, as we left the theater, I forced on you a voice check. And I stumbled on the stairs and forced you to put your arms around me. That did it. Is there an Ear on us here?"

            "Probably. But it may not be recording and it is possible that no one is monitoring it now."

            "Too much." I worried it. Walk side by side on the promenade? An Ear would have trouble with that setup without continuous tracking, but tracking could be automatic if Mac had a beacon on him. Or I myself might be booby-trapped. Aquarius Pool? Acoustics in a swimming pool are always bad, which was good. But, damn it, I needed more privacy. "Leave your drink and come with me."

            I took him to cabin BB. Shizuko let us in. So far as I could tell she stood a twenty-four-hour watch except that she slept when I did. Or I thought she did. I asked her, "What do we have later, Shizuko?"

            "Purser's party, Missy. Nineteen o'clock."

            "I see. Go take a walk or something. Come back in one hour."

            "Too late. Thirty minutes."

            "One hour!"

            She answered humbly, "Yes, Missy"Äbut not before I caught her glance at him and his scant five-millimeter nod.

            With Shizuko gone and the door bolted I said quietly, "Are you her boss or is she yours?"

            "Some argument," he admitted. "Maybe `cooperating independent agents' describes it."

            "I see. She's quite professional. Mac, do you know where the Ears are in here or will we have to work out some way to defeat them? Are you willing to have your sordid past discussed and recorded on tape somewhere? I can't think of anything that would embarrass meÄafter all, I was the innocent victimÄbut I want you to speak freely."

            Instead of answering he pointed: over my couch on the lounge side, over the head of my bed, into my bathroomÄthen he touched his eye and pointed to a spot where the bulkhead met the overhead opposite the couch.

            I nodded. Then I dragged two chairs off into the corner farthest from the couch and out of line of sight for the Eye location he had indicated. I switched on the terminal, punched it for music, selected a tape featuring the Salt Lake City Choir. Perhaps an Ear could reach through and sort out our voices but I did not think so.

            We sat down and I continued, "Mac, can you think of any good reason why I should not kill you right now?"

            "Just like that? Without even a hearing?"

            "Why do we need a hearing? You raped me. You know it, I know it. But I am giving you this much of a hearing. Can you think of any reason why you should not be summarily executed for your crime?"

            "Well, since you put it that wayÄ No, I can't."

            Men will be the death of me. "Mac, you are a most exasperating man. Can't you see that I don't want to kill you and am looking for a

reasonable excuse not to do so? But I can't manage it without your help. How did you get mixed up in so dirty a business as a gang rape of a blindfolded, helpless woman?"

            I sat and let him stew and that's just what he did. At last he said, "I could claim that I was so deep into it by then that, if I balked at raping you, I would have been killed myself, right then."

            "Is that true?" I asked, feeling contempt for him.

            "True enough, but not relevant. Miss Friday, I did it because I wanted to. Because you are so sexy you could corrupt a Stylite. Or cause Venus to switch to Lesbos. I tried to tell myself that I couldn't avoid it. But I knew better. All right, do you want my help in making it look like suicide?"

            "Not necessary." (So sexy I could corrupt a Stylite. What in the world is a Stylite?Ämust find out. He seemed to mean it as a superlative.)

            He persisted. "Aboard ship you can't run away. A dead body can be embarrassing."

            "Oh, I think not. You were hired to watch over me; do you think anything would be done to me? But you already know that I intend to let you get away with it. However, I want explanations before I let you go. How did you escape the fire? When I smelled you, I was astonished; I had assumed that you were dead."

            "I wasn't at the fire; I ran for it before that."

            "Really? Why?"

            "Two reasons. I planned to leave as soon as I learned what I had come for. But mostly on your account."

            "Mac, don't expect me to believe too many unlikely things. What was this you had come there to learn?"

            "I never found out. I was after the same thing they were after:

Why you had gone to Ell-Five. I heard them interrogate you and I could see that you did not know. So I left. Fast."

            "That's true. I was a carrier pigeon . . . and when does a carrier pigeon know what a war is about? They wasted their time, torturing me."

            Swelp me, he looked shocked. "They tortured you?"

            I said sharply, "Are you trying to play innocent?"

            "Eh? No, no, I'm guilty as sin and I know it. Of rape. ButI didn't

have any notion that they had tortured you. That's stupid, that's centuries out of date. What I heard was straight interrogation, then they shot you with babble juiceÄand you told the same story. So I knew you were telling the truth and I got out of there. Fast."

            "The more you tell me, the more questions you raise. Who were you working for, why were you doing it, why did you leave, why did they let you leave, who was that voice that gave you ordersÄthe one called the MajorÄwhy was everybody so anxious to know what I was carryingÄso anxious that they would mount a military attack and waste a lot of lives and wind up torturing me and sawing off my right tit? Why?"

            "They did that to you?" (Swelp me, Mac's face was utterly impassive until I mentioned damage done to my starboard milk gland. Will somebody explain males to me? With diagrams and short words?)

            "Oh. Complete regeneration, functional as well as cosmetic. I'll show youÄlater. If you answer my questions fully. You can check it against how it used to look. Now back to business. Talk."

            Mac claimed to have been a double agent. He said that, at the time, he was an intelligence officer in a quasi-military hired out to Muriel Shipstone Laboratories. As such, and working alone, he had penetrated the Major's organizationÄ "Wait a minute!" I demanded. "Did he die in the fire? The one called the Major?"

            "I'm fairly sure he did. Although Mosby may be the only one who knows."

            "Mosby? Franklin Mosby? Finders, Incorporated?"

            "I hope he doesn't have brothers; one is too many. Yes. But Finders, Inc. is just a front; he's a stooge for Shipstone Unlimited."

            "But you said you were working for Shipstone, tooÄthe laboratories."

            Mac looked surprised. "But the whole Red Thursday ruckus was an intramural fight amongst the top boys; everybody knows that."

            I sighed. "I seem to have led a protected life. All right, you were working for Shipstone, one piece of it, and as a double agent you were working for Shipstone, another piece of it. But why was I the bone being fought over?"

            "Miss Friday, I don't know; that is what I was supposed to find out. But you were believed to be an agent of Kettle Belly BalÄ"

            "Stop right there. If you are going to talk about the late Dr. Baldwin, please do not use that dreadful nickname."

            "Sorry. You were thought to be an agent of System Enterprises, that is to say, of Dr. Baldwin, and you confirmed it by going to his headquartersÄ"

            "Stop again. Were you part of the gang that jumped me there?"

            "I am happy to say that I was not. You killed two and one died later and none of them was unhurt. Miss Friday, you're a wildcat."

            "Go on."

            "KetÄ Dr. Baldwin was a mugwump, a maverick, not part of the system. With Red Thursday being mountedÄ"

            "What's Red Thursday got to do with this?"

            "Why, everything. Whatever it was that you carried was bound to affect the timing, at least. I think the Council for SurvivalÄthat's the side Mosby's goons were working forÄgot the wind up and moved before they were ready. Perhaps that's why nothing much ever came of it. They compromised their differences in the boardrooms. But I've never seen an analysis."

            (Nor had I, and now I probably never would. I longed for a few hours at the unlimited-service terminal I had had at Pajaro Sands. What directors if any had been killed on Red Thursday and its sequelae? What had the stock market done? I suspect that all really important answers never get into the history books. Boss had been requiring me to learn the sort of things that would eventually have led me to the answersÄbut he had died and my education stopped abruptly. For now. But I would still feed the Elephant's Child! Someday.)

            "Mac, did Mosby hire you for this job? Guarding me in this ship.

            "Eh? No, I've only had that one contact with Mosby and that under a phony. I was hired for this through a recruiter working for a cultural attach‚ of the Ambassador for The Realm in Geneva. This job isn't one to be ashamed of, truly. We are taking care of you. The best care."

            "Must be dull with no rape."

            "Ouch."

            "What are your instructions about me? And how many of you are there? You're in charge, are you not?"

            He hesitated. "Miss Friday, you are asking me to tell my employer's secrets. In the profession we don't do that . . . as I think you know."

            "Fiddlesticks. You knew when you walked in that door that your life depended on answering my questions. Think back to that gang that jumped me on Dr. B~ildwin's farmÄthink what happened to them. Then speak up."

            "I've thought about it, many times. Yes, I'm in charge . . . except, possibly, for TillyÄ"

            "Which one is Tilly?"

            "Sorry. Shizuko. That's a professional name. At UCLA she was Matilda Jackson. We all had been waiting in the Sky High Hotel almost two monthsÄ"

            `We,' plural. Name them. Ship's roster names. And don't try to stall me with guff about the mercenary's code; Shizuko will be back in a few minutes."

            He named themÄno surprises; I had spotted them all. Clumsy. Boss would never have tolerated it. "Go on."

            "We waited and the Dirac warped without us and only twentyfour hours before warping time for the Forward we were suddenly alerted to leave in the Forward. Then I was supplied with color holos of you for us to studyÄand, Miss Friday, when I saw your picture, I almost fainted."

            "Pictures were that bad? Oh, come, now."

            "Huh? No, they were quite good. But consider where I saw you last. I thought that you had died in that fire. I, uh, well, you might say I had grieved over you. Some at least."

            "Thank you. I think. Okay, seven, with you in charge. This trip isn't cheap, Mac; why do I need seven chaperons?"

            "I had thought that you might tell me. Not that it is any of my business why you are making this trip. All I can tell you are my instructions. You are to be delivered to The Realm in perfect condition. Not a hangnail, not a bruise, not a sniffle. When we arrive, an officer of the palace guard comes aboard and then you're his prob

1cm. But we don't get paid our delivery bonus until you've had a physical examination. Then we are paid, and we deadhead home."

            I thought about it. It was consistent with Mr. Sikmaa's worry over the "most valuable package a courier ever carried"Äbut there was something phony about it. The old belt-and-suspenders redundantbackups principle was understandableÄbut seven people, full-time, just to see that I did not fall downstairs and break my neck? It did not taste right.

            "Mac, I can't think of anything else to ask you now, and ShizukoÄI mean `Tilly'Äis due back. We'll talk later."

            "Very well. Miss Friday, why do you call me Mac?"

            "That's the only name I've ever heard you called. Socially, I mean. At a gang rape we both attended. I'm reasonably sure that you are not `Howard J. Bullfinch.' What do you prefer to be called?"

            "Oh. Yes, I was Mac on that mission. But I'm usually called Pete."

            "Your name is Peter?"

            "Uh, well, not exactly. It'sÄPercival. But I'm not called that."

            I refrained from laughing. "I don't see why not, Pete. Brave and honorable men have been named Percival. I think that's Tilly at the door, anxious to bathe me and to dress me. One last word: Do you know why you are still breathing? Not dead?"

            "Because you let me pee. Thank you for letting me pee before you handcuffed me to that bed."

            He suddenly looked wry. "I got chewed out for that."

            "You did? Why?"

            "The Major intended to force you to wet the bed. He figured that it would help to make you crack."

            "So? The bloody amateur. Pete, that was the point at which I decided that you were not totally beyond hope."

XXX

Outpost isn't much. Its sun is a G8 star, which puts it pretty far down the list of Sol-like stars since Sol is a G2. This is markedly cooler than our solar system star. But the star is not that important as long as it is a sol-type (G-type) star. (It may be possible to colonize around other types of stars someday but it seems reasonable to stick to stars with spectral distributions that match the human eye and don't pass out too much lethal radiationÄI'm quoting Jerry. Anyhow there are over four hundred C-type stars no farther from Earth than is The RealmÄso says Jaime LopezÄwhich could keep us busy for a few years.)

            But assume a G-type star. Then you need a planet the right distance from it for it to be warm but not too warm. Then its surface gravity should be strong enough to hold its atmosphere firmly in place. That atmosphere must have had time to cook, in connection with evolving life, long enough to offer air suitable for life-as-weknow-it. (Life-as-we-don't-know-it is a fascinating subject but has nothing to do with colonization by Earth people. Not this week. Nor are we discussing colonies of living artifacts or cyborgs. This is about colonists from Dallas or Tashkent.)

            Outpost just barely qualifies. It's a poor relation. Its sea-level oxygen is so scanty that one needs to walk slowly, as on top of a high mountain. It sits back so far from its star that it has just two sorts of weather, cool and freezing. Its axis stands almost straight up; it gets

its seasons from an eccentric orbitÄso you don't go south for the winter because the winter comes to you wherever you are. There is a growing season of sorts about twenty degrees each side of the equator but the winter is much longer than the summerÄof course. That "of course" refers to Kepler's Laws, the one about radius vectors and equal areas. (I cribbed most of this out of the Daily Forward.) When the prizes were handed out, Outpost was ahint the door.

            But I was frantically eager to see it.

            Why? Because I had never been farther away from home than LunaÄand Luna almost is home. Outpost is over forty light-years from Earth. Do you know how many kilometers that is? (Neither did I.) Here's what it is:

            300,000 x 40.7 x 31,557,600 = 385,318,296,000,000 kilometers.

            Round it off. Four hundred million million kilometers.

            Ship's schedule called for us to achieve stationary orbit (22. 1 hours' orbital period, that being the length of the day at Outpost) at oh-two-four-seven and for the starboard landing boat to drop away very early in the morning (ship's time "morning")Äoh-three hundred sharp. Not many signed up for the rideÄthat's all it would be since no passenger would set foot on the groundÄas the midwatch isn't too popular an hour with most of our passengers.

            But I would as lief miss Armageddon. I left a good party and went to bed at twenty-two hundred in order to soak up several hours of sleep before rise and shine. I got up at two o'clock and ducked into my bathroom, latching the door behind meÄif I don't latch it, Shizuko comes straight in behind me; I learned that my first day in the ship. She was up and dressed when I woke up.

            Latched the door behind me and promptly threw up.

            This surprised me. I am not immune to motion sickness but I had not been bothered this trip. Riding the Beanstalk plays hob with my stomach and it goes on for endless hours. But in the Forward I had noticed one surge when we warped into hyperspace, then just before dinner last night when we broke into normal space I had felt a simi

lar tremor, but the bridge had warned us to expect it.

            Did the (artificial) gravity feel steady now? I couldn't be sure. I was quite dizzy but that might be an aftereffect of vomitingÄfor I had certainly thrown up as thoroughly as if I had been riding that goddam Beanstalk.

            I rinsed my mouth, brushed my teeth without dentifrice, rinsed my mouth again, and said to myself, "Friday, that's your breakfast; you are not going to let an unexpected case of Beanstalk tummy keep you from seeing Outpost. Besides, you've gained two kilos and it is time to cut down on the calories."

            Having given my stomach that fight talk and then turned it over to mind-control discipline, I went out, let Tilly-Shizuko help me into a heavy jump suit, then headed for the starboard landing-boat airlock, with Shizuko paddling along behind, carrying heavy coats for each of us. At first I had been inclined to be chummy with Shizuko, but after deducing, then confirming, her true role, I tended to resent her. Petty of me, no doubt. But a spy is not entitled to the friendly consideration that a servant always rates. I was not rude to her; I simply ignored her much of the time. This morning I did not feel sociable at best.

            Mr. Woo, purser's assistant in charge of ground excursions, was at the airlock with a clipboard. "Miss Friday, your name isn't on my list."

            "I certainly signed up. Either add it to your list or call the Captain."

            "I can't do that."

            "So? Then I am going on a sit-down strike right in the middle of your airlock. I don't like this, Mr. Woo. If you are trying to suggest that I should not be here because of some clerical error in your office, I shall like it still less."

            "Mmm, I suppose it is a clerical error. There's not much time, so why don't you go in, let them show you to a seat, and I'll straighten it out after I get these other people checked off."

            He did not object to Shizuko's following me. We went forward along a long passagewayÄeven the landing boats of the Forward are enormousÄfollowing arrows that said "This Way to Bridge" and arrived in a fairly large room, something like the interior of an omnibus APV: dual controls up front, seats for passengers behind, a big

windshieldÄand for the first time since we left Earth I was seeing "sunlight."

            The light of Outpost's sun, it was, lighting a white, very white, curve of planet ahead, with black sky beyond. The sun-star was itself not in sight. Shizuko and I found seats and fastened seatbelts, the five-way sort used in SBs. Knowing that we were going by antigrav I was going to let it go simply with fastening the lap belt. But my little shadow twittered over me and fastened everything.

            After a while Mr. Woo came looking, finally spotted me. He leaned across the man between me and the aisle and said, "Miss Friday, I'm sorry but you still aren't on the list."

            ::Inde~P What did the Captain say?"

            I couldn t reach him.

            "That's your answer then. I stay."

            "I'm sorry. No."

            "Really? Which end are you going to carry? And who is going to help you carry me? For you will have to drag me kicking and screaming and, I assure you, I do kick and scream."

            "Miss Friday, we can't have this."

            The passenger next to me said, "Young man, aren't you making a fool of yourself? This young lady is a first-class passenger; I've noticed her in the dining roomÄat the Captain's table. Now get that silly clipboard out of my face and find something better to do."

            Looking worriedÄjunior pursers always look worriedÄMr. Woo went away. After a bit the red light came on, the siren sounded, and a loud voice said, "Leaving orbit! Prepare for surges in weight."

            I had a miserable day.

            Three hours to get down to the surface, two hours on the ground, three hours to get back up to stationary orbitÄthe trip down had music varied by an amazingly dull lecture on Outpost; the trip back had nothing but music, which was better. The two hours on the ground might have been okay had we been able to leave the landing craft. But we had to stay inboard. We were allowed to unbelt and go aft to what was called the lounge but was really just a space with a coffee-and-sandwiches bar on the port side and transparent ports on the after end. Through these you could see the migrants getting out on the deck below and cargo being unloaded.

            Low rolling hills covered with snow . . . some sort of stunted growth in the middle distance. . . near the ship low b.uildings connected by snow sheds. The immigrants were all bundled up but they wasted no time in hurrying toward the buildings. The cargo was going onto a string of flatbed trucks pulled by a machine of some sort that puffed out clouds of black smoke . . . exactly the sort of thing you see pictured in children's history books! But this was not a picture.

            I heard one woman say to her companion, "Why would anyone decide to settle here?"

            Her companion made some pious answer about "the Lord's will" and I moved away. How can anyone get to be seventy years old (she was at least that) without knowing that no one "decided" to settle on Outpost. . . except in the limited sense that one "decides" to accept transportation as the only alternative to death or life imprisonment?

            My stomach still felt queasy so I did not risk the sandwiches, but I thought a cup of coffee might helpÄuntil I whiffed it. Then I went straight to the rest rooms forward of the lounge, and won the title of "Ironjaw Friday." I won it fair and square but nobody knows about it but meÄI found the stalls all occupied and had to wait. . . and wait I did, jaw muscles rigid. After a century or two a stall was vacated and I grabbed it and threw up again. Dry heaves, mostlyÄI should not have smelled the coffee.

            The trip back up was endless.

            Once in the Forward I called my friend Jerry Madsen, the junior ship's surgeon, and asked to see him professionally. By ship's rules the medical department holds clinic at oh-nine hundred each day, then handles only emergencies at other times. But I knew that Jerry would be willing to see me, whatever the excuse. I told him that it was nothing serious; I just wanted to get from him some of those pills he prescribed for old ladies with jumpy tummiesÄthe motionsickness pills. He asked me to meet him at his office.

            Instead of having the pills waiting for me he ushered me into an examination room and closed the door. "Miss Friday, shall I send for a nurse? Or would you rather be seen by a female doctor? I can call Dr. Garcia but I hate to wake her; she was up most of the night."

            I said, "Jerry, what is this? When did I stop being Marj to you? And why the prissy protocol? I just want a handful of those seasick pills. The little pink ones."

            "Sit down, please. Miss FridayÄokay, MarjÄwe don't prescribe that drug or its derivatives for young femalesÄto be precise, females of childbearing ageÄwithout making certain that they are not pregnant. It can cause birth defects."

            "Oh. Set your mind at rest, lover boy; I am not knocked up."

            "That's what we are here to find out, Marj. If you areÄor if you become soÄwe have other drugs that will make you comfortable."

            Ah so! The dear thing was just trying to take care of me. "Boss man, suppose I tell you, Cub Scout honor, that I ain't done nothin' a-tall for my last two periods? Although several have tried. You among them."

            "Why, I would say, `Take this cup and get me a urine sample' and then I'll take a blood sample, and a saliva sample. I've dealt before with women who hadn't done nothin'."

            "You're a cynic, Jerry."

            "I'm trying to take care of you, dear."

            "I know you are, you sweet thing. All right, I'll go along with the nonsense. If the mouse squealsÄ"

            "It's a gerbil."

            "If the gerbil says yes, you can notify the Pope-in-Exile that it's happened at last, and I'll buy you a bottle of champagne. This has been the longest dry spell of my life."

            Jerry took his samples and did nineteen other things, and gave me a blue pill to take before dinner and a yellow pill to make me sleep and another blue pill to take before breakfast. "These don't have quite the authority of the stuff you asked for but they will do and they don't cause a baby to be born with his feet on backwards or some such. I'll call you tomorrow morning as soon as I'm through with office hours."

            "I thought that pregnancy tests today were service-while-youwait?"

            "Get along with you. Your great-grandmother used to find out through her waistband becoming too tight. You're spoiled. Just hope I don't have to run the test over."

            So I thanked him and kissed him, which he pretended to try to avoid but not very hard. Jerry is a lamb. -

            The blue pills did let me eat dinner and breakfast.

            I stayed in my cabin after breakfast. Jerry called about on time. "Brace yourself, Marj. You owe me a bottle of champagne."

            "What?" Then I quieted down for Tilly's benefit. "Jerry, you are certifiably insane. Out of your skull."

            "Certainly," he agreed. "But that's no handicap in this business. Stop in and we'll discuss a regime for you. Say at fourteen?"

            "Say at right now. I want to talk to that gerbil."

            Jerry convinced me. He went over the details, showing just how each test was conducted. Miracles do happen and I was demonstrably pregnant . . . so that's why my breasts had been feeling sort of tender lately. He had a little pamphlet for me, telling me what to do, what to eat, how to bathe, what to avoid, what to expect, and dreary so forth. I thanked him and took it and left. Neither of us mentioned the possibility of abortion and he made no wisecracks about women "who hadn't done nothin'."

            Only I hadn't. Burt was the last time and that was two periods back and anyhow I had been rendered surgically sterile at menarche and had never used contraception of any sort in all my very busy social life. All those hundreds and hundreds of times and now he tells me I'm pregnant!

            I am not totally stupid. Having accepted the fact, the old Sherlock Holmes rule told me when and where and how it had happened. Once back in cabin BB I went into the bathroom, latched the door, took off my clothes, and lay down on the floorÄspread both hands around my navel, tensed my muscles, and pushed.

            A little nylon sphere popped out and I grabbed it.

            I examined it carefully. No doubt about it; this was the same little marble I had worn in there since the trick surgery was done to me, always worn except when I was carrying a message there. Not a container for an ovum in stasis, not a container for anythingÄjust a small, featureless, translucent sphere. I looked at it again and popped it back in.

            So they had lied to me. I had wondered at the time about "stasis" at body temperature because the only stasis for living tissues I had

ever heard of involved cryogenic temperatures, liquid nitrogen or lower.

            But that was Mr. Sikmaa's problem and I don't claim to be a biophysicistÄif he had confidence in his scientists, it was not my place to argue. I was a courier; my sole responsibility was to deliver the package.

            What package? Friday, you know durn well what package. Not one in your navel. One about ten centimeters farther inside. One that was planted in you one night in Florida when you were induced to sleep sounder than you knew. One that takes nine months to unload. That postpones your plans to complete the Grand Tour, does it not? If this fetus is what it has to be, they won't let you leave The Realm until after you unload.

            If they wanted a host mother, why the blinkin' hell didn't they say so? I would have been reasonable about it.

            Wait a moment! The Dauphiness has to give birth to this baby. That is what the whole hanky-panky is about: an heir to the throne, free of any congenital defects, from the DauphinessÄunarguably from the Dauphiness, born in the presence of about four court physicians and three nurses and a dozen members of the court. Not you, you mongrel AP with the phony birth certificate!

            Which took me back to the original scenario with just the slightest variation: Miss Marjorie Friday, wealthy tourist, goes groundside on The Realm to enjoy the glories of the imperial capital . . . and catches a bad cold and has to go to hospital. And the Dauphiness is brought to the same hospital andÄno, hold it! Would the Dauphiness do anything so plebeian as to be a patient in a hospital open to tourists?

            Okay, try this: You enter hospital with a bad cold, as instructed. About three in the morning you go out the back door on a meat wagon with a sheet draped over you. You wind up in the Palace. How soon? How long will it take the Palace physicians to fiddle her royal body chemistry into receptiveness for the fetus? Oh, forget it, Friday; you don't know and don't have to know. When she is ready, they place both of you on operating tables and spread your legs and take it out of you and plant it in her, while it's small and no problem.

Then you get paid a fancy price and you leave. Does The First Citizen thank you? Probably not in person. But possibly incognito ifÄ Stop it, Friday! Don't daydream; you know better. At a lecture clear back in basicÄone of Boss's orientation lectures, it wasÄ "The trouble with this sort of mission is that, after an agent has

successfully completed it, something permanent happens to that agent, something that keeps him from talking, then or later. So, no matter how lavish the fee, it is well to avoid this class of mission."

XXXI

During the leg to Botany Bay I mulled that thought over and over, trying to find some flaw in it. I recalled the classic case of J. F. Kennedy. His putative assassin had been killed (assassinated) too quickly for even a preliminary hearing. Then there was that dentist who had gunned down Huey LongÄgunned down himself a few seconds later. And any number of agents during the long Cold War who had lived just long enough to carry out their missions and "just happened" to walk in front of speeding vehicles.

            But the picture that kept coming back to my mind was so old that it is almost mythology: A lonely beach and a pirate chief supervising the burying of treasure. The hole is dug, the chests of loot placed thereinÄand the men who dug the hole are shot; their bodies help to fill the hole.

            Yes, I'm being melodramatic. But it is my womb we are talking about, not yours. Everybody in the Known Universe knows that the father of the present First Citizen climbed to the throne over uncounted dead bodies and his son stays on that throne by being even more ruthless than his father.

            Is he going to thank me for having improved his line? Or is he going to bury my bones in his deepest dungeon?

            Don't kid yourself, Friday; knowing too much is a capital offense. In politics it always has been. If they ever had any intention of treating you fairly, you would not be pregnant. Therefore you are forced

to assume that they will not treat you fairly after they take this royal fetus out of you.

            What I had to do was obvious.

            What was not obvious was how I could do it.

            It no longer seemed a clerical error that my name had not been on the list to go down to the surface at Outpost.

            At the cocktail hour the next evening I saw Jerry and asked him to dance with me. It was a classic waltz, which brought my face close enough to his to talk privately. "How's the tummy?" he asked.

            "The blue pills do the trick," I assured him. "Jerry, who knows about this besides you and me?"

            "Now there's an odd thing. I've been so busy that I haven't had time to enter anything in your medical folder. The notes are in my safe."

            "So? How about the lab technician?"

            "He's been so overworked that I ran those tests myself."

            "Well, well. Do you think that there is a possibility that those notes might be lost? Burned, maybe?"

            "We never burn anything in the ship; it annoys the air-conditioning engineer. Instead we shred and recycle. Fear not, little girl; your shameful secret is safe with me."

            "Jerry, you're my pal. Dear, if it hadn't been for my maid, I think I could have blamed this baby on you. My first night in the shipÄ remember?"

            "I'm not likely to forget. I had an attack of acute frustration."

            "Having a maid along is not my idea; my family planted her on me, and she sticks to me like a leech. One would think my family does not trust me merely because they know they can'tÄas you know all too well. Can you think of a way to avoid her chaperonage? I'm feeling very pliable. With you. A man I can trust with secrets."

            "Um. I must give it some thought. My stateroom is no good; you have to pass two dozen other officers' rooms and go through the wardroom to reach it. Watch it; here comes Jimmy."

            Yes, of course I was trying to bribe him into silence. But besides that I was grateful and felt that I owed him something. If congress with my unvirgin carcass was what he wanted (and it was), I was willingÄand willing on my own account, too; I had been quite underprivileged lately and Jerry is an attractive man. I was not embar

rassed over being pregnant (although the idea was decidedly novel to me) but I did want to keep my condition secret (if possibleÄif there were not already a platoon of people in the ship who knew of it!)Ä keep it secret, if it was, while I sorted out what to do.

            The extent of my predicament may not be clear; maybe I had better draw a diagram. If I went on to The Realm, I expected to be killed in a surgical operating room, all quiet and legal and proper. If you don't believe that such things can happen, we aren't living in the same world and there is no point in your reading any more of this memoir. Throughout history the conventional way of dealing with an awkward witness has been to arrange for him to stop breathing.

            This might not happen to me. But all the signs suggested that it wouldÄif I went to The Realm.

            Just stay aboard? I thought of that. . . but Pete-Mac's words echoed in my ears: "When we arrive, an officer of the palace guard comes aboard and then you're his problem." Apparently they weren't even going to wait for me to go groundside and pretend to fall ill.

            Ergo, I must leave the ship before we reached The RealmÄi.e., Botany Bay, no other choice.

            Simple. Just walk off the ship.

            Oh, sure! Walk down the gangway and wave good-bye from the ground.

            This is not an ocean ship. The closest the Forward ever gets to a planet is its stationary orbitÄfor Botany Bay that is about thirty-five thousand kilometers. That's a long way to go in some very thin vacuum. The only possible way I could get down to the surface of Botany Bay would be in one of the ship's landing boats, just as I had at Outpost.

            Friday, they are not going to let you walk aboard that landing boat. At Outpost you bulled your way aboard. That has alerted them; you won't manage it a second time. What will happen? Mr. Woo or somebody will be at the airlock with a listÄand again your name is not on it. But this time he has an armed master-at-arms with him. What do you do?

            Why, I disarm him, bang their heads together, step over their unconscious bodies, and take a seat. You can do it, Friday; you've

been trained for it and genetically designed for just that sort of rough stuff.

            Then what happens? The landing boat does not leave on time. It waits in its cradle while a squad of eight comes in and by brute force and a tranquilizer dart takes you out of the boat and locks you into cabin BBÄwhere you stay until that officer of the palace guard takes custody of your carcass.

            This is not a problem rough stuff can solve.

            That leaves sweet talk, sex appeal, and bribery.

            Wait! What about honesty?

            Huh?

            Certainly. Go straight to the Captain. Tell him what Mr. Sikmaa promised you, tell him how you were swindled, get Jerry to show him the pregnancy report, tell him that you are frightened and have decided to wait on Botany Bay until some ship calls that is headed back to Earth, not to The Realm. He's a sweet, fatherly old dear; you've seen pictures of his daughtersÄhe'll take care of you!

            What would Boss's opinion be of that?

            He would note that you sit on the Captain's rightÄwhy?

            You were given one of the ship's most posh cabins at the last minuteÄwhy?

            Space was found for seven others, people who spend all their time watching youÄdo you think the Captain does not know this?

            Somebody took your name off the ground-trip list for OutpostÄ who?

            Who owns HyperSpace Lines? Thirty percent is owned by Interworld, which in turn is owned or controlled by various segments of the Shipstone group. And you noticed that 11 percent was owned by three banks on The RealmÄyou noticed this because other chunks of Shipstone companies were owned from The Realm.

            So don't expect too much from sweet old Captain van Kooten. You can hear him now: "Oh, I don't zink so. Mr. Sikmaa is a goot friend of mine; I haf known him for years. Yes, I did promise him zat no chances would be taken wiz your safety; zat's vy I can't let you go down to vild, uncivilized planets. But yen ye go back, I show you real, goot time on Halcyon, I promise. Now you yust be a goot girl and not make me any more troublesÄhenh?"

            He might even believe it.

            He almost certainly knows that you are not "Miss Rich Bitch" and probably has been told that you contracted as a host mother (probably not told that it was for the Royal FamilyÄalthough he may guess it) and he would simply think that you are trying to welch on a legal and equitable contract. Friday, you have not one word in writing that would even tend to indicate that you were swindled.

            Don't expect help from the Captain. Friday, you're on your own.

It was only three days before our scheduled arrival at Botany Bay that any change took place. I did a lot of pondering but most of it was maunderingÄfutile and time-wasting imaginings about what I would do if I could not manage to jump ship in Botany Bay. Like this: "You heard me, Captain! I'm locking myself in my cabin until we leave The Realm. If you have the door broken down so that you can turn me over to that palace guard officer, I can't stop youÄbut a dead body is all you'll find!"

            (Ridiculous. Sleepy gas through the air pipes is all it would take to outflank me.)

            OrÄ "Captain, have you ever seen a knitting-needle abortion? You are invited to come watch; I understand that one can be quite bloody."

            (Even more ridiculous. I can talk about abortion; I can't do it. Even though this wart inside me is no kin to me, it is nevertheless my innocent guest.)

            I tried not to waste time on such useless thoughts but to concentrate my mind on subversion while continuing to behave normally. When the purser's office announced that it was time to sign up for excursions on Botany Bay, I was one of the first to show up, going over all the possibilities, asking questions, taking brochures to my cabin, and signing up for and paying cash for all the best and most expensive trips.

            That night at dinner I chattered to the Captain about the trips I had picked, asked his opinions on each, and complained again about my name having been left off the list at Outpost and asked him to check on it for me this timeÄas if the Captain of a giant liner had nothing better to do than to run errands for Miss Rich Bitch. So far as I could see, he did not flinch under any of thisÄhe certainly did not tell me that I could not go groundside. But he may

be as steeped in sin as I am; I learned to lie with a straight face long before I left the crŠche.

            That evening (ship's schedule time) I found myself in The Black Hole with my first three swains: Dr. Jerry Madsen, Jaime "Jimmy" Lopez, and Tom Udell. Tom is first assistant supercargo and I had never known quite what that is. All that I really knew was that he wore one more stripe than the other two. That first night aboard Jimmy had told me solemnly that Tom was the head janitor.

            Tom had not denied it. He answered, "You forgot `furniture mover.'

            This night, less than seventy-two hours out from Botany Bay, I found out part of what Tom did. The starboard landing boat was being loaded with cargo for Botany Bay. "The port boat we loaded at Beanstalk," he told me. "But we had to load the starboard boat for Outpost. We need both of them to handle Botany Bay, so we have to shift cargo this leg." He grinned. "Lots of sweaty work."

            "It's good for you, Tommy; you're getting fat."

            "Speak for yourself, Jaime."

            I asked how they loaded the boat. "That airlock looks pretty small to me."

            "We don't move cargo through that. Would you like to see how we handle it?"

            So I made a date with him for the next morning. And learned things.

            The holds in the Forward are so enormous that they breed agoraphobia rather than claustrophobia. But even the holds in the landing boats are huge. Some of the items shipped are enormous, too, especially machinery. Botany Bay was receiving a Westinghouse turbogeneratorÄbig as a house. I asked Tom how in the world they would move that?

            He grinned. "Black magic." Four of his cargomen placed a metallic net around it and fastened a suitcase-size metal box to it. Tom inspected it, then said, "Okay, fire it up."

            The leaderÄthe "snapper"Ädid so. . . and this metal behemoth quivered and lifted a touch: a portable antigrav unit, not unlike that for an APV, but out in the open instead of built into a shell.

            With extreme care, by hand, using lines and poles, they moved this thing through an enormous door and into the hold of the star-

board boat. Tom pointed out that, while this huge monster was floating, free of the ship's artificial gravity, it was as ponderously massive as ever and could crush a man as easily as a man can crush an insect. "They depend on each other and have to trust each other. I'm responsibleÄbut it's no use to a dead man for me to take the blame; they must take care of each other."

            What he was really responsible for, he told me, was being certain that each item was placed by plan and was tied down solidly against surges, and also being absolutely certain that the big cargo doors, both sides, were actually vacuum-tight each time they were closed after being opened.

            Tom showed me through the landing boat's migrant-passenger spaces. "We've got more new colonists for Botany Bay than for anywhere else. When we leave there, third class will be almost deserted."

            "Are they all Aussies?" I asked.

            "Oh, no. Lots of them are but about a third of them are not. But one thing they all do have in common; they are all fluent in English. It's the only colony with a language requirement. They are trying to ensure that their whole planet will have a single language."

            "I heard something about that. Why?"

            "Some notion that they are less likely to have wars. Maybe so.

but the bloodiest wars in history have been fratricidal wars. No language problem."

            I didn't have an opinion so I didn't comment. We left the boat

through the passenger airlock and Tom closed it behind us. Then I

recalled that I had left a scarf behind. "Tom, did you see it? I know I

had it in the migrants' hold."

            "No, but we'll find it." He turned back and unlocked the airlock door.

            The scarf was where I had dropped it between two benches in the migrants' space. I flipped it around Tom's neck and pulled his face down to mine and thanked him, and let my appreciation progress as far as he cared to push itÄwhich was pretty far but not that far as he was still on duty.

            He deserved my best thanks. That door has a combination lock. Now I could open it.

When I returned from inspecting the cargo holds and the landing boat, it was almost lunchtime. Shizuko, as usual, was doing some sort of busywork (it can't take all of one woman's tithe to see that another woman is well groomed).

            I said to her, "I don't want to go to the dining room. I want to take a quick shower, grab a robe, and eat here."

            ::~at will Missy have? I will order."

            Order for both of us.

            "For me?"

            "For you. I don't want to eat alone, I just don't want to have to dress up and go to the dining room. Don't argue; just punch for the menu." I headed for the bath.

            I heard her start to order but by the time I switched off the shower she was ready with a big fluffy towel, with a smaller one wrapped around her, the perfect bath girl. When I was dry and she had helped me into a robe, the dumbwaiter was chiming. While she opened the delivery drawer, I pulled a small table over into the corner where I had talked with Pete-Mac. Shizuko raised her eyebrows but did not argue; she started laying out lunch on it. I set the terminal for music and again punched up a tape with some loud singing, classic rock.

            Shizuko had set only one place at the table. I said, facing her so that my words would reach her through the music, "Tilly, put your plate there, too."

            "What, Missy?"

            "Knock it off, Matilda. The farce is over. I've set this up so that we can talk."

            She barely hesitated. "Okay, Miss Friday."

            "Better call me Marj so that I won't have to call you Miss Jackson. Or call me Friday, my real name. You and I have got to take our hair down. By the way, your lady's-maid act is perfect, but there is no longer any need to bother with it when we're in private. I can dry myself after a bath."

            She almost smiled. "I rather enjoy taking care of you, Miss Friday. Marj. Friday."

            "Why, thank you! Let's eat." I spooned sukiyaki over onto her plate.

            After some chompingÄconversation goes better with foodÄI said, "What do you get out of it?"

            "Out of what, Marj?"

            "Out of riding herd on me. Turning me over to the palace guard on The Realm."

            "Contract rates. Paid to my boss. There is supposed to be a bonus in it for me but I believe in bonuses only when I spend them."

            "I see. Matilda, I'm cutting out at Botany Bay. You're going to help me."

            "Call me Tilly. I am?"

            "You are. Because I'm going to pay you a large chunk more than you would get otherwise."

            "Do you really think you can switch me that easily?"

            "Yes. Because you have just two choices." Between us was a large stainless-steel serving spoon. I picked it up, squeezed the bowl, crushed it. "You can help me. Or you can be dead. Rather quickly. Which is it?"

            She picked up the mutilated spoon. "Marj, you don't have to be so dramatic. We'll work something out." With her thumbs she ironed out the crumpled steel. "What's the problem?"

            I stared at the spoon. " `Your mother was a test tubeÄ'

            " `Äand my father was a knife.' So was yours. That's why I was recruited. Let's talk. Why are you jumping ship? I'll catch hell if you do."

            "I'll be dead if I don't." Without trying to hold back, I told her about the deal I had made, how I had turned up pregnant, why I thought my chances of living through a visit to The Realm were slim. "So what does it take to persuade you to look the other way? I think I can meet your price."

            "I'm not the only one watching you."

            "Pete? I'll handle Pete. The other three men and the other two women I think we can ignore. If I have your active help. YouÄyou and PeteÄare the only professionals. Who recruited these others? Clumsy."

            "I don't know. I don't know who hired me, for that matter; it was done through m~y boss. Perhaps we can forget the othersÄdepends on your plan."

"Let's talk money."

"Let's talk plans first."

"Uh . . . do you think you can imitate my voice?"

            Tilly answered, " `Uh . . . do you think you can imitate my voice?'

            "Do that again!"

            " `Do that again!'

            I sighed. "Okay, Tilly, you can do it. The Daily Forward says that breakout near Botany Bay is sometime tomorrow and, if the figures are as sharp as they were for Outpost, we'll hit stationary orbit and put boats down about midday the day after tomorrowÄless than forty-eight hours from right now. So tomorrow I fall ill. Very sad. Because I had had my heart set on going down to the surface for all those wonderful excursions. The exact timing on my plan depends on when those landing boats are scheduled, which must waitÄif I understand the matterÄuntil we break out into normal space and they can predict exactly when we will hit stationary orbit. Whenever that is, the night before the boats go down, around oh-one hundred when the corridors are empty, I leave. From there on you're both of us. You don't let anyone in; I'm too ill.

            "If anyone calls for me by terminal, be careful not to switch on the video pickupÄI never do. You're both of us on anything you can handle, or, if you can't, I'm asleep. If you start to impersonate me and it gets too sticky, why, you're just so fogged up with fever and medicine that you're not coherent.

            "You'll order breakfast for both of usÄyour usual breakfast for you, and tea and milk toast and juice for the invalid."

            "Friday, I can see that you're planning on stowing away in a landing boat. But the doors to the landing boats are always locked when not in use. I know."

            "So they are. Not your worry, Til."

            "All right. Not my worry. Okay, I can cover for you after you leave. What do I tell the Captain after you've gone?"

            "So the Captain is in on it. I thought so."

            "He knows about it. But we get our orders from the purser."

"Makes sense. Suppose I arrange for you to be tied up and gagged and your story is that I jumped you and did it to you. I can't, of

course, because you have to be both of us from very early morning to whatever time the boats leave. But I can arrange to have you tied and gagged. I think."

            "That would certainly improve my alibi! But who is the philanthropist?"

            "You remember our first night in the ship? I came in late, with a date. You served us tea and almond cakes."

            "Doctor Madsen. You're counting on him?"

            "I think so. With your help. That night he was kind of eager."

            She snorted. "His tongue was dragging on the rug."

            "Yes. It still is. Tomorrow I become ill; he comes to see me, professionally. You are here, as usual. We have the lights turned off in the bedroom end. If Dr. Jerry has the steady nerves I think he has, he'll take what I'll offer. Then he'll cooperate." I looked at her. "Okay? He comes to see me the next morningÄand ties you up. Simple."

            Tilly sat and looked thoughtful for long moments. "No."

            "No?"

            "Let's keep it really simple. Don't let anyone else in on it. Not anybody.I don't need to be tied up; that would just cause suspicion. Here's my story: Sometime not very long before the boats go down you decide that you are well; you get up, get dressed, and leave the cabin. You don't tell me your plans; I'm just the poor dumb maidÄ you never tell me such things. Or maybe you've changed your mind and are going on the ground excursion anyhow. It doesn't matter either way. I am not charged with keeping you in the ship. My sole responsibility is to keep an eye on you here in the cabin. I don't think it's Pete's responsibility to keep you in the ship, either. If you manage to jump ship, probably the only one who gets burned is the Captain. And I'm not crying over him."

            "Tilly, I think you are right, on all points. I had assumed that you would want an alibi. But you're better off without one."

            She looked at me and smiled. "Don't let that keep you from taking Dr. Madsen to bed. Enjoy yourself. One of my jobs was to keep men out of your bedÄas I think you knowÄ"

            "I figured it out," I agreed dryly.

            "But I am switching sides, so that is no longer the case." Suddenly she dimpled. "Maybe I should offer Dr. Madsen a bonus. When

he calls on his patient the next morning and I tell him that you're well and have gone to the sauna or something." -

            "Don't offer him that sort of bonus unless you mean business. As I know that he means business." I shivered. "I'm certain."

            "If I advertise, I deliver. Are we all straight?" She stood up, I followed.

            "All but what I owe you."

            "I've been thinking about that. Marj, you know your circumstances better than I do. I'll leave it up to you."

            "But you didn't quite tell me what you are being paid."

            "I don't know. My master hasn't told me."

            "Are you owned?" I felt sudden distress. Any AP would.

            "No longer. Or not quite. I was sold on a twenty-year indenture. Thirteen years to go. Then I'm free."

            "ButÄ Oh, God, Tilly, let's get you off the ship, too!"

            She put a hand on my arm. "Take it easy. You've got me thinking about it. That's the main reason I don't want to be tied up. Marj, I'm not on the ship's rolls as indentured. Consequently I can take a groundside excursion if I can pay for itÄand I can. Maybe I'll see you down there."

            "Yes!" I kissed her.

            She pulled me to her strongly, and the kiss gained speed. She was moaning against my tongue and I felt her hand inside my robe.

            Presently I broke the kiss and looked into her eyes. "Is that how it is, Tilly?"

            "Hell, yes! From the first time I bathed you."

That evening the migrants leaving the ship at Botany Bay staged a lounge show for the first-class passengers. The Captain told me that such shows were traditional and that the first-class passengers customarily contributed to a purse for the colonistsÄbut that it was not compulsory. He himself went to the lounge that nightÄalso traditionalÄand I found myself sitting with him. I used the opportunity to mention that I was not feeling well. I added that I might have to cancel my reservations for dirtside excursions. I groused about it a bit.

            He told me that, if I did not feel perfectly fit, I certainly should not risk exposing myself on the surface of a strange planetÄbut not

to worry about missing Botany Bay, which wasn't much at best. The rest of the trip was the wonderful part. So be a goot girl or should I lock you in your room?

            I told him that, if my tummy didn't stop acting up, it wouldn't be necessary to lock me up. The trip down to Outpost had been horridÄspacesick all the wayÄand I wouldn't risk anything like that again. I had laid groundwork for this by pecking at my food at dinner.

            The show was amateurish but jollyÄsome skits but mostly group singing: "Tie Me Kangaroo Down," "Waltzing Matilda," "Botany Bay," and, for an encore, "The Walloping Window Blind." I enjoyed it but would have thought nothing of it were it not for a man in the second row of the group singers, a man who looked familiar.

            I looked at him and thought: Friday, have you become the sort of careless, sloppy slitch who can't remember whether she's slept with a man or not?

            He reminded me of Professor Federico Farnese. But this man was wearing a full beard, whereas Freddie had been smoothshavenÄwhich proves nothing as there had been time enough to grow a beard and almost all men get overtaken by the beard mania one time or another. But it did make it impossible for me to be certain by looking at him. This man never sang a solo, so voice did not help.

            Body odorÄat a range of thirty meters no way to sort it out from dozens of others.

            I was greatly tempted not to be a ladyÄstand up, walk straight across the dance floor, confront him: "Are you Freddie? Didn't you take me to bed in Auckland last May?"

            What if he says no?

            I'm a coward. What I did do was tell the Captain that I thought I had spotted an old acquaintance from Sydney among the migrants and how could I check? That resulted in my writing "Federico Farnese" on a program and the Captain passed it to the purser, who passed it to one of his assistants, who went away and came back soon with a report that there were several Eyetalian names among the migrants but no name, Eyetalian or otherwise, even vaguely like "Farnese."

            I thanked him and thanked the purser and thanked the CaptainÄ and thought about asking for a check on "Tormey" and "Perreault," but decided that it was damfoolishness; I certainly had not seen Betty or JanetÄand they didn't grow beards. I had seen a face behind a full beaverÄmeaning I hadn't seen it. Put a full beard on a man and all you see is the shredded wheat.

            I decided that all the old wives' tales about pregnant women were probably true.

XXXII

It was two hours past midnight, ship's time. Breakout into normal space had taken place on time, about eleven in the morning, and the figures had been so good that the Forward was expected to achieve stationary orbit around Botany Bay at oh-seven-forty-two, several hours better than had been estimated before breakout. I was not pleased because an early morning landing-boat departure increased the hazard (I judged) that people might be prowling around the corridors in the still hours of the night.

            No choice. It was rushing at me, no second chance. I finished last-minute adjustments, kissed Tilly good-bye, cautioned her with a finger to make no noise, and let myself out the door of cabin BB.

            I had to go far aft and down three decks. Twice I slowed down to

avoid night watchmen making their rounds. Once I ducked through

a transverse passage to avoid a passenger, continued aft to the next

passageway across the ship, then went back to starboard. Eventually

I reached the short, dead-end corridor that led to the passenger airlock door for the starboard landing boat.

            I found Mac-Pete-Percival waiting there.

            I moved quickly to him, smiling, put a finger to my lips for silence, and clipped him under the ear.

            I eased him to the deck, pulled him out of my way, and got to work on that combination lockÄ

            Äand discovered that it was almost impossible to read the marks

on the dial, even with my enhanced night-sight. There was nothing but night-lights in the corridors and this short dead end had none of its own. Twice I muffed the combination.

            I stopped and thought about it. Go back to cabin BB for a torchlight? I had none there, but perhaps Tilly had one. If she did not, should I wait until morning lights were turned on? That would be cutting it too fine; people would be stirring. But did I have a choice?

            I checked PeteÄstill out but his heart was strong . . . and lucky for you, Pete; had I been fully triggered, you would be dead. I searched him.

            I found, with no surprise, a pencil light on himÄhis job (tailing me) could need a torchlight, whereas Miss Rich Bitch does not bother with such things.

            A few seconds later I had the door open.

            I dragged Pete through, closed and locked the door, spinning the wheel both clockwise and counterclockwise. I turned back, noted that Pete's eyelids moved a touchÄclipped him again.

            There followed a bloody awkward chore. Pete masses about eighty-five kilos, not gross for a man. But it's twenty-five kilos more than I do and he's much bigger. I knew from Tom that the engineers were holding the artificial gravity at 0.97 gee to match Botany Bay. At that moment I could have wished for free fall or antigrav gear as I could not leave Pete behind, dead or alive.

            I managed to get him up into that cross-shoulder carry that some call fireman's carry, then discovered that the best way for me to see ahead and still have a hand free for dogs on airtight doors and such was to hold Pete's pencil light in my mouth like a cigar. I really needed that lightÄbut, given a choice, I would have felt my way through in the dark, sans unconscious body.

With only one false turn I arrived at last in that biggest cargo hold which seemed even bigger with only a pencil beam to cut

through the total darkness. I had not anticipated total darkness; I had visualized the landing boat as faintly illuminated with nightlights as was the ship proper from midnight to oh-six hundred.

At last I reached the hidey-hole I had picked out the day before:

that giant Westinghouse turbogenerator.

I guessed that this big mass was intended to run on gas of some

sort, or possibly steamÄit certainly was not meant for Shipstones. There is a lot of obsolete engineering that is still useful in the colonies but is no longer used anywhere that Shipstones are readily available. None of it is familiar to me but I was not concerned with how this thing worked; my interest lay in the fact that half of it was somewhat like a frustrum of a giant cone laid on its sideÄand this formed a space in the middle under the narrow end of the frustrum, a space over a meter high. Big enough for a body. Mine. Even for two, luckily, since I had this unwelcome guest whom I could neither kill nor leave behind.

            That space was made downright cozy by the fact that the cargo men had placed a fitted glass tarpaulin over this monster before tying it down. I had to wiggle in, between tiedowns, then I had to strain like the very devil to drag Pete in after me. I made it. Minus some skin.

            I checked him again, then peeled him. With any luck I would get a little sleepÄimpossible had I left one of my guards loose behind me.

            Pete was wearing trousers, belt, shirt, shorts, socks, sneakers, and a sweater. I took everything off, then tied his wrists behind him with his shirt, tied his ankles with his trouser legs, fastened his ankles to his wrists with his belt behind his backÄthis is one hell of an awkward position, taught to me in basic as a way to discourage attempts to escape.

            Then I started to gag him, using his shorts and sweater. He said quietly, "No need to do that, Miss Friday. I've been awake quite a while. Let's talk."

            I paused. "I thought you were awake. But I was willing to go along with the pretense as long as you were. I assumed that you would realize that, if you gave me any trouble, I would tear off your gonads and stuff them down your throat."

            "I figured something of the sort. But I didn't expect you to be quite that drastic."

            "Why not? I've run into your gonads before. Not favorably. They are mine to tear off if I wish. Any argument?"

            "Miss Friday, will you let me talk?"

            "Sure, why not? But one peep out of you louder than a whisper and these toys come off." I made sure he knew what I meant.

            "Uh! Easy thereÄplease! The purser put us on double watch to-

night. IÄ"

            "Double watch? How?"

            "Ordinarily TillyÄShizukoÄÄis the only one on duty from the time you go to your cabin until you get up. When you do get up, she punches a button and that tells me to set the watch. But the purserÄor maybe the CaptainÄis itchy about you. Worries that you might try to jump ship at Botany BayÄ"

            I made my eyes round. "Goodness gracious! How can anyone have such wicked thoughts about little ole me?"

            "I can't imagine," he answered solemnly. "But why are we here in this landing boat?"

            "I'm getting ready to go sight-seeing. How about you?"

            "Me, too. I hope. Miss Friday, I realized that, if you were going to try to jump ship at Botany Bay, the most likely time would be tonight during the midwatch. I didn't know how you expected to get into the landing boat but I had confidence in youÄand I see that my confidence is justified."

            "Thank you. Some, anyhow. Who's watching the portside boat? Or is there someone?"

            "Graham. Little sandy bloke. Perhaps you've noticed him?"

            "Too often."

            "I picked this side because you toured this boat with Mr. Udell yesterday. Day before yesterday, depending on how you figure it."

            "I don't care how you figure it. Pete, what happens when you are missed?"

            "I may not be missed. Joe StupidÄsorry, Joseph SteubenÄthe other is just my private name for himÄI have instructed to relieve me after he eats breakfast. If I know Joe, he'll make no fuss at not finding me at the door; he will just sit down on the deck with his back to the door and sleep until someone comes along and unlocks it. Then he'll stay there until this boat drops away . . . whereupon he will go to his room and sack in until I look for him. Joe is steady but not bright. Which I figured on."

            "Pete, it sounds as if you had planned this."

            "I didn't plan to get a sore neck and a headache out of it. If you had waited long enough to let me speak, you wouldn't have had to carry me."

            "Pete, if you're trying to sweet-talk me into untying you, you are barking down the wrong well."

            "Don't you mean `up the wrong tree'?"

            "The wrong one, in any case, and you aren't improving your chances by criticizing my figures of speech. You're in deep trouble, Pete. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you and leave you here. For the Captain is right; I'm jumping ship. I can't be bothered with you."

            "Well. . . one reason is that they'll find my body later this morning, while they are unloading. Then they'll be looking for you."

            "I'll be many kilometers the other side of the horizon. But why would they look for me? I'm not going to leave my fingerprints on you. Just some purple bruises around your neck."

            "Motive and opportunity. Botany Bay is a pretty law-abiding community, Miss Friday. You can probably talk your way out of trouble in jumping ship thereÄothers have. But if you are wanted for a murder aboard ship, the local people will cooperate."

            "I'll plead self-defense. A known rapist. Fer Gossake, Pete, what am I going to do with you? You're an embarrassment. You know I won't kill you; I can't kill in cold blood. It has to be forced on me. But if I keep you tied upÄ Let me seeÄfive and three is eight, then add at least two hours before they work back to here in unloadingÄ that's ten hours at leastÄand I'll have to gag youÄand it's getting coldÄ"

            "You bet it's getting cold! Could you sort of drape my sweater around me?"

            "All right, but I'll have to use it later when I gag you."

            "And besides being cold, my hands and feet are going to sleep. Miss Friday, if you leave me tied up this way for ten hours, I'll have gangrene in both hands and both feetÄand lose them. No regeneration out here. By the time I'm back where they can do it, I'll be a permanent basket case. Kinder to kill me."

            "Damn it, you're trying to work on my sympathy!"

            "I'm not sure you have any."

            "Look," I told him, "if I untie you and let you put your clothes back on so that you won't freeze, will you let me tie you up and gag you later without fussing about it? Or must I clip you a good deal

harder than I did and knock you out cold? Run a risk of breaking your neck? I can, you know. You've seen me fightÄ"

            "I didn't see it; I just saw the results. Heard about ft."

            "Same thing. Then you know. And you must know why I can do such things. `My mother was a test tubeÄ'

            " `Äand my father was a knife,' "he interrupted. "Miss Friday, I didn't have to let you clip me. You're fast . . . but I'm just as fast and my arms are longer. I knew that you were enhanced but you did not know that I am. So I would have had the edge."

            I was sitting in lotus, facing him, when he made this astounding statement. I felt dizzy and wondered if I was going to throw up again. "Pete," I said, almost pleadingly, "you wouldn't lie to me?"

            "I've had to lie all my life," he answered, "and so have you. HoweverÄ" He paused and twisted his wrists; his bonds broke. Do you know the breaking strength of a twisted sleeve of a good shirt? It is more than that of a manila line of equal thicknessÄtry it.

            "I don't mind ruining the shirt," he said conversationally. "The sweater will cover. But I would rather not ruin my trousers; I expect to have to appear in public in them before I can get more. You can reach the knots more easily than I can; will you untie them, Miss Friday?"

            "Stop calling me Miss Friday, Pete; we're APs together." I started working on the knots. "Why didn't you tell me a long time ago?"

            "I should have. Other things got in the way."

            "There! Oh, your feet are cold! Let me rub them. Get the circulation back."

We got some sleep, or I did. Pete was shaking my shoulder and saying quietly, "Better wake up. We must be about to ground. Some lights have come on."

            A dim twilight trickled in, under, around, and through the tarpaulin covering the dinosaur we had slept under. I yawned at it. "I'm cold."

            "Complaints. You had the inside of the snuggle. That's warmer than the outside. I'm frozen."

            "Just what you deserve. Rapist. You're too skinny; you don't make much of a blanket. Pete, we've got to put some fat on you.

Which reminds me that we didn't have breakfast. And the thought of foodÄ I think I'm about to throw up."

            "UhÄ Slide past me and sort o' heave it back into that corner. Not here where we would have to lie in it. And keep as quiet as you can; there may be someone in here by now."

            "Brute. Unfeeling brute. Just for that I won't throw up."

            On the whole I felt fairly good. I had taken one of the little blue pills just before leaving cabin BB, and it seemed to be holding. I had a butterfly or two in my tummy but they weren't very muscular butterfliesÄnot the sort that shout "Lemme outa here!" I had with me the rest of the supply Dr. Jerry had given me. "Pete, what are the plans?"

            "You're asking me? You planned this jailbreak, not me."

            "Yes, but you are a big, strong, masculine man who snores. I assumed that you would take charge and have it all planned out while I napped. Am I mistaken?"

            "WellÄ Friday, what are your plans? The plans you made when you didn't expect to have me along."

            "It wasn't much of a plan. After we ground they are going to have to open a door, either a people door or a big cargo door; I don't care which, `cause when they do, I go out of here like a frightened cat, running roughshod over anything or anybody in my way. . . and I don't stop until I'm a long way from the ship. I don't want to hurt anybody but I hope nobody tries too hard to stop me. . . for I won't be stopped."

            "That's a good plan."

            "You think so? It's not really a plan at all. Just a determination. A door opens, I crush out."

            "It's a good plan because it doesn't have any fancies to go wrong. And you have one big advantage. They don't dare hurt you."

            "I wish I could be sure of that."

            "If you are hurt, it will be by accident, and the man who does it will be strung up by his thumbs. At least. After hearing the rest of your story I now know why the instructions to me were so emphatic. Friday, they don't want you dead-or-alive; they want you in perfect health. They'll let you escape before they will hurt you."

            "Then it's going to be easy."

            "Don't be too sure of it. Wildcat that you are, it has already been proved that enough men can grab you and hold you; we both know that. If they know you are goneÄand I think they do~ this boat was over an hour late in leaving orbitÄ"

            "Oh!" I glanced at my finger. "Yes, we should have grounded by now. Pete, they are searching for me!"

            "I think so. But there was no point in waking you until the lights came on. By now they have had about four hours to make certain that you are not on the deck above with the first-class excursionists. They will have mustered the migrants as well. So, if you are hereÄ and not simply hiding out in the ship properÄyou have to be in this cargo hold. That's an oversimplification as there are all sorts of ways to play hide-and-seek in a space as big as this boat. But they'll watch the two bottlenecks, the cargo door on this level and the passenger door on the level above. Friday, if they use enough peopleÄand they willÄand if those jimmylegs are equipped with nets and sticky ropes and tanglefootÄand they will beÄthey will catch you without hurting you as you come out of this boat."

            "Oh." I thought about it. "Pete . . . if it comes to that, there will be some dead and wounded first. I may wind up dead myselfÄbut they'll pay a high price for my carcass. Thanks for alerting me."

            "They may not do it quite that way. They may make it very obvious that the doors are being watched in order to cause you to hang back. So they get the migrants outÄI suppose you know that they go out the cargo door?"

            "I didn't."

            "They do. Get them out and checked offÄthen close the big door and shoot this place full of sleepy gas. Or tear gas and force you to come out wiping your eyes and tossing your cookies."

            "Brrr! Pete, are they really equipped in the ship with those gases? I wondered."

            "Those and worse. Look, the skipper of this ship operates many light-years from law and order and he has only a handful of people he can depend on in a crunch. In fourth class this ship carries, almost every trip, a gang of desperate criminals. Of course he is equipped to gas every compartment, selectively. But, Friday, you won't be here when they use the gas."

            "Huh? Keep talking."

            "The migrants walk down the center aisle of this hold. Almost three hundred of them this trip; they'll be packed into their compartment tighter than is safe. So many of them this trip that I am assuming that they can't possibly all know each other in the short time they've had to get acquainted. We'll use that. Plus a very, very old method, Friday; the one Ulysses used on Polyphemus. .

Pete and I were hanging back in an almost dark corner formed by the high end of the generator and a something in a big crate. The light changed, and we heard a murmur of many voices. "They're coming," Pete whispered. "Remember, your best bet is someone who has too much to carry. There'll be plenty of those. Our clothes are okayÄwe don't look first class. But we must have something to carry. Migrants are always loaded down; I got the straight word on that."

            "I'm going to try to carry some woman's baby," I told him.

            "Perfect, if you can swing it. Hush, here they come."

            They were indeed loaded downÄbecause of what seems to me a rather chinchy company policy: A migrant can take on his ticket anything he can stuff into those broom closets they call staterooms in third classÄas long as he can carry it off the ship unassisted; that's the company's definition of "hand luggage." But anything he has to have placed in the hold he pays freight charges on. I know that the company has to show a profitÄbut I don't have to like this policy. However, today we were going to try to turn it to our advantage.

            As they passed us most of them never glanced our way and the rest seemed uninterested. They looked tired and preoccupied and I suppose they were, both. There were lots of babies and most of them were crying. The first couple of dozen in the column were strung out with those in front hurrying. Then the line moved more slowlyÄmore babies, more luggageÄand clumped together. It was coming time to pretend to be a "sheep."

            Then suddenly, in that medley of human odors, of sweat and dirt and worry and fear and musk and soiled diapers, one odor cut through as crystal clear as the theme of the Golden Cockerel in Rimsky-Korsakov's Hymn to the Sun or a Wagnerian leitmotif in the Ring CycleÄand I yelped:

            "Janet!"

            A heavyset woman on the other side of the queue turned and looked at me, and dropped two suitcases and grabbed fne. "Marjie!" And a man in a beard was saying, "I told you she was in the ship! I told you!" And Ian said accusingly, "You're dead!" and I pulled my mouth away from Janet's long enough to say, "No, I'm not. Junior Piloting Officer Pamela Heresford sends you her warmest regards."

            Janet said, "That slitch!" Ian said, "Now, Jan" and Betty looked at me carefully and said, "It is she. Hello, luv! Good on you! My word!" and Georges was being incoherent in French around the edges while trying gently to take me away from Janet.

            Of course we had fouled up the progress of the queue. Other people, burdened down and some of them complaining, pushed past us, through us, around us. I said, "Let's get moving again. We can talk later." I glanced back at the spot where Pete and I had lurked; he was gone. So I quit worrying about him; Pete is smart.

            Janet wasn't really heavyset, not corpulentÄshe was simply several months gone. I tried to take one of her suitcases; she wouldn't let me. "Better with two; they balance."

            So I wound up carrying a cat's travel cageÄMama Cat. And a large brown-paper parcel Ian had carried under one arm. "Janet, what did you do with the kittens?"

            "They," Freddie answered for her, "have, through my influence, gained excellent positions with fine prospects for advancement as rodent-control engineers on a large sheep station in Queensland. And now, Helen, pray tell me how it chances that you, who, only yesterday it seems, were seen on the right hand of the lord and master of a great superliner, today find yourself consorting with the peasantry in the bowels of this bucket?"

            "Later, Freddie. After we're through here."

            He glanced toward the door. "Ah, yes! Later, with a friendly libation and many a tale. Meanwhile we have yet to pass Cerberus."

            Two watchdogs, both armed, were at the door, one on each side.

I started saying mantras in my mind while chattering double-talk

inanities with Freddie. Both masters-at-arms looked at me, both

seemed to find my appearance unexceptionable. Possibly a dirty

face and scraggly hair acquired in the night helped, for, up to then,

I had never once been seen outside cabin BB unless Shizuko had

labored mightily to prepare me to fetch top prices on the auction block.

            We got outside the door, down a short ramp, and were queued up at a table set just outside. At it sat two clerks with papers. One called out, "Frances, Frederick J.! Come forward!"

            "Here!" answered Federico and stepped around me to go to the table. A voice behind me called out, "There she is!"Äand I sat Mama Cat down quite abruptly and headed for the skyline.

            I was vaguely aware of much excitement behind me but paid no attention to it. I simply wanted to get out of range of any stun gun or sticky-rope launcher or tear-gas mortar as fast as possible. I could not outrace a radar gun or even a slug rifleÄbut those were no worry if Pete was right. I just kept placing one in front of the other. There was a village off to my right and some trees dead ahead. For the time being the trees seemed a better bet; I kept going.

            A glance back showed that most of the pack had been left behindÄnot surprising; I can do a thousand meters in two minutes flat. But two seemed to be keeping up and possibly closing the gap. So I checked my rush, intending to bang their heads together or whatever was needed.

            "Keep going!" Pete rasped. "We're supposed to be trying to catch you.

            I kept going. The other runner was Shizuko. My friend Tilly.

            Once I was well inside the trees and out of sight of the landing boat I stopped to throw up. They caught up with me; Tilly held my head and then wiped my mouthÄtried to kiss me. I turned my face away. "Don't, I must taste dreadful. Did you come out of the ship like that?" She was dressed in a leotard that made her look taller, more slender, more western, and much more female than I was used to in my quondam "maid."

            "No. A formal kimono with obi. They're back there somewhere. Can't run in them."~

            Pete said irritably, "Stop the chatter. We got to get out of here." He grabbed my hair, kissed me. "Who cares what you taste like? Get moving!"

            So we did, staying in the woods and getting farther from the landing boat. But it quickly became clear that Tilly had a sprained ankle and was becoming more crippled each step. Pete grumbled again.

"When you broke for it, Tilly was only halfway down the gangway from the first-class deck. So she jumped and made abad landing. Til, you're clumsy."

            "It's these damn Nip shoes; they give no support. Pete, take the kid and get moving; the busies won't do anything to me."

            "Like hell," Pete said bitterly. "We three are in it together all the way. Right, MissÄ Right, Friday?"

            "Hell, yes! `One for all, all for one!' Take her right side, Pete; I'll take this side."

            We did pretty well as a five-legged race, not making fast time but nevertheless putting more bush between us and pursuit. Somewhat later Pete wanted to take her piggyback. I stopped us. "Let's listen."

            No sound of pursuit. Nothing but the strange sounds of a strange forest. Birdcalls? I wasn't sure. The place was a curious mix of friendly and outr‚Ägrass that wasn't quite grass, trees that seemed to be left over from another geological epoch, chlorophyll that was heavily streaked with redÄor was this autumn? How cold would it be tonight? It didn't seem smart to go looking for people for the next three days, in view of the ship's schedule. We could last that long without food or waterÄbut suppose it froze?

            "All right," I said. "Piggyback. But we take turns."

            "Friday! You can't carry me."

            "I carried Pete last night. Tell her, Pete. You think I can't handle a little Japanese doll like you?"

            "Japanese doll, my sore feet. I'm as American as you are."

            "More so, probably. Because I'm not very. Tell you later. Climb aboard."

            I carried her about fifty meters, then Pete carried her about two hundred, and so on, that being Pete's notion of fifty-fifty. After an hour of this we came to a roadÄjust a track through the bush, but you could see marks of wheels and horses' hooves. To the left the road went away from the landing boat and the town, so we went left, with Shizuko walking again but leaning quite a lot on Pete.

We came to a farmhouse. Perhaps we should have ducked around it but by then I wanted a drink of water more than I yearned to be totally safe, and I wanted to strap Tilly's ankle before it got bigger than her head.

            There was an older woman, gray-haired, very neat and prim, sitting in a rocking chair on the front veranda, knitting. She looked up as we got closer, motioned to us to come up to the house. "I'm Mrs. Dundas," she said. "You're from the ship?"

            "Yes," I agreed. "I'm Friday Jones and this is Matilda Jackson and this is our friend Pete."

            "Pete Roberts, ma'am."

            "Come sit down, all of you. You'll forgive me if I don't get up; my back is not what it used to be. You're refugees, are you not? You've jumped ship?"

            (Bite the bullet. But be ready to duck.) "Yes. We are."

            "Of course. About half the jumpers wind up first with us. Well, according to this morning's wireless you'll need to hide out at least three days. You're welcome here and we enjoy visitors. Of course you are entitled to go straight to the transient barracks; the ship authorities can't touch you there. But they can make you miserable with their endless lawyer arguments. You can decide after dinner. Right now, would you like a nice cup of tea?"

            "Yes!" I agreed.

            "Good. Malcolm! Oh, Malcooom!"

            "What, Mum?"

            "Put the kettle on!"

            "What?"

            "The billy!" Mrs. Dundas added, to Tilly, "Child, what have you done to your foot?"

            "I think I sprained it, ma'am."

            "You certainly did! YouÄFriday is your name?Ägo find Malcolm, tell him I want the biggest dishpan filled with cracked ice. Then you can fetch tea, if you will, while Malcolm cracks ice. And you, sirÄMr. RobertsÄyou can help me out of this chair because there are more things we'll need for this poor child's foot. Must strap it after we get the swelling down. And youÄMatildaÄare you allergic to aspirin?"

            "No, ma'am."

            "Mum! The billy's boiling!"

            "YouÄFridayÄgo, dear."

            I went to fetch tea, with a song in my heart.

XXXIII

It has been twenty years. Botany Bay years, that is, but the difference isn't much. Twenty good years. This memoir has been based on tapes I made at Pajaro Sands before Boss died, then on notes I made shortly after coming here, notes to "perpetuate the evidence" when I still thought I might have to fight extradition.

            But when it became impossible to keep their schedule through using me, they lost interest in meÄlogical, as I was never anything but a walking incubator to them. Then the matter became academic when The First Citizen and the Dauphiness were assassinated together, that bomb planted in their coach.

            Properly this memoir should end with my arrival on Botany Bay because my life stopped having any dramatic highlights at that pointÄafter all, what does a country housewife have to write memoirs about? How many eggs we got last season? Are you interested? I am but you are not.

            People who are busy and happy don't write diaries; they are too busy living.

            But in going over the tapes and notes (and sloughing 60 percent of the words) I noticed items that, having been mentioned, should be cleared up. Janet's canceled Visa cardÄ I was "dead" in the explosion that sank the Skip to M'Lou. Georges checked carefully in Vicksburg low town, was assured that there were no survivors. He then called Janet and Ian . . . when they were about to leave for

Australia, having been warned by Boss's Winnipeg agentÄso of course Janet canceled her card.

            The strangest thing is finding my "family." But Georges says that the strange thing is not that they are here but that I am here. All of them were browned off, disgusted with EarthÄwhere would they go? Botany Bay is not Hobson's choice but for them it is certainly the obvious choice. It is a good planet, much like Earth of centuries backÄbut with up-to-date knowledge and technology. It is not as primitive as Forest, not as outrageously expensive as Halcyon or Fiddler's Green. They all lost heavily in forced liquidation but they had enough to let them go steerage class to Botany Bay, pay their contributions to company and colony, and still have starting money.

            (Did you know that here on Botany Bay, nobody locks doorsÄ many don't have locks. Mira bile visu!)

            Georges says that the only long coincidence lies in my being in the same ship they migrated inÄand it almost wasn't. They missed the Dirac, then barely caught the Forward because Janet crowded it, being dead-set on traveling with a baby in her belly rather than in her arms. But of course if they had taken a later ship or an earlier ship, I still would have met them here without planning it. Our planet is about the size of Earth but our colony is still small and almost all in one area and everyone is always interested in new chums; we were certain to meet.

            But what if I had never been offered that booby-trapped job? One can always "what ifÄ" but I think that it is at least fifty-fifty that, after shopping as I had planned, I would still have wound up on Botany Bay.

            "There is a destiny that shapes our ends" and I have no complaints. I like being a colonial housewife in an 8-group. It's not formally an S-group here because we don't have many laws about sex and marriage. We eight and all our kids live in a big rambling house that Janet designed and we all built. (I'm no cabinetmaker but I'm a whee! of a rough carpenter.) Neighbors have never asked snoopy questions about parentageÄand Janet would freeze them if they did. Nobody cares here, babies are welcome on Botany Bay; it will be many centuries before anyone speaks of "population pressure" or "ZeePeeGee."

r

            This account won't be seen by neighbors because the only thing I intend to publish here is a revised edition of my cookbookÄa good cookbook because I am ghost writer for two great books, Janet and Georges, plus some practical hints for young housewives that I owe to Goldie. So here I can discuss paternity freely. Georges married Matilda when Percival married me; I think they drew straws. Of course the baby in me fell under the old test-tube-and-knife sayingÄa saying I have not heard even once on Botany Bay. Maybe Wendy derives some or most of her ancestry from a former royal house on The Realm. But I have never let her suspect it and officially Percival is her father. All I really know is that Wendy is free of exhibited congenital defects and Freddie and Georges say that she doesn't carry any nasty recessives either. As a youngster she was no meaner than any of the others and the usual moderate ration of spankings was enough to straighten her out. I think that she is quite a nice person, which pleases me as she is the only child of my body even though she is no relation to me.

            "The only. . ." When I got her out of the oven, I asked Georges to reverse my sterility. He and Freddie examined me and told me that I could get it done. . . on Earth. Not in New Brisbane. Not for years and years. That settled thatÄand I found that I was somewhat relieved. I've done it once; I don't really need to do it again. We have babies and dogs and kittens underfoot; the babies don't have to be from my body any more than the kittens do. A baby is a baby and Tilly makes good ones and so does Janet and so does Betty.

            And so does Wendy. Were it not impossible I would guess that she gets her hominess from her motherÄme, I mean. She had not yet turned fourteen the first time she came home and said, "Mum, I guess I'm pregnant." I told her, "Don't guess about it, dear. Go see Uncle Freddie and get a mouse test."

            She announced the result at dinner, which turned it into a party because, by long custom, in our family whenever a female is officially pregnant is occasion for rejoicing and merriment. So Wendy had her first pregnancy party at fourteenÄand her next one at sixteenÄand her next one at eighteenÄand her latest one just last week. I'm glad she spaced them because I reared them, all but the newest one; she got married for that one. So I have never been short

of babies to pet, even if we didn't have fourÄnow fiveÄno, sixÄ mothers in this household.

            Matilda's first baby has a number-one fatherÄexcellent stock. Dr. Jerry Madsen. So she tells me. So I believe. Like this: Her former master had just had her sterility reversed, intending to breed her, when he got this chance to sell her services for a high-pay fourmonths' job. So she became "Shizuko" with the shy smile and the modest bow and chaperoned meÄbut conversely I chaperoned her without intending to. Oh, had she tried, she might have found a little night life in the daytime . . . but the fact was that she spent almost twenty-four hours of each day in cabin BB to be sure to be there whenever I came back.

            So when? The only time that it could happen. While I was huddled under that turbogenerator, half frozen, with Percival, my "maid" was in my bed with my doctor. So that young man has fine parents! Joke: Jerry now lives in New Brisbane with his sweet wife, DianÄbut Tilly has not let him suspect that he has a son in our household. Is this another "startling coincidence"? I don't think so. "Medical doctor" is one of the contribution-free professions here; Jerry wanted to get married and stop spacingÄand why would anyone choose to settle down on Earth when he has had opportunity to shop the colonies?

            Most of our family go to Jerry now; he's a good doctor. Yes, we have two M.D.s in our family but they have never practiced; they used to be gene surgeons, experimental biologists, genetic engineersÄand now they are farmers.

            Janet knows who are the fathers of her first child, tooÄboth her husbands of that time, Ian and Georges. Why both? Because she wanted it that way and Janet has a whim of steel. I've heard several versions but it is my belief that she would not choose between them for her first child.

            Betty's first one is almost certainly not a knife job and may be legitimate. But Betty is such a slashing outlaw that she would rather have you believe that she caught that child at a gang bang during a masquerade ball. New Brisbane is a very quiet place but no household that has Betty Frances in it can ever be dull.

            You may know more about the return of the Black Death than I

do. Gloria credits my warning with having saved Luna City but it is more nearly correct to credit it to BossÄmy short career as soothsayer was as Trilby to his Svengali. -

            Plague did not get off Earth; that was surely Boss's doing. . . although once, at the critical time, New Brisbane signaled that a landing boat could not land unless it was first exposed to vacuum, then repressurized. Sure enough, this treatment killed some rats and miceÄand fleas. Its captain stopped talking about charging the drill to the colony after this showed up.

            Contributions: Mail between Botany Bay and Earth/Luna takes four to eight months, round-tripÄnot bad for a hundred and forty light-years. (I once heard a tourist lady ask why didn't we use radio mail?) Gloria paid my contribution to the colony with all possible speed and was lavish in setting me up with capitalÄBoss's will gave her leeway. She didn't send gold here; these were bookkeeping entries in the colony's account in Luna City, under which farm implements or anything can be shipped to Botany Bay.

            But Pete had little on Earth to draw on and Tilly, a quasi-slave, had nothing. I still had a piece left of that lottery windfall and all of my final paycheck and even a few shares of stock. This got my fellow jumpers out of hockÄour colony never turns back a jumper            but it may take him years to pay his share in the colony.

            They both fussed. I fussed right back and worse. Not only is it all in the family but without the help of both Percival and Matilda I almost certainly would have been caught, then wound up on The RealmÄdead. But they still insisted on paying me.

            We compromised. Their payments and some from the rest of us started the Asa Hunter Bread-Upon-the-Waters Revolving Fund, used to help jumpers or any new chum.

I no longer think about my odd and sometime shameful origin. "It takes a human mother to bear a human baby." Georges told me that long ago. It's true and I have Wendy to prove it. I'm human and I belong!

            I think that's all anybody wants. To belong. To be "people."

            My word, do I belong! Last week I was trying to figure out why I was so short on time. I'm secretary of the Town Council. I'm program chairman of the Parents-Teacher Association. I'm troop mistress of the New Toowoomba Girl Scouts. I'm a past president of the Garden Club, and I'm on the planning committee of the community college we're starting. Yes, I belong.

It's a warm and happy feeling.