VIII

We've had that radiation storm. I prefer hives. I don't mean the storm itself, it wasn't too bad. Radiation jumped to about 1500 times normal for where we are now-about eight-tenths of an astronomical unit from the Sun, say 120,000,000 kilometers in units you can get your teeth in. Mr. Savvonavong says that we would have been all right if the first-class passengers had simply gone up one deck to second-class passenger country-which certainly would have been more comfortable than stuffing all the passengers and crew into that maximum-safety mausoleum at the center of the ship. Second-class accommodations are cramped and cheerless, and as for third class, I would rather be shipped as freight. But either one would be a picnic compared with spending eighteen hours in the radiation shelter.

            For the first time I envied the half-dozen aliens aboard. They don't take shelter; they simply remain locked in their specially conditioned staterooms as

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usual. No, they aren't allowed to fry; those X-numbered rooms are almost at the center of the ship anyhow, in officers' and crew's country, and they have their own extra layer of shielding, because you can't expect a Martian, for example, to leave the pressure and humidity he requires and join us humans in the shelter; it would be equivalent to dunking him in a bathtub and holding his head under. If he had a head, I mean.

            Still, I suppose eighteen hours of discomfort is better than being sealed into one small room for the whole trip. A Martian can simply contemplate the subtle difference between zero and nothing for that long or longer and a Venerian just estivates. But not me. I need unrest oftener than I need rest-or my circuits get tangled and smoke pours out of my ears.

            But Captain Darling couldn't know ahead of time that the storm would be short and relatively mild; he had to assume the worst and protect his passengers and crew. Eleven minutes would have been long enough for us to be in the shelter, as shown later by instrument records. But that is hindsight ... and a captain doesn't save his ship and the lives depending on him by hindsight.

            I am beginning to realize that being a captain isn't all glorious adventure and being saluted and wearing four gold stripes on your shoulders. Captain Darling is younger than Daddy and yet he has worry lines that make him look years older.

            QUERY: Poddy, are you sure you have what it takes to captain an explorer ship?

            ANSWERS: What did Columbus have that you don't? Aside from Isabella, I mean. Semper toujours, girl!

            I spent a lot of time before the storm in the control room. Hermes Solar Weather Station doesn't actually

warn us when the storm is coming; what they do is fail to warn us that the storm is not coming. That sounds silly but here is how it works:

            The weathermen at Hermes are perfectly safe, as they are underground on the dark side of Mercury. Their instruments peek cautiously over the horizon in the twilight zone, gather data about Solar weather including running telephotos at several wave lengths.

            But the Sun takes about twenty-five days to turn around, so Hermes Station can't watch all of it all the time. Worse yet. Mercury is going around the Sun in the same direction that the Sun rotates, taking eightyeight days for one lap, so when the Sun again faces where Mercury was, Mercury has moved on. What this adds up to is that Hermes Station faces exactly the same face of the Sun about every seven weeks.

            Which is obviously not good enough for weatherpredicting storms that can gather in a day or two, peak in a few minutes, and kill you dead in seconds or less.

            So the Solar weather is watched from Earth's Luna and from Venus' satellite station as well, plus some help from Deimos. But there is speed-of-light lag in getting information from these more distant stations back to the main station on Mercury. Maybe fifteen minutes for Luna and as high as a thousand seconds for Deimos ... not good when seconds count.

            But the season of bad storms is only a small part of the Sun's cycle as a variable star-say about a year out of each six. (Real years, I mean-Martian years. The Sun's cycle is about eleven of those Earth years that astronomers still insist on using.)

            That makes things a lot easier; five years out of six a ship stands very little chance of being hit by a radiation storm.

            But during the stormy season a careful skipper (the only sort who lives to draw a pension) will plan his orbit so that he is in the worst danger zone, say inside

the orbit of Earth, only during such time as Mercury lies between him and the Sun, so that Hermes Station can always warn him of coming trouble. That is exactly what Captain Darling had done; the Tricorn waited at Deimos nearly three weeks longer than the guaranteed sightseeing time on Mars called for by the Triangle Line's advertising, in order to place his approach to Venus so that Hermes Station could observe and warn-because we are right in the middle of the stormy season.

            I suppose the Line's business office hates these expensive delays. Maybe they lose money during the stormy season. But three weeks' delay is better than losing a whole shipload of passengers.

            But when the storm does start, radio communication goes all to pieces at once-Hermes Station can't warn the ships in the sky.

            Stalemate? Not quite. Hermes Station can see a storm shaping up; they can spot the conditions on the Sun which are almost certainly going to produce a radiation storm very shortly. So they send out a storm warning-and the Tricorn and other ships hold radiation-shelter drills. Then we wait. One day, two days, or a whole week, and the storm either fails to develop, or it builds up and starts shooting nasty stuff in great quantities.

            All during this time the space guard radio station on the dark side of Mercury sends a continuous storm warning, never an instant's break, giving a running account of how the weather looks on the Sun.

            and suddenly it stops.

            Maybe it's a power failure and the stand-by transmitter will cut in. Maybe it's just a "fade" and the storm hasn't broken yet and transmission will resume with reassuring words.

            But it may be that the first blast of the storm has hit Mercury with the speed of light, no last-minute

warning at all, and the station's eyes are knocked out and its voice is swallowed up.in enormously more powerful radiation.

            The officer-of-the-watch in the control room can't be sure and he dare not take a chance. The instant he loses Hermes Station he slaps a switch that starts a big clock with just a second hand. When that clock has ticked off a certain number of seconds-and Hermes Station is still silent-the general alarm sounds. The exact number of seconds depends on where the ship is, how far from the Sun, how much longer it will take the first blast to reach the ship after it has already hit Hermes Station.

            Now here is where a captain bites his nails and gets gray hair and earns his high pay.. . because he has to decide how many seconds to set that clock for. Actually, if the first and worst blast is at the speed of light, he hasn't any warning time at all because the break in the radio signal from Hermes and that first wave front from the Sun will reach him at the same instant. Or, if the angle is unfavorable, perhaps it is his own radio reception that has been clobbered, and Hermes Station is still trying to reach him with a last-moment warning. He doesn't know.

            But he does know that if he sounds the alarm and chases everybody to shelter every time the radio fades for a few seconds, he will get people so worn out and disgusted from his crying "Wolfi" that when the trouble really comes they may not move fast enough.

            He knows, too, that the outer hull of his ship will stop almost anything in the electromagnetic spectrum. Among photons (and nothing else travels at speed-oflight) only the hardest X-radiation will get through to, passenger country and not much of that. But traveling along behind, falling just a little behind each second, is the really dangerous stuff-big particles, little particles, middle-sized particles, all the debris of nuclear

explosion. This stuff is moving very fast but not quite at speed-of-light. He has to get his people safe before it hits.

            Captain Darling picked a delay of twenty-five seconds, for where we were and what he expected from the weather reports. I asked him how he picked it and he just grinned without looking happy and said, "I asked my grandfather's ghost."

            Five times while I was in the control room the officer of the watch started that clock ... and five times contact with Hermes Station was picked up again before time ran out and the switch was opened.

            The sixth time the seconds trickled away while all of us held our breaths ... and contact with Hermes wasn't picked up again and the alarm sounded like the wakeful trump of doom.

            The Captain looked stony-faced and turned to duck down the hatch into the radiation shelter. I didn't move, because I expected to be allowed to remain in the control room. Strictly speaking, the control room is part of the radiation shelter, since it is just above it and is enclosed by the same layers of cascade shielding.

            (It's amazing how many people think that a captain controls his ship by peering out a port as if he were driving a sand wagon. But he doesn't, of course. The control room is inside, where he can watch things much more accurately and conveniently by displays and instruments. The only viewport in the Tricorn is one at the top end of the main axis, to allow passengers to look out at the stars. But we have never been headed so that the mass of the ship would protect that sightseeing room from solar radiation, so it has been locked off this whole trip.)

            I knew I was safe where I was, so I hung back, intending to take advantage of being "teacher's pet"- for I certainly didn't want to spend hours or days

stretched out on a shelf with gabbling and maybe hysterical women crowding me on both sides~

            I should have known. The Captain hesitated a split second as he started down the hatch and snapped, "Come along, Miss Fries."

            I came. He always calls me "Poddy"-and his voice had spank in it.

            Third-class passengers were already pouring in, since they have the shortest distance to go, and crew members were mustering them into their billets. The crew has been on emergency routine ever since we first were warned by Hermes Station, with their usual one watch in three replaced by four hours on and four hours off. Part of the crew had been staying dressed in radiation armor (which must be very uncomfortable) and simply hanging around passenger country. They can't take that heavy armor off for any reason at all until their reliefs show up, dressed also in armor. These crewmen are the "chasers" who bet their lives that they can check every passenger space, root out stragglers, and still reach the shelter fast enough not to accumulate radiation poisoning. They are all volunteers and the chasers on duty when the alarm sounds get a big bonus and the other half of them who were lucky enough not to be on duty get a little bonus.

            The, Chief Officer is in charge of the first section of chasers and the Purser is in charge of the second- but they don't get any bonus even though the one on duty when the alarm sounds is by tradition and law the last man to enter the safety of the shelter. This hardly seems fair ... but it is considered their honor as well as their duty.

            Other crewmen take turns in the radiation shelter and are equipped with mustering lists and billeting diagrams.

            Naturally, service has been pret'ty skimpy of late, with so many of the crew pulled off their regular

duties in order to do just one thing and do it fast at the first jangle of the alarm. Most of these emergencyduty assignments have to be made from the stewards and clerks; engineers and communicators and such usually can't be spared. So staterooms may not be made up until late afternoon-unless you make your own bed and tidy your room yourself, as I had been doing-and serving meals takes about twice as long as usual, and lounge service is almost non-existent.

            But of course the passengers realize the necessity for this temporary mild austerity and are grateful because it is all done for safety.

            You think so? My dear, if you believe that, you will believe anything. You haven't Seen Life until you've seen a rich, elderly Earthman deprived of something he feels is his rightful due, because he figures he paid for it in the price of his ticket. I saw one man, perhaps as old as Uncle Tom and certainly old enough to know better, almost have a stroke. He turned purple, really purple and gibbered-all because the bar steward didn't show up on the bounce to fetch him a new deck of playing cards.

            The bar steward was in armor at the time and couldn't leave his assigned area, and the lounge steward was trying to be three places at once and answer stateroom rings as well. This didn't mean anything to our jolly shipmate; he was threatening to sue the Line and all its directors, when his speech became incoherent.

            Not everybody is that way, of course. Mrs. Grew, fat as she is, has been making her own bed and she is never impatient. Some others who are ordinarily inclined to demand lots of service have lately been making a cheerful best of things.

            But some of them act like children with tantrums- which isn't pretty in children and is even uglier in grandparents.

            The instant I followed the Captain into the radiation shelter I discovered just hçw efficient Tricorn service can be when it really matters. I was snatched- snatched like a ball, right out of the air-and passed from hand to hand. Of course I don't weigh much at one-tenth gravity, all there is at the main axis; but it is rather breath-taking. Some more hands shoved me into my billet, already stretched out, as casually and impersonally as a housewife stows clean laundry, and a voice called out, "Fries, Podkayne!" and another voice answered, "Check."

            The spaces around me, and above and below and across from me, filled up awfully fast, with the crewmen working with the unhurried efficiency of automatic machinery sorting mail capsules. Somewhere a baby was crying and through it I heard the Captain saying, "Is that the last?"

            "Last one, Ca~tain," I heard the Purser answer. "How's the time?'

            "Two minutes thirty-seven seconds-and your boys can start figuring their payoff, because this one is no drill."

            "I didn't think it was, Skipper-and I've won a small bet from the Mate myself." Then the Purser walked past my billet carrying someone, and I tried to sit up and bumped my head and my eyes bugged out.

The passenger he was carrying had fainted; her head lolled loosely over the crook of his arm. At first I couldn't tell who it was, as the face was a bright, bright red. And then I recognized her and I almost fainted. Mrs. Royer- Of course the first symptom of any bad radiation

exposure is emythema. Even with a sunburn, or just carelessness with an ultraviolet lamp, the first thing you see is the skin turning pink or bright red.

            But was it possible that Mrs. Royer had been hit with such extremely sharp radiation in so very little

time that her skin had already turned red in the worst "sunburn" imaginable? Just from being last man in?

In that case she hadn't fainted; she was dead.

            And if that was true, then it was equally true that the passengers who were last to reach the shelter must all have received several times the lethal dosage. They might not feel ill for hours yet; they might not die for days. But they were just as dead as if they were already stretched out still and cold.

            How many? I had no way of guessing. Possibly- probably I corrected myself-all the first-class passengers; they had the farthest to go and were most exposed to start with.

Uncle Tom and Clark- I felt sudden sick sorrow and wished that I had not

been in the control, room. If my brother and Uncle Tom were dying, I didn't want to be alive myself.

            I don't think I wasted any sympathy on Mrs. Royer. I did feel a shock of horror when I saw that flaming red face, but truthfully, I didn't like her, I thought she was a parasite with contemptible opinions, and if she had died of heart failure instead, I can't honestly say that it would have affected my appetite. None of us goes around sobbing over the millions and billions of people who have died in the past ... nor over those still living and yet to be born whose single certain heritage is death (including Podkayne Fries herself). So why should you cry foolish tears simply because you happen to be in the neighborhood when someone you don't like-despise, in fact-comes to the end of her string?

            In any case, I did not have time to feel sorrow for Mrs. Royer; my heart was filled with grief over my brother and my uncle. I was sony that I hadn't been sweeter to Uncle Tom, instead of imposing on him and expecting him always to drop whatever he was doing to help me with my silly problems. I regretted

all the many times I had fought with my brother. After all, he was a child and I am a woman; "I should have made allowances.

            Tears were welling out of my eyes and I almost missed the Captain's first words:

            "Shipmates,' he said, in a voice firm and very soothing, "my crew and our guests aboard . . . this is not a drill; this is indeed a radiation storm.

            "Do not be alarmed; we are all, each and every one of us, perfectly safe. The Surgeon has examined the personal radiation exposure meter of the very last one to reach the shelter. It is well within safe limits. Even if it were added to the accumulated exposure of the most exposed person aboard-who is not a passenger, by the way, but one of the ship's company-the total would still be inside the conservative maximum for personal health and genetic hygiene.

            "Let me say it again. No one has been hurt, no one is going to be hurt. We are simply going to suffer a mild inconvenience. I wish I could tell you how long we will have to remain here in the safety of the shelter. But I do not know. It might be a few hours, it might be several days. The longest radiation storm of record lasted less than a week. We hope that Old Sol is not that bad-tempered this time. But until we receive word from Hermes Station that the storm is over, we will all have to stay inside here. Once we know a storm is over it usually does not take too long to check the ship and make sure that your usual comfortable quarters are safe. Until then, be patient and be patient with each other."

            I started to feel better as soon as the Captain started to talk. His voice was almost hypnotic; it had the soothing all-better-now effect of a mother reassuring a child. I relaxed and was simply weak with the aftereffects of my fears.

            But presently I began to wonder. Would Captain

Darling tell us that everything was all right when really everything was All Wrong simply because it was too late and nothing could be done about it?

            I thought over everything I had ever learned about radiation poisoning, from the simple hygiene they teach in kindergarten to a tape belonging to Mr. Clancy that I had scanned only that week.

            And I decided that the Captain had been telling the truth.

            Why? Because, even if my very worst fears had been correct, and we had been hit as hard and unexpectedly as if a nuclear weapon had exploded by us, nevertheless something can always be done about it. There would be three groups of us-those who hadn't been hurt at all and were not going to die (certainly everybody who was in the control room or in the shelter when it happened, plus all or almost all the third-class passengers if they had moved fast), a second group so terribly exposed that they were certain to die, no matter what (let's say everybody in first class country), and a third group, no telling how large, which had been dangerously exposed but could be saved by quick and drastic treatment.

            In which case that quick and drastic action would be going on.

            They would be checking our exposure meters and reshuffling us-sorting out the ones in danger who required rapid treatment, giving morphine shots to the ones who were going to die anyhow and moving them off by themselves, stacking those of us who were safe by ourselves to keep us from getting in the way, or drafting us to help nurse the ones who could be helped.

            That was certain. But there was nothing going on, nothing at all-just some babies crying and a murmur of voices. Why, they hadn't even looked at the exposure meters of most of us; it seemed likely that the

Surgeon had checked only the last few stragglers to reach the shelter.

            Therefore the Captain had told us the simple, heartwarming truth.

            I felt so good that I forgot to wonder why Mrs. Royer had looked like a ripe tomato. I relaxed and soaked in the warm and happy fact that darling Uncle Tom wasn't going to die and that my kid brother would live to cause me lots more homey grief. I almost went to sleep

            and was yanked out of it by the woman on my right starting to scream: "Let me out of here! Let me out of here!"

            Then I did see some fast and drastic emergency action.

            Two crewmen swarmed up to our shelf and grabbed her; a stewardess was right behind them. She slapped a gag over the woman's mouth and gave her a shot in the arm, all in one motion. Then they held her until she stopped struggling. When she was quiet, one of the crewmen picked her up and took her somewhere.

            Shortly thereafter a stewardess showed up who was collecting exposure meters and passing out sleeping pills. Most people took them but I resisted-I don't like pills at best and I certainly won't take one to knock me out so that I won't know what is going on. The stewardess was insistent but I can be awfully stubborn, so she shrugged and went away. After that there were three or four more cases of galloping claustrophobia or maybe just'plain screaming funk; I wouldn't know. Each was taken care of promptly with no fuss and shortly the shelter was quiet except for snores, a few voices, and' fairly continuous sounds of babies crying.

            There aren't any babies in first class and not many children of any age. Second class has quite a few kids, but third class is swarming with them and every family seems to have at least one young baby. It's why they

are there, of course; almost all of third class are Earth people emigrating to Venus. With Earth so crowded, a man with a big family can easily reach the point where emigration to Venus looks like the best way out of an impossible situation, so he signs a labor contract and Venus Corporation pays for their tickets as an advance against his wages.

            I suppose it's all right. They need to get away and Venus needs all the people they can get. But I'm glad Mars Republic doesn't subsidize immigration, or we would be swamped. We take immigrants but they have to pay their own way and have to deposit return tickets with the PEG board, tickets they can't cash in for two of our years.

            A good thing, too. At least a third of the immigrants who come to Mars just can't adjust. They get homesick and despondent and use those return tickets to go back to Earth. I can't understand anyone's not liking Mars, but if they don't then it's better if they don't stay.

            I lay there, thinking about such things, a little bit excited and a little bit bored, and mostly wondering why somebody didn't do something about those poor babies.

            The lights had been dimmed and when somebody came up to my shelf I didn't see who it was at first. "Poddy?" came Girdle's voice, softly but clearly. "Are you in there?"

            "I think so. What's up, Girdie?" I tried to keep my voice down too.

            "Do you know how to change a baby?"

            "I certainly do!" Suddenly I wondered how Duncan was doing ... and realized that I hadn't really thought about him in days. Had he forgotten me? Would he know Grandmaw Poddy the next time he saw her?

            "Then come along, chum. There's work to be done." There certainly was! The lowest part of the shelter, four catwalks below my billet and just over the

engineering spaces, was cut like a pie into four quarters-sanitary units, two sick bays, for 'men and for women and both crowded~~L~and jammed into a little corner between the infirmaries was a sorry pretense for a nursery, not more than two meters in any dimension. On three walls of it babies were stacked high in canvas crib baskets snap-hooked to the walls, and more overflowed into the women's sick bay. A sweeping majority of those babies were crying.

            In the crowded middle of this pandemonium two harassed stewardesses were changing babies, working on a barely big enough shelf let down out of one wall. Girdle tapped one of them on the shoulder. "All right, girls, reinforcements have landed. So get some rest and a bite to eat."

            The older one protested feebly, but they were awfully glad to take a break; they backed out and Girdle and I moved in and took over. I 'don't know how long we worked, as we never had time to think abut it-there was always more than we could do and we never quite got caught up. But it was better than lying on a shelf and staring at another shelf just centimeters above your nose. The worst of it was that there simply wasn't enough room. I worked with both elbows held in close, to keep from bumping Girdie on one side and a basket crib that was nudging me on the other side.

            But I'm not complaining about that. The engineer who designed that shelter into the Tricorn had been forced to plan as many people as possible into the smallest possible space; there wasn't any other way to do it and still give us all enough levels of shielding during a storm. I doubt if he worried much about getting babies changed and dry; he had enough to do just worrying about how to keep them alive.

            But you can't tell that to a baby.

            Girdle worked with an easy, no-lost-motions efficiency

that surprised me; I would never have guessed that she had ever had her hands on a 'baby. But she knew what she was doing and was faster than I was. "Where are their mothers?" I asked, meaning: "Why aren't those lazy slobs down here helping instead of leaving it to the stewardesses and some volunteers?"

            Girdle understood me. "Most of them-all of them, maybe-have other small children to keep quiet; they have their hands full. A couple of them went to pieces themselves; they're in there sleeping it off." She jerked her head toward the sick bay.

            I shut up, as it made sense. You couldn't possibly take care of an infant properly in one of those shallow niches the passengers were stacked in, and if each mother tried to bring her own baby down here each time, the traffic jam would be indescribable. No, this assembly-line system was necessary. I said, "We're running out of Disposies."

            "Stacked in a cupboard behind you. Did you see what happened to Mrs. Garcia's face?"

            "Huh?' I squatted and got out more supplies. "You mean Mrs. Royer, don't you?"

            "I mean both of them. But I saw milady Garcia first and got a better look at her, while they were quieting her down. You didn't see her?"

            "Sneak a look into the women's ward first chance you get. Her face is the brightest, most amazing chrome yellow I've ever seen in a paint pot, much less on a human face."

            I gasped. "Gracious! I did see Mrs. Royer-bright red instead of yellow. Girdle-what in the world happened to them?"

            "I'm fairly sure I know what happened," Girdle answered slowly, "but no one can figure out how it happened."

            "I don't follow you."

            "The colors tell the story. Those are the exact shades of two of the water-act vated dyes used in photography. Know anything about photography, hon?"

            "Not much," I answered. I wasn't going to admit what little I did know, because Clark is a very accomplished amateur photographer. And I wasn't going to mention that, either!

            "Well, surely you've seen someone taking snapshots. You pull out the tab and there is your picture-only there's no picture as yet. Clear as glass. So you dip it in water and slosh it around for about thirty seconds. Still no picture. Then you lay it anywhere in the light and the picture starts to show... and when the colors are bright enough to suit you, you cover it up and let it finish drying in darkness, so that the colors won't get too garish." Girdie suppressed a chuckle. "From the results, I would say that they didn't cover their faces in time to stop the process. They probably tried to scrub it off and made it worse."

            I said, in a puzzled tone-and I was puzzled, about part of it-"I still don't see how it could happen."

            "Neither does anybody else. But the Surgeon has a theory. Somebody booby-trapped their washcloths."

            "Huh?"

            "Somebody in the ship must have a supply of the pure dyes. That somebody soaked two washcloths in the inactive dyes-colorless, I mean-and dried them carefully, all in total darkness. Then that same somebody sneaked those two prepared washcloths into those two staterooms and substituted them for washcloths they found there on the stateroom wash trays. That last part wouldn't be hard for anyone with cool nerves-service in the staterooms has been pretty haphazard the last day or two, what with this flap over the radiation storm. Maybe a fresh washcloth appears in your room, maybe it doesn't-and all the

ship's washcloths and towels are the same pattern. You just wouldn't know."

            I certainly hope not! I said to myself-and added aloud, "I suppose not."

            "Certainly not. It could be one of the stewardesses-or any of the passengers. But the real mystery is: where did the dyes come from? The ship's shop doesn't carry them .. . just the rolls of prepared film

            and the Surgeon says that he knows enough about chemistry to be willing to stake his life that no one but a master chemist, using a special laboratory, could possibly separate out pure dyes from a roll of film. He thinks, too, that since the dyes aren't even manufactured on Mars, this somebody must be somebody who came aboard at Earth." Girdle glanced at me and smiled. "So you're not a suspect, Poddy. But I am."

            "Why are you a suspect?" (And if I'm not a suspect then my brother isn't a suspect!) "Why, that's silly!"

            "Yes, it is ... because I wouldn't have known how

even if I'd had the dyes. But it isn't, inasmuch as I

could have bought them before I left Earth, and I

don't have reason to like either of those women."

            "I've never heard you say a word against them."

            "No, but they've said a few thousand words about me-and other people have ears. So I'm a hot suspect, Poddy. But don t fret about it. I didn t do it, so there is no possible way to show that I did." She chuckled. "And I hope they never catch the somebody who did!"

            I didn't even answer, "Me, too!" I could think of one person who might figure out a way to get pure dyes out of a roll of film without a complete chemistry laboratory, and I was checking quickly through my mind every item I had seen when I searched Clark's room.

            There hadn't been anything in Clark's room which could have been photographic dyes. No, not even film.

            Which proves precisely nothing where Clark is

concerned. I just hope that he was careful about fingerprints.

            Two other stewardesses came in presently and we fed all the babies, and then Girdle and I managed a sort of a washup and had a snack standing up, and then I went back up to my assigned shelf and surprised myself by falling asleep.

            I must have slept three or four hours, because I missed the happenings when Mrs. Dirkson had her baby. She is one of the Terran emigrants to Venus and she shouldn't have had her baby until long after we reach Venus-I suppose the excitement stirred things up. Anyhow, when she started to groan they carried her down to that dinky infirmary, and Dr. Torland took one look at her and ordered her carried up into the control room because the control room was the only place inside the radiation-safe space roomy enough to let him do what needed to be done.

            So that's where the baby was born, on the deck of the control room, right between the chart tank and the computer. Dr. Torland and Captain Darling are godfathers and the senior stewardess is godmother and the baby's name is "Radiant," which is a poor pun but rather pretty.

            They jury-rigged an incubator for Radiant right there in the control room before they moved Mrs. Dirkson back to the infirmary and gave her something to make her sleep. The baby was still there when I woke up and heard about it.

            I decided to take a chance that the Captain was feeling more mellow now, and sneaked up to the control room and stuck my head in. "Could I please see the baby?"

            The Captain looked annoyed, then he barely smiled and said, "All right, Poddy. Take a quick look and get out."

            So I did. Radiant masses about a kilo and, frankly, she looks like cat meat, not worth saving. But Dr. Torland says that she is doing well and that she will grow up to be a fine, healthy girl-prettier than I am. I suppose he knows what he is talking about, but if she is ever going to be prettier than I am, she has lots of kilometers to go. She is almost the color of Mrs. Royer and she's mostly wrinkles.

            But no doubt she'll outgrow it, because she looks like one of the pictures toward the end of the series in a rather goody-goody schoolbook called The Miracle of Life-and the earlier pictures in that series were even less appetizing. It is probably just as well that we can't possibly see babies until they are ready to make their debut, or the human race would lose interest and die out.

            It would probably 'be still better to lay eggs. Human engineering isn't all that it might be, especially for us female types.

            I went back down where the more mature babies were to see if they needed me. They didn't, not right then, as the babies had been fed again and a stewardess and a young woman I had never met were on duty and claimed that they had been working only a few minutes. I hung around anyhow, rather than go back up to my shelf. Soon I was pretending to be useful by reaching past the two who really were working and checking the babies, then handing down the ones who needed servicing as quickly as shelf space was cleared.

            It speeded things up a little. Presently I pulled a little wiggler out of his basket and was cuddling him; the stewardess looked up and said, "I'm ready for him."

            "Oh, he's not wet," I answered. "Or 'she' as the case may be. Just lonely and needs loving."

            "We haven't time for that."

            "I wonder." The worst thing about the midget nursery was the high noise leyel. The babies woke each other and egged each other on and the decibels were something fierce. No doubt they were all lonely and probably frightened-I'm sure I would be. "Most of the babies need loving more than they need anything else."

            "They've all had their bottles."

            "A bottle can't cuddle."

            She didn't answer, just started checking the other infants. But I didn't think what I had said was silly. A baby can't understand your words and he doesn't know where he is if you put him in a strange place, nor what has happened. So he cries. Then he needs to be soothed.

            Girdie showed up just then. "Can I help?"

            "You certainly can. Here ... hold this one."

            In a few minutes I rounded up three girls about my age and I ran across Clark prowling around the catwalks instead of staying quietly in his assigned billet so I drafted him, too. He wasn't exactly eager to volunteer, but doing anything was slightly better than doing nothing; he came along.

            I couldn't use any more help as standing room was almost nonexistent. We worked it only by having two baby-cuddllers sort of back into each of the infirmaries with the mistress of ceremonies (me) standing in the little space at the bottom of the ladder, ready to scrunch in any direction to let people get in and out of the washrooms and up and down the ladder-and with Girdie, because she was tallest, standing back of the two at the changing shelf and dealing out babies, the loudest back to me for further assignment and the wet ones down for service-and vice versa: dry ones back to their baskets unless they started to yell; ones that had fallen asleep from being held and cuddled.

            At least seven babies could receive personal

attention at once, and sometimes as high as ten or eleven, because at one-tenth gee your feet never get tired and a baby doesn't weigh anything at all worth mentioning; it was possible to hold one in each arm and sometimes we did.

            In ten minutes we had that racket quieted down to an occasional whimper, quickly soothed. I didn't think Clark would stick it out, but he did-probably because Girdle was part of the team. With a look of grim nobility on his face, the like of which I have never before seen there, he cuddled babies and presently was saying "Kitchy-koo ldtchy-koo!" and "There, there, honey bun," as if he had been doing it all his life. Furthermore, the babies seemed to like him; he could soothe one down and put it to sleep quickest of any of us. Hypnotism, maybe?

            This went on for several hours, with volunteers moving in and tired ones moving out and positions rotating. I was relieved once and had another snatched meal and then stretched out on my shelf for about an hour before going back on duty.

            I was back at the changing shelf when the Captain called us all by speaker: "Attention, please. In five minutes power will be cut and the ship will be in free fall while a repair is made outside the ship. All passengers strap down. All crew members observe precautions for free fall."

            I went right on changing the baby under my hands; you can't walk off on a baby. In the meantime, babies that had been being cuddled were handed back and stowed, and the cuddling team was chased back to their shelves to strap down-and spin was being taken off the ship. One rotation every twelve seconds you simply don't notice at the center of the ship, but you do notice when the unspinning starts. The stewardess with me on the changing bench said, "Poddy, go up and strap down. Hurry."

            I said, "Don't be silly, Bergitta, there's work to be done," and popped the baby I had just' dried into its basket and fastened the zipper.

            "You're a passenger. That's an order-please!"

            "Who's going to check all these babies? You? And how about those four in on the floor of the women's sick bay?"

            Bergitta looked startled and hurried to fetch them. All the other stewardesses were busy checking on strap-down; she didn't bother me any more with That's-an-order; she' was too busy hooking up the changing shelf and fastening baby baskets to the space. I was checking all the others and almost all of them had been left unzipped-logical enough while we were working with them, but zipping the cover on a baby basket is the same as strapping down for a grown-up. It holds them firmly but comfortably with just their heads free.

            I still hadn't finished when the siren 'sounded and the Captain cut the power.

            Oh, brother! Pandemonium. The siren woke the babies who were asleep and scared any who were awake, and every single one of those squirmy little worms started to cry at the top of its lungs-and one I hadn't zipped yet popped right out of its basket and floated out into the middle of the space and I snagged it by one leg and was loose myself, and the baby and I bumped gently against the baskets on one wall-only it wasn't a wall any longer, it was just an obstacle to further progress. Free fall can be very confusing when you are not used to it, which I admit I am not. Or wasn't.

            The stewardess grabbed us both and shoved the elusive little darling back into her straitjacket and zipped it while I hung onto a handhold. And by then two more were loose.

            I did better this time-snagged one without letting

go and just kept it captive while Bergitta took care of the other one. Bergitta really knew how to handle herself in zero gravity, with unabrupt graceful movements like a dancer in a slow-motion solly. I made a mental note that this was a skill I must acquire.

            I thought the emergency was over; I was wrong. Babies don't like free fall; it frightens them. It also makes their sphincters most erratic. Most of the latter we could ignore-but Disposies don't catch everything; regrettably some six or seven of them had been fed in the last hour.

            I know now why stewardesses are all graduate nurses; we kept five babies from choking to death in the next few minutes. That is, Bergitta cleared the throat of the first one that upchucked its milk and, seeing what she had done, I worked on the second one in trouble while she grabbed the third. And so on.

            Then we were very busy trying to clear the air with clean Disposies because- Listen, dear, if you think you've had it tough because your baby brother threw up all over your new party dress, then you should try somewhat-used baby formula in free fall, where it doesn't settle anywhere in particular but just floats around like smoke until you either get it or it gets you.

            From six babies. In a small compartment.

            By the time we had that mess cleaned up, or 95 percent or so anyway, we were both mostly sour milk from hair part to ankle and the Captain was warning us to stand by for acceleration, which came almost at once to my great relief. The Chief Stewardess showed up and was horrified that I had not strapped down and I told her in a ladylike way to go to hell, using a more polite idiom suitable to my age and sex-and asked her what Captain Darling would think about a baby passenger choking to death simply because I had strapped down all regulation-like and according to orders? And Bergitta backed me up and told her that

I had cleared choke from at least two and maybe more-she had been too busy to count.

            Mrs. Peal, the C.S., changed her tune in a hurry and was sony and thanked me, and sighed and wiped her forehead and trembled and you could see that she was dead on her feet. But nevertheless, she checked all the babies herself and hurried out. Pretty quickly we were relieved and Bergitta and I crowded into the women's washroom and tried to clean up some. Not much good, as we didn't have any clean clothes to change into.

            The "All Clear" felt like a reprieve from purgatory, and a hot bath was heaven itself with the Angels singing. "A" deck had already been checked for radiation level and pronounced safe while the repair outside the ship was being made. The repair itself, I learned, was routine. Some of the antennas and receptors and things outside the ship can't take a flare storm; they burn out-so immediately after a storm, men go outside in armored space suits and replace them. This is normal and unavoidable,' like replacing lighting tubes at home. But the men who do it get the same radiation bonus that the passenger chasers get, because old Sol could burn them down with one tiny little afterthought.

            I soaked in warm, clean water and thought how miserable an eighteen hours it had been. Then I decided that it hadn't been so bad after all.

            It's lots better to be miserable than to be bored.

IX

I am now twenty-seven years old.

            Venus years, of course, but it sounds so much better. All is relative.

            Not that I would stay here on Venus even if guaranteed the Perfect Age for a thousand years. Venusberg is sort of an organized nervous breakdown and the country outside the city is even worse. What little I've seen of it. And I don't want to see much of it. Why they ever named this dreary, smog-ridden place for the Goddess of Love and Beauty I'll never know. This planet appears to have been put together from the scrap left over after the rest of the Solar System was finished.

            I don't think I would go outside Venusberg at all except that I've just got to see fairies in Right. The only one I've seen so far is in the lobby of the hilton we are staying in and is stuffed.

            Actually I'm just marking time until we shape for Earth, because Venus is a Grave Disappointment-

and now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Earth will not be a G.D., too. But I don't see how it can be; there is something deliciously primitive about the very thought of a planet where one can go outdoors without any special preparations. Why, Uncle Tom tells me that there are places along the Mediterranean (that's an ocean in La Belle France) where the natives bathe in the ocean itself without any clothing of any sort, much less insulasuits or masks.

            I wouldn't like that. Not that I'm body proud; I enjoy a good sauna sweat-out as well as the next Marsman. But it would scare me cross-eyed to bathe in an ocean; I don't ever intend to get wet all over in anything larger than a bathtub. I saw a man fished out of the Grand Canal once, in early spring. They had to thaw him before they could cremate him.

            But it is alleged that, along the Mediterranean shore, the air in the summertime is often blood temperature and the water not much cooler. As may be. Podkayne is not going to take any silly chances.

            Nevertheless I am terribly eager to see Earth, in all its fantastic unlikeliness. It occurs to me that my most vivid conceptions of Earth come from the Oz stories- and when you come right down to it, I suppose that isn't too reliable a source. I mean, Dorothy's conversations with the Wizard are instructive-but about what? When I was a child I believed every word of my Oz tapes; but now I am no longer a child and I do not truly suppose that a whirlwind is a reliable means of transportation, nor that one is likely to encounter a Tin Woodman on a road of yellow brick.

            Tik-Tok, yes-because we have Tik-Toks in Marsopolis for the simpler and more tedious work. Not precisely like Tik-Tok of Oz, of course, and not called "Tik-Toks" by anyone but children, but near enough, near enough, quite sufficient to show that the Oz stories are founded on fact if not precisely historical.

            And I believe in the Hungry Tiger, too, in the most practical way possible, because there was one in the municipal zoo when I was a child, a gift from the Calcutta Kiwanis KIub to Marsopolis Kiwanians. It always looked at me as if it were sizing me up as an appetizer. It died when I was about five and I didn't know whether to be sorry or glad. It was beautiful .

and so very Hungry.

            But Earth is still many weeks away and, in the meantime, Venus does have some points of interest for the newcomer, such as I.

            In traveling I strongly recommend traveling with my Uncle Tom. On arriving here, there were no silly waits in "Hospitality" (!) rooms; we were given the "courtesy of the port" at once-to the extreme chagrin of Mrs. Royer. "Courtesy of the port" means that your baggage isn't examined and that nobody bothers to look at that bulky mass of documents-passport and health record and security clearance and solvency proof and birth certificate and I.D.s, and nineteen other silly forms. Instead we were whisked from satellite station to spaceport in the private yacht of the Chairman of the Board and were met there by the Chairman himself!- and popped into his Rolls and wafted royally to Hilton Tannhäuser.

            We were invited to stay at his official residence (his "cottage," that being the Venus word for a palace) but I don't think he really expected us to accept, because Uncle Tom just cocked his left or satirical eyebrow and, "Mr. Chairman, I don't think you would want me to appear to be bribed even if you manage it."

            And the Chairman didn't seem offended at all; he just chuckled till his belly shook like Saint Nicholas' (whom he strongly resembles even to the beard and the red cheeks, although his eyes are cold even when he laughs, which is frequently).

            "Senator," he said, "you know me better than that.

My attempt to bribe you will be much more subtle. Perhaps through this young lady. Miss Podkayne, are you fond of jewelry?"

            I told him honestly that I wasn't, very, because I always lose it. So he blinked and said to Clark, "How about you, son?"

            Clark said, "I prefer cash."

            The Chairman blinked again and said nothing.

            Nor had he said anything to his driver when Uncle Tom declined the offer of his roof nevertheless we flew straight to our hilton-which is why I don't think he ever expected us to stay with him.

            But I am beginning to realize that this is not entirely a pleasure trip for Uncle Tom ... and to grasp emotionally a fact known only intellectually in the past, i.e., Uncle Tom is not merely the best pinochle player in Marsopolis, he sometimes plays other games for higher stakes. I must confess that the what or why lies outside my admittedly youthful horizon-save that everyone knows that the Three-Planets conference is coming up.

            Query: Could U.T. conceivably be involved in this? As a consultant or something? I hope not, as it might keep him tied up for weeks on Luna and I have no wish to waste time on a dreary ball of slag while the Wonders of Terra await me-and Uncle Tom just might be difficult about letting me go down to Earth without him.

            But I wish still more strongly that Clark had not answered the Chairman truthfully.

            Still, Clark would not sell out his own uncle for mere money.

On the other hand, Clark does not regard money as "mere." I must think about this- But it is some comfort to realize that anyone who

handed Clark a bribe would find that Clark had not only taken the bribe but the hand as well.

            *           *           *

            Possibly our suite at the Tannhäuser is intended as a bribe, too. Are we paying for it? I'm almost afraid to ask Uncle Tom, but I do know this: the servants that come with it won't accept tips. Not any. Although I very carefully studied up on the subject of tipping, both for Venus and Earth, so that I would know what to do when the time came-and it had been my understanding that anyone on Venus always accepts tips, even ushers in churches and bank tellers.

            But not the servants assigned to us. I have two tiny little amber dolls, identical twins, who shadow me and would bathe me if I let them. They speak Portuguese but not Ortho-and at present my Portuguese is limited to "gobble-gobble" (which means "Thank you") and I have trouble explaining to them that I can dress and undress myself and I'm not too sure about their names-they both answer to "Maria."

            Or at least I don't think they speak. Ortho. I must think about this, too.

            Venus is officially bilingual, Ortho and Portuguese, but I'll bet I heard at least twenty other languages the first hour we were down. German sounds like a man being choked to death, French sounds like a cat fight, while Spanish sounds like molasses gurgling gently out of a jug. Cantonese- Well, think of a man trying to vocalize Bach who doesn't like Bach very much to start with.

            Fortunately almost everybody understands Ortho as well. Except Maria and Maria. If true.

            I could live a long time without the luxury of personal maids but I must admit that this hilton suite is quite a treat to a plain-living, wholesome Mars girl, namely me. Especially as I am in it quite a lot of the time and will be for a while yet. The ship's Surgeon, Dr. Torland, gave me many of the special inoculations needed for Venus on the trip here-an unpleasant

subject I chose not to mention-but there still remain many more before it will be safe for me to go outside the city, or even very much into the city. As soon as we reached our suite a physician appeared and played chess on my back with scratches, red to move and mate in five moves-and three hours later I had several tens of welts, with something horrid that must be done about each of them.

            Clark ducked out and didn't get his scratch tests until the next morning and I misdoubt he will die of Purple Itch or some such, were it not that his karma is so clearly reserving him for hanging. Uncle Tom refused the tests. He was through all this routine more than twenty years ago, and anyhow he claims that the too, too mortal flesh is merely a figment of the imagination.

            So I am more or less limited for a few days to lavish living here in the Tannhäuser. If I got out, I must wear. gloves and a mask even in the city. But one whole wall of the suite's salon becomes a stereo stage simply by voice request, either taped or piped live from any theater or club in Venusberg-and some of the "entertainment" has widened my sophistication unbelievably, especially when Uncle Tom is not around. I am beginning to realize that Mars is an essentially puritanical culture. Of course Venus doesn't actually have laws, just company regulations, none of which seems to be concerned with personal conduct. But I had been brought up to believe that Mars Republic is a free society-and I suppose it is. However, there is "freedom" and "freedom."

            Here the Venus Corporation owns everything worth owning and runs everything that shows a profit, all in a fashion that would make Marsmen swoon. But I guess Venusmen would swoon at how straitlaced we are. I know this Mars girl blushed for the first time in I don't

know when and switched off a show that I didn't really believe.

            But the solly screen is far from being the only astonishing feature of this suite. It is so big that one should carry food and water when exploring it, and the salon is so huge that local storms appear distinctly possible. My private bath is a suite in itself, with so many gadgets in it that I ought to have an advanced degree in engineering before risking washing my hands. But I've learned how to use them all and purely love them! I had never dreamed that I had been limping along all my life without Utter Necessities.

            Up to now my top ambition along these lines has been not to have to share a washstand with Clark, because it has never been safe to reach for my own Christmas-present cologne without checking to see that it is not nitric acid or worse! Clark regards a bathroom as an auxiliary chemistry lab; he's not much interested in staying clean.

            But the most astonishing thing in our suite is the piano. No, no, dear, I don't mean a keyboard hooked into the sound system; I mean a real piano. Three legs. Made out of wood. Enormous. That odd awkwardgraceful curved shape that doesn't fit anything else and can't be put in a corner. A top that opens up and lets you see that it really does have a harp inside and very complex machinery for making it work.

            I think that there are just four real pianos on all of Mars, the one in the Museum that nobody plays and probably doesn't work, the one in Lowell Academy that no longer has a harp inside it, just wiring connections that make it really the same as any other piano, the one in the Rose House (as if any President ever had time to play a piano!), and the one in the Beaux Arts Hall that actually is played sometimes by visiting artists although I've never heard it. I don't think there

can be another one, or it would have been bannerlined in the news, wouldn't you think?

            This one was made by a man named Steinway and it must have taken him a lifetime. I played Chopsticks on it (that being the best opus in my limited repertoire) until Uncle asked me to stop. Then I closed it up, keyboard and top, because I had seen Clark eying the machinery inside, and warned him sweetly but firmly that if he touched one finger to it I would break all his fingers while he was asleep. He wasn't listening but he knows I mean it. That piano is Sacred to the Muses and is not to be taken apart by our Young Archimedes.

            I don't care what the electronics engineers say; there is a vast difference between a "piano" and a real piano. No matter if their silly oscilloscopes "prove" that the sound is identical. It is like the difference between being warmly clothed-or climbing up in your Daddy's lap and getting really warm.

            I haven't been under house arrest all the time; I've been to the casinos, with Girdle and with Dexter Cunha, Dexter being the son of Mr. Chairman of the Board Kurt Cunha. Girdie is leaving us here, going to stay on Venus, and it makes me sad.

            I asked her, "Why?"

            We were sitting alone in our palatial salon. Girdle is staying in this same hilton, in a room not very different nor much larger than her cabin in the Tricorn, and I guess I'm just mean enough that I wanted her to see the swank we were enjoying. But my excuse was to have her help me dress. For now I am wearing (Shudder!) support garments. Arch supports in my shoes and tight things here and there intended to keep me from spreading out like an amoeba-and I won't say what Clark calls them because Clark is rude, crude, unrefined, and barbaric.

            I hate them. But at 84 percent of one standard gee,

I need them despite all that exercise I took aboard ship. This alone is reason enough not to live on Venus, or on Earth, even if they~were as delightful as Mars.

            Girdle did help me-she had bought them for me in the first place-but she also made me change my makeup, one which I had most carefully copied out of the latest issue of Aphrodite. She looked at me and said, "Go wash your face, Poddy. Then we'll start over."

            I pouted out my lip and said, "Won't!" The one thing I had noticed most and quickest was that every female on Venus wears paint like a Red Indian shooting at the Good Guys in the sollies-even Maria and Maria wear three times as much makeup just to work in as Mother wears to a formal reception-and Mother doesn't wear any when working.

            "Poddy, Poddy! Be a good girl."

            "I am being a good girl. I learned that when I was just a child. And look at yourself in the mirror!" Girdie was wearing as High-styled a Venusberg face-do as any in that magazine.

            "I know what I look like. But I am more than twice your age and no one even suspects me of being young and sweet and innocent. Always be what you are, Poddy. Never pretend. Look at Mrs. Grew. She's a comfortable fat old woman. She isn't kittenish, she's just nice to be around."

            "You want me to look like a hick tourist!"

            "I want you to look like Poddy. Come, dear, we'll find a happy medium. I grant you that even the girls your age here wear more makeup than grown-up women do on Mars-so we'll compromise. Instead of painting you like a Venusberg trollop, we'll make you a young lady of good family and gentle breeding, one who is widely traveled and used to all sorts of customs and manners, and so calmly sure of herself that she

knows what is best for her-totally uninfluenced by local fads."

            Girdle is an artist, I must admit. She started with a blank canvas and worked on me for more than an hour-and when she got through, you couldn't see that I was wearing any makeup at all.

            But here is what you could see: I was at least two years older (real years, Mars years, or about six Venus years); my face was thinner and my nose not pug at all and I looked ever so slightly world-weary in a sweet and tolerant way. My eyes were enormous.

            "Satisfied?" she asked.

"I'm beautiful!"

            "Yes, you are. Because you are still Poddy. All I've done is make a picture of Poddy the way she is going to be. Before long."

            My eyes filled with tears and we had to blot them up very hastily and she repaired the damage. "Now," she said briskly, "all we need is a club. And your mask."

            "What's the club for? And I won't wear a mask, not on top of this."

            "The club is to beat off wealthy stockholders who will throw themselves at your feet. And you will wear your mask, or else we won't go."

            We compromised. I wore the mask until we got there and Girdle promised to repair any damage to my face-and promised that she would coach me as many times as necessary until I could put on that lovely, lying face myself. The casinos are safe, or supposed to be-the air not merely filtered and conditioned but freshly regenerated, free of any trace of pollen, virus, colloidal suspension or whatever. This is because lots of tourists don't like to take all the long list of immunizations necessary actually to live on Venus; but the Corporation wouldn't think of letting a tourist get away unbled. So the hiltons are safe and

the casinos are safe and a tourist can buy a health insurance policy from the corporation fbr a very modest premium. Then he finds that he can cash his policy back in for gambling chips any time he wants to. I understand that the Corporation hasn't had to pay off on one of these policies very often.

            Venusberg assaults the eye and ear even from inside a taxi. I believe in free enterprise; all Marsmen do, it's an article of faith and the main reason we won't federate with Earth (and be outvoted five hundred to one). But free enterprise is not enough excuse to blare in your ears and glare in your eyes every time you leave your own roof. The shops never close (I don't think anything ever closes in Venusberg) and full color and stereo ads climb right inside your taxi and sit in your lap and shout in your ear.

            Don't ask me how this horrid illusion is produced. The engineer who invented it probably flew off on his own broom. This red devil about a meter high appeared between us and the partition separating us from the driver (there wasn't a sign of a solly receiver) and started jabbing at us with a pitchfork. "Get the Hi-Ho Habit!" it shrieked. "Everybody drinks Hi-Ho! Soothing, Habit-Forming. Deelishus! Get High with Hi-Ho!"

            I shrank back against the cushions.

            Girdie phoned the driver. "Please shut that thing off."

            It faded down to just a pink ghost and the commercial dropped to a whisper while the driver answered, "Can't, madam. They rent the concession." Devil and noise came back on full blast.

            And I learned something about tipping. Girdie took money from her purse, displayed one note. Nothing happened and she added a second; noise and image faded down again. She passed them through a slot to the driver and we weren't bothered any more. Oh, the

transparent ghost of the red devil remained and a nagging whisper of his voice, until both were replaced by another and just as faint~-but we could talk. The giant ads in the street outside were noisier and more dazzling; I didn't see how the driver could see or hear to drive, especially as traffic was unbelievably thick and heart-stoppingly fast and frantic and he kept cutting in and out of lanes and up and down in levels as if he were trying utmostly to beat Death to a hospital.

            By the time we slammed to a stop on the roof of Dom Pedro Casino I figure Death wasn't more than half a lap behind.

            I learned later why they drive like that. The hackle is an employee of the Corporation, like most everybody-but he is an "enterprise-employee," not on wages. Each day he has to take in a certain amount in fares to "make his nut"-the Corporation gets all of this. After he has rolled up that fixed number of paid kilometers, he splits the take with the Corporation on all other fares the rest of the day. So he drives like mad to pay off the nut as fast as possible and start making some money himself-then keeps on driving fast because he's got to get his while the getting is good.

            Uncle Tom says that most people on Earth have much the same deal, except it's done by the year and they call it income tax.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

            A stately pleasure dome decree- Dom Pedro Casino is like that. Lavish. Beautiful.

Exotic. The arch over the entrance proclaims EVERY

DIVERSION IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE, and

from what I hear this may well be true. However, all

Girdie and I visited were the gaming rooms. I never saw so much money in my whole life!

            A sign outside the gambling sector read:

HELLO, SUCKER!

All Games Are Honest

All Games Have a House Percentage

You CAN'T WIN!

So Come On In and Have Fun-

(While We Prove It)

Checks Accepted. All Credit

Cards Honored. Free Breakfast

and a Ride to Your Hilton When

You Go Broke. Your Host,

DOM PEDRO

            I said, "Girdie, there really is somebody named Dom Pedro?"

            She shrugged. "He's an employee and that's not his real name. But he does look like an emperor. I'll point him out. You can meet him if you like and he'll kiss your hand. If you like that sort of thing. Come on."

She headed for the roulette tables while I tried to see everything at once. It was like being on the inside of a kaleidoscope. People beautifully dressed (employees mostly), people dressed every sort of way, from formal evening wear to sports shorts (tourists mostly), bright lights, staccato music, click and tinkle and shuffle and snap, rich hangings, armed guards in comicopera uniforms, trays of drinks and food, nervous excitement, and money everywhere- I stopped suddenly, so Girdle stopped. My brother

Clark. Seated at a crescent-shaped table at which a beautiful lady was dealing cards. In front of him several tall stacks of chips and an imposing pile of paper money.

            I should not have been startled. If you think that a six-year-old boy (or eighteen-year-old boy if you use their years) wouldn't be allowed to gamble in Venusberg, then

you haven't been to Venus. Never mind what we do in Marsopolis, here there are just two requirements to gamble: a) you have to be alive; b) you have to have money. You don't have to be able to talk Portuguese or Ortho, nor any known language; as long as you can nod, wink, grunt, or flip a tendril, they'll take your bet. And your shirt.

            No, I shouldn't have been surprised. Clark heads straight for money the way ions head for an electrode. Now I knew where he had ducked out to the first night and where he had been most of the time since.

            I went up and tapped him on the shoulder. He didn't look around at once but a man popped up out of the rug like a genie from a lamp and had me by the arm. Clark said to the dealer, "Hit me," and looked around. "Hi, Sis. It's all right, Joe, she's my sister."

            "Okay?" the man said doubtfully, still holding my arm.

            "Sure, sure. She's harmless. Sis, this is Josie Mendoza, company cop, on lease to me for tonight. Hi, Girdle!" Clark's voice was suddenly enthusiastic. But he remembered to say, "Joe, slip into my seat and watch the stuff. Girdie, this is swell! You gonna play black jack? You can have my seat."

            (It must be love, dears. Or a high fever.)

            She explained that she was about to play roulette. "Want me to come help?" he said eagerly. "I'm pretty good on the wheel, too."

            She explained to him gently that she did not want help because she was working on a system, and promised to see him later in the evening. Girdle is unbelievably patient with Clark. I would have- Come to think of it, she's unbelievably patient with me.

            If Girdie has a system for roulette, it didn't show.

We found two stools together and she tried to give me a few chips. I didn't want to gamble and told her so, and she explained that I would have to stand up if I didn't. Considering what 84 percent gee does to my poor feet I bought a few chips of my own and did just what she did, which was to place minimum bets on the colors, or on odd or even. This way you don't win, you don't lose-except that once in a long while the little ball lands on zero and you lose a chip permanently (that "house percentage" the sign warned

against).           -/

            The croupier could see what we were doing but we actually were gambling and inside the rules; he didn't object. I discovered almost at once that the trays of food circulating and the drinks were absolutely free-to anyone who was gambling. Girdie had a glass of wine. I don't touch alcoholic drinks even on birthdays-and I certainly wasn't going to drink Hi-Ho, after that obnoxious ad!-but I ate two or three sandwiches and asked for, and got-they had to go get it-a glass of milk. I tipped the amount I saw Girdie tip.

            We had been there over an hour and I was maybe three or four chips ahead when I happened to sit up straight-and knocked a glass out of the hand of a man standing behind me, all over him, some over me.

            "Oh, dear!" I said, jumping down from my stool and trying to dab off the wet spots on him with my kerchief. "I'm terribly sorry!"

            He bowed. "No harm done to me. Merely soda water. But I fear my clumsiness has ruined milady's gown."

            Out of one corner of her mouth Girdle said, "Watch it, kid!" but I answered, "This dress? Huh uh! If that was just water, there won't be a wrinkle or a spot in ten minutes. Travel clothes."

            "You are a visitor to our city? Then permit me to introduce myself less informally than by soaking you to the skin." He whipped out a card. Girdle was looking grim but I rather liked his looks. Actually not impossibly older than I am (I guessed at twelve Mars years, or say thirty-six of his own-and it turned out he was only thirty-two). He was dressed in the very elegant Venus evening wear, with cape and stick and

formal ruff... and the cutest little waxed mustaches. The card read:

DEXTER KURT CUNHA, STK.

            I read it, then reread it, then said, "Dexter Kurt Cunha- Are you any relation to-"

"My father."

            "Why, I know your father!"-and put out my hand. Ever had your hand kissed? It makes chill bumps that race up your arm, across your shoulders, and down the other arm-and of course nobody would ever do it on Mars. This is a distinct shortcoming in our planet and one I intend to correct, even if I have to bribe Clark to institute the custom.

            By the time we had names straight, Dexter was urging us to share a bite of supper and some dancing with him in the roof garden. But Girdle was balky. "Mr. Cunha," she said, "that is a very handsome calling card. But I am responsible for Podkayne to her uncle-and I would rather see your I.D."

            For a split second he looked chilly. Then he smiled warmly at her and said, "I can do better," and held up one hand.

            The most imposing old gentleman I have ever seen hurried over. From the medals on his chest I would say that he had won every spelling contest from first grade on. His bearing was kingly and his costume unbelievable. "Yes, Stockholder?"

            "Dom Pedro, will you please identify me to these ladies?"

            "With pleasure, sir." 56 Dexter was really Dexter and I got my hand kissed again. Dom Pedro does it with great flourish but it didn't have quite the same effect- I don't think he puts his heart into it the way Dexter does.

            Girdle insisted on stopping to collect Clark-and Clark suffered an awful /moment of spontaneous schizophrenia, for he was still winning. But love won out and Girdle went up on Clark's arm, with Josie trailing us with the loot. I must say I admire my brother in some ways; spending cash money to protect his winnings must have caused even deeper conflict in his soui, if any, than leaving the game while he was winning.

            The roof garden is the Brasilia Room and is even more magnificent than the casino proper, with a nightsky roof to match its name, stars and the Milky Way and the Southern Cross such as nobody ever in history actually saw from anywhere on Venus. Tourists were lined up behind a velvet rope waiting to get in-but not us. It was, "This way, if you please, Stockholder," to an elevated table right by the floor and across from the orchestra and a perfect view of the floor show.

            We danced and we ate foods I've never heard of and I let a glass of champagne be poured for me but didn't try to drink it because the bubbles go up my nose-and wished for a glass of milk or at least a glass of water because some of the food was quite spicy, but didn't ask for it.

            But Dexter leaned over me and said, "Poddy, my spies tell me that you like milk."

            "I do!"

            "So do I. But I'm too shy to order it unless I have somebody to back me up." He raised a finger and two glasses of milk appeared instantly.

            But I noticed that he hardly touched his.

            However, I did not realize I had been hoaxed until later. A singer, part of the floor show, a tall handsome dark girl dressed as a gypsy-if gypsies did ever dress that way, which I doubt, but she was billed as "Romany Rose"-toured the ringside tables singing topical verses to a popular song.

            She stopped in front of us, looked right at me and smiled, struck a couple of chords and sang:

"Poddy Fries-uh came to town, Pretty, winsome Poddy- Silver shoes and sky blue gown, Lovely darling Podkayne- "She has sailed the starry sea, Pour another toddy! Lucky Dexter, lucky we! Drink a toast to Poddy!"

            And everybody clapped and Clark pounded on the table and Romany Rose curtsied to me and I started to cry and covered my face with my hands and suddenly remembered that I mustn't cry because of my makeup and dabbed at my eyes with my napkin and hoped I hadn't ruined it, and suddenly silver buckets with champagne appeared all over that big room and everybody did drink a toast to me, standing up when Dexter stood up in a sudden silence brought on by a roll of drums and a crashing chord from the orchestra.

            I was speechless and just barely knew enough to stay seated myself and nod and try to smile when he looked at me-

            -and he broke his glass, just like story tapes, and everybody imitated him and for a while there was crash and tinkle all over the room, and I felt like Ozma just

after she stops being Tip and is Ozma again and I had to remember my makeup very hard indeed!

            Later on, after I had gulped my stomach back into place and could stand up without trembling, I danced with Dexter again. He is a dreamy dancer-a firm, sure lead without ever turning it into a wrestling match. During a slow waltz I said, "Dexter? You spilled that glass of soda water. On purpose."

            "Yes. How dld~ you know?"

            "Because it is a sky-blue dress-or the color that is called 'sky-blue,' for Earth, although I've never seen a sky this color. And my shoes are silvered. So it couldn't have been an accident. Any of it."

            He just grinned, not a bit ashamed. "Only a little of it. I went first to your hilton-and it took almost half an hour to find out who had taken you where and I was furious, because Papa would have been most vexed. But I found you."

            I chewed that over and didn't like the taste. "Then you did it because your daddy told you to. Told you to entertain me because I'm Uncle Tom's niece."

            "No, Poddy."

            "Huh? Better check through the circuits again. That's how the numbers read."

            "No, Poddy. Papa would never order me to entertain a lady-other than formally, at our cottage-lady on my arm at dinner, that sort of thing. What he did do was show me a picture of you and ask me if I wanted to. And I decided I did want to. But it wasn't a very good picture of you, didn't do you justice-just one snapped by one of the servants of the Tannhäuser when you didn't know it."

            (I decided I had to find some way to get rid of Maria and Maria, a girl needs privacy. Although this hadn't turned out too dry.)

            But he was still talking. "... and when I did find you I almost didn't recognize you, you were so much

more dazzling than the photograph. I almost shied off from introducing myself. Then I got the wonderful idea of turning it into an accident. I stood behind you with that glass of soda water almost against your elbow for so long the bubbles all went out of it-and when you did move, you bumped me so gently I had to slop it over myself to make it enough of an accident to let me be properly apologetic." He grinned most disarmingly.

            "I see," I said. "But look, Dexter, the photograph was probably a very good one. This isn't my own face." I explained what Girdle had done.

            He shrugged. "Then someday wash it for me and let me look at the real Poddy. I'll bet I'll recognize her. Look, dear, the accident was only half fake, too. We're even."

            "What do you mean?"

            "They named me 'Dexter' for my maternal grandfather, before they found out I was left-handed. Then it was a case of either renaming me 'Sinister,' which doesn't sound too well-or changing me over to righthanded. But that didn't work out either; it just made me the clumsiest man on three planets." (This while twirling me through a figure eight!)

            "I'm always spilling things, knocking things over. You can follow me by the sound of fractured frangibles. The problem was not to cause an accident, but to keep from spilling that water until the right instant." He grinned that impish grin. "I feel very triumphant about it. But forcing me out of left-handedness did something else to me too. It's made me a rebel-and I think you are one, too."

            "Uh ... maybe."

            "I certainly am. I am expected to be Chairman oc the Board someday, like my papa and my grandpapa. But I shan't. I'm going to space!"

            "Oh! So am I!" We stopped dancing and chattered

about spacing. Dexter intends to be an explorer captain, just like me-only I didn't quite. admit that my plans for spacing included pilot and master; it is never well in dealing with a male to let him know that you think you can do whatever it is he can do best or wants to do most. But Dexter intends to go to Cambridge and study paramagnetics and Davis mechanics and be ready when the first true starships are ready. Goodness!

            "Poddy, maybe we'll even do it together. Lots of billets for women in starships."

            I agreed that that was so.

            "But let's talk about you. Poddy, it wasn't that you looked so much better than your picture."

            "No?" (I felt vaguely disappointed.)

            "No. Look. I know your background, I know you've lived all your life in Marsopolis. Me, I've been everywhere. Sent to Earth for school, took the Grand Tour while I was there, been to Luna, of course, and all over Venus-and to Mars. When you were a little girl and I wish I had met you then."

            "Thank you." (I was beginning to feel like a poor relation.)

            "So I know exactly what a honky-tonk town Venusberg is ... and what a shock it is to people the first time. Especially anyone reared in a gentle and civilized place like Marsopolis. Oh, I love my hometown but I know what it is- I've been other places. Poddy? Look at me, Poddy. The thing that impressed me about you was your aplomb."

            "Me?"

            "Your amazing and perfect savoir-faire ... under conditions I knew were strange to you. Your uncle has been everywhere-and Girdie, I take it, has been, too. But lots of strangers here, older women, become quite giddy when first exposed to the fleshpots of Venusberg

and behave frightfully. But you carry yourself like a queen. Savoir-falre."

            (This man I liked! Definitely. After years and years of "Beat it, runt!" it does something to a woman to be told she has savoir-faire. I didn't even stop to wonder if he told all the girls that- I didn't want to!)

            We dldn't stay much longer; Girdle made it plain that I had to get my "beauty sleep." So Clark went back to his game (Josie appeared out of nowhere at the right time-and I thought of telling Clark he had better git fer home too, but I decided that wasn't "savoir-faire" and anyhow he wouldn't have listened) and Dexter took us to the Tannhäuser in his papa's Rolls (or maybe his own, I don't know) and bowed over our hands and kissed them as he left us.

            I was wondering if he would try to kiss me good night and had made up my mind to be cooperative about it. But he didn't try. Maybe it's not a Venusberg custom, I don't know.

            Girdle went up with me because I wanted to chatter. I bounced myself on a couch and said, "Oh, Girdle, it's been the most wonderful night of my life!"

            "It hasn't been a bad night for me," she said quietly. "It certainly can't hurt me to have met the son of the Chairman of the Board." It was then that she told me that she was staying on Venus.

            "But, Girdle-why?"

            "Because I'm broke, dear. I need a job."

            "You? But you're rich. Everybody knows that."

            She smiled. "I was rich, dear. But my last husband went through it all. He was an optimistic man and excellent company. But not nearly the businessman he thought he was. So now Girdle must gird her loins and get to work. Venusberg is better than Earth for that. Back home I could either be a parasite on my old friends until they got sick of me-the chronic house guest-or get one of them to give me a job that

would really be charity, since I don't know anything. Or disappear into the lower depths and change my name. Here, nobody cares and there is always work for anyone who wants to work. I don't drink and I don't gamble-Venusberg is made to order for me."

            "But what will you do?" It was hard to imagine her as anything but the rich society girl whose parties and pranks were known even on Mars.

            "Croupier, I hope. They make the highest wages... and I've been studying it. But I've been practicing dealing, too-for black jack, or faro, or chemin de fer. But I'll probably have to start as a change girl."

            "Change girl? Girdie-would you dress that way?"

            She shrugged. "My figure is still good ... and I'm quite quick at counting money. It's honest work, Poddy-it has to be. Those change girls often have as much as ten thousand on their trays."

            I decided I had fubbed and shut up. I guess you can take the girl out of Marsopolis but you can't quite take Marsopolis out of the girl. Those change girls practically don't wear anything but the trays they carry money on-but it certainly was honest work and Girdle has a figure that had all the junior officers in the Tricorn running in circles and dropping one wing. I'm sure she could have married any of the bachelors and insured her old age thereby with no effort.

            Isn't it more honest to work? And, if so, why shouldn't she capitalize her assets?

            She kissed me good night soon after and ordered me to go right to bed and to sleep. Which I did-all but the sleep. Well, she wouldn't be a change girl long; she'd be a croupier in a beautiful evening gown

and saving her wages and her tips ... and. someday she would be a stockholder, one share anyway, which is all anybody needs for old age in the Venus Corporation. And I would come back and visit her when I was famous.

            I wondered if I could ask Dexter to put in a word for her to Dom Pedro?

            Then I thought about Dexter- I know that can't be love; I was in love once and it feels entirely different. It hurts.

            This just feels grand.

X

I hear that Clark has been negotiating to sell me (black market, of course) to one of the concessionaires who ship wives out to contract colonists in the bush. Or so they say. I do not know the truth. But There Are Rumors.

            What infuriates me is that he is said to be offering me at a ridiculously low price!

            But in truth it is this very fact that convinces me that it is just a rumor, carefully planted by Clark himself, to annoy me-because, while I would not put it past Clark to sell me into what is tantamount to chattel slavery and a Life of Shame if he could get away with it, nevertheless he would wring out of the sordid transaction every penny the traffic would bear. This is certain.

            It is much more likely that he is suffering a severe emotional reaction from having opened up and become almost human with me the other night-and therefore found it necessary to counteract it with this

rumor in order to restore our relations to their normal, healthy, cold-war status.

            Actually I don't think he could get away with it, even on the black market, because I don't have any contract with the Corporation and even if he forged one, I could always manage to get a message to Dexter, and Clark knows this. Girdie tells me that the black market in wives lies mostly in change girls or clerks or hilton chambermaids who haven't managed to snag husbands in Venusberg (where men are in short supply) and are willing to cooperate in being sold out back (where women are scarce) in order to jump their contracts. They don't squawk and the Corporation overlooks the matter.

            Most of the bartered brides, of course, are single women among the immigrants, right off a ship. The concessionaires pay their fare and squeeze whatever cumshaw they can out of the women themselves and the miners or ranchers to whom their contracts are assigned. All Kosher.

            Not that I understand it- I don't understand anything about how this planet really works. No laws, just Corporate regulations. Want to get married? Find somebody who claims to be a priest or a preacher and have any ceremony you like-but it hasn't any legal standing because it is not a contract with the Corporation. Want a divorce? Pack your clothes and get out, leaving a note or not as you see fit. Illegitimacy? They've never heard of it. A baby is a baby and the Corporation won't let one want, because that baby will grow up and be an employee and Venus has a chronic labor shortage. Polygamy? Polyandiy? Who cares? The Corporation doesn't.

            Bodily assault? Don't try it in Venusberg; it is the most thoroughly policed city in the system-violent crime is bad for business. I don't wander around alone in some parts of Marsopolis, couth as my hometown

is, because some of the old sand rats are a bit sunstruck and not really responsible. Bi~t I'm perfectly safe alone anywhere in Venusberg; the only assault I risk is from super salesmanship.

            (The bush is another matter. Not the people so much, but Venus itself is lethal-and there is always a chance of encountering a Venerian who has gotten hold of a grain of happy dust. Even the little wingety fairies are bloodthirsty if they sniff happy dust.)

            Murder? This is a very serious violation of regulations. You'll have your pay checked for years and years and years to offset both that employee's earning power for what would have been his working life ... and his putative value to the Corporation, all calculated by the company's actuaries who are widely known to have no hearts at all, just liquid helium pumps.

            So if you are thinking of killing anybody on Venus, don't do it! Lure him to a planet where murder is a social matter and all they do is hang you or something. No future in it on Venus.

            There are three classes of people on Venus: stockholders, employees, and a large middle ground. Stockholder-employees (Girdle's ambition), enterprise employees (taxi drivers, ranchers, prospectors, some retailers, etc.), and of course future employees, children still being educated. And there are tourists but tourists aren't people; they have more the status of steers in a cattle pen-valuable assets to be treated with great consideration but no pity.

            A person from out-planet can be a tourist for an hour or a lifetime-just as long as his money holds out. No visa, no rules of any sort, everybody welcome. But you must have a return ticket and you can't cash it in until after you sign a contract with the Corporation. If you do. I wouldn't.

            I still don't understand how the system works even though Uncle Tom has been very patient in explaining.

But he says he doesn't understand it either. He calls it "corporate fascism"-which explains nothing-and says that he can't make up his mind whether it is the grimmest tyranny the human race has ever known

or the most perfect democracy in history.

            He says that nothing here is as bad in many ways as the conditions over 90 percent of the people on Earth endure, and that it isn't even as bad in creature comforts and standard of living as lots of people on Mars, especially the sand rats, even though we never knowingly let anyone starve or lack medical attention.

            I Just Don't Know. I can see now that all my life I have simply taken for granted the way we do things on Mars. Oh, sure, I learned about other systems in school-but it didn't soak in. Now I am beginning to grasp emotionally that There Are Other Ways Than Ours ... and that people can be happy under them. Take Girdie. I can see why she didn't want to stay on Earth, not the way things had changed for her. But she could have stayed on Mars; she's just the sort of high-class immigrant we want. But Mars didn't tempt her at all.

            This bothered me because (as you may have gathered) I think Mars is just about perfect. And I think Girdle is just about perfect.

            Yet a horrible place like Venusberg is what she picked. She says it is a Challenge.

            Furthermore Uncle Tom says that she is Dead Right; Girdie will have Venusberg eating out of her hand in two shakes and be a stockholder before you can say Extra Dividend.

            I guess he's right. I felt awfully sorry for Girdle when I found out she was broke. "I wept that I had no shoes-till I met a man who had no feet." Like that, I mean. I've never been broke, never missed any meals, never worried about the future-yet I used to feel sony for Poddy when money was a little tight

around home and I couldn't have a new party dress. Then I found out that the rich and .glamorous Miss FitzSnugglie (I still won't use her right name, it wouldn't be fair) had only her ticket back to Earth and had borrowed the money for that. I was so sony I hurt.

            But now I'm beginning to realize that Girdle has "feet" no matter what-and will always land on them.

            She has indeed been a change girl, for two whole nights-and asked me please to see to- it that Clark did not go to Dom Pedro Casino those nights. I don't think she cared at all whether or not I saw her .

but she knows what a horrible case of puppy love Clark has on her and she's just so sweet and good all through that she did not want to risk making it worse and/or shocking him.

            But she's a dealer now and taking lessons for croupier-and Clark goes there every night. But she won't let him play at her table. She told him point-blank that he could know her socially or professionally, but not both-and Clark never argues with the inevitable; he plays at some other table and tags her around whenever possible.

            Do you suppose that my kid brother actually does possess psionic powers? I know he's not a telepath, else he would have cut my throat long since. But he is still winning.

            Dexter assures me that a) the games are absolutely honest, and b) no one can possibly beat them, not in the long run, because the house collects its percentage no matter what. "Certainly you can win, Poddy," he assured me. "One tourist came here last year and took home over half a million. We paid it happily-and advertised it all over Earth-and still made money the very week he struck it rich. Don't you even suspect that we are giving your brother a break. If he keeps it up long enough, we will not only win it all back but

take every buck he started with. If he's as smart as you say he is, he'll quit while he's ahead. But most people aren't that smart-and Venus Corporation never gambles on anything but a sure thing."

            Again, I don't know. But it was both Girdle and winning that caused Clark to become almost human with me. For a while.

            It was last week, the night I met Dexter-and Girdle told me to go to bed and I did but I couldn't sleep and I left my door open so that I could hear Clark come in-or if I didn't, phone somebody and have him chased home because, while Uncle Tom is responsible for both of us, I'm responsible for Clark and always have been. I wanted Clark to be home and in bed before Uncle Tom got up. Habit, I guess.

            He did come sneaking in about two hours after I did and I psst'd to him and he came into my room.

            You never saw a six-year-old boy with so much money!

            Josie had seen him to our door, so he said. Don't ask me why he didn't put it in the Tannhäuser's vault-or do ask me: I think he wanted to fondle it.

            He certainly wanted to boast. He laid it out in stacks on my bed, counting it and making sure that I knew how much it was. He even shoved a pile toward me. "Need some, Poddy? I won't even charge you interest-plenty more where this came from."

            I was breathless. Not the money, I didn't need any money. But the offer. There have been times in the past when Clark has lent me money against my allowance-and charged me exactly 100 percent interest come allowance day. Till Daddy caught on and spanked us both.

            So I thanked him most sincerely and hugged him. Then he said, "Sis, how old would you say Girdle is?"

            I began to understand his off-the-curve behavior. "I

really couldn't guess," I answered carefully. (Didn't need to guess, I knew.) "Why don't yau ask her?"

            "I did. She just smiled at me and said that women don't have birthdays."

            "Probably an Earth custom," I told him and let it go at that. "Clark, how in the world did you win so much money?"

            "Nothing to it," he said. "All those games, somebody wins, somebody loses. I just make sure I'm one who wins."

            "But how?"

            He just grinned his worst grin.

            "How much money did you start with?"

            He suddenly looked guarded. But he was still amazingly mellow, for Clark, so I pushed ahead. I said, "Look, if I know you, you can't get all your fun out of it unless somebody knows, and you're safer telling me than anyone else. Because I've never told on you yet. Now have I?"

            He admitted that this was true by not answering- and it is true. When he was small enough, I used to clip him one occasionally. But I never tattled on him. Lately clipping him has become entirely too dangerous; he can give me a fat lip quicker than I can give him one. But I've never tattled on him. "Loosen up," I urged him. "I'm the only one you dare boast to. How much were you paid to sneak those three kilos into the Tricorn in my baggage?"

            He looked very smug. "Enough."

            "Okay. I won't pry any further about that. But what was it you smuggled? You've had me utterly baffled."

            "You would have found it if you hadn't been so silly anxious to explore the ship. Poddy, you're stupid. You know that, don't you? You're as predictable as the law of gravity. I can always outguess you."

            I didn't get mad. If Clark gets you sore, he's got you.

            "Guess maybe," I admitted. "Are you ~oing to tell me what it was? Not happy dust, I hope?'

            "Oh, no!" he said and looked shocked. "You know what they do to you for happy dust around here? They turn you over to natives who are hopped up with it, that's what they do-and then they don't even have to bother to cremate you."

            I shuddered and returned to the subject. "Going to tell me?"

"Mmm . .

            "I swear by Saint Podkayne Not to Tell." This is my own private oath, nobody else would or could use it.

            "By Saint Podkayne!" (And I should have kept my lip zipped.)

            "Okay," he said. "But you swore it. A bomb."

"A what?"

            "Oh, not much of a bomb. Just a little squeezer job. Total destruction not more than a kilometer. Nothing much."

            I reswallowed my heart. "Why a bomb? And what did you do with it?"

            He shrugged. "They were stupid. They paid me this silly amount, see? Just to sneak this little package aboard. Gave me a lot of north wind about how it was meant to be a surprise for the Captain-and that I should give it to him at the Captain's party, last night out. Gift wrapped and everything. 'Sonny,' this silly zero says to me, 'just keep it out of sight and let him be surprised-because last night out is not only the Captain's party, it's his birthday.'

            "Now, Sis, you know I wouldn't swallow anything like that. If it had really been a birthday present they would just have given it to the Purser to hold-no need to bribe me. So I just played stupid and kept jacking up the price. And the idiots paid me. They got real jumpy when time came to shove us through passport clearance and paid all I asked. So I shoved it into

your bag while you were yakking to Uncle Tom-then saw to it you didn't get inspected.

            "Then the minute we were aboard I went to get it-and got held up by a stewardess spraying your cabin and had to do a fast job and go back to relock your bag because Uncle Tom came back in looking for his pipe. That first night I opened the thing in the dark-and opened it from the bottom; I already had a hunch what it might be."

            "Why?"

            "Sis, use your brain. Don't just sit there and let it rust out. First they offer me what they probably figured was big money to a kid. When I turn it down, they start to sweat and up the ante. I kept crowding it and the money got important. And more important. They don't even give me a tale about how a man with a flower in his lapel will come aboard at Venus and give me a password. It has to be that they don't care what happens to it as long as it gets .into the ship. What does that add up to? Logic."

            He added, "So I opened it and took it apart. Time bomb. Set for three days after we space. Blooey!"

            I shivered, thinking about it.

            "What a horrible thing to do!"

            "It could have turned out pretty dry," he admitted, "if I had been as stupid as they thought I was."

            "But why would anybody want to do such a thing?"

            "Didn't want the ship to get to Venus."

"But why?"

            "You figure it out. I have."

            "Uh ... what did you do with it?"

            "Oh, I saved it. The essential pieces. Never know when you might need a bomb."

            And that's all I got out of him-and here I am stuck with a Saint Podkayne oath. And nineteen questions left unanswered. Was there really a bomb? Or was I swindled by my brother's talent for improvising

explanations that throw one off the obvious track? If there was where is it? Still in the Tricorn? Right here in this suite? In an innocent-looking package in the safe of the Tannhäuser? Or parked with his private bodyguard, Josie? Or a thousand other places in this big city? Or is it still more likely that I simply made a mistake of three kilograms in my excitement and that Clark was snooping just to be snooping? (Which he will always do if not busy otherwise.)

            No way to tell. So I decided to squeeze what else I could from this Moment of Truth-if it was one. "I'm awful glad you found it," I said. "But the slickest thing you ever dld was that dye job on Mrs. Garcia and Mrs. Royer. Girdle admires it, too."

            "She does?" he said eagerly.

            "She certainly does. But I never let on you did it. So you can still tell her yourself, if you want to."

            "Mmm .. ." He looked quite happy. "I gave Old Lady Royer a little extra, just for luck. Put a mouse in her bed."

            "Clark! Oh, wonderful! But where did you get a mouse?"

            "Made a deal with the ship's cat."

            I wish II had a nice, normal, slightly stupid family. It would be a lot more comfortable. Still, Clark has

his points.       -

But I haven't had too much time to worry about my brother's High Crimes and Misdemeanors; Venusberg offers too much to divert the adolescent female with a hitherto unsuspected taste for high living. Especially Dexter- I am no longer a leper; I can now go anywhere,

even outside the city, without wearing a filter snout that makes me look like a blue-eyed pig-and dashing, darling Dexter has been most flatteringly eager to escort me everywhere. Even shopping. Using both hands a girl could spend a national debt there on

clothes alone. But I am being (almost) sensible and spending only that portion of my cash assets earmarked for Venus. If I were not firm with him, Dexter would buy me anything I admire, just by lifting his finger. (He never carries any money, not even a credit card, and even his tipping is done by some unobvious credit system.) But I haven't let him buy me anything more important than a fancy ice cream sundae; I have no intention of jeopardizing my amateur status for some pretty clothes. But I don't feel too compromised over ice cream and fortunately I do not as yet have to worry about my waistline-I'm hollow clear to my ankles.

- So, after a hard day of sweating over the latest Rio styles Dexter takes me to an ice cream parlor-one that bears the same relation to our Plaza Sweet Shoppe that the Tricorn does to a sand car-and he sits and toys with café au lait and watches in amazement while I eat. First some little trifle like an everlasting strawberry soda, then more serious work on a sundae composed by a master architect from creams and syrups and imported fruits and nuts of course, and perhaps a couple of tens of scoops of ice cream in various flavors and named "The Taj Mahal" or "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" or such.

            (Poor Girdie! She diets like a Stylite every day of the year. Query: Will I ever make that sacrifice to remain svelte and glamorous? Or will I get comfortably fat like Mrs. Grew? Echo Answereth Not and I'm not afraid to listen.)

            I've had to be firm with him in other ways, too, but much less obviously. Dexter turns out to be a master of seductive logic and is ever anxious to tell me a bedtime story. But I have no intention of being a Maid Betrayed, not at my age. The tragedy about Romeo and Juliet is not that they died so young but that the boy-meets-girl reflex should be so overpowering as to defeat all common sense.

            My own reflexes are fine, thank you, and my hormonal balance is just dandy. Dexter's fruitless overtures give me a nice warm feeling at the pit of my stomach and hike up my metabolism. Perhaps I should feel insulted at his dastardly intentions toward meand possibly I would, at home, but this is Venusberg, where the distinction between a shameful proposition and a formal proposal of honorable marriage lies only in the mind and would strain a semantician to define. For all I know, Dexter already has seven wives at home, numbered for the days of the week. I haven't asked him, as I have no intention of becoming number eight, on any basis.

            I talked this over with Girdle and asked why I didn't feel "insulted." Had they left the moral circuits out of my cybernet, as they so obviously did with my brother Clark? -

            Girdle smiled her sweet and secret smile that always means she is thinking about something she doesn't intend to be fully frank about. Then she said, "Poddy, girls are taught to be 'insulted' at such offers for their own protection-and it is a good idea, quite as good an idea as keeping a fire extinguisher handy even though you don't expect a fire. But you are right; it is not an insult, it is never an insult-it is the one utterly honest tribute to a woman's charm and femininity that a man can offer her. The rest of what they tell us is mostly polite lies .. . but on this one subject a man is nakedly honest. I don't see any reason ever to be insulted if a man is polite and gallant about it."

            I thought about it. "Maybe you're right, Girdle. I guess it is a compliment, in a way. But why is it that that is all a boy is ever after? Nine times out of ten anyhow."

            "You've got it just backwards, Poddy. Why should he ever be after anything else? Millions of years of evolution is the logic behind every proposition. Just be

glad that the dears have learned to approach the matter with handkissing instead of a club. Some of them, anyhow. It gives us more choice in the matter than we've ever had before in all history. It's a woman's world today, dear-enjoy it and be grateful."

            I had never thought of it that way. When I've thought of it at all, I've mostly been groused because it is so hard for a girl to break into a "male" profession, such as piloting.

            I've been doing some hard thinking about piloting- and have concluded that there are more ways of skinning a cat than buttering it with parsnips. Do I really want to be a "famous explorer captain"? Or would I be just as happy to be some member of his crew?

Oh, I want to space, let there be no doubt about that! My one little trip from Mars to Venus makes me certain that travel is for me. I'd rather be a junior stewardess in the Tricorn than President of the Republic. Shipboard life is fun; you take your home and your friends along with you while you go romantic new places-and with Davis-drive starships being built those places are going to be newer and more romantic every year. And Poddy is going to go, somehow. I was born to roam- But let's not kid ourselves, shall we? Is anybody

going to let Poddy captain one of those multimegabuck ships?

            Dexter's chances are a hundred times as good as mine. He's as smart as I am, or almost; he'll have the best education for it that money can buy (while I'm loyal to Ares U., I know it is a hick college compared with where he plans to go); and also it is quite possible that his daddy could buy him a Star Rover ship. But the clincher is that Dexter is twice as big as I am and male. Even if you leave his father's wealth out of the equation, which one of us gets picked?

            But all is not lost. Consider Theodora, consider Catherine the Great. Let a man boss the job ... then boss that man. I am not opposed to marriage. (But if Dexter wants to many me-or anything-he'll have to follow me to Marsopolis where we are pretty oldfashioned about such things. None of this lighthearted Venusberg stuff. Marriage should be every woman's end-but not her finish. I do not regard marriage as a sort of death.

            Girdle says always to "be what you are." All right, let's look at ourselves in a mirror, dear, and forget "Captain Podkayne Fries, the famous Explorer" for the nonce. What do we see?

            Getting just a touch broad-shouldered in the hips, aren't we, dear? No longer any chance of being mistaken for a boy in a dim light. One might say that we were designed for having babies. And that doesn't seem too bad an idea, now does it? Especially if we could have one as nice as Duncan. Fact is, all babies are pretty nice even when they're not.

            Those eighteen miserable hours during the storm in the Tricorn-weren't they just about the most fun you ever had in your life? A baby is lots more fun than differential equations.

            Every starship has a crèche. So which is better? To study crèche engineering and pediatrics-and be a department head in a starship? Or buck for pilot training and make it ... and wind up as a female pilot nobody wants to hire?

Well, we don't have to decide now- I'm getting pretty anxious for us to shape for Earth.

Truth is, Venusberg's fleshpots can grow monotonous to one of my wholesome (or should I say "limited") tastes. I haven't any more money for shopping, not if I am to have any to shop in Paris; I don't think I could ever get addicted to gambling (and don't want to; I'm

one of those who lose and thereby offset in part Clark's winning); and the incessant noise and lights are going to put wrinkles where I now have dimples. And I think Dexter is beginning to be just a bit bored with my naïve inability to understand what he is driving at.

            If there is any one thing I have learned about males in my eight and a half years, it is that one should sign off before he gets bored. I look forward to just one last encounter with Dexter now: a tearful farewell just before I must enter the Tricovn's loading tube, with a kiss so grown-up, so utterly passionate and all-out giving, that he will believe the rest of his life that Things Could Have Been Different if Only He Had Played His Cards Right.

            I've been outside the city just once, in a sealed tourist bus. Once is more than enough; this ball of smog and swamp should be given back to the natives, only they wouldn't take it. Once a fairy in flight was pointed out, so they said, but I didn't see anything. Just smog.

            I'll settle now for just one fairy, in flight or even perched. Dexter says that he knows of a whole colony, a thousand or more, less than two hundred kilometers away, and wants to show it to me in his Rolls. But I'm not warm to that idea; he intends to drive it himself- and that dratted thing has automatic controls. If I can sneak Girdle, or even Clark, into the picnic-well, maybe.

            But I have learned a lot on Venus and would not have missed it for anything. The Art of Tipping, especially, and now I feel like an Experienced Traveler. Tipping can be a nuisance but it is not quite the vice Marsmen think it is; it is a necessary lubricant for perfect service.

            Let's admit it; service in Marsopolis varies from indifferent to terrible-and I simply had not realized it. A clerk waits on you when he feels like it and goes

on gossiping with another clerk, not even able to see you until he does feel like it.

            Not like that in Venusberg! However, it is not just the money-and here follows the Great Secret of Happy Travel. I haven't soaked up much Portuguese and not everybody speaks Ortho. But it isn't necessary to be a linguist if you will learn just one word-in as many languages as possible. Just "thank you."

            I caught onto this first with Maria and Maria-I say "gobble-gobble" to them a hundred times a day, only the word is actually "obrigado" which sounds like "gobble-gobble" if you say it quickly. A small tip is much more savoir-fairish-and gets better, more willing service-when accompanied by "thank you" than a big tip while saying nothing.

            So I've learned to say "thank you" in as many languages as possible -and I always try to say it in the home language of the person I'm dealing with, if I can guess it, which I usually can. Doesn't matter much if you miss, though; porters and clerks and taxi drivers and such usually know that one word in several languages and can spot it even if you can't talk with them at all in any other way. I've written a lot of them down and memorized them:

            Obrigado

            Donkey shane

Mare-see

Key toss

M 'goy

Graht-see-eh

Arigato

Spawseebaw

Gathee-oss

Tock

            Or "money tock" and Clark says this one means "money talks." But Clark is wrong; he ~has to tig too high because he won't bother to say "thank you. Oh, yes, Clark tips. It hurts him, but he soon discovered that he couldn't get a taxi and that even automatic vending machines were rude to him if he tried to buck the local system. But it infuriates him so much that he won't be pleasant about it and that costs him.

            If you say "tock" instead of "key toss" to a Finn, he still understands it. If you mistake a Japanese for a Cantonese and say "m'goy" instead of "arigato"-well, that is the one word of Cantonese he knows. And "obrigado" everybody understands.

            However, if you do guess right and pick their home language, they roll out the red carpet and genuflect, all smiles. I've even had tips refused-and this in a city where Clark's greediness about money is considered only natural.

            All those other long, long lists of hints on How to Get Along While Traveling that I studied so carefully before I left turn out not to be necessary; this one rule does it all.

            Uncle Tom is dreadfully worried about something. He's absent-minded and, while he will smile at me if I manage to get his attention (not easy), the smile soon fades and the worry lines show again. Maybe it's something here and things will be all right once we leave. I wish we were back in the happy ThreeCornered Hat with next stop Luna City.

XI

Things are really grim. Clark hasn't been home for two nights, and Uncle Tom is almost out of his mind. Besides that, I've had a quarrel with Dexter-which isn't important compared with Brother being missing but I could surely use a shoulder to cry on.

            And Uncle Tom has had a real quarrel with Mr. Chairman-which was what led to my quarrel with Dexter because I was on Uncle Tom's side even though I didn't know what was going on and I discovered that Dexter was just as blind in his loyalty to his father as I am to Uncle Tom. I saw only a bit of the quarrel with Mr. Chairman and it was one of those frightening, cold, bitter, formally polite, grown-men quarrels of the sort that used to lead inevitably to pistols at dawn.

            I think it almost did. Mr. Chairman arrived at our suite, looking not at all like Santa Claus, and I heard Uncle say coldly, "I would rather your friends had called on me, sir."

            But Mr. Chairman ignored that and about then Uncle noticed that I was there-back of the piano, keeping quiet and trying to look small-and he told me to go to my room. Which I did.

            But I know what part of it is. I had thought that both Clark and I had been allowed to run around loose in Venusberg-although I have usually had either Girdle or Dexter with me. Not so. Both of us have been guarded night and day, every instant we have been out of the Tannhäuser, by Corporation police. I never suspected this and I'm sure Clark didn t or he would never have hired Josie to watch his boodle. But Uncle did know it and had accepted it as a courtesy from Mr. Chairman, one that left him free to do whatever these things are that have kept him so busy here, without riding herd on two kids, one of them nutty as Christmas cake. (And I don't mean me.)

            As near as I can reconstruct it Uncle blames Mr. Chairman for Clark's absence-although this is hardly fair as Clark, if he knew he was being watched, could evade eighteen private eyes, the entire Space Corps, and a pack of slavering bloodhounds. Or is it "wolfhounds"?

            But, on top of this, Dexter says that they disagree completely on how to locate Clark. Myself, I think that Clark is missing because Clark wants to be missing because he intends to miss the ship and stay here on Venus where a) Girdle is, and b) where all that lovely money is. Although perhaps I have put them in the wrong order.

            I keep telling myself this, but Mr. Chairman says that it is a kidnapping, that it has to be a kidnapping, and that there is only one way to handle a kidnapping on Venus if one ever expects to see the kidnappee alive again.

            On Venus, kidnapping is just about the only thing a stockholder is afraid of. In fact they are so afraid of it

that they have brought the thing down almost to a ritual. If the kidnapper plays by the rules and doesn't hurt his victim, he not only won't be punished but he had the Corporation's assurance that he can keep any ransom agreed on.

            But if he doesn~'t play by the rules and they do catch him, well, it's pretty grisly. Some of the things Dexter just hinted at. But I understand that the mildest punishment is something called a "four-hour death." He wouldn't give me any details on this, either-except that there is some drug that is just the opposite of anesthesia; it makes pain hurt worse.

            Dexter says that Clark is absolutely safe as long as Uncle Tom doesn't insist on meddling with things he doesn't understand. "Old fool" is one term that he used and that was when I slapped him.

            Long sigh and a wish for my happy girlhood in Marsopolis, where I understood how things worked. I don't here. All I really know is that I can no longer leave the suite save with Uncle Tom-and must leave it and stay with him when he does and wherever he goes.

            Which is how I at last saw the Cunha "cottage"- and would have been much interested if Clark hadn't been missing. A modest little place only slightly smaller than the Tannhäuser but much more lavish. Our President's Rose House would fit into its ballroom. That is where I quarreled with Dexter while Uncle and Mr. Chairman were continuing their worst quarrel elsewhere in that "cottage."

            Presently Uncle Tom took me back to the Tannhäuser and I've never seen him look so old-fifty at least, or call it a hundred and fifty of the years they use here. We had dinner in the suite and neither of us ate anything and after dinner I went over and sat by the living window. The view was from Earth, I guess. The Grand Canyon of El Dorado, or El

Colorado, or whatever it is. Grand, certainly. But all I got was acrophobia and tears.

            Uncle was just sitting, looking like Prometheus enduring the eagles. I put my hand in his and said, "Uncle Tom? I wish you would spank me."

            "Eh?" He shook his head and seemed to see me. "Flicka! Why?"

            "Because it's my fault."

            "What do you mean, dear?"

            "Because I'm responsibu-bul for Clark. I always have been. He hasn't any sense. Why, when he was a baby I must have kept him from falling in the Canal at least a thousand times."

            He shook his head, negatively this time. "No, Poddy. It is my responsibility and not yours at all. I am in loco parentis to both of you-which means that your parents were loco ever to trust me with it."

            "But I feel responsible. He's my Chinese obligation." He shook his head still again. "No. In sober truth no person can ever be truly responsible for another human being. Each one of us faces up to the universe alone, and the universe is what it is and it doesn't soften the rules for any of us-and eventually, in the long run, the universe always wins and takes all. But that doesn't make it any easier when we try to be responsible for another-as you have, as I have-and then look back and see how we could have done it better." He sighed. "I should not have blamed Mr. Cunha. He tried to take care of Clark, too. Of both of you. I knew it."

            He paused and added, "It was just that I had a foul suspicion, an unworthy one, that he was using Clark to bring pressure on me. I was wrong. In his way and by his rules, Mr. Cunha is an honorable man-and his rules do not include using a boy for political purposes."

            "Political purposes?"

            Uncle looked around at me, as if surprised that I

was still in the room. "Poddy, I should have told you more than I have. I keep forgetting that you are now a woman. I always think of you as the baby who used to climb on my knee and ask me to tell her 'The Poddy Story.'" He took a deep breath. "I still won't burden you with all of it. But I owe Mr. Cunha an abject apology-because I was using Clark for political purposes. And you, too."

            "Huh?"

            "As a cover-up, dear. Doddering great-uncle escorts beloved niece and nephew on pleasure tour. I'm sony, Poddy, but it isn't that way at all. The truth is I am Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary for the Republic. To the Three Planets Summit. But it seemed desirable to keep it a secret until I present my credentials."

            I didn't answer because I was having a little trouble soaking this in. I mean, I know Uncle Tom is pretty special and has done some important things, but all my life he has been somebody who always had time to hold a skein of yarn for me while I wound it and would take serious interest in helping me name paper dolls.

            But he was talking. "So I used you, Flicka. You and your brother. Because- Poddy, do you really want to know all the ins and outs and snarls of the politics behind this?"

            I did, very much. But I tried to be grown up. "Just whatever you think best to tell me, Uncle Tom."

            "All right. Because some of it is sordid and all of it is complex and would take hours to explain-and some of it really isn't mine to tell; some of it involves commitments Bozo-sony, the President- Some of it has to do with promises he made. Do you know who our Ambassador is now, at Luna City?"

            I tried to remember. "Mr. Suslov?"

            "No, that was last administration. Artie Finnegan.

Artie isn't too bad a boy... but he thinks he should have been President and he's certain he knows more about interplanetary affairs and what is good for Mars than the President does. Means well, no doubt."

            I didn't comment because the name "Arthur Finnegan" I recognized at once- I had once heard Uncle Tom sound off about him to Daddy when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep. Some of the milder expressions were "a head like a sack of mud," "larceny in his heart," and a "size twelve ego in a size nine soul."

            "But even though he means well," Uncle Tom went on, "he doesn't see eye to eye with the President- and myself-on matters that will come before this conference. But unless the President sends a special envoy-me, in this case-the Ambassador in residence automatically speaks for Mars. Poddy, what do you know about Switzerland?"

            "Huh? William Tell. The apple."

            "That's enough, I guess, although there probably never was an apple. Poddy, Mars is the Switzerland of the solar System-or it isn't anything at all. So the President thinks, and so I think. A small man (and a small country, like Mars or Switzerland) can stand up to bigger, powerful neighbors only by being willing to fight. We've never had a war and I pray we never do, because we would probably lose it. But if we are willing enough, we may never have to fight."

            He sighed. "That's the way I see it. But Mr. Finnegan thinks that, because Mars is small and weak, Mars should join up with the Terran Federation. Perhaps he's right and this really is the wave of the future. But I don't think so; I think it would be the end of Mars as an independent country and a free society. Furthermore, I think it is logical that if Mars gives up its independence, it is only a matter of time until Venus goes the same way. I've been spending the time

since we got here trying to convince Mr. Cunha of this, cause him to have his Resident Commissioner make a common cause with us against Terra. This could persuade Luna to come in with us too, since both Venus and Mars can sell to Luna cheaper than Terra can. But it wasn't at all easy; the Corporation has such a long-standing policy of never meddling in politics at all. 'Put not your faith in princes'-which means to them that they buy and they sell and they ask no questions.

            "But I have been trying to make Mr. Cunha see that if Luna and Mars and Terra (the Jovian moons hardly count), if those three were all under the same rules, in short order Venus Corporation would be no more free than is General Motors or I.G. Farbenindustrie. He got the picture too, I'm sure-until I jumped to conclusions about Clark's disappearance and blew my top at him." He shook his head. "Poddy, I'm a poor excuse for a diplomat."

            "You aren't the only one who got sore," I said, and told him about slapping Dexter.

            He smiled for the first time. "Oh, Poddy, Poddy, we'll never make a lady out of you. You're as bad as I am."

            So I grinned back at him and started picking my teeth with a fingernail. This is an even ruder gesture than you might think-and utterly private between Uncle Tom and myself. We Maori have a very bloodthirsty history .and I won't even- hint at what it is we are supposed to be picking out of our teeth. Uncle Tom used to use this vulgar pantomime on me when I was a little girl, to tell me I wasn't being lady-like.

            Whereupon he really smiled and mussed my hair. "You're the blondest blue-eyed savage I ever saw. But you're a savage, all right. And me, too. Better tell him you're sorry, hon, because, much as I appreciate your gallant defense of me, Dexter was perfectly right. I

was an 'old fOol.' I'll apologize to his father, doing the last hundred meters on my belly if he wants it that way; a man should admit it in full when he's wrong, and make amends. And you kiss and make up with Dexter- Dexter is a fine boy."

            "I'll say I'm sony and make up-but I don't think I'll kiss him. I haven't yet."

            He looked surprised. "So? Don't you like him? Or have we brought too much Norse blood into the family?"

            "I like Dexter just fine and you're crazy with the smog if you think Svenska blood is any colder than Polynesian. I could go for Dexter in a big way-and that's why I haven't kissed him."

            He considered this. "I think you're wise, hon. Better do your practice kisses on boys who don't tend to cause your gauges to swing over into the red. Anyhow, although he's a good lad, he's not nearly good enough for my savage niece."

            "Maybe so, maybe not. Uncle ... what are you going to do about Clark?"

            His halfway happy mood vanished. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

            "But we've got to do something!"

            "But what, Podkayne?"

            There he had me. I had already chased it through all the upper and lower segments of my brain. Tell the police? Mr. Chairman is the police-they all work for him. Hire a private detective? If Venus has any (I don't know), then they all are under contract to Mr. Cunha, or rather, the Venus Corporation.

            Run ads in newspapers? Question all the taxi drivers? Put Clark's picture in the sollies and offer rewards? It didn't matter what you thought of, everything on Venus belongs to Mr. Chairman. Or, rather, to the corporation he heads. Same thing, really,

although Uncle Tom tells me that the Cunhas actually own only a fraction of the, stock.

            "Poddy, I've been over everything I could think of with Mr. Cunha-and he is either already doing it, or he has convinced me that there, under conditions he knows much better than I do, it should not be done."

            "Then what do we do?"

            "We wait. But if you think of anything-anything- that you think might help, tell me and if it isn't already being done, we'll call Mr. Cunha and find out if it should be done. If I'm asleep, wake me."

            "I will." I doubted if he would be asleep. Or me. But something else had been bothering me. "If time comes for the Tricorn to shape for Earth-and Clark isn't back-what do you do then?"

            He didn't answer; the lines in his face just got deeper. I knew what the Awful Decision was-and I knew how he had decided it.

            But I had a little Awful Decision of my own to make

            and I had talked to Saint Podkayne about it for quite a while and had decided that Poddy had to break a Saint-Podkayne oath. Maybe this sounds silly but it isn't silly to me. Never in my life had I broken one

            and never in my life will I be utterly sure about Poddy again.

            So I told Uncle all about the smuggled bomb.

            Somewhat to my surprise he took it seriously-when I had about persuaded myself that Clark had been pulling my leg just for exercise. Smuggling-oh, sure, I understand that every ship in space has smuggling. But not a bomb. Just something valuable enough that it was worthwhile to bribe a boy to get it aboard

and probably Clark had been paid off again when he passed it along to a steward, or a cargo hand, or somebody. If I know Clark- But Uncle wanted me to describe exactly the person

I had seen talking to Clark at Deimos Station.

            "Uncle, I can't! I barely glanced at him. A man. Not short, not tall, not especially fat or skinny, not dressed in any way that made me remember-and I'm not sure I looked at his face at all. Uh, yes, I did but I can't call up any picture of it."

            "Could it have been one of the passengers?"

            I thought hard about that. "No. Or I would have noticed his face later when it was still fresh in my mind. Mmm ... I'm almost certain he didn't queue up with us. I think he headed for the exit, the one that takes you back to the shuttle ship."

            "That is likely," he agreed. "Certain-if it was a bomb. And not just a product of Clark's remarkable imagination."

            "But, Uncle Tom, why would it be a bomb?"

            And he didn't answer and I already knew why. Why would anybody blow up the Tricorn and kill everybody in her, babies and all? Not for insurance like you sometimes find in adventure stories; Lloyd's won't insure a ship for enough to show a profit on that sort of crazy stunt-or at least that's the way it was explained to me in my high school economics class.

            Why, then?

            To keep the ship from getting to Venus.

            But the Tricorn had been to Venus tens and tens of times- To keep somebody in the ship from getting to Venus (or perhaps to Luna) that trip.

            Who? Not Podkayne Fries. I wasn't important to anybody but me.

            For the next couple of hours Uncle Tom and I searched that hilton suite. We didn't find anything, nor did I expect us to. If there was a bomb (which I still didn't fully believe) and if Clark had indeed brought it off the ship and hidden it there (which seemed unlikely with all of the Tricorn at one end and all of the city at the other end to choose from), nevertheless

he had had days and days in which to make it look like anything from a vase of flowers to a-a anything.

            We searched Clark's room last on the theory that it was the least likely place. Or rather, we started to search it together and Uncle had to finish it. Pawin through Clark's things got to be too much for me an Uncle sent me back into the salon to lie down.

            I was all cried out by the time he gave up; I even had a suggestion to make. "Maybe if we sent for a Geiger counter?"

            Uncle shook his head and sat down. "We aren't looking for a bomb, honey."

            "We aren't?"

            "No. If we found it, it would simply confirm that Clark had told you the truth, and I'm already using that as least hypothesis. Because . . . well because I know more about this than the short outline I gave to you ... and I know just how deadly serious this is to some people, how far they might go. Politics is neither a game nor a bad joke the way some people think it is. War itself is merely an extension of politics ... so I don't find anything surprising about a bomb in politics; bombs have been used in politics hundreds and even thousands of times in the past. No, we aren't looking for a bomb, we are looking for a man-a man you saw for a few seconds once. And probably not even for that man but for somebody that man might lead us back to. Probably somebody inside the President's office, somebody he trusts."

            "Oh, gosh, I wish I had really looked at him!"

            "Don't fret about it, hon. You didn't know and there was no reason to look. But you can bet that Clark knows what he looks like. If Clark-I mean, when Clark comes back, in time we will have him search the ID. files at Marsopolis. And all the visa photographs for the past ten years, if necessary. The man will be found. And through him the person the President has

been trusting who should not to be trusted." Uncle Tom suddenly looked all Maori and very savage. "And when we do, I may take care of the matter personally. We'll see."

            Then he smiled and added, "But right now Poddy is going to bed. You're up way past your bedtime, even with all the dancing and late-sleeping you've been doing lately."

            "Uh ... what time is it in Marsopolis?"

            He looked at his other watch. "Twenty-seventeen. You weren't thinking of phoning your parents? I hope not."

            "Oh, no! I won't say a word to them unless-until Clark is back. And maybe not then. But if it's only twenty-seventeen, it's not late at all, real time, and I don't want to go to bed. Not until you do."

            "I may not go to bed."

            "I don't care. I want to sit with you."

            He blinked at me, then said very gently, "All right, Poddy. Nobody ever grows up without spending at least one night of years."

            We just sat then for quite a while, with nothing to say that had not already been said and would just hurt to say over again.

            At last I said, "Unka Tom? Tell me the Poddy story-"

            "At your age?"

            "Please." I crawled up on his knees. "I want to sit in your lap once more and hear it. I need to."

            "All right," he said, and put his arm around me. "Once upon a time, long, long ago when the world was young, in a specially favored city there lived a little girl named Poddy. All day long she was busy like a ticking clock. Tick tick tick went her heels, tick tick tick went her knitting needles, and, most especially, tick tick tick went her busy little mind. Her hair was the color of butter blossoms in the spring when the

ice leaves canals, her eyes were the changing blue of sunshine playing down through the spring floods, her nose had not yet made up its mind what it would be, and her mouth was shaped like a question mark. She greeted the world as an unopened present and there was no badness in her anywhere.

            "One day Poddy-"

            I stopped him. "But I'm not young any longer and I don't think the world was ever young!"

            "Here's my handky," he said. "Blow your nose. I never did tell you the end of it, Poddy; you always fell asleep. It ends with a miracle."

            "A truly miracle?"

            "Yes. This is the end. Poddy grew up and had another Poddy. And then the world was young again."

            "Is that all?"

            "That's all there ever is. But it's enough."