At first, nostalgically, the crew harked back to happier times on Earth.
Soon not one young lady of their collective acquaintance had escaped the
most minute analysis. They were young men--the oldest, Blunt, was only
twenty-six--and several of them had married young, greatly limiting
their activities so that even their cumulative memories could not last
forever. After several weeks, repetition began to set in. Once all
successes had been lovingly remembered, down to the last, exquisite
detail, they began recalling their failures. The master strategist, the
unofficial referee of these seminars, was Dick Blunt.
"Now where you went wrong there," he would tell a fledgling reporting
complete zero with a YWCA resident, "was in making her feel that you
were interested. Your line with a girl like that should be one of
charity. Pure charity. You impress on her that you're doing her a
terrific favor. You offer to bring to her dull life romance, adventure,
tenderness."
"I couldn't even get my hands on her," complained the reproved failure,
Herbert Banks.
"I've always found that type the easiest ones of all," Blunt said
indifferently. "Dull, of course."
The testiness, the self-pity, the shortness of temper and the near-riots
over stolen packages of cigarettes, were not improved after the Doctors,
having surveyed the situation thoroughly, decided that it would do no
harm to let the men of the crew go out on Liberty.
Fraternizing with natives was, of course, strictly forbidden. They were
not to drink off premises. (Nor on, for that matter.) They were exhorted
not to steal, not to engage in fights.
Still, they could walk around, take pictures of the strange pink houses
and the dazzling cities. They could watch a covey of children swim in
the municipal pools. They could look at the fountains, the so-called
"miraculous fountains of Engraham", or climb the strange, glassy
mountains. The natives, although shy of them, were most polite, and some
smiled enchantingly--especially the women.
----
This was the worst rub of all: there were women, and they were gorgeous.
A little smaller than most Earth women, with bright eyes, and high,
arched eyebrows, looking forever as if they had heard the most priceless
joke. Their faces conformed to the most rigid standards of Caucasian
beauty. Their legs, so delicate, so tapering, so fantastically small of
ankle, were breath-taking. Their clothes, which would have driven a
Parisian designer to suicide, were draped carelessly over the most
exquisite figures. True, they were a little deficient in one department,
and this was explained, before they were granted liberty, by Dr.
Flandeau. The women of Engraham, he said, did not bear children.
This announcement was not received with special gloom, for until then,
none of the crew had seen an Engrahamite woman. But Willy Lanham, a
dark-haired, skinny boy from Tennessee, asked, unhappily, "Don't they
even go in for games or nothin'?"
Flandeau understood instantly. He shook his head sadly. "I should think
not. It has been a long time since they have observed the normal
functions. The women are mainly for decoration, although it is said that
some are also created for brains. They are a most strange people."
After this--granted these agonizing liberties, and able to see that
which was biologically unattainable--the crew became so demoralized that
not even Kosalowsky's discovery of the works of Wilhelm Reik relieved
the deep gloom.
However, they had reckoned without the superior genius of Dick Blunt.
Blunt received Flandeau's news as unhappily as the others, and, like the
rest, was made miserable by the sight of the glorious damozels. But he
was a reasonable man and he put his reasoning powers to work. Soon he
alone was cheerful. He went around with the absorbed, other-world look
of a physicist grappling with a problem in ionospheric mathematics
without the use of an IBM calculator. One day he went on Liberty alone.
He did not return until the fall of night, and when he came in his
elation was so immoderate that the others thought there must be bars on
Engraham after all.
"I have found the answer to our question," he said.
No one needed to ask what question. O'Connors hurried to pour Blunt a
drink.
"I have spent the day pursuing this answer logically," said Blunt. "I
have done what any thoughtful man would do. I have read up on it."
"How?" cried Henderson.
"At the library."
Blunt then described his day: finding his way to the library by means of
pantomime; and finding at last, that file of photographs--photographs of
an utterly self-explanatory nature. And these he pulled from his pocket,
for ignoring all discipline, he had stolen them.
The pictures passed from hand to hand. O'Connors passed them on to Pane,
and suddenly felt the need to open the window behind him. It was Willy
Lanham, the boy from Tennessee, who voiced those exultant words that
rose to the throats of all: