Spaceflight Seventy-nine took off, lifted on schedule by Pilot Jock
Norton. Norton was a big man, rather on the lazy side, but a good
pilot. If he had had any ambition at all, he would have owned his
spacecraft, maybe a string of several, instead of being a paid space
jockey.
But Jock Norton lacked the drive, or perhaps had never seen anything he
actually wanted. He was a love-em-and-leave-em kind of guy who spent
everything he earned on good times and luxuries. He spent no time
seeking out the better pay loads as other pilots did, and so did not
collect any of the fancy commissions for being a good businessman. He
had gravitated to a standard contract type of job and with this he was
satisfied.
His cargoes were invariably bid-basis job lots, instead of valuable
merchandise with a delivery factor. He ran mail loads mostly--mail
that could not, for legal reasons, be micro-microfilmed, transmitted
by facsi-wave, or recomposed by infrawave at the receiving end. Legal
contracts, documents, and the like, the one-and-only original of which
must bear the _bona fide_ signature of both parties.
Norton took the spacecraft up, fired the warp-generator, and headed for
Castor Three at about forty parsecs per hour. Then, with the control
room on the full automatic, he went down to the salon, because it had
been a couple of months of Sundays since he had been pilot-host to
anyone as young and attractive as Miss Alice Hemingway. Most of his
passengers had been businessmen. The few women had been wives of such
businessmen, a bit on the dowager side, and therefore more boring than
interesting.
But Miss Alice Hemingway was interesting. Not that Jock Norton favored
her ash-blond and dark-eyed attractiveness more than he would have
admired a redhead or an olive-skinned brunette. He favored all women
under thirty who were properly rounded here and there--especially
there--and who had clear-skinned faces with regular features.
That Alice Hemingway, secretary, was traveling with her boss made her
even more interesting. Norton had cased Mr. Charles Andrews carefully
and put him down as a Napoleon type, peppery and active, and probably
well-to-do, but not personally attractive to the opposite sex. It was
money, decided Norton, that bought a reasonable facsimile of affection
to Mr. Charles Andrews.
It would be masculine virility, thought Jock Norton, that would offset
the money of Charles Andrews and really bring a proper emotional
response from the girl.
"Good morning," he greeted them from the last step of the ladder that
led down from the control room.
"How do you do, Pilot Norton," responded Andrews.
"My goodness!" exclaimed Alice. "Isn't that dangerous?"
"Isn't what dangerous?" asked Norton, with a wide, lazy smile.
"Your leaving the ship to run itself."
"Not at all." Norton showed his superior knowledge. "Our auto-pilot
is the best that money can buy and maintain. And after all, Miss
Hemingway, there is little a pilot can do while we are in transit.
The auto-pilot does the job from after take-off to before landing. In
between, the human pilot relaxes and enjoys his space travel. So--may
I build you a cocktail? Or maybe you'd prefer a highball."
"At this hour in the morning?"
Norton laughed and inspected his watch. "I admit that it is ten o'clock
by Chicago time. But it is past midnight on Polaris Two at Minervatown.
It's three A.M. in Leyport, Procyon Five. It's even three
o'clock in London, Terra."
"Besides," said Charles Andrews curtly, "we're hard at work."
"Work?" exploded Norton loftily. "You're hard at work in deep space?"
"Certainly. Deep space or hard planet, work must go on. I did not get
where I am by goofing off, Pilot Norton."