A girl yelled, “Good for you, Junior!” and jumped like a wildcat onto a

slim, gray-haired lady, clawing, and slapping. The throng dissolved

immediately into a wild melee. Ross, busily fighting off the fortyish

fellow and a couple of his stocky buddies, noted only that the scrap was

youth against age, whatever it meant.

“How _dare_ you?” a voice thundered, and the rioters froze.

A decrepit wreck was standing in the doorway, surrounded by three or

four gerontological textbook cases only a little less spavined than he.

“Glory,” a girl muttered despairingly. “It would be the minister.”

“What is the meaning of this brawl?” rolled from the wreck’s shriveled

lips in a rich basso—no; rolled, Ross noted, from a flat perforated

plate on his chest. There was a small, flesh-colored mike slung before

his lips. “Who is responsible here?” asked the golden basso.

Ross’s fortyish assailant said humbly: “I am, sir. This new fellow

here——”

“Manners! Speak when you’re spoken to.”

Abjectly: “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Silly fools!” the senile wreck hectored them. “I’m going to take no

official notice of this since I’m merely passing through. Luckily for

you this is no formal inspection. But you’ve lost your lunch hour with

your asinine pranks. Now get back to your work and never let me hear of

a disgraceful incident like this again from Junior Unit Twenty-Three.”

He swept out with his retinue. Ross noted that some of the younger girls

were crying and that the older men and women were glaring at him

murderously.

“We’ll teach you manners, you pup,” the foreman-type said. “You go on

the dye vats this afternoon. Any more trouble and you’ll miss a few

meals.”

Ross told him: “Just keep your hands off me, mister.”

The foreman-type expanded into a beam of pleasure. “I thought you’d be

sensible,” he said. “Everybody to the plant, now!” He collared a pretty

girl of about Ross’s age. “Helena here is working out a bit of insolence

on the dye vats herself. She’ll show you.” The girl stood with downcast

eyes. Ross liked her face and wondered about her figure. Whatever it was

like, it was covered from neck to knee by a loose shirt. But the older

women wore fitted clothes.

The foreman-type led a grand procession through the door. Helena told

Ross: “I guess you’d better get in front of me in line. I go here——” She

slipped in deftly, and Ross understood a little more of what went on

here. The procession was in order of age.

He had determined to drift for a day or two—not that he seemed to have

much choice. The Franklin Foundation, supposedly having endured a good

many years, would last another week while he explored the baffling mores

of this place and found out how to circumvent them and find his way to

the keepers of F-T-L on this world. Nobody would go anywhere with his

own ship—not without first running up a setting for the Wesley Drive!

The line filed into a factory whose like Ross had never before seen. He

had a fair knowledge of and eye for industrial processes; it was clear

that the place was an electric-cable works. But why was the concrete

floor dangerously cracked and sloppily patched? Why was the big

enameling oven rumbling and stinking? Why were the rolling mills in a

far corner unsupplied with guards and big, easy-to-hit emergency

cutoffs? Why was the light bad and the air full of lint? Why did the

pickling tank fume and make the workers around it cough hackingly? Most

pointed of all, why did the dye vats to which Helena led him stink and

slop over?

There were grimy signs everywhere, including the isolated bay where

braiding cord was dyed the standard code colors. The signs said things

like: AGE IS A PRIVILEGE AND NOT A RIGHT. AGE MUST BE EARNED BY WORK.

GRATITUDE IS THE INDEX OF YOUR PROGRESS TO MATURITY.

Helena said girlishly as she took his arm and hooked him out of the

moving line: “Here’s Stinkville. Believe me, I’m not going to talk back

again. After all, one’s maturity is measured by one’s acceptance of

one’s environment, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Ross. “Listen, Helena, have you ever heard of a place

called the Franklin Foundation?”

“No,” she said. “First you climb up here—golly! I don’t even know your

name.”

“Ross.”

“All right, Ross. First you climb up here and make sure the yarn’s

running over the rollers right; sometimes it gets twisted around and

then it breaks. Then you take one of the thermometers from the wall and

you check the vat temperature. It says right on the thermometers what it

should be for the different colors. If it’s off you turn that gas tap up

or down, just a little. Then you check the wringer rolls where the yarn

comes out. Watch your fingers when you do! The yarn comes in different

thicknesses on the same thread so you have to adjust the wringer rolls

so too much dye doesn’t get squeezed out. You can tell by the color; it

shouldn’t be lighter after it goes through the rolls. But the yarn

shouldn’t come through sloppy and drip dye on the floor while it travels

to the bobbin——”

There was some more, equally uncomplicated. He took the yellow and green

vats; she took the red and blue. They had worked in the choking stench

and heat for perhaps three hours before Ross finished one temperature

check and descended to adjust a gas tap. He found Helena, spent and

gasping, on the floor, hidden from the rest of the shop by the bulky

tanks.

“Heat knock you out?” he asked briskly. “Don’t try to talk. I’ll tote

you over by the wall away from the burners. Maybe we’ll catch a little

breeze from the windows there.” She nodded weakly.

He picked her up without too much trouble, carried her three yards or so

to the wall, still isolated from the rest of the shop. She was ripely

curved under that loose shirt, he learned. He set her down easily,

crouching himself, and did not take his hands away.

It’s been a long time, he thought—and she was responding! Whether she

knew it or not, there was a drowsy smile on her face and her body moved

a little against his hands, pleasurably. She was breathing harder.

Ross did the sensible thing and kissed her.

Wildcat!

Ross reeled back from her fright and anger, his face copiously

scratched. “I’m dreadfully sorry,” he sputtered. “Please accept my

sincerest——”

The flare-up of rage ended; she was sobbing bitterly, leaning against

the wall, wailing that nobody had ever treated her like that before,

that she’d be set back three years if he told anybody, that she was a

good, self-controlled girl and he had no _right_ to treat her that way,

and what kind of degenerate was he, not yet twenty and going around

kissing girls when _everybody_ knew you went crazy from it.

He soothed her—from a distance. Her sobbing dropped to a bilious croon

as she climbed the ladder to the yellow vat, tears still on her face,

and checked its temperature.

Ross, wondering if he were already crazy from too much kissing of girls,

mechanically resumed his duties. But she had responded. And how long had

they been working? And wasn’t this shift ever going to end?

All the shifts ended in time. But there was a catch to it: There was

always another shift. After the afternoon shift on the dye vats came

dinner—porridge!—and then came the evening shift on the dye vats, and

then sleep. The foreman was lenient, though; he let Ross off the vats

after the end of the second day. Then it was kitchen orderly, and only

two shifts a day. And besides, you got plenty to eat.

But it was a long, long way, Ross thought sardonically to himself, from

the shining pictures he had painted to himself back on Halsey’s Planet.

Ross the explorer, Ross the hero, Ross the savior of humanity....

Ross, the semipermanent KP.

He had to admit it to himself: The expedition thus far had been a bust.

Not only was it perfectly clear that there no longer was a Franklin

Foundation on Gemser, but more had been lost than time and effort. For

Ross himself, he silently admitted, was as close to lost as he ever

wanted to be. He was, in effect, a prisoner, in a prison from which

there was no easy escape as long as he was cursed with youthfulness....

Of course, the implications of that were that there was a perfectly easy

escape in time. All he had to do was get old enough to matter, on this

insane planet. Ninety, maybe. And then he would be perfectly free to

totter out to the spaceport, dragoon a squad of juniors into lifting him

into the ship, and take off....

Helena was some help. But only psychologically; she was pleasant

company, but neither she nor anyone else in the roster of forty-eight to

whom he was permitted to speak had ever heard of the Franklin

Foundation, or F-T-L travel, or anything. Helena said, “Wait for

Holiday. Maybe one of the grownups will tell you then?”

“Holiday?” Ross slid back and scratched his shoulder blades against the

corner of his bed. Helena was sprawled on the floor, half watching a

projected picture on the screen at the end of the dormitory.

“Yes. You’re lucky, it’s only eight days off. That’s when Dobermann——”

she pointed to the foreman——“graduates; he’s the only one this year. And

we all move up a step, and the new classes come in, and then we all get

everything we want. Well, pretty near,” she amended. “We can’t do

anything _bad_. But you’ll see; it’s nice.”

Then the picture ended, and it was calisthenics time, and then lights

out. Forty-eight men and women on their forty-eight bunks—the honor

system appeared to work beautifully; there had been no signs of sex play

that Ross had been able to see—slept the sleep of the innocent. While

Ross, the forty-ninth, lay staring into the dark with rising hope.

In the kitchen the next morning he got more information from Helena.

Holiday seemed to be a cross between saturnalia and Boy’s Week; for one

day of the year the elders slightly relaxed their grip on the reins. On

that day alone one could Speak Before Being Spoken To, Interrupt One’s

Elders, even Leave the Room without Being Excused.

Whee, Ross thought sourly. But still....

The foreman, Dobermann, once you learned how to handle him, wasn’t

such a bad guy. Ross, studying his habits, learned the proper

approach and used it. Dobermann’s commonest complaint was of

irresponsibility—irresponsibility when some thirty-year-old junior

was caught sneaking into line ahead of his proper place,

irresponsibility when Ross forgot to make his bed before stumbling

out in the dark to his kitchen shift, one awful case of

irresponsibility when Helena thoughtlessly poured cold water into

the cooking vat while it was turned on. There was a sizzle, a

crackle, and a puff of steam, and Helena was weeping over a broken

heating element.

Dobermann came storming over, and Ross saw his chance. “That is very

irresponsible of you, Helena,” he said coldly, back to Dobermann but

entirely conscious of his presence. “If Junior Unit Twenty-Three was all

as irresponsible as you, it would reflect badly on Mr. Dobermann. You

don’t know how lucky you are that Mr. Dobermann is so kind to you.”

Helena’s weeping dried up instantly; she gave Ross one furious glance,

and lowered her eyes before Dobermann. Dobermann nodded approvingly to

Ross as he waded into Helena; it was a memorable tirade, but Ross heard

only part of it. He was looking at the cooking vat; it was a

simple-minded bit of construction, a spiral of resistance wire around a

ceramic core. The core had cracked and one end of the wire was loose; if

it could be reconnected, the cracked core shouldn’t matter much—the wire

was covered with insulation anyhow. He looked up and opened his mouth to

say something, then remembered and merely stood looking brightly

attentive.

“——looks like you want to go back to the vats,” the foreman was

finishing. “Well, Helena, if that’s what you want we can make you happy.

This time you’ll be by yourself, too; you won’t have Ross to help you

out when the going’s rough. Will she, Ross?”

“No, sir,” Ross said immediately. “Sir?”

Dobermann looked back at him, frowning. “What?”

“I think I can fix this,” Ross said modestly.

Dobermann’s eyes bulged. “Fix it?”

“Yes, sir. It’s only a loose wire. Back where I come from, we all

learned how to take care of things like that when we were still in

school. It’s just a matter of——”

“Now, hold on, Ross”; the foreman howled. “Tampering with a machine is

bad enough, but if you’re going to turn out to be a liar, too, you’re

going just too far! School, indeed! You know perfectly well, Ross, that

even I won’t be ready for school until after Holiday. Ross, I knew you

were a troublemaker, knew it the first day I set eyes on you. School!

Well, we’ll see how you like the school I’m going to send you to!”

The vats weren’t so bad the second time. Even though the porridge was

cold for two days, until somebody got around to delivering a different

though equally worn-out cooking vat.

Helena passed out from the heat three times. And when, on the third

time, Ross, goaded beyond endurance, kissed her again, there were no

hysterics.

..... 6

FROM birth to puberty you were an infant. From puberty to Dobermann’s

age, a junior. For ten years after that you went to school, learning the

things you had neither the need nor the right to know before.

And then you were Of Age.

Being Of Age meant much, much more than voting, Ross found out. For one

thing, it meant freedom to marry—after the enforced sexlessness of the

junior years and the directed breeding via artificial insemination of

the Scholars. It meant a healthy head start on seniority, which carried

with it all offices and all power.

It meant freedom.

As a bare beginning, it meant the freedom to command any number of

juniors or scholars. On Ross’s last punitive day in the dye vats, a

happy ancient commandeered the entire staff to help set shrubs in his

front lawn—a good dozen acres of careful landscaping it was, and the

prettiest sight Ross had seen on this ugly planet.

When they got back to the dye vats, the yellow and blue had boiled over,

and broken strands of yarn had fouled all the bobbins. Dobermann

raged—at the juniors.

But then Dobermann’s raging came to an end forever. It was the night

before Holiday, and there was a pretty ceremony as he packed his kit and

got ready to turn Junior Unit Twenty-three over to his successor.

Everyone was scrubbed, and though a certain amount of license in regard

to neatness was allowed between dinner and lights out, each bunk was

made and carefully smoothed free of wrinkles. After half an hour of

fidgety waiting, Dobermann called—needlessly—for attention, and the

minister came in with his ancient retinue.

The rich mechanical voice boomed out from his breastplate: “Junior

Dobermann, today you are a man!”

Dobermann stood with his head bowed, silent and content. Junior Unit

Twenty-Three chanted antiphonally: “Good-by, Junior Dobermann!”

The retinue took three steps forward, and the minister boomed, “Beauty

comes with age. Age is beauty!”

And the chorus: “Old heads are wisest!” Ross, standing as straight as

any of them, faked the words with his lips and tongue, and wondered how

many repetitions had drilled those sentiments into Junior Unit

Twenty-Three.

There were five more chants, and five responses, and then the minister

and his court of four were standing next to Dobermann. Breathing heavily

from his exertions, the minister reached behind him and took a book from

the hands of the nearest of his retinue. He said, panting, “Scholar

Dobermann, in the Book lies the words of the Fathers. Read them and

learn.”

The chorus cried thrice, “The Word of the Fathers Is Law.” And then the

minister touched Dobermann’s hand, and in solemn silence, left.

As soon as the elders had gone, the juniors flocked around Dobermann to

wish him well. There was excited laughter in the congratulations, and a

touch of apprehension too: Dobermann, with all his faults, was a known

quantity, and the members of Junior Unit Twenty-Three were beginning to

look a little fearfully at the short, redheaded youth who, from the next

day on, would be Dobermann’s successor.

Ross promised himself: He can be good or bad, a blessing or a problem.

But he won’t be _my_ problem. I’m getting out of here tomorrow!

Holiday.

“Oh, it’s fun,” Helena told him enthusiastically. “First you get up

early to get the voting out of the way——”

“Voting?”

“Sure. Don’t they vote where you come from? I thought everybody voted.

That’s democracy, like we have it here.”

He sardonically quoted one of the omnipresent wall signs: “THE HAPPINESS

OF THE MAJORITY MEANS THE HAPPINESS OF THE MINORITY.” He had often

wondered what, if anything, it meant. But Helena solemnly nodded.

They were whispering from their adjoining cots by dim, false dawn

filtering through the windows on Holiday morning. They were not the only

whisperers. Things were relaxing already.

“Ross,” Helena said.

“Yes?”

“I thought maybe you might not know. On Holiday if you, ah, want to do

that again you don’t have to wait until I faint. Ah, of course you don’t

do it right out in the open.” Overcome by her own daring she buried her

head under the coarse blanket.

Fine, thought Ross wearily. Once a year—or did Holiday come once a

year?—the kids were allowed to play “Spin The Bottle.” No doubt their

elders thought it was too cute for words: mere tots of thirty and

thirty-five childishly and innocently experimenting with sex. Of course

it would be discreetly supervised so that nobody would Get In Trouble.

He was quite sure Helena’s last two faints had been unconvincing

phonies.

* * * * *

The wake-up whistle blew at last. The chattering members of Junior Unit

Twenty-Three dawdled while they dressed, and the new foreman indulgently

passed out shabby, smutted ribbons which the girls tied in their hair.

They had sugar on their mush for breakfast, and Ross’s stomach came near

turning as he heard burbles of gratitude at the feast.

With pushing and a certain amount of inexpert horseplay they formed a

column of fours and hiked from the hall—from the whole factory complex,

indeed, along a rubberized highway.

Once you got out of the factory area things became pleasanter by the

mile. Hortatory roadside signs thinned out and vanished. Stinking

middens of industrial waste were left behind. And then the landscape was

rolling, sodded acres with the road pleasantly springy underfoot, the

air clean and crisp.

They oohed and aahed at houses glimpsed occasionally in the

distance—always rambling, one-story affairs that looked spanking-new.

Once a car overhauled them on the highway and slowed to a crawl. It was

a huge thing, richly upholstered within. A pair of grimlooking youths

were respectively chauffeur and footman; the passenger waved at the

troop from Junior Twenty-Three and grinned out of a fantastic landscape

of wrinkles. Ross gaped. Had he thought the visiting minister was old?

This creature, male or female, was _old_.

After the car sped on, to the cheers of the marchers, there was happy

twittering speculation. Junior Twenty-Three didn’t recognize the Citizen

who had graciously waved to them, but they thought he—or she?—was

wonderful. So dignified, so distinguished, so learned, so gracious, so

democratic!

“Wasn’t it sweet of him?” Helena burbled. “And I’m sure he must be

somebody important connected with the voting, otherwise he’d just vote

from home.”

Ross’s feet were beginning to hurt when they reached the suburban

center. To the best of his recollection, they were no more than eight or

ten kilos from the field and his starship. Backtrack on the road to the

suburban center about three kilos, take the fork to the right, and that

would be that.

Junior Twenty-Three reached a pitch of near-ecstasy marveling at the

low, spacious buildings of the center. Through sweeping, transparent

windows they saw acres of food and clothing in the shopping center; the

Drive-In Theater was an architectural miracle. The Civic Center almost

finished them off, with its statue of Equal Justice Under the Law (a

dignified beldame whose chin and nose almost met, leaning on a

gem-crusted crutch) and Civic Virtue (in a motorized wheelchair equipped

with an emergency oxygen tent, Lindbergh-Carrel auxiliary blood pump and

an artificial kidney).

Merry oldsters were everywhere in their cars and wheelchairs, gaily

waving at the kids. Only one untoward incident marred their prevoting

tour of inspection. A thick-headed young man mistakenly called out a

cheerful: “Life and wisdom, ma’am!” to a beaming oldster.

“Ma’am, is it?” the oldster roared through his throat mike and amplifier

in an unmistakable baritone. “I’ll ma’am you, you wise punk!” He spun

his wheelchair on a decishield, threw it into high and roared down on

the offender, running him over. The boy covered himself as well as he

could while the raging old man backed over him again and ran over him

again. His ordeal ended when the oldster collapsed forward in the chair,

hanging from his safety belt.

The boy got up with tire marks on him and groaned: “Oh, lord! I’ve hurt

him.” He appealed hysterically: “What’ll I do? Is he dead?”

Another Senior Citizen buzzed up and snapped: “Cut in his L-C heart, you

booby!”

The boy turned on the Lindbergh-Carrel pump, trembling. The white-faced

juniors of Twenty-Three watched as the tubes to the oldster’s left arm

throbbed and pulsed. A massive sigh went up when the old man’s eyes

opened and he sat up groggily. “What happened?”

“You died again, Sherrington,” said the other elder. “Third time this

week—good thing there was a responsible person around. Now get over to

the medical center this minute and have a complete checkup. Hear me?”

“Yes, Dad,” Sherrington said weakly. He rolled off in low gear.

His father turned to the youngster who stood vacantly rubbing the tire

marks on his face. “Since it’s Holiday,” he grated, “I’ll let this pass.

On any other day I would have seen to it that you were set back fifteen

years for your disgraceful negligence.”

Ross knew by then what that meant, and shuddered with the rest. It

amounted to a death sentence, did fifteen additional years of the

grinding toil and marginal diet of a junior.

Somewhat dampened they proceeded to the Hall of Democracy, a glittering

place replete with slogans, statues, and heroic portraits of the heroic

aged. Twenty-Three huddled together as it joined with a stream of

juniors from the area’s other factory units. Most of them were larger

than the cable works; many of them, apparently, involved more wearing

and hazardous occupations. Some groups coughed incessantly and were

red-eyed from the irritation of some chemical. Others must have been

heavy-manual-labor specialists. They were divided into the hale, whose

muscles bulged amazingly, and the dying—men and women who obviously

could not take the work but who were doing it anyway.

They seated themselves at long benches, with push buttons at each

station. Helena, next to him, explained the system to Ross. Voting was

universal and simultaneous, in all the Halls of Democracy around the

planet and from all the homes of the Senior Citizens who did not choose

to vote from a Hall. Simultaneously the votes were counted at a central

station and the results were flashed to screens in the Centers and

homes. She said a number of enthusiastic things about Democracy while

Ross studied a sheet on which the candidates and propositions were

listed.

The names meant nothing to him. He noted only that each of three

candidates for Chief of State was one hundred thirty years old, that

each of three candidates for First Assistant Chief was one hundred and

twenty-seven years old, and so on. Obviously the nominating conventions

by agreement named candidates of the same age for each office to keep it

a contest.

Proposition One read: “To dismantle seven pediatric centers and apply

the salvage value to the construction of, and the funds no longer

required for their maintenance to the maintenance of, a new wing of the

Gerontological Center, said wing to be devoted to basic research in the

extension of human life.”

Proposition Two was worse. Ross didn’t bother to read the rest of them.

He whispered hoarsely to Helena, “What next?”

“Ssh!” She pointed to a screen at the front of the Hall. “It’s

starting.”

A Senior Citizen of a very high rank (his face was entirely hidden by an

oxygen mask) was speaking from the screen. There was what seemed to be a

ritual speech of invocation, then he got down to business. “Citizens,”

he said through his throat mike, “behold Democracy in Action! I give you

three candidates for Chief of State—look them over, and make up your

minds. First, Citizen Raphael Flexner, age one century, three decades,

seven months, ten days.” Senior Citizen Flexner rolled on screen, spoke

briefly through his throat mike and rolled off. The first speaker said

again, “Behold Democracy in Action! See now Citizen Sheridan Farnsworth,

age one century, three decades, ten months, forty-two days.” Applause

boomed louder; some of the younger juniors yelled hysterically and

drummed their heels on the floor.

Helena was panting with excitement, eyes bright on the screen. “Isn’t it

_wonderful_?” she gasped ecstatically. “Oh, look at _him_!”

“Him” was the third candidate, and the first oldster Ross had seen whose

gocart was a wheeled stretcher. Prone and almost invisible through the

clusters of tubing and chromed equipment, Senior Citizen Immanuel

Appleby acknowledged his introduction—“Age one century, three decades,

eleven months and five days!” The crowd went mad; Helena broke from

Ross’s side and joined a long yelling snake dance through the corridors.

Ross yelled experimentally as protective coloration, then found himself

yelling because everybody was yelling, because he couldn’t help it. By

the time the speaker on the screen began to call for order, Ross was

standing on top of the voting bench and screaming his head off.

Helena, weeping with excitement, tugged at his leg. “Vote now, Ross,”

she begged, and all over the hall the cry was “Vote! Vote!”

Ross reached out for the voting buttons. “What do we do now?” he asked

Helena.

“Push the button marked ‘Appleby,’ of course. Hurry!”

“But why Appleby?” Ross objected. “That fellow Flexner, for instance——”

“Hush, Ross! Somebody might be listening.” There was sickening fright on

Helena’s face. “Didn’t you hear? We _have_ to vote for the best man.

‘Oldest Is Bestest,’ you know. That’s what Democracy _means_, the

freedom of choice. They read us the ages, and we choose which is oldest.

Now please, Ross, hurry before somebody starts asking questions!”

The voting was over, and the best man had won in every case. It was a

triumph for informed public opinion. The mob poured out of the hall in

happy-go-lucky order, all precedences and formalities suspended for

Holiday.

Helena grasped Ross firmly by the arm. The crowd was spreading over the

quiet acres surrounding the Center, each little cluster heedlessly

intent on a long-planned project of its own. Under the pressure of

Helena’s arm, Ross found himself swerving toward a clump of shrubbery.

He said violently, “No! That is, I mean I’m sorry, Helena, but I’ve got

something to do.”

She stared at him with shock in her eyes. “On Holiday?”

“On Holiday. Truly, Helena, I’m sorry. Look, what you said last

night—from now till tomorrow morning, I can do what I want, right?”

Sullenly, “Yes. I _thought_, Ross, that I _knew_ what——”

“Okay.” He jerked his arm away, feeling like all of the hundred possible

kinds of a skunk. “See you around,” he said over his shoulder. He did

not look back.

Three kilos back, he told himself firmly, then the right-hand fork in

the road. And not more than a dozen kilos, at the most, to the

spaceport. He could do it in a couple of hours.

One thing had been established for certain: If ever there had been a

“Franklin Foundation” on this planet, it was gone for good now.

Dismantled, no doubt, to provide building materials for an eartrumpet

plant. No doubt the little F-T-L ship that the Franklin Foundation was

supposed to cover for was still swinging in an orbit within easy range

of the spaceport; but the chance that anybody would ever find it, or use

it if found, was pretty close to zero. If they bothered to maintain a

radar watch at all—any other watch than the fully automatic one set to

respond only to highvelocity interstellar ships—and if anyone ever took

time to look at the radar plot, no doubt the F-T-L ship was charted. As

an asteroid, satellite, derelict or “body of unknown origin.” Certainly

no one of these smug oldsters would take the trouble to investigate.

The only problem to solve on this planet was how to get off it—fast.

On the road ahead of him was what appeared to be a combination sex orgy

and free-for-all. It rolled in a yelling, milling mob of half a hundred

excited juniors across the road toward him, then swerved into the fields

as a cluster of screaming women broke free and ran, and the rest of the

crowd roared after them.

Ross quickened his step. If he ever did get off this planet, it would

have to be today; he was not fool enough to think that any ordinary day

would give him the freedom to poke around the spaceport’s defenses. And

it would be just his luck, he thought bitterly, to get involved in a

gang fight on the way to the port.

There was a squeal of tires behind him, and a little vehicle screeched

to a halt. Ross threw up a defensive arm in automatic reflex.

But it was only Helena, awkwardly fumbling open the door of the car.

“Get in,” she said sourly. “You’ve spoiled _my_ Holiday. Might as well

do what _you_ want to do.”

* * * * *

“What’s that?”

Helena looked where he was pointing, and shrugged. “Guard box,” she

guessed. “How would I know? Nobody’s in it, anyhow.”

Ross nodded. They had abandoned the car and were standing outside a

long, seamless fence that surrounded the spaceport. The main gates were

closed and locked; a few hundred feet to the right was a smaller gate

with a sort of pillbox, but that had every appearance of being locked

too.

“All right,” said Ross. “See that shed with the boxes outside it? Over

we go.”

The shed was right up against the fence; the metal boxes gave a sort of

rough and just barely climbable foothold. Helena was easy enough to lift

to the top of the shed; Ross, grunting, managed to clamber after her.

They looked down at the ground on the other side, a dozen feet away.

“You don’t have to come along,” Ross told her.

“That’s just _like_ you!” she flared. “Cast me aside—trample on me!”

“All right, all right.” Ross looked around, but neither junior nor elder

was anywhere in sight. “Hang by your hands and then drop,” he advised

her. “Get moving before somebody shows up.”

“On Holiday?” she asked bitterly. She squirmed over the narrow top of

the fence, legs dangling, let herself down as far as she could, and let

go. Ross watched anxiously, but she got up quickly enough and moved to

one side.

Ross plopped down next to her, knocking the wind out of himself. He got

up dizzily.

His ship, in lonesome quiet, was less than a quarter of a mile away.

“Let’s go,” Ross panted, and clutched her hand. They skirted another

shed and were in the clear, running as fast as they could.

Almost in the clear.

Ross heard the whine of the little scooter before he felt the blow, but

it was too late. He sprawled on the ground, dragging Helena after him.

A Senior Citizen with a long-handled rod of the sort Ross remembered all

too well was scowling down at them. “Children,” he rumbled through his

breast-speaker in a voice of awful disgust, “is this the way to act on

Holiday?”

Helena, gibbering in terror, was beyond words. Ross croaked, “Sorry,

sir. We—we were just——”

Crash! The rod came down again, and every muscle in Ross’s body

convulsed. He rolled helplessly away, the elder following him. Crash!

“We give you Holiday,” the elder boomed, “and——” crash “——you act like

animals. Terrible! Don’t you know that freedom of play on Holiday——”

crash “——is the most sacred right of every junior——” crash “——and heaven

help you——” crash “——if you abuse it!”

The wrenching punishment and the caressing voice stopped together. Ross

lay blinking into the terrible silence that followed. He became

conscious of Helena’s weeping, and forced his head to turn to look at

her.

She was standing behind the elder’s scooter, a length of wire in her

hand. The senior lay slumped against his safety strap. “Ross!” she

moaned. “Ross, what have I done? _I turned him off!_”

He stood up, coughing and retching. No one else was in sight, only the

two of them and the silent, slack form of the old man. He grabbed her

arm. “Come on,” he said fuzzily, and started toward the starship.

She hung back, mumbling to herself, her eyes saucers. She was in a state

of grievous shock, it was clear.

Ross hesitated, rubbing his back. He knew that she might never pull out

of it. Even if she did, she was certain to be a frightful handicap. But

it was crystal-clear that she had declared herself on his side. Even if

the elder could be revived, the punishment in store for Helena would be

awful to contemplate....

Come what may, he was now responsible for Helena.

He towed her to the starship. She climbed in docilely enough, sat

staring blankly as he sealed ship and sent it blasting off the face of

the planet.

* * * * *

She didn’t speak until they were well into deep space. Then the blank

stare abruptly clouded and she exploded in a fit of tears. Ross said

ineffectually, “There, there.” It had no effect; until, in its own time,

the storm ended.

Helena said hoarsely, “Wh-what do I do now?”

“Why, I guess you come right along with me,” Ross said heartily, cursing

his luck.

“Where’s that?”

“Where? You mean, where?” Ross scratched his head. “Well, let’s see.

Frankly, Helena, your planet was quite a disappointment to me. I had

hoped——Well, no matter. I suppose the best thing to do is to look up the

next planet on the list.”

“What list?”

Ross hesitated, then shrugged and plunged into the explanation. All

about the longliners and the message and faster-than-light travel and

the Wesley Families—and none of it, while he was talking, seemed

convincing at all. But perhaps Helena was less critical; or perhaps

Helena simply did not care. She listened attentively and made no

comment. She only said, at the end, “What’s the name of the next

planet?”

He consulted the master charts. Haarland’s listing showed a place called

Azor, conveniently near at hand in the strange geodesics of the Wesley

Effect, where the far galaxies might be near at hand in the warped

space-lines, and the void just beyond the viewplates be infinitely

distant. The F-T-L family of Azor was named Cavallo; when last heard

from, they had been builders of machine tools.

Ross told Helena about it. She shrugged and watched curiously as he

began to set up the F-T-L problem on the huge board.

..... 7

THEY were well within detection range of Azor’s radar, if any, and yet

there had been no beeping signal that the planet’s GCA had taken over

and would pilot them down. Another blank? He studied the surface of the

world under his highest magnification and saw no signs that it had been

devastated by war. There were cities—intact, as far as he could tell,

but not very attractive. The design ran to huge, gloomy piles that

mounted toward central towers.

Azor was a big world which showed not much water and a great deal of

black rock. It was the fifth of its system and reportedly had colonized

its four adjacent neighbors and their moons.

His own search radar pinged. The signal was followed at once by a

guarded voice from his ship-to-ship communicator: “What ship are you? Do

you receive me? The band is 798.44.”

He hastily dialed the frequency on his transmitter and called, “I

receive you. We are a vessel from outside your solar system, home planet

Halsey. We want to contact a family named Cavallo of the planet Azor

believed to be engaged in building machine tools. Can you help us?”

“You are a male?” the voice asked cautiously. “In command or simply the

communicator?”

“I’m a male and I’m in command of this vessel.”

The voice said: “Then sheer off this system and go elsewhere, my

friend.”

“What is this? Who are you?”

“My name does not matter. I happen to be on watch aboard the prison

orbital station ‘Minerva.’ Get going, my friend, before the planetary

GCA picks you up.”

Prison orbital station? A very sensible idea. “Thanks for the advice,”

he parried. “Can you tell me anything about the Cavallo family?”

“I have heard of them. My friend, your time is running out. If you do

not sheer off very soon they will land you. And I judge from the tone of

your voice that it will not be long before you join the rest of us

criminals aboard ‘Minerva.’ It is not pleasant here. Good-by.”

“Wait, please!” Ross had no intention at all of committing any crimes

that would land him aboard a prison hulk, and he had every intention of

fulfilling his mission. “Tell me about the Cavallo family—and why you

expect me to get in trouble on Azor.”

“The time is running out, my friend, but—the Cavallo family of machine

tool builders is located in Novj Grad. And the crime of which all of us

aboard ‘Minerva’ were convicted is conspiracy to advocate equality of

the sexes. Now go!”

The carrier-wave hum of the communicator died, but immediately there was

another electronic noise to fill the cabin—the beep of a GCA radar

taking over the sealed landing controls of the craft.

Helena had been listening with very little comprehension. “Who was your

friend, Ross?” she asked. “Where are we?”

“I think,” Ross said, “he _was_ my friend. And I think we are—in

trouble.”

The ship began to jet tentative bursts of reaction mass, nosing toward

the big, gloomy planet.

“That’s all right,” Helena said comfortably. “At least they won’t know I

disconnected a Senior Citizen.” She thought a moment. “They won’t, will

they? I mean, the Senior Citizens here won’t know about the Senior

Citizens there, will they?”

He tried to break it to her gently as the ship picked up speed. “Helena,

it’s possible that the old people here won’t be Senior Citizens—not in

your planet’s sense. They may just be old people, with no special

authority over young people. I think, in fact, that we may find you

outranking older people who happen to be males.”

She took it as a joke. “You are funny, Ross. Old means Senior, doesn’t

it? And Senior means better, wiser, abler, and in charge, doesn’t it?”

“We’ll see,” he said thoughtfully as the main reaction drive cut in.

“We’ll see very shortly.”

* * * * *

The spaceport was bustling, busy, and efficient. Ross marveled at the

speed and dexterity with which the anonymous ground operator whipped his

ship into a braking orbit and set it down. And he stared enviously at

the crawling clamshells on treads, bigger than houses, that cupped

around his ship; the ship was completely and hermetically surrounded,

and bathed in a mist of germicides and prophylactic rays.

A helmeted figure riding a little platform on the inside of one of the

clamshells turned a series of knobs, climbed down, and rapped on the

ship’s entrance port.

Ross opened it diffidently, and almost strangled in the antiseptic

fumes. Helena choked and wheezed behind him as the figure threw back its

helmet and said, “Where’s the captain?”

“I am he,” said Ross meticulously. “I would like to be put in touch with

the Cavallo Machine-Tool Company of Novj Grad.”

The figure shook its long hair loose, which provided Ross with the

necessary clue: it was a woman. Not a very attractive-looking woman, for

she wore no makeup; but by the hair, by the brows and by the smoothness

of her chin, a woman all the same. She said coldly, “If you’re the

captain, who’s that?”

Helena said in a small voice, “I’m Helena, from Junior Unit

Twenty-Three.”

“Indeed.” Suddenly the woman smiled. “Well, come ashore, dear,” she

said. “You must be tired from your trip. Both of you come ashore,” she

added graciously.

She led the way out of the clamshells to a waiting closed car. Azor’s

sun had an unpleasant bluish cast to it, not a type-G at all; Ross

thought that the lighting made the woman look uglier than she really had

to be. Even Helena looked pinched and bloodless, which he knew well was

not the case at all.

All around them was activity. Whatever this planet’s faults, it was not

a stagnant home for graybeards. Ross, craning, saw nothing that was

shoddy, nothing that would have looked out of place in the best-equipped

port of Halsey’s Planet. And the reception lounge, or whatever it was,

that the woman took them to was a handsome and prettily furnished

construction. “Some lunch?” the woman asked, directing her attention to

Helena. “A cup of tribrew, maybe? Let me have the boy bring some.”

Helena looked to Ross for signals, and Ross, gritting his teeth, nodded

to her to agree. Too young the last time, too male this time; was there

ever going to be a planet where he mattered to anyone?

He said desperately, “Madam, forgive my interruption, but this lady and

myself need urgently to get in touch with the Cavallo company. Is this

Novj Grad?”

The woman’s pale brows arched. She said, with an effort, “No, it is

not.”

“Then can you tell us where Novj Grad is?” Ross persisted. “If they have

a spaceport, we can hop over there in our ship——”

The woman gasped something that sounded like, “Well!” She stood up and

said pointedly to Helena, “If you’ll excuse me, I have something to

attend to.” And swept out.

Helena stared wide-eyed at Ross. “She must’ve been a real Senior

Citizen, huh?”

“Not exactly,” said Ross despairingly. “Look, Helena, things are

different here. I need your help.”

“Help?”

“Yes, help!” he bellowed. “Get a grip on yourself, girl. Remember what I

told you about the planet I came from? It was different from yours,

remember? The old people were just like anybody else.” She giggled in

embarrassment. “They were!” he yelled. “And they are here, too. Old

people, young people, doesn’t matter. On my planet, the richest people

were—well, never mind. On this planet, women are the bosses. Get it?

Women are like elders. So you’ll have to take over, Helena.”

She was looking at him with a puzzled frown. She objected, “But if women

are——”

“They are. Never mind about that part of it now; just remember that for

the purposes of getting along here, you’re going to be my boss. You tell

me what to do. You talk to everybody. And what you have to say to them

is this: You must get to Novj Grad immediately, and talk to a

high-ranking member of the Cavallo Machine-Tool Company. Clear? Once we

get there, I’ll take over; everything will be under control then.” He

added prayerfully, “I hope.”

Helena blinked at him. “I’m going to be your boss?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“Like an elder bosses a junior? And it’s legal?”

Ross started to repeat, “That’s right,” impatiently again. But there was

a peculiar look in Helena’s round eyes. “Helena!” he said warningly.

She was all concern. “Why, what is it, Ross?” she asked solicitously.

“You look upset. Just leave everything to me, dear.”

* * * * *

They got started on the way to Novj Grad—not in their ship (the woman

had said there was no spaceport in Novj Grad), and not alone, so that

Ross could not confirm his unhappy opinion of Helena’s inner thoughts.

But at least they were on their way to Novj Grad in the Azorian

equivalent of a chartered aircraft, with Helena chatting happily with

the female pilot, and Ross sitting uncomfortably on a narrow,

upholstered strip behind.

Everything he saw in Azor confirmed his first impressions. The planet

was busy and prosperous. Nobody seemed to be doing anything very

productive, he thought, but somehow everything seemed to get done.

Automatic machinery, he guessed; if women were to have any chance of

gaining the upper hand on a planet, most of the hard physical work would

have to be fairly well mechanized anyhow. And particularly on this

planet. They had been flying for six hours, at a speed he guessed to be

not much below that of sound, and fully half of the territory they

passed over was bare, black rock.

The ship began losing altitude, and the pilot, who had been curled up in

a relaxed position, totally ignoring the aircraft, glanced at her

instrument panel. “Coming in for a landing,” she warned. “Don’t distract

me right now, dear, I’ve got a thousand things to do.”

She didn’t seem to be doing any of them, Ross thought disapprovingly;

all she did was watch varicolored lights blink on and off. But no doubt

the ship landing, too, was as automatic as the piloting.

Helena turned and leaned back to Ross. “We’re coming in for a landing,”

she relayed.

Ross said sourly, “I heard.”

Helena gave him a look of reprimand and forgiveness. “I’m hungry,” she

mused.

The pilot turned from her controls. “You can get something at the

airport,” she offered eagerly. “I’ll show you.”

Helena looked at Ross. “Would you like something?”

But the pilot frowned. “I don’t believe there’s any place for men,” she

said disapprovingly. “Perhaps we can get something sent out for him if

you like. Although, really, it’s probably against the rules, you know.”

Ross started to say with great dignity, “Thank you, but that won’t be

necessary.” But he didn’t quite get it out. The ship came in for its

landing. There was an enormous jolt and a squawk of alarm bells and

flashing lights. The ship careened crazily, and stopped.

“Oh, darn,” complained the pilot mildly. “It’s always doing that. Come

on, dear, let’s get something to eat. We’ll come back for _him_ later.”

And Ross was left alone to stare apprehensively at the unceasingly

flashing lights and to listen to the strident alarms for three-quarters

of an hour.

His luck was in, though. The ship didn’t explode. And eventually a

pallid young man in a greasy apron appeared with a tray of sandwiches

and a vacuum jug.

“Up here, boy,” Ross called.

He gaped through the port. “You mean come in?”

“Sure. It’s all right.”

The young man put down the tray. Something in the way he looked at it

prompted Ross to invite him: “Have some with me? More here than I can

handle.”

“Thanks; I believe I will. I, uh, was supposed to take my break after I

brought you this stuff.” He poured steaming brew into the cup that

covered the jug, politely pushed it to Ross and swigged from the jug

himself. “You’re with the starship?” he asked, around a mouthful of

sandwich.

“Yes. I—the captain, that is—wants to contact an outfit called Cavallo

Machine-Tool. You know where they are?”

“Sure. Biggest firm on the south side. Fifteen Street; you can’t miss

them. The captain—is she the lady who was with Pilot Breuer?”

“Yes.”

The youngster’s eyes widened. “You mean you were in space—alone—with a

lady?”

Ross nodded and chewed.

“And she didn’t—uh—there wasn’t—well—any problem?”

“No,” said Ross. “You have much trouble with that kind of thing?”

The boy winced. “If I’ve asked once I’ve asked a hundred times for a

transfer. Oh, those jet pilots! I used to work in a roadside truck stop.

I know truckers are supposed to be rough and tough; maybe they are. But

you can’t tell me that deep down a trucker isn’t a lady. When you tell

them no, that’s that. But a pilot—it just eggs them on. Azor City today,

Novj Grad tomorrow—what do they care?”

Ross was fascinated and baffled. It seemed to him that they should care

and care plenty. Back where he came from, it was the woman who paid and

he couldn’t imagine any cultural setup which could alter that biological

fact. He asked cautiously: “Have you ever been—in trouble?”

The boy stiffened and looked disapproving. Then he said with a sigh: “I

might as well tell you. It’s all over the station anyway; they call me

‘Bernie the Pullover.’ Yes. Twice. Pilots both times. I can’t seem to

say no——” He took another long pull from the jug and a savage bite from

a second sandwich.

“I’m sure,” Ross said numbly, “it wasn’t your fault.”

“Try telling that to the judge,” Bernie the Pullover said bitterly. “The

pilot speaks her piece, the medic puts the blood group tests in

evidence, the doctor and crèche director depose that the child was born

and is still living. Then the judge says, without even looking up,

‘Paternity judgment to the plaintiff, defendant ordered to pay one

thousand credits annual support, let this be a warning to you, young

man, next case.’ I shouldn’t have joined you and eaten your sandwiches,

but the fact is I was hungry. I had to sell my meal voucher yesterday to

meet my payment. Miss three payments and——” He jerked his thumb

heavenward.

Ross thought and realized that the thumb must indicate the orbiting

prison hulk “Minerva.” It _was_ the man who paid here.

He demanded: “How did all this happen?”

Bernie, having admitted his hunger, had stopped stalling and seized a

third sandwich. “All what?” he asked indistinctly.

Ross thought hard and long. He realized first that he could probably

never explain what he meant to Bernie, and second that if he did they’d

probably both wind up aboard “Minerva” for conspiracy to advocate

equality. He shifted his ground. “Of course everybody agrees on the

natural superiority of women,” he said, “but people seem to differ from

planet to planet as to the reasons. What do they say here on Azor?”

“Oh—nothing special or fancy. Just the common-sense, logical thing.

They’re smaller, for one thing, and haven’t got the muscles of men, so

they’re natural supervisors. They accumulate money as a matter of course

because men die younger and women are the beneficiaries. Then, women

have a natural aptitude for all the interesting jobs. I saw a broadcast

about that just the other night. The biggest specialist on the planet in

vocational aptitude. I forget her name, but she proved it conclusively.”

He looked at the empty platter before them. “I’ve got to go now. Thanks

for everything.”

“The pleasure was mine.” Ross watched his undernourished figure head for

the station. He swore a little, and then buckled down to some hard

thinking. Helena was his key to this world. He’d have to have a long

skull-session or two with her; he couldn’t be constantly prompting her

or there would be serious trouble. She would be the front and he would

be the very inconspicuous brains of the outfit, trailing humbly behind.

But was she capable of absorbing a brand-new, rather complicated

concept? She seemed to be, he told himself uncomfortably, in love with

him. That would help considerably....

Helena and Pilot Breuer showed up, walking with a languor that suggested

a large and pleasant meal disposed of. Helena’s first words disposed

with shocking speed of Ross’s doubts that she was able to acquire a

brand-new sociological concept. They were: “Ah, there you are, my dear.

Did the boy bring you something or other to eat?”

“Yes. Thanks. Very thoughtful of you,” he said pointedly, with one eye

on Breuer’s reaction. There was none; he seemed to have struck the right

note.

“Pilot Breuer,” said Helena blandly, “thinks I’d enjoy an evening doing

the town with her and a few friends.”

“But the Cavallo people——”

“Ross,” she said gently, “don’t _nag_.”

He shut up. And thought: wait until I get her out into space. _If_ I get

her out into space. She’d be a damned fool to leave this wacked-up

culture....

Breuer was saying, with an altogether too-innocent air, “I’d better get

you two settled in a hotel for the night; then I’ll pick up Helena and a

few friends and we’ll show her what old Novj Grad has to offer in the

way of night life. Can’t have her batting around the universe saying

Azor’s sidewalks are rolled up at 2100, can we? And then she can do her

trading or whatever it is with Cavallo bright and early tomorrow, eh?”

Ross realized that he was being jollied out of an attack of the sulks.

He didn’t like it.

* * * * *

The hotel was small and comfortable, with a bar crowded by roistering

pilots and their dates. The glimpses Ross got of social life on Azor

added up to a damnably unfair picture. It was the man who paid. Breuer

roguishly tested the mattress in their room, nudging Helena, and then

announced, “Get settled, kids, while I visit the bar.”

When the door rolled shut behind her Ross said furiously: “Look, you!

Protective mimicry’s fine up to a point, but let’s not forget what this

mission is all about. We seem to be suckered into spending the night,

but by hell tomorrow morning bright and early we find those Cavallo

people—”

“There,” Helena said soothingly. “Don’t be angry, Ross. I promise I

won’t be out late, and she really did insist.”

“I suppose so,” he grumbled. “Just remember it’s no pleasure trip.”

“Not for you, perhaps,” she smiled sweetly.

He let it drop there, afraid to push the matter.

Breuer returned in about ten minutes with a slight glow on. “It’s all

fixed,” she told Helena. “Got a swell crowd lined up. Table at Virgin

Willie’s—oops!” She glanced at Ross. “No harm in it, of course,” she

said. “Anything you want, Ross, just dial service. It’s on my account. I

fixed it with the desk.”

“Thanks.”

They left, and Ross went grumpily to bed.

* * * * *

A secretive rustle in the room awoke him. “Helena?” he asked drowsily.

Pilot Breuer’s voice giggled drunkenly, “Nope. Helena’s passed out at

Virgin Willie’s, kind of the way I figured she would be on triple

antigravs. Had my eye on you since Azor City, baby. You gonna be nice to

me?”

“Get out of here!” Ross hissed furiously. “Out of here or I’ll yell like

hell.”

“So yell,” she giggled. “I got the house dick fixed. They know me here,

baby——”

He fumbled for the bedside light and snapped it on. “I’ll pitch you

right through the door,” he announced. “And if you give me any more lip

I won’t bother to open it before I do.”

She hiccupped and said, “A spirited lad. That’s the way I like ’em.”

With one hand she drew a nasty-looking little pistol. With the other she

pulled a long zipper and stepped out of her pilot’s coveralls.

Ross gulped. There were three ways to play this, the smart way, the

stupid way, and the way that all of a sudden began to look attractive.

He tried the stupid way.

He got the pistol barrel alongside his ear for his pains. “Don’t jump

me,” Pilot Breuer giggled. “The boys that’ve tried to take this gun away

from me are stretched end to end from here to Azor City. By me, baby.”

Ross blinked through a red-spotted haze. He took a deep breath and got

smart. “You’re pretty tough,” he said admiringly.

“Oh, sure.” She kicked the coveralls across the room and moved in on

him. “Baby,” she said caressingly, “if I seem to sort of forget myself

in the next couple of minutes, don’t get any ideas. I _never_ let go of

my gun. Move over.”

“Sure,” Ross said hollowly. This, he told himself disgustedly, was the

damnedest, silliest, ridiculousest....

There was a furious hiccup from the door. “So!” Helena said venomously,

pushing the door wide and almost falling to the floor. “So!”

Ross flailed out of the bed, kicking the pistol out of Pilot Breuer’s

hand in the process. He cried enthusiastically, “Helena, dear!”

“Don’t you ‘Helena-dear’ me!” she said, moving in and kicking the door

shut behind her. “I leave you alone for one little minute, and what

happens? And _you_!”

“Sorry,” Pilot Breuer muttered, climbing into her coveralls. “Wrong

room. Must’ve had one anti-grav too many.” She licked her lips

apprehensively, zipping her coveralls and sidling toward the door. With

one hand on the knob, she said diffidently, “If I could have my gun

back——? No, you’re right! I’ll get it tomorrow.” She got through the

door just ahead of a lamp.

“Hussy!” spat Helena. “And you, Ross——”

It was the last straw. As Ross lurched toward her he regretted only one

thing: that he didn’t have a hairbrush.

Pilot Breuer had been right. Nobody paid any attention to the noise.

* * * * *

“Yes, Ross.” Helena had hardly touched her breakfast; she sat with her

eyes downcast.

“‘Yes, Ross’,” he mimicked bitterly. “It better be ‘Yes, Ross.’ This

place may look all right to you, but it’s trouble. You don’t want to

find yourself stuck here all your life, do you? Then do what I tell

you.”

“Yes, Ross.”

He pushed the remains of his food away. “Oh, the hell with it,” he said

dispiritedly. “I wish I’d never started out on this fool’s errand. And I

double damn well wish I’d left you in the dye vats.”

“Yes, Ro——I mean, I’m glad you didn’t, Ross,” she said in a small voice.

He stood up and patted her shoulder absently. “Come on,” he said, “we’ve

got to get over to the Cavallo place. I wish you had let me talk to them

on the phone.”

She said reasonably, “But you said——”

“I know what I said. When we get there, remember that I do the talking.”

They walked through green-lit streets, filled with proud-looking women

and sad-eyed men. The Cavallo Machine-Tool Corporation was only a few

intersections away, by the map the desk clerk had drawn for Helena; they

found it without trouble. It was a smallish sort of building for a

factory, Ross thought, but perhaps that was how factories went on Azor.

Besides, it was well constructed and beautifully landscaped with the

purplish lawns these people seemed to prefer.

Helena led him through the door, as was right and proper. She said to

the busy little bald-headed man who seemed to be the receptionist,

“We’re expected. Miss Cavallo, please.”

“Certainly, Ma’am,” he said with a gap-toothed smile, and worked a

combination of rods and buttons on the desk beside him. In a moment, he

said, “Go right in. Three up and four over; can’t miss it.”

They passed through a noisy territory of machines where metal was

sliced, spun, hacked, and planed; no one seemed to be paying any

attention to them. Ross wondered who had built the machines, and had a

sudden flash of realization as to where those builders were now: On

“Minerva,” staring at the unattainable free sky.

Miss Cavallo was a motherly type with a large black cigar. “Sit right

down,” she said heartily. “You, too, young man. Tell me what we in

Cavallo Company can do for you.”

Helena opened her mouth, but Ross stopped her with a gesture. “That’s

enough,” he said quietly. “I’ll take over. Miss Cavallo,” he declaimed

from memory, “what follows is under the seal.”

“Is it indeed! What do you know,” she said.

Ross said, “Wesley.”

Miss Cavallo slapped her thigh admiringly. “Son of a gun,” she said

admiringly. “How this takes me back—those long-ago childhood days,

learning these things at my mother’s knee. Let’s see. Uh—the limiting

velocity is C.”

“But C^2 is not a velocity,” Ross finished triumphantly. And, from the

heart, “Miss Cavallo, you don’t begin to know how happy this makes me.”

Miss Cavallo reached over and pumped his hand, then Helena’s. To the

girl she said, “You’ve got a right to be a proud woman, believe me. The

way he got through it, without a single stumble! Never saw anything like

it in my life. Well, just tell me what I can do for you, now that that’s

over.”

Ross took a deep, deep breath. He said earnestly, “A great deal. I don’t

know where to begin. You see, it all goes back to Halsey’s Planet, where

I come from. This, uh, this ship came in, a longliner, and it got some

of us a little worried because, well, it seemed that some of the planets

were no longer in communication. We—uh, Miss Cavallo?” She was smiling

pleasantly enough, but Ross had the crazy feeling that he just wasn’t

getting through to her.

“Go right ahead,” she boomed. “God knows, I’ve got nothing against men

in business; that’s old-fashioned prejudice. Take your time. I won’t

bite you. Get on with your proposition, young man.”

“It isn’t exactly a proposition,” Ross said weakly. All of a sudden the

words seemed hard to find. What did you say to a potential partner in

the salvation of the human race when she just nodded and blew cigar

smoke at you?

He made an effort. “Halsey’s Planet was the seventh alternate

destination for this ship, and so we figured——That is, Miss Cavallo, it

kind of looked like there was some sort of trouble. So Mr. Haarland—he’s

the one who has the F-T-L secret on Halsey, like you do here on Azor—he

passed it on to me, of course—well, he asked me to, well, sort of take a

look around.” He stopped. The words by then were just barely audible

anyhow; and Miss Cavallo had been looking furtively at her watch.

Miss Cavallo shrugged sympathetically to Helena. “They’re all like that

under the skin, aren’t they?” she observed ambiguously. “Well, if men

could take our jobs away from us, what would we do? Stay home and mind

the kids?” She roared and poked a box of cigars at Helena.

“Now,” she said briskly, “let’s get down to cases. I really enjoyed

hearing those lines from you, young man, and I want you to know that I’m

prepared to help you in any possible way because of them. Open a line of

credit, speed up deliveries, send along some of our technical people to

help you get set up—anything. Now, what can I do for you? Turret lathes?

Grinders? Screw machines?”

“Miss Cavallo,” Ross said desperately, “don’t you know anything about

the faster-than-light secret?”

She said impatiently, “Of course I do, young man. Said the responses,

didn’t I? There’s no call for that item, though.”

“I don’t want to _buy_ one,” Ross cried. “I have one. Don’t you realize

that the human race is in danger? Populations are dying out or going out

of communication all over the galaxy. Don’t you want to do something

about it before we all go under?”

Miss Cavallo dropped all traces of a smile. Her face was like flint as

she stood up and pointed to the window. “Young man,” she said icily,

“take a look out there. That’s the Cavallo Machine-Tool Company. Does

that look as if we’re going under?”

“I know, but Clyde, Cyrnus One, Ragansworld—at least a dozen planets I

can name—are _gone_. Didn’t you ever think that you might be next?”

Miss Cavallo kept her voice level, but only with a visible effort.

She said flatly, “No. Never. Young man, I have plenty to do right here

on Azor without bothering my head about those places you’re talking

about. Seventy-five years ago there was another fellow just like you;

Flarney, some name like that; my grandmother told me about him. He came

bustling in here causing trouble, with that old silly jingle about

Wesley and C-square and so on, with some cock-and-bull story about a

planet that was starving to death, stirring up a lot of commotion. Well,

he wound up on ‘Minerva,’ because he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Watch out that you don’t do the same.”

She marched majestically to the door. “And now,” she said, “if you’ve

wasted quite enough of my time, kindly leave.”

..... 8

“STUPID old bat,” Ross muttered. They were walking aimlessly down

Fifteen Street, the nicely-landscaped machine tool works behind them.

Helena said timidly: “You really shouldn’t talk that way, Ross. She _is_

older than you, after all. Old heads are——”

“——wisest,” he wearily agreed. “Also the most conservative. Also the

most rigidly inflexible; also the most firmly closed to the reception of

new ideas. With one exception.”

She reeled under the triple blasphemy and then faintly asked: “What’s

the exception?”

Ross became aware that they were not alone. Their very manner of

walking, he a little ahead, obviously leading the way, was drawing

unfavorable attention from passers-by. Nothing organized or even

definite—just looks ranging from puzzled distaste to anger. He said,

“Somebody named Haarland. Never mind,” and in a lower voice: “Straighten

up. Step out a little ahead of me. Scowl.”

She managed it all except the scowl. The expression on her face got some

stupefied looks from other pedestrians, but nothing worse.

Helena said loudly and plaintively: “I don’t like it here after all,

Ross. Can’t we get away from all these women?”

Should the impulse seize you, placard ancient Brooklyn with twenty-four

sheets proclaiming the Dodgers to be cellar-dwelling bums. Mount a

detergent box and inform a crowd of Altairians that they are degenerate

slith-fondlers if you must. Announce in a crowded Cephean bar room that

Sadkia Revall is no better than she should be. From these situations you

have some chance of emerging intact. But never, never pronounce the word

“women” as Helena pronounced it on Fifteen Street, Novj Grad, Azor.

The mob took only seconds to form.

Ross and Helena found themselves with their backs to the glass doors of

a food store. The handful of women who had actually heard the remark

were all talking to them simultaneously, with fist-shaking. Behind them

stood as many as a dozen women who knew only that something had happened

and that there were comfortably outnumbered victims available. The noise

was deafening, and Helena began to cry. Ross first wondered if he could

bring himself to knock down a woman; then realized after studying the

hulking virago in their foreground that he might bring himself to try

but probably would not succeed.

She seemed to be accusing Helena of masquerading, of advocating

equality, of uttering obscenely antisocial statements in the public

road, to the affront of all decent-minded girls.

There was violence in the air. Ross was on the point of blocking a

roundhouse right when the glass doors opened behind them. The small

diversion distracted the imbecile collective brain of the mob.

“What’s going on here?” a suety voice demanded. “Ladies, may I please

get through?”

It was a man trying to emerge from the food shop with a double armful of

cartons. He was a great fat slob, quite hairless, and smelling

powerfully of kitchen. He wore the gravy-spotted whites of any cook

anywhere.

The virago said to him, “Keep out of this, Willie. This fellow here’s a

masquerader. The thing I heard him say——!”

“I’m not,” Helena wept. “I’m not!”

The cook stooped to look into her face and turned on the mob. “She

isn’t,” he said definitely. “She’s a lady from another system. She was

slopping up triple antigravs at my place last night with a gang of jet

pilots.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing!” the virago yelled.

“Madam,” the cook said wearily, “after her third antigrav I had to trip

her up and crown her. She was about to climb the bar and corner my

barman.”

Ross looked at her fixedly. She stopped crying and nervously cleared her

throat.

“So if you’ll just let us through,” the cook bustled, seizing the

psychological moment of doubt. His enormous belly bulldozed a lane for

them. “Beg pardon. Excuse us. Madam, will you—thank you. Beg pardon——”

The lynchers were beginning to drift away, embarrassed. The party had

collapsed. “Faster,” the cook hissed at them. “Beg pardon——” And they

were in the clear and well down the street.

“Thank you, Sir,” Helena said humbly.

“Just ‘Willie’, _if_ you please,” the fat man said.

One hand descended on Ross’s shoulder and another on Helena’s. They both

belonged to the virago. She spun them around, glaring. “_I’m_ not

satisfied with the brush-off,” she snapped. “Exactly what did you mean

by that remark you made?”

Helena wailed, “It’s just that you and all these other women here seem

so _young_.”

The virago’s granite face softened. She let go and tucked in a strand of

steel-wool hair. “Did you really think so, dear?” she asked, beaming.

“There, I’m sorry I got excited. A wee bit jealous, were you? Well,

we’re broad-minded here in Novj Grad.” She patted Helena’s arm and

walked off, smiling and jaunty.

Virgin Willie led off and they followed him. Ross’s knees were shaky.

The virago had not known that to Helena “young” meant “stupid.”

The cook absently acknowledged smiles and nods as they walked. He was,

obviously, a character. Between salutes he delivered a low-voiced,

rapid-fire reaming to Ross and Helena. “Silly stunt. Didn’t you hear

about the riots? Supposed to be arms caches somewhere here on the south

side. Everybody’s nerves absolutely ragged. Somebody gets smashed up in

traffic, they blame it on us. Don’t care _where_ you’re from. Watch it

next time.”

“We will, Willie,” Helena said contritely. “And I think you run an

awfully nice restaurant.”

“Yeah,” said Ross, looking at her.

Willie muttered, “I guess you’re clear. You still staying at that hot

pilot’s hangout? This is where we say good-by, then. You turn left.”

He waddled on down the street. Helena said instantly, “I don’t remember

a thing, Ross.”

“Okay,” he said. “You don’t remember a thing.”

She looked relieved and said brightly, “So let’s get back to the hotel.”

“Okay,” he said. Climbed the bar and tried to corner the.... Halfway to

the hotel he slowed, then stopped, and said, “I just thought of

something. Maybe we’re not staying there any more. After last night why

should Breuer carry us on her tab? I thought we’d have some money to

carry us from the Cavallos by now——”

“The ship?” she asked in a small voice.

“Across the continent. Hell! Maybe Breuer forgave and forgot. Let’s try,

anyway.”

They never got as far as the hotel. When they reached the square it

stood on, there was a breathless rush and Bernie stood before them,

panting and holding a hand over his chest. “In here,” he gasped, and

nodded at a shopfront that announced hot brew. Ross thoughtlessly

started first through the door and caught Bernie’s look of alarm. He

opened the door for Helena, who went through smiling nervously.

They settled at a small table in an empty corner in stiff silence. “I’ve

been walking around that square all morning,” Bernie said, with a cowed

look at Helena.

Ross told her: “This young man and I had a talk yesterday at the plane

while you were eating. What is it, Bernie?”

He still couldn’t believe that he was doing it, but Bernie said in a

scared whisper: “Wanted to head you off and warn you. Breuer was down at

the field cafe this morning, talking loud to the other hot-shots. She

said you—both of you—talked equality. Said she got up with a hangover

and you were gone. But she said there’d be six policewomen waiting in

your room when you got back.” He leaned forward on the table. Ross

remembered that he had been forced to sell his ration card.

“Here comes the waiter,” he said softly. “Order something for all of us.

We have a little money. And thanks, Bernie.”

Helena asked, “What do we _do_?”

“We eat,” Ross said practically. “Then we think. Shut up; let Bernie

order.”

* * * * *

They ate; and then they thought. Nothing much seemed to come from all

the thinking, though.

They were a long, long way from the spaceship. Ross commandeered all of

Helena’s leftover cash. It was almost, not quite, enough for one person

to get halfway back to Azor City. He and Bernie turned out their pockets

and added everything they had, including pawnable valuables. That

helped. It made the total almost enough for one person to get

three-quarters of the way back.

It didn’t help enough.

Ross said, “Bernie, what would happen if we, well, stole something?”

Bernie shrugged. “It’s against the law, of course. They probably

wouldn’t prosecute, though.”

“They wouldn’t?”

“Not if they can prove egalitarianism on you. Stealing’s against the

law; preaching equality is against the _state_. You get the maximum

penalty for that.”

Helena choked on her drink, but Ross merely nodded. “So we might as well

take a chance,” he said. “Thanks, Bernie. We won’t bother you any more.

You’ll forget you heard this, won’t you?”

“The hell I will!” Bernie squawked. “If you’re getting out of here, I

want to go with you! You aren’t leaving _me_ behind!”

“But Bernie——” Ross started. He was interrupted by the manager, a

battleship-class female with a mighty prow, who came scowling toward

them.

“Pipe down,” she ordered coarsely. “This place is for decent people; we

don’t want no disturbances here. If you can’t act decent, get out.”

“Awk,” said Helena as Ross kicked her under the table. “I mean, yes

ma’am. Sorry if we were talking too loud.” They watched the manager walk

away in silence.

As soon as she was fairly away, Ross hissed, “It’s out of the question,

Bernie. You might be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire.”

Bernie asked, startled, “The what?”

“The—never mind, it’s just an expression where I come from. It means you

might get out of this place and find yourself somewhere worse. We don’t

know where we’re going next; you might wish to God you were back here

within the next three days.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Bernie said earnestly. “Look, Ross, I played

square with you. I didn’t have to stick my neck out and warn you. How

about giving me a break too?”

Helena interrupted, “He’s right, Ross. After all, we owe him that much,

don’t we? I mean, if a person does that much for a person, a person

ought to——”

“Oh, shut up.” Ross glared at both of them. “You two seem to think this

is a game,” he said bitterly. “Let me set you straight, both of you. It

isn’t. More hangs on what happens to me than either of you realize. The

fate of the human race, for instance.”

Helena flashed a look at Bernie. “Of _course_, Ross,” she said

soothingly. “Both of us know that, don’t we, Bernie?”

Bernie stammered, “Sure—sure we do, Ross.” He rubbed his ankle. He went

on, “Honest, Ross, I want to get the hell away from Azor once and for

all. I don’t care _where_ you’re going. Anything would be better than

this place and the damned female bloodsuckers that——”

He stopped, petrified. His eyes, looking over Ross’s shoulder, were

enormous.

“Go on, sonny,” said a rich female voice from behind Ross. “Don’t let me

and the lieutenant stop you just when you’re going good.”

* * * * *

“It must have been that damn manager,” Bernie said for the fifteenth

time.

Ross uncrossed his legs painfully and tried lying on the floor on his

side. “What’s the difference?” he asked. “They got us; we’re in the jug.

And face it: somebody would have caught us sooner or later, and we might

have wound up in a worse jail than this one.” He shifted uncomfortably.

“If that’s possible, I mean. Why don’t they at least have beds in these

places?”

“Oh,” said Bernie immediately, “some do. The jails in Azor City and

Nuevo Reykjavik have beds; Novj Grad, Eleanor, and Milo don’t. I mean,

that’s what they tell me,” he added virtuously.

“Sure,” Ross growled. “Well, what do they tell you usually happens

next?”

Bernie spread his hands. “Different things. First there’s a hearing.

That’s all over by now. Then an indictment and trial. Maybe that’s

started already; sometimes they get it in on the same day as the

hearing, sometimes not. Then—tomorrow sometime, most likely—comes the

sentencing. We’ll know about that, though, because we’ll be there. The

law’s very strict on that—they always have you in the court for

sentencing.”

Ross cried, “You mean the trial might be going on right now without us?”

“Of course. What else? Think they’d take a chance on having the

prisoners creating a disturbance during the trial?”

Ross groaned and turned his face to the wall. For this, he thought, he

had come the better part of a hundred light years; for this he had left

a comfortable job with a brilliant future. He spent a measurable period

of time cursing the memory of old Haarland and his double-jointed,

persuasive tongue.

Back in the days of Ross’s early teens he had seen a good many

situations like this in the tri-dis, and the hero had never failed to

extricate himself by a simple exercise of superhuman strength,

intellect, and ingenuity. That, Ross told himself, was just what he

needed now. The trouble was, he didn’t have them.

All he had was the secret of faster-than-light travel. And, here on Azor

as on the planet of the graybeards, it had laid a king-sized egg. Women,

Ross thought bitterly, women were basically inward-directed and

self-seeking; trust them with the secret of F-T-L; make them, like the

Cavallos, custodians of a universe-racking truth; and see the secret

lost or embalmed in sterile custom. What, he silently demanded of

himself, did the greatest of scientific discoveries mean to a biological

baby-foundry? How could any female—no single member of which class had

ever painted a great picture, written a great book, composed a great

sonata, or discovered a great scientific truth—appreciate the ultimate

importance of the F-T-L drive? It was like entrusting a first-folio

Shakespeare to a broody hen; the shredded scraps would be made into a

nest. For the egg came first. Motherhood was all.

That explained it, of course. That, Ross told himself moodily, explained

everything except why the F-T-L secret had fallen into apparently equal

or worse desuetude on such planets as Gemsel, Clyde, Cyrnus One,

Ragansworld, Tau Ceti II, Capella’s family of eight, and perhaps a

hundred others.

Ragansworld was gone entirely, drowned in a planetary nebula.

The planet of the graybeard had gone to seed; nothing new, nothing not

hallowed by tradition had a chance in its decrepit social order.

His home, Halsey’s Planet, was rapidly, calmly, inevitably depopulating

itself.

And Azor had fallen into a rigid, self-centered matriarchal order that

only an act of God could break.

Was there a pattern? Were there any similarities?

Ross searched desperately in his mind; but without result. The image of

Helena kept intruding itself between him and his thoughts. Was he

getting sentimental about that sweet little chucklehead? Who, he hastily

added, had come near to criminally assaulting him, who had climbed

the....

He turned to the little waiter and demanded: “Will she—Helena—be on the

orbital station with us if we’re all convicted?”

“Hmm—no, I should think not. As a responsible person, she gets the

supreme penalty.”

Ross numbly asked after a long pause, “How? Nothing—painful?” It was

hard to think of Helena dangling grotesquely at a rope’s end or jolting

as she sat strapped in a large, ugly chair. But there were things he had

heard of which were horribly worse.

Bernie had been watching him. “I’m sorry,” the little man said soberly.

“It’s up to the judge. She’s a foreigner, so they may consider that an

extenuating circumstance and place some quick-acting poison aboard for

her to take. Otherwise it’s slow starvation.”

A faint, irrational hope had begun to dawn in Ross’s mind. “Aboard what?

Exactly how does it work?”

“They’ll put her aboard some hulk with the rockets disabled, fire it off

into space—and that’s that. I suppose they’ll use the ship she came

in——”

Ross was frantically searching his pockets. He had a stylus. “Got any

paper?” he briskly demanded of Bernie.

“Yes, but——?” The waiter blankly passed over an order book. Ross

sprawled on the floor and began to scribble: “Never mind how or why this

works. Do it. You saw me work the big fan-shaped computer in the center

room and you can do it too. Find the master star maps in the chart room.

Look up the co-ordinates of Halsey’s System. Set these co-ordinates on

the twenty-seven dials marked Proximate Mass. Take the readings on the

windows above the dials and set them on the cursors of the computer——”

He scribbled furiously, from time to time forcing himself deliberately

to slow down as the writing became an unreadable scrawl. He filled the

ruled fronts of the order pages and then the backs—perhaps ten thousand

closely-written words, and not one of them wasted. Haarland’s precise

instructions, mercilessly drilled into him, flowed out again.

He flung the stylus down at last and read through the book again,

ignoring the gaping Bernie. It was all there, as far as he could tell.

Grant her a lot of luck and more brains than he privately credited her

with, and she had a fighting chance of winding up within radar range of

Halsey’s Planet. GCA could take her down from there; an annoying

ship-like object hanging on the radarscopes would provoke a

reconnaissance.

She knew absolutely nothing about F-T-L or the Wesley drive, but

then—neither did he. That fact itself was no handicap.

He might rot on “Minerva,” but some word might get back to Haarland. And

so would the ship. And Helena would not perish miserably in a drifting

hulk.

Bernie saw the mysterious job was ended and dared to ask, “A letter?”

“No,” Ross said jubilantly. “By God, if things break right they won’t

get her. It’s like this——”

He happily began to explain that his F-T-L ship’s rockets were only

auxiliaries for fine maneuvering, but he counted on the court not

knowing that. If he and Helena could persuade....

As he went on the look on Bernie’s face changed very slowly from hope to

pity to politely-simulated interest. Correspondingly Ross’s accounting

became labored and faulty. The pauses became longer and at last he broke

off, filled with self-contempt at his folly. He said bitterly, “You

don’t think it’ll work.”

“Oh, no!” Bernie protested with too much heartiness. “I could see she’s

awfully mechanically-minded for a woman, even if it wouldn’t be polite

to say so. Sure it’ll work, Ross. Sure!”

The hell it would.

At least he had disposed of a few hours. And—perhaps some bungling

setting would explode the ship, or end a Wesley Jump in the heart of a

white dwarf star—sudden annihilation, whiffing Helena out of existence

before her body could realize that it had died, before the beginning of

apprehension could darken happy absorption with a task she thought would

bring her to safety.

For that reason alone he had to carry the scheme through.

* * * * *

The courtroom was a chintzy place bright with spring flowers. Ross and

Helena looked numbly at one another from opposite corners while the

previous order of business was cleared from the docket. A wedding.

The judge, unexpectedly sweet-faced and slender though gray, obviously

took such parts of her work seriously. “Marylyn and Kent,” she was

saying earnestly to the happy couple, “I suppose you know my reputation.

I lecture people a bit before I tie the knot. Evidently it’s not such a

bad idea because my marriages turn out well. Last week in Eleanor one of

my girls was arrested and reprimanded for gross infidelity and a couple

of years ago right here in Novj Grad one of my boys got five hundred

lashes for nonsupport. Let’s hope it did them some good, but the cases

were unusual. My people, I like to think, know their rights and

responsibilities when they walk out of my court, and I think the record

bears me out.

“Marylyn, you have chosen to share part of your life with this man. You

intend to bear his children. This should not be because your animal

appetites have overcome you and you can’t win his consent in any other

way but because you know, down deep in your womanly heart, that you can

make him happy. Never forget this. If you should thoughtlessly conceive

by some other man, don’t tell him. He would only brood. Be thrifty,

Marylyn. I have seen more marriages broken up by finances than any other

reason. If your husband earns a hundred Eleanors a week, spend only that

and no more. If he makes _fifty_ Eleanors a week spend only that and no

more. Honorable poverty is preferable to debt. And, from a practical

standpoint, if you spend more than your husband earns he will be jailed

for debt sooner or later, with resulting loss to your own pocket.

“Kent, you have accepted the proposal of this woman. I see by your

dossier that you got in just under the wire. In your income group the

antibachelor laws would have caught up with you in one more week. I must

say I don’t like the look of it, but I’ll give you the benefit of the

doubt. I want to talk to you about the meaning of marriage. Not just the

wage assignment, not just the insurance policy, not just the waiver of

paternity and copulation ‘rights’, so-called. Those, as a good citizen,

you will abide by automatically—Heaven help you if you don’t. But there

is more to marriage than that. The honor you have been done by this

woman who sees you as desirable and who wishes to make you happy over

the years is not a sterile legalism. Marriage is like a rocket, I

sometimes think. The brute, unreasoning strength of the main jets

representing the husband’s share and the delicate precise steering and

stabilizing jets the wife’s. We have all of us seen too many marriages

crash to the ground like a rocket when these roles were reversed. It is

not reasonable to expect the wife to provide the drive—that is, the

income. It is not reasonable to expect the husband to provide the

steering—that is, the direction of the personal and household

expenditures. So much for the material side of things. On the spiritual

side, I have little to say. The laws are most explicit; see that you

obey them—and if you don’t, you had better pray that you wind up in some

court other than mine. I have no patience with the obsolete doctrine

that there is such a legal entity as seduction by female, despite the

mouthings of certain so-called jurists who disgrace the bench of a

certain nearby city.

“Having heard these things, Marylyn and Kent, step forward and join

hands.”

They did. The ceremony was short and simple; the couple then walked from

the courtroom under the beaming smile of the judge.

A burly guard next to Ross pointed at the groom. “Look,” she said

sentimentally. “He’s crying. Cute!”

“I don’t blame the poor sucker,” Ross flared, and then, being a man of

conscience, wondered suddenly if that was why, on Halsey’s Planet, women

cried at weddings.

A clerk called: “Dear, let’s have those egalitarians front and center,

please. Her honor’s terribly rushed.”

Helena was escorted forward from one side, while Ross and Bernie were

jostled to the fore from the other. The judge turned from the happy

couple. As she looked down at the three of them the smile that curved

her lips turned into something quite different. Ross, quailing, suddenly

realized that he had seen just that expression once before. It was when

he was very, very young, when a friend of his mother’s had come bustling

into the kitchen where he was playing, just after she had smelled, and

just before she had seen, the long-dead rat he had fetched up from the

abandoned cellar across the street.

While the clerk was reading the orders and indictment, the judge’s stare

never wavered. And when the clerk had finished, the judge’s silent stare

remained, for a long, terrible time.

In the quietest of voices, the judge said, “So.”

Ross caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. He turned

just in time to see Bernie, knees buckling, slip white-faced and

unconscious to the floor. The guards rushed forward, but the judge

raised a peremptory hand. “Leave him alone,” she ordered soberly. “It is

kinder. Defendants, you are charged with the gravest of crimes. Have you

anything to say before sentence is passed on you?”