Perfect signal and zero noise. That was that. From now until Emergence—unless some robot or computer called for help—he might as well be a passenger. He leaned back in his seat, lit a cigarette, and began really to study this wild hunch, that was getting worse all the time. It was all he could do to keep from calling his relief and going down there right then; but he couldn’t and wouldn’t do that. He was on until plus three hours. He couldn’t possibly explain any such break as that would be, so he stuck it out.
At time zero plus one hundred seventy nine minutes his relief appeared. “All black, Babe?” the newcomer asked.
“As the pit, Eddie. Take over. You’ve picked out your girl-friend for the trip, I suppose?”
While taking the bucket seat, Eddie said, “Not yet. I got sidetracked watching Bobby Warner... ”
A wave of psychic force hit Deston’s mind hard enough almost to turn it inside out; but he clenched his teeth and held his pose.
“... and after seeing her just walk across the lounge once, all the other women looked like a dime’s worth of catmeat. Talk about poetry in motion!” Eddie rolled his eyes, made motions with his hands, and whistled expressively. “Oh, brother!”
“Okay, okay, don’t blow a fuse,” Deston said, in what he hoped was his usual tone and manner. “I know. You’ll love her undyingly—all this trip, maybe.”
“Huh? How dumb can you get? D’you think I’d even try to play footsie with Barbara Warner?”
“You play footsie with the pick of the passenger list, so who’s Barbara Warner, to daunt Don Juan Eddie Thompson, the Tomcat of Space?”
“I thought you knew some of the facts of life, Babe. She’s Warner’s only child, is all. Warner of WarnOil; the biggest in all space. Operates in every solar system known to man and never puts down a dry hole. All gushers that blow their rigs clear up into the stratosphere. Everybody wonders how come. The poop is, his wife’s an oil-witch, is why he lugs her around with him all the time. Why else would he?”
“Maybe he loves her. It happens, you know.”
“Huh? After twenty-some years of her? Comet-gas! Anyway, would you have the sublime gall to make a pass at WarnOil’s heiress, with more millions in her own sock than you’ve got dimes? If you ever made passes, I mean.”
“Uh-uh. Negative. For sure.”
“You nor me neither. But what a dish! Brother, what a lovely, luscious, toothsome dish!”
“Cheer up; you’ll be raving about another one tomorrow,” Deston said callously, turning away.
“I don’t know... maybe; but even if I do, she won’t be anything like her,” Eddie mourned, to the closing door.
Deston didn’t go to his cabin; didn’t take off his sidearm. He didn’t even think of it; the .41 automatic at his hip was as much a part of his uniform as his pants.
Entering the lounge, he did not have to look around. She was playing contract, and as eyes met eyes and she rose to her feet a shock-wave went through him that made him feel as though every hair he had was standing straight on end.
She was about five feet four. Her hair was a startlingly brilliant artificial yellow; her eyes a deep, cool blue. She could have made the Miss Western Hemisphere finals. Deston, however, did not notice any of these details—then.
“Excuse me, please,” she said to the other three at her table. “I must go now.” She tossed her cards down onto the table and walked straight toward him; eyes still holding eyes.
He backed hastily out into the corridor, and as the door closed behind her they went naturally and wordlessly into each other’s arms. Lips met lips in a kiss that lasted for a long time. It was not a passionate embrace—passion would come later—it was as though each of them, after endless years of bootless, fruitless longing, had come at long last home.
“Come with me, dear, where we can talk,” she said finally, eyeing with disfavor the half-dozen spectators; and, in her suite a few minutes later, Deston said:
“So this is why I had to come down into passenger territory. You came aboard at exactly zero seven forty three.”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “A few minutes before that; that was when I read your name on the board. First Officer, Carlyle Deston. It simply unraveled me; I came completely unzipped. It’s wonderful that you’re so strongly psychic, too.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, thoughtfully. “Psionics says that that the map is the territory, but all my training has been based on the axiom that it isn’t. I’ve had hunches all my life, but the signal doesn’t carry much information. Like hearing a siren while you’re driving a ground-car. You know you have to pull over and stop, but that’s all you know. It could be police, fire, ambulance—anything. Anybody with any psionic ability at all ought to do a lot better than that, I should think.”
“Not necessarily. You don’t want to believe it, so you’ve been fighting it; beating it down. So it has to force its way through whillions and skillions of ohms of resistance to get through to you at all. But I know you’re very strongly psychic, or you wouldn’t’ve come down here... ” she giggled suddenly “... and you’d’ve jumped clear out into subspace when a perfectly strange girl attacked you. So... aren’t you going to ask me to marry you?”
“Of course I am.” He blushed hotly. “Will you? Right now?”
“You can’t without resigning, can you? They’d fire you?”
“What of it? I can get a good ground job.”
“But you wouldn’t like a ground job!”
“What of that, too. A man grows up. Between you and any job in the universe there’s no choice.”
“I knew you’d say that, Carl.” She hugged his elbow against her side. “I’d love to get married right now... ” She paused.
“Except for what?” he asked.
“I thought at first I’d tell my parents first—they’re aboard, you know—but I won’t. She’d scream and he’d roar and neither of them could make me change my mind, so we will do it right now.”
He looked at her questioningly; she shrugged and went on, “We aren’t what you could call a happy family. She’s been trying to make me marry an old goat of a prince and I finally told her to go roll her hoop—to get a divorce and marry the foul old beast herself. And he’s been pushing me to marry an oil-man—to consolidate two empires—that it makes me sick at the stomach just to look at! Last week he insisted on it and I blew an atomic bomb. I’d keep on finding oil and stuff for him, I said, but... ” She broke off as Deston stiffened involuntarily.
“Oil?” he asked, too quietly. “You’re the oil-witch, then; not your mother. Besides having more megabucks in your own right than any... ”
“Don’t say it, dearest!” She seized both his hands in hers. “I know how you feel. I don’t like to let you ruin your career, either, but nothing can come between us now that we’ve found each other. So I’ll tell you this.” Her eyes looked steadily into his. “If it bothers you that much I’ll give every dollar I own to some foundation or other. I swear it.”
He laughed shamefacedly as he took her into his arms. “That’s knocking me for the well-known loop, sweetheart. I’ll live with it and like it.”
Then, to get away from that subject, he explored with knowing fingers the muscles of her arms and back. “You’re trained down as fine as I am and it’s my business to be—how come?”
“I majored