“I didn’t know; taxes don’t bother me much. But go ahead. You teach a few courses. In?”
“Oh, bars, trapeze, ground-and-lofty tumbling, acrobatics, aerialistics, highwire work, muscle-control, unarmed combat—all that sort of thing.”
“Ouch! So if you ever happen accidentally to get mad at me you’ll tie me up into a pretzel?”
She laughed. “A pleasant thought; but you know as well as I do that a good big man can take a good little one every time.”
“But I’m not big. I’m just a little squirt.”
“You outweigh me by forty pounds and I know just how good space officers have to be. You’re exactly the right size.”
“For the first time in my life I’m beginning to think so.” Laughing, he put his arm around her and led her up to a full-length mirror. “We’re a mighty well-matched pair... I like us immensely... well, shall we go see the chaplain? Or should we look for a priest—or maybe a rabbi?”
“We don’t know each other very well, do we? But we’ll have all the rest of our lives to learn unimportant details. The chaplain, please. Let’s go.”
They went; still talking. “You’ll live with me in the suite, won’t you?” she asked. “All the time you aren’t on duty?”
“I can’t imagine anything else.”
“Wonderful! Now I want to talk seriously for a minute. You’ll never need a job, nor any of my money, either. Not ever. The thought of dowsing never even entered your mind, did it?”
“Dowsing? Oh, witching stuff. Of course not.”
“Listen, darling. All the time I’ve been touching you I’ve been learning about you—and you’ve been learning about me.”
“Yes but... ”
“No buts, buster. You actually have tremendous powers; ever so much greater than mine. All I can do is feel oil, water, coal, and gas. I’m no good at all on metals—I couldn’t feel gold if I were perched right on the ridgepole of Fort Knox. But if you’ll stop fighting that terrific power of yours and really use it I’m positive that you can dowse anything you want to. Even uranium.”
He didn’t believe it, and the argument went on until they reached the chaplain’s office. Then, of course, it was dropped automatically; and the next five days were deliciously, deliriously, ecstatically happy days for them both.
* * * *
At the time of this chronicle starships were the safest means of transportation ever used by man; but there was, of course, an occasional accident. Worse than the accidents however—but fortunately much rarer—were the complete disappearances: starships from which no distress signal was ever received and of which no trace was ever found.
And on the Great Wheel of Fate the Procyon’s number came up.
In the middle of the night Carlyle Deston came instantaneously awake—deep down in his mind a huge, terribly silent voice was roaring “DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!” He did not take time to think or to reason: he grabbed Barbara around the waist and leaped out of bed with her.
“Trouble, Bobby! Get into your suit—quick!”
“But... but I’ve got to dress!”
“No time! Snap it up!” He stuffed her into her suit; leaped into his own. “Control!” he snapped into its microphone. “Disaster! Abandon Ship!”
The alarm bells clanged once; the big red lights flashed once; the sirens barely started to growl, then quit. The whole vast fabric of the ship shuddered as though it were being mauled by a thousand and impossibly gigantic hammers.
And out in the corridor: “Come on, girl, sprint!” He put his hand under her arm and urged her along.
She tried, but her best wasn’t good. “I’ve never been checked out on sprinting in space-suits, so you’d better... ”
Everything went out. Lights, artificial gravity, air-circulation—everything.
“You’ve never been checked out on null-gee, either, so hang on and we’ll travel.”
“Where to?” she asked, hurtling through the air faster than she would have believed possible.
“Baby Two—Lifecraft Number Two, that is—my crash assignment. Good thing I was down here with you—I don’t think anybody’ll make it from the Top. Next turn left, then right. I’ll swing you.”
At the lifecraft he kicked a lever and a port swung open—to reveal a blaze of light and a startled gray-haired man who, half-floating in air, was hanging on to a fixture with both hands.
“What happened?” the man asked. “I didn’t know whether... ”
“Wrecked. Null-gee and high radiation. I’ll have to put you in the safe for a while.” Deston shoved the oldster into a small room, gave him a line, and turned to Barbara. “My tell-tale reads twenty—pink—so we’ve got a few minutes. Wrap a leg around that lever there and I’ll see if I can find some passengers and toss ’em to you. Or is null-gee getting to you too much?”
“I’m pretty gulpy, but I can take it.”
“Good girl—you may have to take a lot of it.”
The first five doors he tried were locked. The sixth was not; but the couple inside the room were very gruesomely dead. So was everyone else he could find until he came to a room in which a man in a space-suit was floundering helplessly in the air. He glanced at his tell-tale. Thirty two. High red. Time to go.
In the lifecraft he closed the port, cut in the launcher, and slammed on a one-gravity drive away from the ship. Then he shucked Barbara out of her suit and shed his own. He unclamped a fire-extinguisher-like affair; opened the door of a tiny room. “In here!” He shut the door behind them. “Strip, quick!” He cradled the device and opened four valves.
Fast as he was, she was naked and ready for the gush of thick, creamy foam from the multiplex nozzle. “Oh, Dekon?” she asked. “I’ve read about it. I rub it in good, all over me?”
“That’s right. Short for ‘Decontaminant, Complete; Compound, Absorbant, and Chelating; Type DCQ.’ It takes care of radiation, but speed is of the essence. All over you is right.” He placed the foam-gun on the floor and went vigorously to work. “Eyes, too, yes. Everywhere. Just that. And swallow six gulps of it... that’s it. I slap a gob of it over your nose and mouth and you inhale once—hard and deep. One good one’s enough, but if it isn’t a good one you die of lung cancer, so I’ll have to knock you out and give it to you while you’re unconscious, and that isn’t good—complications. So make it good and deep?”
“Will do. Good and deep.” She emptied her lungs.
He put a headlock on her and slapped the Dekon on. She inhaled, hard and deep, and went into paroxysms of coughing. He held her in his arms until the worst of it was over; but she was still coughing hard when she pulled herself away from him.
“But—you? Lemme—help—you—quick!”
“No need, sweetheart. The old man won’t need it—I got him into the safe in time—the other guy and I will work on each other. Lie down on the bunk there and take it easy for half an hour.”
Forty minutes later, while all four were still cleaning up the messes of foam, the chattering sender stopped sending and the communicator came on. Since everything about a starship is designed to fail safe, they were of course in normal space. On the screens many hundreds of stars blazed, in half the colors of the spectrum.
“Baby Three acknowledging,” the speaker said. “Jones and four—deconned—who’s calling