VII

"Avete, alieni, nos morituri vos spernimus!"

Deety:

            While Aunt Hilda and I assembled lunch, our men disappeared. They returned just in time to sit down. Zebadiah carried an intercom unit; Pop had a wire that he plugged into a jack in the wall, then hooked to the intercom.

            "Gentlemen, your timing is perfect; the work is all done," Aunt Hilda greeted them. "What is that?"

            'A guest for lunch, my dearest," Pop answered. "Miss Gay Deceiver."

            "Plenty for all," Aunt Hilda agreed. "I'll set another place." She did so; Zebadiah placed the intercom on the fifth plate. "Does she take coffee or tea?"

            "She's not programmed for either, Hilda," Zebadiah answered, "but I thank you on her behalf. Ladies, I got itchy about news from Singapore and Sumatra. So I asked my autopilot to report. Jake came along, then pointed out that he had spare cold circuits here and there, just in case-and this was a just-incase. Gay is plugged to the garage end of that jack, and this is a voice-switched master-master intercom at this end. I can call Gay and she can call me if anything new comes in-and I increased her programming by reinstating the earlier programs, Logan and back home, for running retrieval of new data."

            1')I add an outlet in the basement," agreed Pop. "But, Son, this is your home-not California."

            "Well-"

            "Don't fight it, Zebbie. This is my home since Jacob legalized me.. and any step-son-in-law of mine is at home here; you heard Jacob say so. Right, Deety?"

            'Of course," I agreed. "Aunt Hilda is housewife and I'm scullery maid. But

Snug Harbor is my home, too, until Pop and, Aunt Hilda kick me out into the snow-and that includes my husband."

            "Not into snow, Deety," Aunt Hilda corrected me. "Jacob would insist on a sunny day; he's kind and gentle. But that would not leave you with no roof over your head. My California home-mine and Jacob's-has long been your home-from-home, and Zebbie has been dropping in for years, whenever he was hungry."

            "I had better put my bachelor flat into the pot."

            "Zebbie, you can't put Deety on your day bed. It's lumpy, Deety. Broken springs. Bruises. Zebbie, break your lease and send your furniture back to Good Will."

            "Sharpie, you're at it again. Deety, there is no day bed in my digs. An emperor-size bed big enough for three-six if they are well acquainted."

            "My Captain, do you go in for orgies?" I asked.

            "No. But you can't tell what may turn up in the future."

            "You always look ahead, Zebadiah," I said approvingly. "Am I invited?"

            "At any orgy of mine, my wife will pick the guests and send the invitations."

            "Thank you, sir. I'll wait until you seem to be bored, then look over the crop and pick out choice specimens for you. Assorted flavors and colors."

            "My Princess, I will not spank a pregnant woman. But I can think about it. Pop, Snug Harbor continues to impress me. Did you use an architect?"

            "Hrrumph! 'Architect' is a dirty word. I studied engineering. Architects copy each other's mistakes and call it 'Art.' Even Frank Lloyd Wright never understood what the Gilbreths were doing. His houses looked great from the outside-inside they were hideously inefficient. Dust collectors. Gloomy. Psych lab rat mazes. Pfui!"

            "How about Neutra?"

            "If he hadn't been hamstrung by building codes and union rules and zoning laws, Neutra could have been great. But people don't want efficient machines for living; they prefer to crouch in medieval hovels, as their flea-bitten forebears did. Cold, drafty, unsanitary, poor lighting, and no need for any of it."

            "I respect your opinion, sir. Pop-three fireplaces.. . no chimneys. How? Why?"

            "Zeb, I like fireplaces-and a few cords of wood can save your life in the mountains. But I see no reason to warm the outdoors or to call attention to the fact that we are in residence or to place trust in spark arresters in forestfire country. Lighting a fire in a fireplace here automatically starts its exhaust fan. Smoke and particles are electrostatically precipitated. The precipitators are autoscrubbed when stack temperature passes twenty-five Celsius, dropping. Hot air goes through labyrinths under bathtubs and floors, then under other floors, thence into a rock heat-sink under the garage, a sink that drives the heat pump that serves the house. When flue gas finally escapes, at points distant from the house,' it is so close to ambient temperature that only the most sensitive heat-seeker could sniff it. Thermal efficiency plus the security of being inconspicuous."

            "But suppose you are snowed in so long that your power packs play out?"

            "Franklin stoves in storage, stove pipe to match, stops in the walls removable from inside to receive thimbles for flue pipes."

            "Pop," I inquired, "is this covered by Rule One? Or was Rule One abolished last night in Elko?"

            "Eh? The chair must rule that it is suspended until Hilda ratifies or cancels it. Hilda my love, years back Jane instituted Rule One-"

            "I ratify it!"

            "Thank you. But listen first. It applies to meals. No news broadcasts-"

            "Pop," I again interrupted, "while Rule One is still in limbo-did Gay Deceiver have any news? I worry, I do!"

            "Null retrievals, dear. With the amusing conclusion that you and I are still presumed to have died twice, but the news services do not appear to have noticed the discrepancy. However, Miss Gay Deceiver will interrupt if a bulletin comes in; Rule One is never invoked during emergencies. Zeb, do you want this rig in your bedroom at night?"

            "I don't want it but should have it. Prompt notice might save our skins."

            "We'll leave this here and parallel another into there, with gain stepped to wake you. Back to Rule One: No news broadcasts at meals, no newspapers. No shop talk, no business or financial matters, no discussion of ailments. No political discussion, no mention of taxes, or of foreign or domestic policy. Reading of fiction permitted en famille-not with guests present. Conversation limited to cheerful subjects-"

            "No scandal, no gossip?" demanded Aunt Hilda.

            "A matter of your judgment, dear. Cheerful gossip about friends and acquaintances, juicy scandal about people we do not like-fine! Now-do you wish to ratify, abolish, amend, or take under advisement?"

            "I ratify it unchanged. Who knows some juicy scandal about someone we don't like?"

            "I know an item about 'No Brain'-Doctor Neil Brain," Zebadiah offered.

            "Give!"

            "I got this from a reliable source but can't prove it."

            "Irrelevant as long as it's juicy. Go ahead, Zebbie."

            "Well, a certain zaftig coed told this on herself. She tried to give her all to 'Brainy' in exchange for a passing grade in the general math course necessary to any degree on our campus. It is rigged to permit prominent but stupid athletes to graduate. Miss Zaftig was flunking it, which takes exceptional talent.

            "So she arranged an appointment with the department head-'Brainy'- and made her quid-pro-quo clear. He could give her horizontal tutoring then and there or in her apartment or his apartment or in a motel and she would pay for it or whenever and wherever he chose. But she had to pass."

            "Happens on every campus, Son," Pop told him.

            "I haven't reached the point. She blabbed the story-not angry but puzzled. She says that she was unable to get her intention over to him (which seems impossible, I've seen this young woman). 'Brainy' didn't accept, didn't refuse, wasn't offended, didn't seem to understand. He told her that she had better talk to her instructor about getting tutoring and a re-exam. Now Miss Zaftig is circulating the story that Prof 'No Brain' must be a eunuch or a robot. Not even a homo. Totally sexless."

            "He's undoubtedly stupid," Aunt Hilda commented. "But I've never met a man I couldn't get that point across to, if I tried. Even if he was uninterested in my fair virginal carcass. I've never tried with Professor Brain because I'm not interested in his carcass. Even barbecued."

            "Then, Hilda my darling, why did you invite him to your party?"

            "What? Because of your note, Jacob. I don't refuse you favors."

            "But, Hilda, I don't understand. When I talked to you by telephone, I asked you to invite Zeb-under the impression that he was his cousin Zebulon-and I did say that two or three others from the department of mathematics might make it less conspicuously an arranged meeting. But I didn't mention Doctor Brain. And I did not write."

            "Jacob-I have your note. In California. On your University stationery with your name printed on it."

            Professor Burroughs shook his head, looked sad. Zebadiah Carter said, "Sharpie-handwritten or typed?"

            "Typed. But it was signed! Wait a moment, let me think. It has my name and address down in the lower left. Jacob's name was typed, too, but it was signed 'Jake.' Uh.. . 'My dear Hilda, A hasty P.S. to my phone call of yesterday-Would you be so kind as to include Doctor Neil O. Brain, chairman of mathematics? I don't know what possessed me that I forgot to mention him. Probably the pleasure of hearing your dear voice.

            "Deety sends her love, as do I. Ever yours, Jacob J. Burroughs' with 'Jake' signed above the typed name."

            Zebadiah said to me, "Watson, you know my methods."

            "Certainly, my dear Holmes. A 'Black Hat.' In Logan."

            "We knew that. What new data?"

            "Well. . . Pop made that call from the house; I remember it. So somebody has a tap on our phone. Had, I mean; the fire probably destroyed it."

            "A recording tap. The purpose of that fire may have been to destroy it and other evidence. For now we know that the 'Blokes in the Black Hats' knew that your father-and you, but it's Pop they are after-was in California last evening. After 'killing' him in California, they destroyed all they could in Utah. Professor, I predict that we will learn that your office was robbed last night-any papers on six-dimensional spaces."

            Pop shrugged. "They wouldn't find much. I had postponed my final paper after the-humiliating-reception my preliminary paper received. I worked on it only at home, or here, and moved notes made in Logan to our basement here each time we came down."

            "Any missing here?"

            "I am certain this place has not been entered. Not that papers would matter; I have it in my head. The continua apparatus has not been touched."

            "Zebadiah, is Doctor Brain a 'Black Hat'?" I asked.

            "I don't know, Deety. He may be a stooge in their hire. But he's part of their

plot, or they would not have risked forging a letter to put him into Hilda's house. Jake, how difficult is it to steal your professional stationery?"

            "Not difficult. I don't keep a secretary; I send for a stenographer when I need one. I seldom lock my office when I'm on campus."

            "Deety, can you scrounge pen and paper? I want to see how Jake signs 'Jake."

            "Sure." I fetched them. "Pop's signature is easy; I often sign it. I hold his power of attorney."

            "It's the simple signatures that are hardest to forge well enough to fool a handwriting expert. But their scheme did not require fooling an expert-phrasing the note was more difficult.. . since Hilda accepted it as ringing true."

            "It does ring true, Son; it is very like what I would have said had I written such a note to Hilda."

            "The forger probably has read many of your letters and listened to many of your conversations. Jake, will you write 'Jake' four or five times, the way you sign a note to a friend?"

            Pop did so, my husband studied the specimens. "Normal variations." Zebadiah then signed "Jake" about a dozen times, looked at his work, took a fresh sheet, signed "Jake" once, passed it to Aunt Hilda. "Well, Sharpie?"

            Aunt Hilda studied it. "It wouldn't occur to me to question it-on Jacob's stationary under a note that sounded like his phrasing. Where do we stand now?"

            "Stuck in the mud. But we have added data. At least three are involved, two 'Black Hats' and Doctor Brain, who may or may not be a 'Black Hat.' He is, at minimum, a hired hand, an unwitting stooge, or a puppet they can move around like a chessman.

            "While two plus 'Brainy' is minimum, it is not the most probable number. This scheme was not whipped up overnight. It involves arson, forgery, boobytrapping a car, wiretapping, theft, and secret communications between points widely separated, with coordinated criminal actions at each end-and it may involve doing in my cousin Zebulon. We can assume that the 'Black Hats' know that I am not the Zeb Carter who is the n-dimensional geometer; I'm written off as a bystander .who got himself killed.

            "Which doesn't bother them. These playful darlings would swat a fly with a sledgehammer, or cure a cough with a guillotine. They are smart, organized, efficient, and vicious-and the only clue is an interest in six-dimensional nonEuclidean geometry.

            "We don't have a glimmer as to 'who'-other than Doctor Brain, whose role is unclear. But, Jake, I think I know 'why'-and that will lead us to 'who."

            "Why, Zebadiah?" I demanded.

            "Princess, your father could have worked on endless other branches of mathematics and they would not have bothered him. But he happened-I don't mean chance; I don't believe in 'chance' in this sense-he worked on the one variety of the endless possible number of geometries-the only one that correctly describes how space-time is put together. Having found it, because he is a genius in both theory and practice, he saw that it was a means by which to build a simple craft-amazingly simple, the greatest invention since the wheel-a space-time craft that offers access to all universes to the full Number of the Beast. Plus undenumerable variations of each of those many universes.

            "We have one advantage."

            "I don't see any advantage! They're shooting at my Jacob!"

            "One strong advantage, Sharpie. The 'Black Hats' know that Jake has worked out this mathematics. They don't know that he has built his spacetime tail-twister; they think he has just put symbols on paper. They tried to discredit his work and were successful. They tried to kill him and barely missed. They probably think Jake is dead-and it seems likely that they have killed Ed. But they don't know about Snug Harbor."

            "Why do you say that, Zeb? Oh, I hope they do not!-but why do you feel sure?"

            "Because these blokes aren't fooling. They blew up your car and burned your flat; what would they do here?-if they knew. An A-bomb?"

            "Son, do you think that criminals can lay hands on atomic weapons?"

            "Jake, these aren't criminals. A 'criminal' is a member of the subset of the larger set 'human beings.' These creatures are not human."

            "Eh? Zeb, your reasoning escapes me."

            "Deety. Run it through the computer. The one between your ears."

            I did not answer; I just sat and thought. After several minutes of unpleasant thoughts I said, "Zebadiah, the 'Black Hats' don't know about the apparatus in our basement."

            "Conclusive assumption," my husband agreed, "because we are still alive."

            "They are determined to destroy a new work in mathematics. . . and to kill the brain that produced it."

            "A probability approaching unity," Zebadiah again agreed.

            "Because it can be used to travel among the universes."

            "Conclusive corollary," my husband noted.

            "For this purpose, human beings fall into three groups. Those not interested in mathematics more complex than that needed to handle money, those who know a bit about other mathematics, and a quite small third group who could understand the possibilities."

            "Yes."

            "But our race does not know anything of other universes so far as I know."

            "They don't. Necessary assumption."

            "But that third group would not try to stop an attempt to travel among the universes. They would wait with intellectual interest to see how it turned out. They might believe or disbelieve or suspend judgment. But they would not oppose; they would be delighted if my father succeeded. The joy of intellectual discovery-the mark of a true scientist."

            I sighed and added, "I see no other grouping. Save for a few sick people, psychotic, these three subsets complete the set. Our opponents are not psychotic; they are intelligent, crafty, and organized."

            "As we all know too well," Zebadiah echoed.

            "Therefore our opponents are not human beings. They are alien intelligences

from elsewhere." I sighed again and shut up. Being an oracle is a no-good profession!

            "Or elsewhen. Sharpie, can you kill?"

            "Kill whom, Zebbie? Or what?"

"Can you kill to protect Jake?"

            "You bet your frimpin' life I'll kill to protect Jacob!"

            "I won't ask you, Princess; I know Dejah Thoris." Zebadiah went on, "That's the situation, ladies. We have the most valuable man on this planet to protect. We don't know from what. Jake, your bodyguard musters two Amazons, one small, one medium large, both probably knocked up, and one Cowardly Lion. I'd hire the Dorsai if I knew their P.O. Box. Or the Gray Lensman and all his pals. But we are all there are and we'll try! Avete, alieni, nos morituri vos spernimus! Let's break out that champagne."

            "My Captain, do you think we should?" I asked. "I'm frightened."

            "We should. I'm no good for more work today, and neither is Jake. Tomorrow we'll start installing the gadget in Gay Deceiver, do rewiring and reprogramming so that she will work for any of us. Meanwhile we need a couple of laughs and a night's sleep. What better time to drink life to the dregs than when we know that any hour may be our last?"

            Aunt Hilda punched Zebadiah in the ribs. "Yer dern tootin', Buster! I'm going to get giggle happy and make a fool of myself and then take my man and put him to sleep with Old Mother Sharpie's Time-Tested Nostrum. Deety, I prescribe the same for you."

            I suddenly felt better. "Check, Aunt Hilda! Captain John Carter always wins. 'Cowardly Lion' my foot! Who is Pop? The Little Wizard?"

            "I think he is."

            "Could be. Pop, will you open the bubbly? I always hurt my thumbs."

            "Right away, Deety. I mean 'Dejah Thoris, royal consort of the Warlord."

            "No need to be formal, Pop. This is going to be an informal party. Very! Pop! Do I have to keep my pants on?"

            "Ask your husband. You're his problem now."

VIII

"Let us all preserve our iIlusion~-"

            Hilda:

            In my old age, sucking my gums in front of the fire and ]iving over my misdeeds, I’ll remember the next few days as the happiest in my life. I'd had three honeymoons earlier, one with each of my term-contract husbands: two had been good, one had been okay and (eventually) very lucrative. But my honeymoon with Jacob was heavenly.

            The whiff of danger sharpened the joy. Jacob seemed unworried, and Zebbie has hunches, like a horseplayer. Seeing that Zebbie was relaxed, Deety got over being .jumpy-and I never was, as I hope to end like a firecracker, not linger on, ugly. helpless, useless..

            A spice of danger adds zest to life. Even during a honeymoon-especially during a honeymoon.

            An odd honeymoon. We worked hard but our husbands seemed never too busy for pat fanny, squeeze tittv, and unhurried kisses. Not a group marriage but two twosomes that were one family, comfortable each with the others. I dropped most of my own sparkv-bitch ways, and Zebbie sometimes called me “Hilda" rather than "Sharpie."

            Jacob and I moved into marriage like ham and eggs. Jacob is not tall (178 centimeters) but tall compared with my scant one fiftv-two~ and his hairline recedes and he has a paunch from years at a desk-hut he looks just right to me. If I wanted to look at male beauty, I could always look at Deety's giant- appreciate him without lusting: my own loving goat kept Sharpie quite blunted.

            I did not decide, when Zebbie came on campus, to make a pet of him for his looks but for his veering sense of humor. But if there was ever a man who could have played the role of John Carter, Warlord of Mars, it was Zebadiah Carter whose middle name just happens to be "John." Indoors with clothes and wearing his fake horn-rims he looks awkward, too big, clumsy. I did not realize that he was beautiful and graceful until the first time he used my pool. (That afternoon I was tempted to seduce him. But, as little dignity as I have, I had resolved to stick to older men, so I shut off the thought.)

            Outdoors at Snug Harbor, wearing little or no clothes, Zebbie looked at home-a mountain lion in grace and muscle. An incident one later afternoon showed me how much he was like the Warlord of Mars. A sword- Those old stories were familiar to me. My father had acquired the Ballantine Del Rey paperback reissues; they were around the house when I was a little girl. Once I learned to read, I read everything, and vastly preferred Barsoom stories to "girls" books given to me for birthdays and Christmas. Thuvia was the heroine I identified with-"toy" of the cruel priests of Issus, then with virginity miraculously restored in the next book: Thuvia, Maid of Mars. I resolved to change my name to Thuvia when I was old enough. When I was eighteen, I did not consider it; I had always been "Hilda," a new name held no attraction.

            I was responsible in part for Deety's name, one that embarrassed her until she discovered that her husband liked it. Jacob had wanted to name his daughter "Dejah Thoris" (Jacob looks like and is a professor, but he is incurably romantic). Jane had misgivings. I told her, "Don't be a chump, Janie. If your man wants something, and you can accommodate him with no grief, give it to him! Do you want him to love this child or to resent her?" Jane looked thoughtful and "Doris Anne" became "Dejah Thoris" at christening, then "Deety" before she could talk-which satisfied everyone.

            We settled into a routine: Up early every day; our men worked on instruments and wires and things and installing the time-space widget into Gay Deceiver's gizzard-while Deety and I gave the housework a lick and a promise (our mountain home needed little attention-more of Jacob's genius), then Deety and I got busy on a technical matter that Deety could do with some help from me.

            I'm not much use for technical work, biology being the only thing I studied in depth and never finished my degree. This was amplified by almost six thousand hours as volunteer nurse's aid in our campus medical center and I took courses that make me an uncertified nurse or medical tech or even jackleg paramedic-I don't shriek at the sight of blood and can clean up vomit without a qualm and would not hesitate to fill in as scrub nurse. Being a campus widow with too much money is fun but not soul filling. I like to feel that I've paid rent on the piece of earth I'm using.

            Besides that, I have a smattering of everything from addiction to the printed page, plus attending campus lectures that sound intriguing. . . then sometimes auditing a related course. I audited descriptive astronomy, took the final as if for credit_got an "A." I had even figured a cometary orbit correctly, to my surprise (and the professor's).

            I can wire a doorbell or clean out a stopped-up soil pipe with a plumber's "snake"-but if it's really technical, I hire specialists.

            So Hilda can help but usually can't do the job alone. Gay Deceiver had to be reprogrammed-and Deety, who does not look like a genius, is one. Jacob's daughter should be a genius and her mother had an I.Q. that startled even me, her closest friend. I ran across it while helping poor grief-stricken Jacob to decide what to save, what to burn. (I burned unflattering pictures, useless papers, and clothes. A dead person's clothes should be given away or burned; nothing should be kept that does not inspire happy memories. I cried a bit and that saved Jacob and Deety from having to cry later.)

            We all held private duo licenses; Zebbie, as Captain Z. J. Carter, U.S.A.S.R., held "command" rating as well-he told us that his space rating was largely honorary, just some free-fall time and one landing of a shuttle. Zebbie is mendacious, untruthful, and tells fibs; I got a chance to sneak a look at his aerospace log and shamelessly took it. He had logged more than he claimed in one exchange tour with Australia. Someday I'm going to sit on his chest and make him tell Mama Hilda the truth. Should be interesting. . . if I can sort out fact from fiction. I do not believe his story about intimate relations with a female kangaroo.

            Zebbie and Jacob decided that we all must be able to control Gay Deceiver all four ways, on the road, in the air, in trajectory (she's not a spaceship but can make high-trajectory jumps), and in space-time, i.e. among the universes to the Number of the Beast, plus variants impossible to count.

            I had fingers crossed about being able to learn that, but both men assured me that they had worked out a fail-safe that would get me out of a crunch if I ever had to do it alone.

            Part of the problem lay in the fact that Gay Deceiver was a one-man girl; her doors unlocked only to her master's voice or to his thumbprint, or to a tapping code if he were shy both voice and right thumb; Zeb tended to plan ahead-"Outwitting Murphy's Law," he called it, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." (Grandma called it "The Butter-Side Down Rule.")

            First priority was to introduce us to Gay Deceiver-teach her that all four voices and right thumbprints were acceptable.

            That took a couple of hours, with Deety helping Zebbie. The tapping code took even less, it being based on an old military cadence-its trickiness being that a thief would be unlikely to guess that this car would open if tapped a certain way and in guessing the correct cadence. Zebbie called the cadence "Drunken Soldier." Jacob said that it was "Bumboat." Deety claimed that its title was "Pay Day," because she had heard it from Jane's grandfather.

            Our men conceded that she must be right, as she had words for it. Her words included "Drunken Sailor" instead of "Drunken Soldier"-plus both "Pay Day" and "Bumboat."

            Introductions taken care of, Zeb dug out Gay's anatomy, one volume her body, one her brain. He handed the latter to Deety, took the other into our basement. The next two days were easy for me, hard for Deety. I held lights and made notes on a clip board while she studied that book and frowned and got smudged and sweaty getting herself into impossible positions and once she cursed in a fashion that would have caused Jane to scold. She added, "Aunt Nanny Goat, your step-son-in-law has done things to this mass of spaghetti that no decent computer should put up with! It's a bastard hybrid."

            "You shouldn't call Gay 'it,' Deety. And she's not a bastard."

            "She can't hear us; I've got her ears unhooked-except that piece that is monitoring news retrieval programs-and that goes through this wire to that jack in the wall; she can talk with Zebadiah only in the basement now. Oh, I'm sure she was a nice girl until that big ape of mine raped her. Aunt Hilda, don't worry about hurting Gay's feelings; she hasn't any. This is an idiot as computers go. Any one-horse college and most high schools own or share time in computers much more complex. This one is primarily cybernetics, an autopilot plus limited digital capacity and limited storage. But the mods Zebadiah has tacked on make it more than an autopilot but not a general-purpose computer. A misbegotten hybrid. It has far more random-number options than it needs and it has extra functions that IBM never dreamed of."

            "Deety, why are you taking off cover plates? I thought you were strictly a programmer? Software. Not a mechanic."

            "I am strictly a software mathematician. I wouldn't attempt to modify this monster even on written orders from my lovable but sneaky husband. But how in the name of Allah can a software hack think about simplification analysis for program if she doesn't know the circuitry? The first half of this book shows what this autopilot was manufactured to do. . . and the second half, the Xeroxed pages, show the follies Zebadiah has seduced her into. This bleedin' bundle of chips now speaks three logic languages, interfaced-when it was built to use only one. But it won't accept any of them until it has been wheedled with Zebadiah's double talk. Even then it rarely answers a code phrase with the same answer twice in a row. What does it say in answer to: 'You're a smart girl, Gay.'?"

            "I remember. 'Boss, I bet you tell that to all the girls. Over."

            "Sometimes. Oftenest, as that answer is weighted to come up three times as often as any of the others. But listen to this:

            "Zeb, I'm so smart I scare myself.'

            "Then why did you turn me down for that raise?'

            "Never mind the compliments! Take your hand off my knee!'

            "Not so loud, dear. I don't want my boyfriend to hear.'

            "-and there are more. There are at least four answers to any of Zebadiah's code phrases. He uses just one list, but the autopilot answers several ways for each of his phrases-and all any of them mean is either 'Roger' or 'Null program; rephrase."

            "I like the idea. Fun."

            "Well. . . I do myself. I animize a computer; I think of them as people.. . and this semirandom answer list makes Gay Deceiver feel much more alive.. . when she isn't. Not even versatile compared with a ground-based computer. But-" Deety gave a quick smile. "I'm going to hand my husband some surprises."

            "How, Deety?"

            "You know how he says, 'Good morning, Gay. How are you?' when we sit down for breakfast."

            "Yes. I like it. Friendly. She usually answers, 'I'm fine, Zeb."

            "Yes. It's a test code. It orders the autopilot to run a self-check throughout and to report any running instruction. Which takes less than a millisecond. If he didn't get that or an equivalent answer, he would rush straight here to find out what's wrong. But I'm going to add another answer. Or more."

            "I thought you refused to modify anything."

            "Aunt Hillbilly, this is software, not hardware. I'm authorized and directed to amplify the answers to include all of us, by name for each of our voices. That is programming, elementary. You say good morning to this gadget and it will-when I'm finished-answer you and call you either 'Hilda' or 'Mrs. Burroughs."

            "Oh, let her call me 'Hilda.'"

            "All right, but let her call you 'Mrs. Burroughs' now and then for variety."

            "Well. . . all right. Keep her a personality."

            "I could even have her call you-low weighting!-'Nanny Goat."

            I guffawed. "Do, Deety, please do. But I want to be around to see Jacob's face."

            "You will be; it won't be programmed to answer that way to any voice but yours. Just don't say, 'Good morning, Gay' unless Pop is listening. But here's one for my husband: Zebadiah says, 'Good morning, Gay. How are you?'-and the speaker answers, 'I'm fine, Zeb. But your fly is unzipped and your eyes are bloodshot. Are you hung over again?"

            Deety is so solemn and yet playful. "Do it, dear! Poor Zebbie-who drinks least of any of us. But he might not be wearing anything zippered."

            "Zebadiah always wears something at meals. Even his underwear shorts are zippered. He dislikes elastic."

            "But he'll recognize your voice, Deety."

            "Nope. Because it will be your voice-modified."

            And it was. I'm contralto about the range of the actress-or girl friend- who recorded Gay Deceiver's voice originally. I don't think my voice has her sultry, bedroom quality but I'm a natural mimic. Deety borrowed a wigglescope-oscilloscope?-from her father, my Jacob, and I practiced until my patterns for Gay Deceiver's original repertoire matched hers well enough- Deety said she could not tell them apart without close checking.

            I got into the spirit of it, such as having Deety cause Gay Deceiver occasionally to say to my husband, "Fine-except for my back ache, you wicked old Billy Goat!"-and Jacob tripped that reply one morning when I did have a back ache, and I feel sure he had one, too.

            We didn't put in answers that Deety felt might be too bawdy for Jacob's "innocent" mind-I didn't even hint how her father actually talked, to me in private. Let us all preserve our illusions; it lubricates social relations. Possibly Deety and Zebbie talked the same way to each other in private-and regarded us "old folks" as hopelessly square.

IX

Most males have an unhealthy tendency to obey laws.

            Deety:

            Aunt Hilda and I finished reprogramming in the time it took Zebadiah and Pop to design and make the fail-safes and other mods needed to turn Gay Deceiver, with the time-space widget installed, into a continua traveler- which included placing the back seats twenty centimeters farther back (for leg room) after they had. bee~p~11ed out to place the widget abaft the bulkhead md ~~eld it to the shell The ~P~essing contiols and triple verniers wcic

remoted to the driver's instrument board-with one voice control for the widget, all others manual:

            If any of our voices said, "Gay Deceiver, take us home!" car and passengers would instantly return to Snug Harbor.

            I don't know but I trust my Pop. He brought us home safe twice, doing it with no fail-safes and no dead-man switch. The latter paralleled the "Take us home!" voice order, was normally clamped closed and covered-but could be uncovered and held in a fist, closed. There were other fail-safes for temperature, pressure, air, radar collision course, and other dangers. If we wound up inside a star or planet, none of this could save us, but it is easy to prove that the chances of falling downstairs and breaking your neck are enormously higher than the chance of co-occupying space with other matter in our native universe-space is plentiful, mass is scarce. We hoped that this would be true of other universes.

            No way ahead of time to check on the Number-of-the-Beast spaces-but "The cowards never started and the weaklings d~jed on the way." None of us

ever mentioned not trying to travel the universes. Besides, our home planet had turned unfriendly. We didn't discuss "Black Hats" but we all knew that they were still here, and that we remained alive by lying doggo and letting the world think we were dead.

            We ate breakfast better each morning after hearing Gay Deceiver offer "null report" on news retrievals. Zebadiah, I am fairly certain, had given up his cousin for dead. I feel sure Zebadiah would have gone to Sumatra to follow a lost hope, were it not that he had acquired a wife and a prospective child. I missed my next period, so did Hilda. Our men toasted our not-yet bulging bellies; Hilda and I smugly resolved to be good girls, yes, sir!-and careful. Hilda joined my morning toning up, and the men joined us the first time they caught us at it.

            Zebadiah did not need it but seemed to enjoy it. Pop brought his waistline down five centimeters in one week.

            Shortly after that toast Zebadiah pressure-tested Gay Deceiver's shell-four atmospheres inside her and a pressure gauge sticking out through a fitting in her shell.

            There being little we could do while our space-time rover was sealed, we knocked off early. "Swim, anybody?" I asked. Snug Harbor doesn't have a citytype pool, and a mountain stream is too cooold. Pop had fixed that when he concealed our spring. Overflow was piped underground to a clump of bushes and thereby created a "natural" mountain rivulet that passed near the house; then Pop had made use of a huge fallen boulder, plus biggish ones, to create a pool, one that filled and spilled. He had done work with pigments in concrete to make this look like an accident of water flow.

            This makes Pop sound like Paul Bunyan. Pop could have built Snug Harbor with his own hands. But Spanish-speaking labor from Nogales built the underground and assembled the prefab shell of the cabin. An air crane fetched parts and materials from an Albuquerque engineering company Jane had bought for Pop through a front-lawyers in Dallas. The company's manager drove the air crane himself, having had it impressed on him that this was for a rich client of the law firm, and that it would be prudent to do the job and forget it. Pop bossed the work in TexMex, with help from his secretary-me- Spanish being one language I had picked for my doctorate.

            Laborers and mechanics never got a chance to pinpoint where they were, but they were well paid, well fed, comfortably housed in prefabs brought in by crane, and the backbreaking labor was done by power-who cares what "locos gringos" do? Two pilots had to know where we were building, but they homed in on a radar beacon that is no longer there.

            "Blokes in Black Hats" had nothing to do with this secrecy; it was jungle caution I had learned from Mama: Never let the revenooers know anything. Pay cash, keep your lips closed, put nothing through banks that does not appear later in tax returns-pay taxes greater than your apparent standard of living and declare income accordingly. We had been audited three times since Mama died; each time the government returned a small "overpayment"- I was building a reputation of being stupid and honest.

            My inquiry of "Swim, anybody?" was greeted with silence. Then Pop said, "Zeb, your wife is too energetic. Deety, later the water will be warmer and the trees will give us shade. Then we can walk slowly down to the pool. Zeb?"

            "I agree, Jake. I need to conserve ergs."

            "Nap?"

            "I don't have the energy to take one. What were you saying this morning about reengineering the system?"

            Aunt Hilda looked startled. "I thought Miss Gay Deceiver was already engineered? Are you thinking of changing everything?"

            "Take it easy, Sharpie darlin'. Gay Deceiver is finished. A few things to stow that have been weighed and their moment arms calculated."

            I could have told her. In the course of figuring what could be stowed in every nook and cranny and what that would do to Gay's balance, I had discovered that my husband had a highly illegal laser cannon. I said nothing, merely included its mass and distance from optimum center of weight in my calculations. I sometimes wonder which of us is the outlaw: Zebadiah or I? Most males have an unhealthy tendency to ob&y laws. But that concealed Lcannon made me wonder.

            "Why not leave well enough alone?" Aunt Hilda demanded. "Jacob and God know I'm happy here. . . But You All Know Why We Should Not Stay Here Longer Than We Must."

            "We weren't talking about Gay Deceiver; Jake and I were discussing reengineering the Solar System."

            "The Solar System! What's wrong with it the way it is?"

            "Lots of things," Zebadiah told Aunt Hilda. "It's untidy. Real estate going to waste. This tired old planet is crowded and sort o' worn in spots. True, industry in orbit and power from orbit have helped, and both Lagrange-Four and -Five have self-supporting populations; anybody who invested in space stations early enough made a pile." (Including Pop, Zebadiah!) "But these are minor compared with what can be done-and this planet is in worse shape each year. Jake's six-dimensional principle can change that."

            "Move people into another universe? Would they go?"

            "We weren't thinking of that, Hilda. We're trying to apply Clarke's Law."

            "I don't recall it. Maybe it was while I was out with mumps."

            "Arthur C. Clarke," Pop told her. "Great man-too bad he was liquidated in The Purge. Clarke defined how to make a great discovery or create a key invention. Study what the most respected authorities agree can not be done- then do it. My continua craft is a godchild of Clarke via his Law. His insight inspired my treatment of six-dimensional continua. But this morning Zeb added corollaries."

            "Jake, don't kid the ladies. I asked a question; you grabbed the ball and ran."

            "Uh, we heterodyned. Hilda, you know that the time-space traveler doesn't require power."

            "I'm afraid I don't know, darling man. Why were you installing power packs in Gay Deceiver?"

            "Auxiliary uses. So that you won't have to cook over an open fire, for example."

            "But the pretzel bender doesn't use po~er," agreed Zebadiah. "Don't ask why. I did, and Jake started writing equations in Sanskrit and I got a headache."

            "It doesn't use power, Aunt Hilda," I agreed. "Just parasitic power. A few microwatts so that the gyros never slow down, milliwatts for instrument readouts and for controls-but the widget itself uses none."

            "What happened to the law of conservation of energy?"

            "Sharpie," my husband answered, "as a fairish mechanic, an amateur electron pusher, and as a bloke who has herded unlikely junk through the sky, I never worry about theory as long as machinery does what it is supposed to do. I worry when a machine turns and bites me. That's why I specialize in fail-safes and backups and triple redundancy. I try never to get a machine sore at me. There's no theory for that but every engineer knows it."

            "Hilda my beloved, the law of conservation of mass-energy is not broken by our continua craft; it is simply not relevant to it. Once Zeb understood that-"

            "I didn't say I understood it."

            "Well. . . once Zeb stipulated that, he raised interesting questions. For example: Jupiter doesn't need Ganymede-"

            "Whereas Venus does. Although Titan might be better."

            "Mmm. . . possible."

            "Yes. Make an inhabitable base more quickly. But the urgent prob1em~:

Jake, is to seed Venus, move atmosphere to Mars, put both of them through;, forced aging. Then respot them. Earth-Sol Trojan points?"

            "Certainly. We've had millions of years of evolution this distance from the Sun. We had best plan on living neither closer nor farther. With careful attention to stratospheric protection. But I still have doubts about anchoring in the Venerian crust. We wouldn't want to lose the planet on Tau axis."

            "Mere R. & D., Jake. Calculate pressures and temperatures; beef up the vehicle accordingly-spherical, save for exterior anchors-then apply a jigger factor of four. With automatic controls quintuply redundant. Catch it when it comes out and steady it down in Earth's orbit, sixty degrees trailing-and start selling subdivisions the size of old Spanish Land Grants. Jake, we should gather enough mass to create new earths at all Trojan points, a hexagon around the Sun. Five brand-new earths would give the race room enough to. breed. On this maiden voyage let's keep our eyes open."

            Aunt Hilda looked at Zebadiah with horror. "Zebbie! Creating planets in~ deed! Who do you think you are? Jesus Christ?"

            "I'm not that junior. That's the Holy Ghost over there, scratching his belly., The Supreme Inseminator. I'm the other one, the Maker and Shaper. But ii~ setting up a pantheon for the Celestial Age, we're going to respect women'S rights, Hilda. Deety is Earth Mother; she's perfect for the job. You are Moofl Goddess, Selene. Good job, dear-more moons than earths. It fits you. You'r~ little and silvery and you wax and wane and you're beautiful in all your phaseS~ How about it? Us four and no more."

            "Quit pulling my leg!"

            My husband answered, "I haven't been pulling your leg. Come closer and I will; you have pretty legs, Step-Mother-in-Law. These things Jake and I have been discussing are practical-once we thought about the fact that the spacetime twister uses no power. Move anything anywhere-all spaces, all times. I add the plural because at first I could not see what Jake had in mind when he spoke of forced aging of a planet. Rotate Venus into the Tau axis, fetch it back along Teh axis, reinsert it centuries-or millennia-older at this point in 't' axis. Perhaps translate it a year or so into the future-our future-so as to be ready for it when it returns, all sweet and green and beautiful and ready to grow children and puppies and butterflies. Terraformed but virginal."

            Aunt Hilda looked frightened. "Jacob? Would one highball do any harm to this peanut inside me? I need a bracer."

            "I don't think so. Jane often had a drink with me while she was pregnant. Her doctor did not have her stop until her third trimester. Can't see that it hurt Deety. Deety was so healthy she drove Jane home from the hospital."

            "Pop, that's a fib. I didn't learn to drive until I was three months old. But I need one, too," I added. "Zebadiah?"

            "Certainly, Princess. A medicinal drink should be by body mass. That's half a jigger for you, Sharpie dear, a jigger for Deety, a jigger and a half for Jake- two jiggers for me."

            "Oh, how unfair!"

            "It certainly is," I agreed. "I outweigh Pop-he's been losing, I've been gaining. Pick us up and see!"

            My husband took us each around the waist, crouched, then straightened and lifted us.

            "Close to a standoff," he announced. "Pop may be a trifle heavier, but you're more cuddly"-kissed me and put us down.

            "There is no one more cuddly than Jacob!"

            "Hilda, you're prejudiced. Let's each mix our own drinks, at the strength required for our emotional and physical conditions."

            So we did-it wound up with Hilda and me each taking a jigger with soda, Pop taking a jigger and a half over ice-and Zebadiah taking a half jigger of vodka and drowning it with Coke.

            While we were sipping our "medicine," Zebadiah, sprawled out, looked up over the fireplace. "Pop, you were in the Navy?"

            "No-Army. If you count 'chair-borne infantry.' They handed me a commission for having a doctorate in mathematics, told me they needed me for ballistics. Then I spent my whole tour as a personnel officer, signing papers."

            "Standard Operating Procedure. That's a Navy sword and belt up there. Thought it might be yours."

            "It's Deety's-belonged to Jane's Grandfather Rodgers. I have a dress saber. Belonged to my Dad, who gave it to me when the Army took me. Dress blues, too. I took them with me, never had occasion to wear either." Pop got up and went into his-their bedroom, calling back, "I'll show you the saber."

            My husband said to me, "Deety, would you mind my handling your sword?"

            "My Captain, that sword is yours."

            "Heavens, dear, I can't accept an heirloom."

            "If my warlord will not permit his princess to gift him with a sword, he can leave it where it is! I've been wanting to give you a wedding present-and did not realize that I had the perfect gift for Captain John Carter."

            "My apologies, Dejah Thoris. I accept and will keep it bright. I will defend my princess with it against all enemies."

            "Helium is proud to accept. If you make a cradle of your hands, I can stand in them and reach it down."

            Zebadiah grasped me, a hand above each knee, and I was suddenly three meters tall. Sword and belt were on hooks; I lifted them down, and myself was placed down. My husband stood straight while I buckled it around him-then he dropped to one knee and kissed my hand.

            My husband is mad north-northwest but his madness suits me. I got tears in my eyes which Deety doesn't do much but Dejah Thoris seems prone to, since John Carter made her his.

            Pop and Aunt Hilda watched-then imitated, including (I saw!) tears in Hilda's eyes after she buckled on Pop's saber, when he knelt and kissed her hand.

            Zebadiah drew sword, tried its balance, sighted along its blade. "Handmade and balanced close to the hilt. Deety, your great-grandfather paid a pretty penny for this. It's an honest weapon."

            "I don't think he knew what it cost. It was presented to him."

            "For good reason, I feel certain." Zebadiah stood back, went into hanging guard, made fast moulinets vertically, left and right, then horizontally clockwise and counterclockwise-suddenly dropped into swordsman's guard- lunged and recovered, fast as a striking cat.

            I said softly to Pop, "Did you notice?"

            Pop answered quietly. "Know saber. Sword, too."

            Hilda said loudly, "Zebbie! You never told me you went to Heidelberg."

            "You never asked, Sharpie. Around the Red Ox they called me 'The Scourge of the Neckar."

            "What happened to your scars?"

            "Never got any, dear. I hung around an extra year, hoping for one. But no one got through my guard-ever. Hate to think about how many German faces I carved into checkerboards."

            "Zebadiah, was that where you took your doctorate?"

            My husband grinned and sat down, still wearing sword. "No, another school ."

            "M.I.T.?" inquired Pop.

            "Hardly. Pop, this should stay in the family. I undertook to prove that a man can get a doctorate from a major university without knowing anything and without adding anything whatever to human knowledge."

            "1 think you have a degree in aerospace engineering," Pop said flatly.

            "I'll concede that I have the requisite hours. I hold two degrees-a bacca

laureate in humane arts. . . meaning I squeaked through. . . and a doctorate from an old and prestigious school-a Ph.D. in education."

            "Zebadiah! You wouldn't!" (I was horrified.)

            "But I did, Deety. To prove that degrees per se are worthless. Often they are honorifics of true scientists or learned scholars or inspired teachers. Much more frequently they are false faces for overeducated jackasses."

            Pop said, "You'll get no argument from me, Zeb. A doctorate is a union card to get a tenured job. It does not mean that the holder thereof is wise or learned."

            "Yes, sir. I was taught it at my grandfather's knee-my Grandfather Zachariah, the man responsible for the initial 'Z' in the names of his male descendants. Deety, his influence on me was so strong that I must explain him- no, that's impossible; I must tell about him in order to explain me. . . and how I happened to take a worthless degree."

            Hilda said, "Deety, he's pulling a long bow again."

            "Quiet, woman. 'Get thee to a nunnery, go!"

            "I don't take orders from my step-son-in-law. Make that a monastery and I'll consider it."

            I kept my blinkin' mouf shut. My husband's fibs entertain me. (If they are fibs.)

            "Grandpa Zach was as cantankerous an old coot as you'll ever meet. Hated government, hated lawyers, hated civil servants, hated preachers, hated automobiles, public schools, and telephones, was contemptuous of most editors, most writers, most professors, most of almost anything. But he' overtipped waitresses and porters and would go out of his way to avoid stepping on an insect,

            "Grandpa had three doctorates: biochemistry, medicine, and law-and he regarded anyone who couldn't read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German as illiterate."

            "Zebbie, can you read all those?"

            "Fortunately for me, my grandfather had a stroke while filling out a tax form before he could ask me that question. I don't know Hebrew. I can read Latin, puzzle out Greek, speak and read French, read technical German, understand it in some accents, swear in Russian-very useful!-and speak an ungrammatical smattering of Spanish picked up in cantinas and from horizontal dictionaries.

            "Grandpa would have classed me as subliterate as I don't do any of these well-and I sometimes split infinitives which would have infuriated him. He practiced forensic medicine, medical jurisprudence, was an expert witness in toxicology, pathology, and traumatology, bullied judges, terrorized lawyers, medical students, and law students. He once threw a tax assessor out of his office and required him to return with a search warrant setting forth in detail its constitutional limitations, He regarded the income tax and the Seventeenth Amendment and the direct primary as signs of the decay of the Republic."

            "How did he feel about the Nineteenth?"

            "Hilda, Grandpa Zach supported female suffrage. I remember hearing him

say that if women were so dad-burned foolish as to want to assume the burden, they should be allowed to-they couldn't do the country more harm than men had. 'Votes for Women' didn't annoy him but nine thousand other things did. He lived at a slow simmer, always ready to break into a rolling boil.

            "He had one hobby: collecting steel engravings."

            "Steel engravings'?" I repeated.

            "Of dead presidents, my Princess. Especially of McKinley, Cleveland, and Madison-but he didn't scorn those of Washington. He had that instinct for timing so necessary to a collector. In 1929 on Black Thursday he held not one share of common stock; instead he had sold short. When the 1933 Bank Holiday came along every old-dollar he owned, except current cash, was in Zurich in Swiss money. Eventually U.S. citizens were forbidden by 'emergency' decree to own gold even abroad.

            "Grandpa Zach ducked into Canada, applied for Swiss citizenship, got it, and thereafter split his time between Europe and America, immune to inflation

and the confiscatory laws that eventually caused us to knock three zeros off ~ the old-dollar in creating the newdollar.

            "So he died rich, in Locarno-beautiful place; I stayed with him two summers as a boy. His will was probated in Switzerland and the U.S. Revenue Service could not touch it.

            "Most of it was a trust with its nature known to his offspring before his death or I would not have been named Zebadiah.

            "Female descendants got pro-rata shares of income with no strings attached but males had to have first names starting with 'Z'-and even that got them not one Swiss franc; there was a 'Root, hog, or die!' clause. Zachariah believed in taking care of daughters, but sons and grandsons had to go out and scratch, with no help from their fathers, until they had earned and saved on their own-or accumulated without going to jail-assets equal to one pro-rata share of the capital sum of the trust before they shared in the trust's income."

            "Sexism," said Aunt Hilda. "Raw, unadulterated sexism. Any FemLib gal would sneer at his dirty old money, on those terms."

            "Would you have refused it, Sharpie?"

            "Me? Zebbie dear, are you feverish? I would have both greedy hands out. I'm strong for women's rights but no fanatic. Sharpie wants to be pampered and that's what men are best at-their natural function."

            "Pop, do you need help in coping with her?"

            "No, Son. I like pampering Hilda. I don't see you abusing my daughter."

            "I don't dare; you told me she's vicious at karate." (I am good at karate; Pop made sure that I learned all the dirty fighting possible. But not against Zebadiah! If I ever do-Heaven forbid!-find myself opposed to my husband, I'll quiver my chin and cry.)

            "On my graduation from high school my father had a talk with me. 'Zeb,' he told me. 'The time has come. I'll put you through any school you choose. Or you can take what you have saved, strike out on your own, and try to qualify for a share in your grandfather's will. Suit yourself, I shan't influence you.'

            "Folks, I had to think. My father's younger brother was past forty and still hadn't qualified. The size of the trust made a pro-rata of its assets amount to a requirement that a male descendant had to get rich on his own-well-to-do at least-whereupon he was suddenly twice as rich. But with over half of this country's population living on the taxes of the lesser number it is not as easy to get rich as it was in Grandpa's day.

            "Turn down a paid-for education at Princeton, or M.I.T.? Or go out and try to get rich with nothing but a high school education?-I hadn't learned much in high school; I had majored in girls.

            "So I had to think hard and long. Almost ten seconds. I left home next day with one suitcase and a pitiful sum of money.

            "Wound up on campus that had two things to recommend it: an Aerospace R.O.T.C. that would pick up part of my expenses, and a phys. ed. department willing to award me a jockstrap scholarship in exchange for daily bruises and contusions, plus all-out effort whenever we played. I took the deal."

            "What did you play?" asked my father.

            "Football, basketball, and track-they would have demanded more had they been able to figure a way to do it."

            "I had thought you were going to mention fencing."

            "No, that's another story. These did not quite close the gap. So I also waited tables for meals-food so bad the cockroaches ate out. But that closed the gap, and I added to it by tutoring in mathematics. That gave me my start toward piling up money to qualify."

            I asked, "Did tutoring math pay enough to matter? I tutored math before Mama died; the hourly rate was low."

            "Not that sort of tutoring, Princess. I taught prosperous young optimists not to draw to inside straights, and that stud poker is not a game of chance, but that craps is, controlled by mathematical laws that cannot be flouted with impunity. To quote Grandfather Zachariah, 'A man who bets on greed and dishonesty won't be wrong too often.' There is an amazingly high percentage of greedy people and it is even easier to win from a dishonest gambler than it is from an honest one. . . and neither is likely to know the odds at craps, especially side bets, or all of the odds in poker, in particular how odds change according to the number of players, where one is seated in relation to the dealer, and how to calculate changes as cards are exposed in stud.

            "That was also how I quit drinking, my darling, except for special celebrations. In every 'friendly' game some players contribute, some take a profit; a player determined to take a profit must be neither drunk nor tired. Pop, the shadows are growing long-I don't think anybody wants to know how I got a worthless doctorate."

            "I do!" I put in. "Me, too!" echoed Aunt Hilda.

            "Son, you're outvoted."

            "Okay. Two years active duty after I graduated. Sky jockeys are even more optimistic than students and have more money-meanwhile I learned more math and engineering. Was sent inactive just in time to be called up again for the Spasm War, Didn't get hurt, I was safer than civilians. But that kept me

on another year even though fighting was mostly over before I reported in. That made me a veteran, with benefits. I went to Manhattan and signed up for school again. Doctoral candidate. School of Education. Not serious at first, simply intending to use my veteran's benefits while enjoying the benefits of being a student-and devote most of my time to piling up cash to qualify for the trust.

            "I knew that the stupidest students, the silliest professors, and the worst bull courses are concentrated in schools of education. By signing for largeclass evening lectures and the unpopular eight am. classes I figured I could spend most of my time finding out how the stock market ticked. I did, by working there, before I risked a dime.

            "Eventually I had to pick a research problem or give up the advantages of being a student. I was sick of a school in which the pie was all meringue and no filling but I stuck as I knew how to cope with courses in which the answers are matters of opinion and the opinion that counts is that of the professor. And how to cope with those large-class evening lectures: Buy the lecture notes. Read everything that professor ever published. Don't cut too often and when you do show up, get there early, sit front row center, be certain the prof catches your eye every time he looks your way-by never taking your eyes off him. Ask one question you know he can answer because you've picked it out of his published papers-and state your name in asking a question. Luckily 'Zebadiah Carter' is a name easy to remember. Family, I got straight 'A's' in both required courses and seminars. . . because I did not study 'education,' I studied professors of education.

            "But I still had to make that 'original contribution to human knowledge' without which a candidate may not be awarded a doctor's degree in most socalled disciplines. . . and the few that don't require it are a tough row to hoe.

            "I studied my faculty committee before letting myself be tied down to a research problem. . . not only reading everything each had published but also buying their publications or paying the library to make copies of out-of-print papers."

            My husband took me by my shoulders. "Dejah Thoris, here follows the title of my dissertation. You can have your divorce on your own terms."

            "Zebadiah, don't talk that way!"

            "Then brace yourself. 'An Ad-Hoc Inquiry Concerning the Optimization of the Infrastructure of Primary Educational Institutions at the Interface Between Administration and Instruction, with Special Attention to Group Dynamics Desiderata."

            "Zebbie! What does that mean?"

            "It means nothing, Hilda."

            "Zeb, quit kidding our ladies. Such a title would never be accepted."

            "Jake, it seems certain that you have never taken a course in a school of education."

            "Well. . . no. Teaching credentials are not required at university level but-"

            "But me no 'huts,' Pop. I have a copy of my dissertation; you can check its

authenticity. While that paper totally lacks meaning it is a literary gem in the sense in which a successful forging of an 'old master' is itself a work of art. It is loaded with buzz words. The average length of sentences is eightyone words. The average word length, discounting 'of,' 'a,' 'the,' and other syntactical particles, is eleven-plus letters in slightly under four syllables. The bibliography is longer than the dissertation and cites three papers of each member of my committee and four of the chairman, and those citations are quoted in part-while avoiding any mention of matters on which I knew that members of the committee held divergent (but equally stupid) opinions.

            "But the best touch was to get permission to do field work in Europe and have it count toward time on campus; half the citations were in foreign languages, ranging from Finnish to Croatian-and the translated bits invariably agreed with the prejudices of my committee. It took careful quoting out of context to achieve this, but it had the advantage that the papers were unlikely to be on campus and my committee were not likely to go to the trouble of looking them up even if they were. Most of them weren't at home in other languages, even easy ones like French, German, and Spanish.

            "But I did not waste time on phony field work; I simply wanted a trip to Europe at student air fares and the use of student hostels-dirt cheap way to travel. And a visit to the trustees of Grandpa's fund.

            "Good news! The fund was blue chips and triple-A bonds and, at that time, speculative stocks were rising. So the current cash value of the fund was down, even though income was up. And two more of my cousins and one uncle had qualified, again reducing the pro-rata. . . so, Glory Be!-I was within reaching distance. I had brought with me all that I had saved, swore before a notary that it was all mine, nothing borrowed, nothing from my father-and left it on deposit in Zurich, using the trustees as a front. And I told them about my stamp and coin collection.

            "Good stamps and coins never go down, always up. I had nothing but proof sets, first-day covers, and unbroken sheets, all in perfect condition-and had a notarized inventory and appraisal with me. The trustees got me to swear that the items I had collected before I left home had come from earned money- true, the earliest items represented mowed lawns and such-and agreed to hold the pro-rata at that day's cash value-lower if the trend continued-if I would sell my collection and send a draft to Zurich, with businesslike speed as soon as I returned to the States.

            "I agreed. One trustee took me to lunch, tried to get me liquored up-then offered me ten percent over appraisal if I would sell that very afternoon, then send it to him by courier at his expense (bonded couriers go back and forth between Europe and America every week).

            "We shook hands on it, went back and consulted the other trustees. I signed papers transferring title, the trustee buying signed his draft to me, I endorsed it to the trustees to add to the cash I was leaving in their custody. Three weeks later I got a cable certifying that the collection matched the inventory. I had qualified

            'Five months later I was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy, summa cum laude, And that, dear ones, is the shameful story of my life, Anyone have the energy to go swimming?"

            "Son, if there is a word of truth in that, it is indeed a shameful story."

            "Pop! That's not fair! Zebadiah used their rules-.-and outsmarted them!"

            "I didn't say that Zeb had anything to be ashamed of. It is a commentary on American higher education. What Zeb claims to have written is no worse than trash I know is accepted as dissertations these days. His case is the only one I have encountered wherein an intelligent and able scholar-you, Zeb- set out to show that an 'earned' Ph.D. could be obtained from a famous institution-I know which one!-in exchange for deliberately meaningless pseudoresearch. The cases I have encountered have involved button-counting by stupid and humorless young persons under the supervision of stupid and humorless old fools. I see no way to stop it; the rot is too deep. The only answer is to chuck the system and start over." My father shrugged. "Impossible."

            "Zebbie," Aunt Hulda asked, "what do you do on campus? I've never asked."

            My husband grinned. "Oh, much what you do, Sharpie."

            "I don't do anything. Enjoy myself."

            "Me, too. If you look, you will find me listed as 'research professor in residence.' An examination of the university's books would show that I am paid a stipend to match my rank. Further search would show that slightly more than that amount is paid by some trustees in Zurich to the university's general fund. . . as long as I remain on campus, a condition not written down. I like being on campus, Sharpie; it gives me privileges not granted the barbarians outside the pale. I teach a course occasionally, as supply for someone on sabbatical or ill."

            "Huh? What courses? What departments?"

            'Any department but education. Engineering mathematics. Physics OneOh-One. Thermogoddamics. Machine elements. Saber and dueling sword. Swimming, And-don't laugh-English poetry from Chaucer through the Elizabethans. I enjoy teaching something worth teaching. I don't charge for courses I teach; the Chancellor and I understand each other,"

            "I'm not sure I understand you," I said, "but I love you anyhow. Let's go swimming."

X

"'-and he had two horns like a lamb,

and he spake as a dragon'!"

Zeb:

            Before heading for the pooi our wives argued over how Barsoomian warriors dress-a debate complicated by the fact that I was the only one fairly sober. While I was telling my 'shameful story," Jake had refreshed his Scotch-onrocks and was genially argumentative, Our brides had stuck to one highball each but, while one jigger gave Deety a happy glow, Sharpie's mass is so slight that the same dosage made her squiffed.

            Jake and I agreed to wear side arms. Our princesses had buckled them on; we would wear them. But Deety wanted me to take off the grease-stained shorts I had worn while working. "Captain John Carter never wears clothes. He arrived on Barsoom naked, and from then on never wore anything but the leather and weapons of a fighting man. Jeweled leather for state occasions, plain leather for fighting-and sleeping silks at night. Barsoomians don't wear clothes. When John Carter first laid eyes on Dejah Thoris," Deety closed her eyes and recited: "She was as destitute of clothes as the Green Martians.. . save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked..." Deety opened her eyes, stared solemnly. "The women never wear clothes, just jewelry."

            "Purty shilly," said her father, with a belch. "Scuse me!"

            "When they were chilly, they wrapped furs around them, Pop. I mean 'Mors Kajak, my revered father.'"

            Jake answered with slow precision. "Not. . . 'chilly.' Silly! With a clash of blades and flash of steel, man doesn't want family treasures swinging in the breeze 'n' banging his knees. Distracts him. Might get 'em sliced off. Correc', Captain John Carter?"

            "Logical," I agreed.

            "Besides, illustrations showed men wearing breech clouts. Pro'ly steel jockstrap underneath. I would."

            "Those pictures were painted early in the twentieth century, Pop. Censored. But the stories make it clear. Weapons for men, jewelry for women-furs for cold weather."

            "I know how I should dress," put in Sharpie. "Thuvia wears jewels on bits of gauze-I remember the book cover. Not clothes. Just something to fasten jewels to. Deety-Dejah Thoris, I mean-do you have a gauze scarf I can use? Fortunately I was wearing pearls when Mors Kajak kidnapped me."

            "Sharpie," I objected, "you can't be Thuvia. She married Carthoris. Mors Kajak-or Mors Kajake, might be a misspelling-is your husband."

            "Cer'nly Mors Jake is my husband! But I'm his second wife; that explains everything. But it ill becomes the Warlord to address a princess of the House of Ptarth as 'Sharpie." Mrs. Burroughs drew herself up to her full 152 centimeters and tried to look offended.

            "My humble apologies, Your Highness."

            Sharpie giggled. "Can't stay mad at our Warlord. Dejah Thoris hon- Green tulle? Blue? Anything but white."

            "I'll go look."

            "Ladies," I objected, "if we don't get moving, the pooi will cool off. You can sew on pearls this evening. Anyhow, where do pearls come from on Barsoom? Dead sea bottoms-no oysters."

            "From Korus, the Lost Sea of Dor," Deety explained.

            "They've got you, Son. But I either go swimming right now-or I have another drink. . . and then another, and then another. Working too hard. Too tense. Too much worry."

            "Okay, Pop; we swim. Aunt H- Aunt Thuvia?"

            "All right, Dejah Thoris. To save Mors Jacob from himself. But I won't wear earthling clothes. You can have my mink cape; may be chilly coming back."

            Jake wrapped his sarong into a breech clout, strapped it in place with his saber belt. I replaced those grimy shorts with swim briefs which Deety conceded were "almost Barsoomian." I was no longer dependent on Jake's clothes; my travel kit, always in my car, once I got at it, supplied necessities from passport to poncho. Sharpie wore pearls and rings she had been wearing at her party, plus a scarf around her waist to which she attached all the costume jewelry Deety could dig up. Deety carried Hilda's mink cape-then wrapped it around her. "My Captain, someday I want one like this."

            "I'll skin the minks personally," I promised her.

            "Oh, dear! I think this is synthetic."

            "I don't. Ask Hilda."

            "I will most carefully not ask her. But I'll settle for synthetic."

            I said, "My beloved Princess, you eat meat. Minks are vicious carnivores and the ones used for fur are raised for no other purpose-not trapped. They are well treated, then killed humanely. If your ancestors had not killed for

meat and fur as the last glaciation retreated, you would not be here. Illogical sentiment leads to the sort of tragedy you find in India and Bangladesh."

            Deety was silent some moments as we followed Jake and Hilda down toward the pool. "My Captain-"

            "Yes, Princess?"

            "I stand corrected. But your brain works so much like a computer that you scare me."

            "I don't ever want to scare you. I'm not bloodthirsty-not with minks, not with steers, not with anything. But I'll kill without hesitation.. . for you."

            "Zebadiah-"

            "Yes, Deety?"

            "I am proud that you made me your wife. I will try to be a good wife. . . and your princess."

            "You do. You have. You always will. Dejah Thoris, my princess and only love, until I met you, I was a boy playing with oversized toys. Today I am a man. With a wife to protect and cherish. . . a child to plan for. I'm truly alive, at last! Hey! What are you sniffling about? Stop it!"

            "I'll cry if I feel like it!"

            "Well. . . don't get it on Hilda's cape."

            "Gimme a hanky."

            "I don't even have a Kleenex." I brushed away her tears with my fingers. "Sniff hard. You can cry on me tonight. In bed."

            "Let's go to bed early."

            "Right after dinner. Sniffles all gone?"

            "I think so. Do pregnant women always cry?"

            "So I hear."

            "Well. . . I'm not going to do it again. No excuse for it; I'm terribly happy."

            "The Polynesians do something they call 'Crying happy.' Maybe that's what you do."

            "I guess so. But I'll save it for private." Deety started to shrug the cape off. "Too hot, lovely as it feels." She stopped with the cape off her shoulders, suddenly pulled it around her again. "Who's coming up the hill?"

            I looked up, saw that Jake and Hilda had reached the pool-and a figure was appearing from below, beyond the boulder that dammed it.

            "I don't know. Stay behind me." I hurried toward the pool.

            The stranger was dressed as a Federal Ranger. As I closed in, I heard the stranger say to Jake, "Are you Jacob Burroughs?"

            "Why do you ask?"

            "Are you or aren't you? If you are, I have business with you. If you're not, You're trespassing. Federal land, restricted access."

            "Jake!" I called out. "Who is he?"

            The newcomer turned his head. "Who are you?"

            "Wrong sequence," I told him. "You haven't identified yourself."

            "Don't be funny," the stranger said. "You know this uniform. I'm Bennie Hibol, the Ranger hereabouts."

            I answered most carefully, "Mr. Highball, you are a man in a uniform, wearing a gun belt and a shield. That doesn't make you a Federal officer. Show your credentials and state your business."

            The uniformed character sighed. "I got no time to listen to smart talk." He rested his hand on the butt of his gun. "If one of you is Burroughs, speak up. I'm going to search this site and cabin. There's stuff coming up from Sonora; this sure as hell is the transfer point."

            Deety suddenly came out from behind me, moved quickly and placed herself beside her father. "Where's your search warrant? Show your authority!" She had the cape clutched around her; her face quivered with indignation.

            "Another joker!" This clown snapped open his holster. "Federal land-here's my authority!"

            Deety suddenly dropped the cape, stood naked in front of him. I drew, lunged, and cut down in one motion-slashed the wrist, recovered, thrust upward from low line into the belly above the gun belt.

            As my point entered, Jake's saber cut the side of the neck almost to decapitation. Our target collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, lay by the pool, bleeding at three wounds.

            "Zebadiah, I'm sorry!"

            "About what, Princess?" I asked as I wiped my blade on the alleged ranger's uniform. I noticed the color of the blood with distaste.

            "He didn't react! I thought my strip act would give you more time."

            "You did distract him," I reassured her. "He watched you and didn't watch me. Jake, what kind of a creature has bluish green blood?"

            "I don't know."

            Sharpie came forward, squatted down, dabbed a finger in the blood, sniffed it. "Hemocyanin. I think," she said calmly. "Deety, you were right. Alien. The largest terrestrial fauna with that method of oxygen transport is a lobster. But this thing is no lobster, it's a 'Black Hat.' How did you know?"

            "I didn't. But he didn't sound right. Rangers are polite. And they never fuss about showing their I.D.'s."

            "I didn't know," I admitted. "I wasn't suspicious, just annoyed."

            "You moved mighty fast," Jake approved.

            "I never know why till it's over. You didn't waste time yourself, tovarishch. Drawing saber while he was pulling a gun-that takes guts and speed. But let's not talk now-where are his pals? We may be picked off getting back to the house."

            "Look at his pants," Hilda suggested. "He hasn't been on horseback. Hasn't climbed far, either. Jacob, is there a jeep trail?"

            "No. This isn't accessible by jeep-just barely by horse."

            "Hasn't been anything overhead," I added. "No chopper, no air car."

            "Continua craft," said Deety.

            "Huh?"

            "Zebadiah, the 'Black Hats' are aliens who don't want Pop to build a timespace machine. We know that. So it follows that they have continua craft.

            I thouaht about it. "Deety. I'm going to bring you breakfast in bed. Jake, how do we spot an alien continua craft? It doesn't have to look like Gay Deceiver."

            Jake frowned. "No. Any shape. But a one-passenger craft might not be much larger than a phone booth."

            "If it's a one-man-one-alien-job, it should be parked down in that scrub," I said, pointing. "We can find it."

            "Zebadiah," protested Deety, "we don't have time to search. We ought to get out of here! Fast!"

            Jake said, "My daughter is right but not for that reason. Its craft is not necessarily waiting. It could be parked an infinitesimal interval away along any of six axes, and either return automatically, preprogrammed, or by some method of signaling that we can postulate but not describe. The alien craft would not be here-now. . . but will be here-later. For pickup."

            "In that case, Jake, you and I and the gals should scram out of here-now to there-then. Be missing. How long has our pressure test been running? What time is it?"

            "Seventeen-seventeen," Deety answered instantly.

            I looked at my wife. "Naked as a frog. Where do you hide your watch, dearest? Surely, not there."

            She stuck out her tongue. "Smarty. I have a clock in my head. I never mention it because people give me funny looks."

            "Deety does have innate time sense," agreed her father, "accurate to thirteen seconds plus or minus about four seconds; I've measured it."

            "I'm sorry, Zebadiah-I don't mean to be a freak."

            "Sorry about what, Princess? I'm impressed. What do you do about time zones?"

            "Same as you do. Add or subtract as necessary. Darling, everyone has a built-in circadian. Mine is merely more nearly exact than most people's. Like having absolute pitch-some do, some don't."

            "Are you a lightning calculator?"

            "Yes. . . but computers are so much faster that I no longer do it much. Except one thing- I can sense a glitch-spot a wrong answer. Then I look for garbage in the program. If I don't find it, I send for a hardware specialist. Look, sweetheart, discuss my oddities later. Pop, let's dump that thing down the septic tank and go. I'm nervous, I am."

            "Not so fast, Deety." Hilda was still squatting by the corpse. "Zebbie. Consult your hunches. Are we in danger?"

            "Well . . . not this instant."

            "Good. I want to dissect this creature."

            "Aunt Hilda!"

            "Take a Miltown, Deety. Gentlemen, the Bible or somebody said, 'Know thy enemy.' This is the only 'Black Hat' we've seen. . . and he's not human and not born on earth. There is a wealth of knowledge lying here and it ought not to be shoved down a septic tank until we know more about it. Jacob, feel this."

            Hilda's husband got down on his knees, let her guide his hand through the "ranger's" hair. "Feel those bumps, dearest?"

            "Yes!"

            "Much like the budding horns of a lamb, are they not?"

            "Oh- 'And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon'!"

            I squatted down, felt for horn buds. "Be damned! He did come up out of the earth-up this slope anyhow-and he spake as a dragon. Talked unfriendly, and all the dragons I've ever heard of talked mean or belched fire. Hilda, when you field-strip this critter, keep an eye out for the Number of the Beast."

            "I shall! Who's going to help me get this specimen up to the house? I want three volunteers."

            Deety gave a deep sigh, "I volunteer. Aunt Hilda.. . must you do this?"

            "Deety, it ought to be done at Johns Hopkins, with x-ray and proper tools and color holovision. But I'm the best biologist for it because I'm the only biologist. Honey child, you don't have to watch. Aunt Sharpie has helped in an emergency room after a five-car crash; to me, blood is just a mess to clean up. Green blood doesn't bother me even that much."

            Deety gulped. "I'll help carry. I said I would!"

            "Dejah Thoris!"

            "Sir? Yes, my Captain?"

            "Back away from that. Take this. And this." I unbuckled sword and belt, shoved down my swimming briefs, handed all of it to Deety. "Jake, help me get him up into fireman's carry."

            "I'll help carry, Son."

            "No, I can tote him easier than two could. Sharpie, where do you want to work?"

            "It will have to be the dining table."

            "Aunt Hilda, I don't want that thing on my-! I beg your pardon; it's your dining table."

            "You're forgiven only if you'll concede that it is our dining table. Deety, how many times must I repeat that I am not crowding you out of your home? We are co-housewives-my only seniority lies in being twenty years older. To my regret."

            "Hilda my dear one, what would you say to a workbench in the garage with a drop cloth on it and flood lights over it?"

            "I say, 'Swell!' I don't think a dining table is the place for a dissection, either. But I couldn't think of anywhere else."

            With help from Jake, I got that damned carcass draped across my shoulders in fireman's carry. Deety started up the path with me, carrying my belt and sword and my briefs in one arm so that she could hold my free hand-despite my warning that she might be splashed with alien blood. "No, Zebadiah, I got overtaken by childishness. I won't let it happen again. I must conquer all squeamishness-I'll be changing diapers soon." She was silent a moment. "That is the first time I've seen death. In a person, I mean. An alien humanoid person I should say. . . but I thought he was a man. I once saw a puppy run over-I threw up. Even though it was not my puppy and I didn't go close." She added, "An adult should face up to death, should she not?"

            "Face up to it, yes," I agreed. "But not grow calloused. Deety, I've seen too

many men die. I've never grown inured to it. One must accept death, learn not to fear it, then never worry about it. 'Make Today Count!' as a friend whose days are numbered told me. Live in that spirit and when death comes, it will come as a welcome friend."

            "You say much what my mother told me before she died."

            "Your mother must have been an extraordinary woman. Deety, in the two weeks I've known you, I've heard so much about her from all three of you that I feel as if I knew her. A friend I hadn't seen lately. She sounds like a wise woman."

            "I think she was, Zebadiah. Certainly she was good. Sometimes, when I have a hard choice, I ask myself, 'What would Mama do?'-and everything falls into place."

            "Both good and wise. . . and her daughter shows it. Uh, how old are you, Deety?"

            "Does it matter, sir?"

            "No. Curiosity."

            "I wrote my birth date on our marriage license application."

            "Beloved, my head was spinning so hard that I had trouble remembering my own. But I should not have asked-women have birthdays, men have ages. I want to know your birthday; I have no need to know the year."

            "April twenty-second, Zebadiah-one day older than Shakespeare."

            "Age could not wither her-' Woman, you carry your years well."

            "Thank you, sir."

            "That snoopy question came from having concluded in my mind that you were twenty-six.. . figuring from the fact that you have a doctor's degree. Although you look younger."

            "I think twenty-six is a satisfactory age."

            "I wasn't asking," I said hastily. "I got confused from knowing Hilda's age. . . then hearing her say that she is-or claims to be-twenty years older than you. It did not jibe with my earlier estimate, based on your probable age on graduating from high school plus your two degrees."

            Jake and Hilda had lingered at the pool while Jake washed his hands and rinsed from his body smears of alien ichor. Being less burdened, they climbed the path faster than we and came up behind us just as Deety answered,

            "Zebadiah, I never graduated from high school."

            "That's right," agreed her father. "Deety matriculated by taking College Boards. At fourteen. No problem since she stayed home and didn't have to live in a dorm. Got her B.S. in three years. . . and that was a happy thing, as Jane lived to see Deety move the tassel from one side of her mortar board to the other. Jane in a wheelchair and happy as a child-her doctor said it couldn't hurt her.. . meaning she was dying anyhow." He added, "Had her mother been granted only three more years she could have seen Deety's doctorate conferred, two years ago."

            "Pop. . . sometimes you chatter."

            "Did I say something out of line?"

            "No, Jake," I assured him. "But I've just learned that I robbed the cradle. I knew I had but hadn't realized how much. Deety darling, you are twentytwo."

            "Is twenty-two an unsatisfactory age?"

            "No, my Princess. Just right."

            "My Captain said that women have birthdays while men have ages. Is it permitted to inquire your age, sir? I didn't pay close attention to that form we had to fill out, either."

            I answered solemnly. "But Dejah Thoris knows that Captain John Carter is centuries old, cannot recall his childhood, and has always looked thirty years old."

            "Zebadiah, if that is your age, you've had a busy thirty years. You said you left home when you graduated from high school, worked your way through college, spent three years on active duty, then worked your way through a doctor's degree-"

            "A phony one!"

            "That doesn't reduce required residence. Aunt Hilda says you've been a professor four years."

            "Uh. . . will you settle for nine years older than you are?"

            "I'll settle for whatever you say."

            "He's at it again," put in Sharpie. "He was run off two other campuses. Coed scandals. Then he found that in California nobody cared, so he moved west."

            I tried to look hurt. "Sharpie darling, I always married them. One gal turned out already to be married and in the other case the child wasn't mine; she slipped one over on me."

            "The truth isn't in him, Deety. But he's brave and he bathes every day and he's rich-and we love him anyhow."

            "The truth isn't in you either, Aunt Hilda. But we love you anyhow. It says in 'Little Women' that a bride should be half her husband's age plus seven years. Zebadiah and I hit close to that."

            "A rule that makes an old hag out of me. Jacob, I'm just Zebbie's age- thirty-one. But we've both been thirty-one for ages."

            "I'll bet he does feel aged after carrying that thing uphill. Atlas, can you support your burden while I get the garage open, a bench dragged out and covered? Or shall I help you put it down?"

            "I'd just have to pick it up again. But don't dally."

XI

"-citizens must protect themselves."

Zeb:

            I felt better after I got that "ranger's" corpse dumped and the garage door closed, everyone indoors. I had told Hilda that I felt no "immediate" danger- but my wild talent does not warn me until the Moment of Truth. The "Blokes in the Black Hats" had us located. Or possibly had never lost us; what applies to human gangsters has little to do with aliens whose powers and motives and plans we had no way to guess.

            We might be as naive as a kitten who thinks he is hidden because his head is, unaware that his little rump sticks out.

            They were alien, they were powerful, they were multiple (three thousand? three million?-we didn't know the Number of the Beast)-and they knew where we were. True, we had killed one-by luck, not by planning. That "ranger" would be missed; we could expect more to call in force.

            Foolhardiness has never appealed to me. Given a chance to run, I run. I don't mean I'll bug out on wing mate when the unfriendlies show up, and certainly not on a wife and unborn child. But I wanted us all to run-me, my wife, my blood brother who was also my father-in-law, and his wife, my chum Sharpie who was brave, practical, smart, and unsqueamish (that she would joke in the jaws of Moloch was not a fault but a source of esprit).

            I wanted us to go!-Tau axis, Teh axis, rotate, translate, whatever-anywhere not infested by gruesomes with green gore.

            I checked the gauge and felt better; Gay's inner pressure had not dropped. ~'oo much to expect Gay to be a spaceship-not equipped to scavenge and

replenish air. But it was pleasant to know that she would hold pressure much longer than it would take us to scram for home if we had to-assuming that unfriendlies had not shot holes in her graceful shell.

            I went by the inside passageway into the cabin, used soap and hot water, rinsed off and did it again, dried down and felt clean enough to kiss my wife, which I did. Deety held onto me and reported.

            "Your kit is packed, sir. I'm finishing mine, the planned weight and space, and nothing but practical clothes-"

            "Sweetheart."

            "Yes, Zebadiah?"

            "Take the clothes you were married in and mine too. Same for Jake and Hilda. And your father's dress uniform. Or was it burned in Logan?"

            "But, Zebadiah, you emphasized rugged clothes."

            "So I did. To keep your mind on the fact that we can't guess the conditions we'll encounter and don't know how long we'll be gone or if we'll be back. So I listed everything that might be useful in pioneering a virgin planet-since we might be stranded and never get home. Everything from Jake's microscope and water-testing gear to technical manuals and tools. And weapons-and flea powder. But it's possible that we will have to play the roles of ambassadors for humanity at the court of His Extreme Majesty, Overlord of Galactic Empires in thousandth-and-third continuum. We may need the gaudiest clothes we can whip up. We don't know, we can't guess."

            "I'd rather pioneer."

            "We may not have a choice. When you were figuring weights, do you recall spaces marked 'Assigned mass such and such-list to come'?"

            "Certainly. Total exactly one hundred kilos, which seemed odd. Space slightly less than one cubic meter split into crannies."

            "Those are yours, snubnose. And Pop or Hilda. Mass can be up to fifty percent over; I'll tell Gay to trim to match. Got an old doll? A security blanket? A favorite book of poems? Scrapbook? Family photographs? Bring 'em all!"

            "Golly!" (I never enjoy looking at my wife quite so much as when she lights up and is suddenly a little girl.)

            "Don't leave space for me. I have only what I arrived with. What about shoes for Hilda?"

            "She claims she doesn't need any, Zebadiah-that her calluses are getting calluses on them. But I've worked out expedients. I got Pop some Dr. Scholl's shoe liners when we were building; I have three pairs left and can trim them. Liners and enough bobby sox make her size three-and-half feet fit my clodhoppers pretty well. And I have a sentimental keepsake; Keds Pop bought me when I first went to summer camp, at ten. They fit Aunt Hilda."

            "Good girl!" I added, "You seem to have everything in hand. How about food? Not stores we are carrying, I mean now. Has anybody thought about dinner? Killing aliens makes me hungry."

            "Buffet style, Zebadiah. Sandwiches and stuff on the kitchen counter, and I thawed and heated an apple pie. I fed one sandwich to Hilda, holding it for

her; she says she's going to finish working, then scrub before she eats anything more."

            "Sharpie munched a sandwich while she carved that thing?"

            "Aunt Hilda is rugged, Zebadiah-almost as rugged as you are."

            "More rugged than I am. I could do an autopsy if I had to-but not while eating. I think I speak for Jake, too."

            "I know you speak for Pop. He saw me feeding her, turned green and went elsewhere. Go look at what she's been doing, Zebadiah; Hilda has found interesting things."

            "Hmmm- Are you the little girl who had a tizzy at the idea of dissecting a dead alien?"

            "No, sir, I am not. I've decided to stay grown up. It's not easy. But it's more satisfying. An adult doesn't panic at a snake; she just checks to see if it's got rattles. I'll never squeal again. I'm grown up at last. . . a wife instead of a pampered princess."

            "You will always be my Princess!"

            "I hope so, my Chieftain. But to merit that, I must learn to be a pioneer mother-wring the neck of a rooster, butcher a hog, load while my husband shoots, take his place and his rifle when he is wounded. I'll learn-I'm stubborn, I am. Grab a hunk of pie and go see Hilda. I know just what to do with the extra hundred kilos: books, photographs, Pop's microfilm files and portable viewer, Pop's rifle and a case of ammo that the weight schedule didn't allow for-"

            "Didn't know he had it-what calibre?"

            "Seven point six two millimeters, long cartridge."

            "Glory be! Pop and I use the same ammo!"

            "Didn't know you carried a rifle, Zebadiah."

            "I don't advertise it, it's unlicensed. I must show all of you how to get at it."

            "Got any use for a lady's purse gun? A needle gun, Skoda fléchettes. Not much range but either they poison or they break up and expand. . . and it fires ninety times on one magazine."

            "What are you, Deety? Honorable Hatchet Man?"

            "No, sir. Pop got it for me-black market-when I started working nights. He said he would rather hire shysters to get me acquitted-or maybe probation-than to have to go down to the morgue to identify my body. Haven't had to use it; in Logan I hardly need it. Zebadiah, Pop has gone to a great deal of trouble to get me the best possible training in self-defense. He's just as highly trained-that's why I keep him out of fist fights. Because it would be a massacre. He and Mama decided this when I was a baby. Pop says cops and courts no longer protect citizens, so citizens must protect themselves."

            "I'm afraid he's right."

            "My husband, I can't evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven't lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs."

            "Deety, your parents did okay."

            "I think so. . . but that's subjective. As may be, I was kept out of blackboard jungles-public schools-until we moved to Utah. And I was trained to fight- armed or unarmed. Pop and I noticed how you handled a sword. Your moulinets are like clockwork. And when you drop into point guard, your forearm is perfectly covered."

            "Jake is no slouch. He drew so fast I never saw it, and cut precisely above the collar."

            "Pop says you are better at it."

            "Mmm- Longer reach. He's probably faster. Deety, the best swordmaster I ever had was your height and reach. I couldn't even cross blades with him unless he allowed me to."

            "You never did say where you had taken up swordsmanship."

            I grinned down at her. "Y.M.C.A. in downtown Manhattan. I had foil in high school. I fiddled with saber and épée in college. But I never encountered swordsmen until I moved to Manhattan. Took it up because I was getting soft. Then during that so-called 'research trip' in Europe I met swordsmen with family tradition-sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of maItres d'armes. Learned that it was a way of life-and I had started too late. Deety, I fibbed to Hilda; I've never fought a student duel. But I did train in saber in Heidelberg under the Säbelmeister reputed to coach one underground Korps. He was the little guy I couldn't cross steel with. Fast! Up to then I had thought I was fast. But I got faster under his tutelage. The day I was leaving he told me that he wished he had had me twenty years sooner; he might have made a swordsman of me."

            "You were fast enough this afternoon!"

            "No, Deety. You had his eye, I attacked from the flank. You won that fight- not me, not Pop. Although what Pop did was far more dangerous than what I did."

            "My Captain, I will not let you disparage yourself! I cannot hear you!"

            Women, bless their warm hearts and strange minds-Deety had appointed me her hero; that settled it. I would have to try to measure up. I cut a piece of apple pie, ate it quickly while I walked slowly through the passage into the garage-didn't want to reach the "morgue" still eating.

            The "ranger" was on its back with clothes cut away, open from chin to crotch, and spread. Nameless chunks of gizzard were here and there around the cadaver. It gave off a fetid odor.

            Hilda was still carving, ice tongs in left hand, knife in her right, greenish goo up over her wrists. As I approached she put down the knife, picked up a razor blade-did not look up until I spoke. "Learning things, Sharpie?"

            She put down her tools, wiped her hands on a towel, pushed back her hair with her forearm. "Zebbie, you wouldn't believe it."

            "Try me."

            "Well. . . look at this." She touched the corpse's right leg, and spoke to the corpse itself. "What's a nice joint like this doing in a girl like you?"

            I saw what she meant: a long, gaunt leg with an extra knee lower than the

human knee; it bent backwards. Looking higher, I saw that its arms had similar extra articulation. "Did you say 'girl'?"

            "I said 'girl.' Zebbie, this monster is either female or hermaphroditic. A fully developed uterus, two-horned like a cat, one ovary above each horn. But there appear to be testes lower down and a dingus that may ~e a retractable phallus. Female-but probably male as well. Bisexual but does not impregnate itself; the plumbing wouldn't hook up. I think these critters can both pitch and catch."

            "Taking turns? Or simultaneously?"

            "Wouldn't that be sump'n? No, for mechanical reasons I think they take turns. Whether ten minutes apart or ten years, deponent sayeth not. But I'd give a pretty to see two of 'em going to it!"

            "Sharpie, you've got a one-track mind."

            "It's the main track. Reproduction is the main track; the methods and mores of sexual copulation are the central feature of all higher developments of life."

            "You're ignoring money and television."

            "Piffle! All human activities including scientific research are either mating dances and care of the young, or the dismal sublimations of born losers in the only game in town. Don't try to kid Sharpie. Took me forty-two years to grab a real man and get myself knocked up-but I made it! Everything I've done up to the last two weeks has been 'vamp till ready.' How about you, you shameless stud? Am I not right? Careful how you answer; I'll tell Deety."

            "I'll take the Fifth."

            "Make mine a quart. Zebbie, I hate these monsters; they interfere with my plans-a rose-covered cottage, a baby in the crib, a pot roast in the oven, me in a gingham dress, and my man coming down the lane after a hard day flunking freshmen-me with his slippers and his pipe and a dry martini waiting for him. Heaven! All else is vanity and vexation. Four fully developed mammary glands but lacking the redundant fat characteristic of the human female-'cept me, damn it. A double stomach, a single intestine. A two-compartment heart that seems to pump by peristalsis rather than by beating. Cordate. I haven't examined the brain; I don't have a proper saw-but it must be as well developed as ours. Definitely humanoid, outrageously nonhuman. Don't knock over those bottles; they are specimens of body fluids."

            "What are these things?"

            "Splints to conceal the unhuman articulation. Plastic surgery on the face, too, I'm pretty sure, and cheaters to reshape the skull. The hair is fake; these Boojums don't have hair. Somethinglike tattooing-or maybe masking I haven't been able to peel off-to make the face and other exposed skin look human instead of blue-green. Zeb, seven-to-two a large number of missing persons have been used as guinea pigs before they worked out methods for this masquerade. Swoop! A flying saucer dips down and two more guinea pigs wind up in their laboratories."

            "There hasn't been a flying saucer scare in years."

            "Poetic license, dear. If they have space-time twisters, they can pop up

anywhere, steal what they want-or replace a real human with a convincing fake-and be gone like switching off a light."

            "This one couldn't get by very long. Rangers have to take physical examinations."

            "This one may be a rush job, prepared just for us. A permanent substitution might fool anything but an x-ray-and might fool even x-ray if the doctor giving the examination was one of Them. . . a theory you might think about. Zebbie, I must get to work. There is so much to learn and so little time. I can't learn a fraction of what this carcass could tell a real comparative biologist."

            "Can I help?" (I was not anxious to.)

            "Well-"

            "I haven't much to do until Jake and Deety finish assembling the last of what they are going to take. So what can I do to help?"

            "I could work twice as fast if you would take pictures. I have to stop to wipe my hands before I touch the camera."

            "I'm your boy, Sharpie. Just say what angle, distance, and when."

            Hilda looked relieved. "Zebbie, have I told you that I love you despite your gorilla appearance and idiot grin? Underneath you have the soul of a cherub. I want a bath so badly I can taste it-could be the last hot bath in a long time. And the bidet-the acme of civilized decadence. I've been afraid I would still be carving strange meat when Jacob said it was time to leave."

            "Carve away, dear; you'll get your bath." I picked up the camera, the one Jake used for record-keeping: a Polaroid Stereo-Instamatic-self-focusing, automatic irising, automatic processing, the perfect camera for engineer or scientist who needs a running record.

            I took endless pictures while Hilda sweated away. "Sharpie, doesn't it worry you to work with bare hands? You might catch the Never-Get-Overs."

            "Zebbie, if these critters could be killed by our bugs, they would have arrived here with no immunities and died quickly. They didn't. Therefore it seems likely that we can't by hurt by their bugs. Radically different biochemistries."

            It sounded logical-but I could not forget Kettering's Law: "Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence."

            Deety appeared, set down a loaded hamper. "That's the last." She had her hair up in a bath knot and was dressed solely in rubber gloves. "Hi, dearest. Aunt Hilda, I'm ready to help."

            "Not much you can do, Deety hon-unless you want to relieve Zebbie."

            Deety was staring at the corpse and did not look happy-her nipples were down flat. "Go take a bath!" I told her. "Scram."

            "Do I stink that badly?"

            "You stink swell, honey girl. But Sharpie pointed out that this may be our last chance at soap and hot water in quite a while. I've promised her that we won't leave for Canopus and points east until she has her bath. So get yours out of the way, then you can help me stow while she gets sanitary."

            "All right." Deety backed off and her nipples showed faintly-not rigid but

she was feeling better. My darling keeps her feelings out of her face, mostly- but those pretty pink spigots are barometers of her morale.

            "Just a sec, Deety," Hilda added. "This afternoon you said, 'He didn't react!' What did you mean?"

            "What I said. Strip in front of a man and he reacts, one way or another. Even if he tries to ignore it, his eyes give him away. But he didn't. Of course he's not a man-but I didn't know that when I tried to distract him."

            I said, "But he did notice you, Deety-and that gave me my chance."

            "But only the way a dog, or a horse, or any animal, will notice any movement. He noticed but ignored it. No reaction."

            "Zebbie, does that remind you of anything?"

            "Should it?"

            "The first day we were here you told us a story about a 'zaftig co-ed."

            "I did?"

            "She was flunking math."

            "Oh! 'Brainy."

            "Yes, Professor N. O'Heret Brain. See any parallel?"

            "But 'No Brain' has been on campus for years. Furthermore he turns red in the face. Not a tattoo job."

            "I said this one might be a rush job. Would anyone be in a better position to discredit a mathematical theory than the head of the department of mathematics at a very prominent university? Especially if he was familiar with that theory and knew that it was correct?"

            "Hey, wait a minute!" put in Deety. "Are you talking about that professor who argued with Pop? The one with the phony invitation? I thought he was just a stooge? Pop says he's a fool."

            "He behaves like a pompous old fool," agreed Hilda. "I can't stand him. I plan to do an autopsy on him."

            "But he's not dead."

            "That can be corrected!" Sharpie said sharply.

XII

"They might fumigate this planet and take it."

Hilda:

            By the time I was out of my bath, Jacob, Deety, and Zebbie had Gay Deceiver stowed and lists checked (can opener, cameras, et cetera)-even samples of fluids and tissues from the cadaver, as Zebbie's miracle car had a small refrigerator. Deety wasn't happy about my specimens being in the refrigerator but they were very well packed, layer on layer of plastic wrap, then sealed into a freezer box. Besides, that refrigerator contained mostly camera film, dyna

mite caps, and other noneatables. Food was mostly freeze-dried and sealed in nitrogen, except foods that won't spoil.

            We were dog tired. Jacob moved that we sleep, then leave. "Zeb, unless you expect a new attack in the next eight hours, we should rest. I need to be clearheaded in handling verniers. This house is almost a fortress, will be pitch black, and does not radiate any part of the spectrum. They may conclude that we ran for it right after we got their boy-hermaphrodite, I mean; the fake 'ranger'-what do you think?"

            "Jake, I wouldn't have been surprised had we been clobbered at any moment. Since they didn't- Well, I don't like to handle Gay when I'm not sharp. More mistakes are made in battle through fatigue than from any other cause. Let's sack 'in. Anybody need a sleeping pill?"

            "All I need is a bed. Hilda my love, tonight I sleep on my own side."

            I said, "Can't I even cuddle up your back?"

            "Promise not to tickle?"

            I made a face at my darling. "I promise."

            "Zebadiah," Deety said. "I don't want to cuddle; I want to be held. . . so I'll know I'm safe. For the first time since my twelfth birthday I don't feel sexy."

            "Princess, it's settled; we sleep. But I suggest that we be up before daylight. Let's not crowd our luck."

            "Sensible," agreed Jacob.

            I shrugged. "You men have to pilot; Deety and I are cargo. We can nap in the back seats-if we miss a few universes, what of it? If you've seen one universe, you've seen 'em all. Deety?"

            "If it were up to me, I would lam out of here so fast my shoes would be left standing. But Zebadiah has to pilot and Pop has to set verniers. . . and both are tired and don't want to chance it. But, Zebadiah. . . don't fret if I rest with my eyes and ears open."

            "Huh? Deety-why?"

            "Somebody ought to be on watch. It might give us that split-second advantage-split seconds have saved us at least twice. Don't worry, darling; I often skip a night to work a long program under shared time. Doesn't hurt me; a nap next day and I'm ready to bite rattlesnakes. Tell him, Pop."

            "That's correct, Zeb, but-"

            Zebbie cut him off. "Maybe you gals can split watches and have breakfast ready. Right now I've got to hook up Gay Deceiver so that she can reach me in our bedroom. Deety, I can add a program so that she can listen around the cabin, too. Properly programmed, Gay's the best watch dog of any of us. Will that satisfy you duty-struck little broads?"

            Deety said nothing so I kept quiet. Zebbie, frowning, turned back to his car, opened a door and prepared to hook Gay's voice and ears to the three house intercoms. "Want to shift the basement talky-talk to your bedroom, Jake?"

            "Good idea," Jacob agreed.

            "Wait a half while I ask Gay what she has. Hello, Gay."

            "Howdy, Zeb. Wipe off your chin."

            "Program. Running new retrievals. Report new items since last report."

            "Null report, Boss."

            "Thank you, Gay."

            "You're welcome, Zeb."

            "Program, Gay. Add running news retrieval. Area, Arizona Strip north of Grand Canyon plus Utah. Persons: all persons listed in current running news retrieval programs plus rangers, Federal rangers, forest rangers, park rangers, state rangers. End of added program."

            "New program running, Boss."

            "Program. Add running acoustic report, maximum gain."

            "New program running, Zeb."

            "You're a smart girl, Gay."

            "Isn't it time you married me?"

            "Good night, Gay."

            "Good night, Zeb. Sleep with your hands outside the covers."

            "Deety, you've corrupted Gay. I'll run a lead outdoors for a microphone

while Jake moves the basement intercom to the master bedroom. But maximum gain will put a coyote yapping ten miles away right into bed with you. Jake, I can tell Gay to subtract acoustic report from the news retrieval for your bedroom."

            "Hilda my love, do you want the acoustic subtracted?"

            I didn't but didn't say so; Gay interrupted:

            "Running news retrieval, Boss."

            "Report!"

            "Reuters, Straits Times, Singapore. Tragic News of Marston Expedition. Indonesian News Service, Palembang. Two bodies identified as Dr. Cecil Yang and Dr. Z. Edward Carter were brought by jungle buggy to National Militia Headquarters, Telukbetung. The district commandant stated that they will be transferred by air to Palembang for further transport to Singapore when the commandant-in-chief releases them to the Minister of Tourism and Culture. Professor Marston and Mr. Smythe-Belisha are still unreported. Commandants of both districts concede that hopes of finding them alive have diminished. However, a spokesman for the Minister of Tourism and Culture assured a press conference that the Indonesian government would pursue the search more assiduously than ever."

            Zebbie whistled tunelessly. Finally, he said, "Opinions, anyone?"

            "He was a brilliant man, Son," my husband said soberly. "An irreplaceable loss. Tragic."

            "Ed was a good Joe, Jake. But that's not what I mean. Our tactical situation. Now. Here."

            My husband paused before answering, "Zeb, whatever happened in Sumatra apparently happened about a month ago. Emotionally I feel great turmoil. Logically I am forced to state that I cannot see that our situation has changed."

            "Hilda? Deety?"

            "News retrieval report," announced Gay.

            "Report!"

            "AP San Francisco via satellite from Saipan, Marianas. TWA hypersonicsemiballistic liner Winged Victory out of San Francisco International at twenty o'clock this evening Pacific Coast Time was seen by eye and radar to implode on reentry. AP Honolulu US Navy Official. USS Submersible Carrier Flying Fish operating near Wake Island has been ordered to proceed flank speed toward site of Winged Victory reentry. She will surface and launch search craft at optimum point. Navy PlO spokesman, when asked what was 'optimum,' replied 'No comment.' Associated Press's military editor noted that submerged speed of Flying Fish class, and type and characteristics of craft carried, are classified information. AP-UPI add San Francisco, Winged Victory disaster. TWA public relations released a statement quote if reports received concerning Winged Victory are correct it must be tentatively assumed that no survivors can be expected. But our engineering department denies that implosion could be cause. Collision with orbital debris decaying into atmosphere or even a strike by a meteor could repeat could endrep cause disaster by mischance so

unlikely that it can only be described as an Act of God endquote TWA spokesmen released passenger list by order of the Civil Aerospace Board. List follows:

California-"

            The list was longish. I did not recognize any names until Gay reached: "Doctor Neil 0. Brain-"

            I gasped. But no one said a word until Gay announced:

            "End running news retrieval."

            "Thank you, Gay."

            "A pleasure, Zeb."

            Zebbie said, "Professor?"

            "You're in command, Captain!"

            "Very well, sir! All of you-lifeboat rules! I expect fast action and no back talk. Estimated departure-five minutes! First everybody take a pee! Second, put on the clothes you'll travel in. Jake, switch off, lock up-whatever you do to secure your house for long absence. Deety-follow Jake, make sure he hasn't missed anything-then you, not Jake, switch out lights and close doors. Hilda, bundle what's left of that Dutch lunch and fetch it-fast, not fussy. Check the refrigerator for solid foods-no liquids-and cram what you can into Gay's refrigerator. Don't dither over choices. Questions, anyone? Move!"

            I gave Jacob first crack at our bathroom because the poor dear tenses up; I used the time to slide sandwiches into a freezer sack and half a pie into another. Potato salad? Scrape it into a third and stick in one plastic picnic spoon; germs were now community property. I stuffed this and some pickles into the biggest freezer sack Deety stocked, and closed it.

            Jake came out of our bedroom; I threw him a kiss en passant, ducked into our john, turned on water in the basin, sat down, and recited mantras-that often works when I'm jumpy-then used the bidet-patted it and told it goodbye without stopping. My travel clothes were Deety's baby tennis shoes with a green-and-gold denim miniskirt dress of hers that came to my knees but wasn't too dreadful with a scarf to belt it. Panties? I had none. Deety had put a pair of hers out for me-but her size would fall off me. Then I saw that the dear baby had gotten at the elastic and knotted it. Yup! pretty good fit-and, with no telling when our next baths would be, panties were practical even though a nuisance.

            I spread my cape in front of the refrigerator, dumped my purse and our picnic lunch into it, started salvaging-half a boned ham, quite a bit of cheese, a loaf and a half of bread, two pounds of butter (freezer sacks, and the same for the ham-if Deety hadn't had a lavish supply of freezer sacks I could not have salvaged much-as it was, I didn't even get spots on my cape). I decided that jams and jellies and catsup were liquid within Zebbie's meaning-except some in squeeze tubes. Half a chocolate cake, and the cupboard was bare.

            By using my cape as a Santa Claus pack, I carried food into the garage and put it down by Gay-and was delighted to find that I was first.

            Zebbie strode in behind me, dressed in a coverall with thigh pockets, a pilot suit. He looked at the pile on my cape. "Where's the elephant, Sharpie?"

            "Cap'n Zebbie, you didn't say how much, you just said what. What won't go she can have." I hooked a thumb at the chopped-up corpse.

            "Sorry, Hilda; you are correct." Zebbie glanced at his wrist watch, the multiple-dial sort they call a "navigator's watch."

            "Cap'n, this house has loads of gimmicks and gadgets and bells and whistles. You gave them an impossible schedule."

            "On purpose, dear. Let's see how much food we can stow."

            Gay's cold chest is set flush in the deck of the driver's compartment. Zebbie told Gay to open up, then with his shoulders sideways, reached down and unlocked it. "Hand me stuff."

            I tapped his butt. "Out of there, you overgrown midget, and let Sharpie pack. I'll let you know when it's tight as a girdle."

            Space that makes Zebbie twist and grunt is roomy for me. He passed things in, I fitted them for maximum stowage. The third item he handed me was the leavings of our buffet dinner. "That's our picnic lunch," I told him, putting it on his seat.

            "Can't leave it loose in the cabin."

            "Cap'n, we'll eat it before it can spoil. I will be strapped down; is it okay if I clutch it to my bosom?"

            "Sharpie, have I ever won an argument with you?"

            "Only by brute force, dear. Can the chatter and pass the chow."

            With the help of God and a shoehorn it all went in. I was in a back seat with our lunch in my lap and my cape under me before our spouses showed up. "Cap'n Zebbie? Why did the news of Brainy's death cause your change of mind?"

            "Do you disapprove, Sharpie?"

            "On the contrary, Skipper. Do you want my guess?"

            "Yes."

            "Winged Victory was booby-trapped. And dear Doctor Brain, who isn't the fool I thought he was, was not aboard. Those poor people were killed so that he could disappear."

            "Go to the head of the class, Sharpie. Too many coincidences. . . and they- the 'Blokes in the Black Hats'-know where we are."

            "Meaning that Professor No Brain, instead of being dead in the Pacific, might show up any second."

            "He and a gang of green-blooded aliens who don't like geometers."

            "Zebbie, what do you figure their plans are?"

            "Can't guess. They might fumigate this planet and take it. Or conquer us as cattle or as slaves. The only data we have is that they are alien, that they are powerful-and that they have no compunction about killing us. So I have no compunction about killing them. To my regret, I don't know how. So I'm running-running scared-and taking the three I'm certain are in danger with me."

            "Will we ever be able to find them and kill them?"

            Zebbie didn't answer because Deety and my Jacob arrived, breathless. Father and daughter were in jump suits. Deety looked chesty and cute; my darling looked trim-but worried. "We're late. Sorry!"

            "You're not late," Zeb told them. "But into your seats on the bounce."

            "As quick as I open the garage door and switch out the lights."

            "Jake, Jake-Gay is now programmed to do those things herself. In you go, Princess, and strap down. Seat belts, Sharpie. Copilot, after you lock the starboard door, check its seal all the way around by touch before you strap down."

            "Wilco, Cap'n." It tickled me to hear my darling boning military. He had told me privately that he was a reserve colonel of ordnance-but that Deety had promised not to tell this to our smart young captain and that he wanted the same promise from me-because the T.O. was as it should be; Zeb should command while Jacob handled space-time controls-to each his own. Jacob had asked me to please take orders from Zeb with no back talk.. . which had miffed me a little. I was an unskilled crew member; I am not stupid, I knew this. In direst emergency I would try to get us home. But even Deety was better qualified than I.

            Checkoffs completed, Gay switched off lights, opened the garage door, and backed out onto the landing flat.

            "Copilot, can you read your verniers?"

            "Captain, I had better loosen my chest belt."

            "Do so if you wish. But your seat adjusts forward twenty centimeters-here, I'll get it." Zeb reached down, did something between their seats. "Say when."

            "There-that's about right. I can read 'em and reach 'em, with chest strap in place. Orders, sir?"

            "Where was your car when you and Deety went to the space-time that lacked the letter 'J'?"

            "About where we are now."

            "Can you send us there?"

            "I think so. Minimum translation, positive-entropy increasing-along Tau axis."

            "Please move us there, sir."

            My husband touched the controls. "That's it, Captain."

            I couldn't see any change. Our house was still a silhouette against the sky, with the garage a black maw in front of us. The stars hadn't even flickered.

            Zebbie said, "Let's check," and switched on Gay's roading lights, brightly lighting our garage. Empty and looked normal.

            Zebbie said, "Hey! Look at that!"

            "Look at what?" I demanded, and tried to see around Jacob.

            "At nothing, rather. Sharpie, where's your alien?"

            Then I understood. No corpse. No green-blood mess. Workbench against the wall and flood lights not rigged.

            Zebbie said, "Gay Deceiver, take us home!"

            Instantly the same scene. . . but with carved-up corpse. I gulped.

            Zebbie switched out the lights. I felt better but not much.

            "Captain?"

            "Copilot."

            "Wouldn't it have been well to have checked for that letter 'J'? It would have given me a check on calibration."

            "I did check, Jake."

            "Eh?"

            '~You have bins on the back of your garage neatly stenciled. The one at left center reads 'Junk Metal."

            "Oh!"

            "Yes, and your analog in that space-your twin, Jake-prime, or what you will-has your neat habits. The left-corner bin read 'lunk Metal' spelled with an 'I.' A cupboard above and to the right contained 'Iugs & lars.' So I told Gay to take us home. I was afraid they might catch us. Embarrassing."

            Deety said, "Zebadiah-I mean 'Captain'-embarrassing how, sir? Oh, that missing letter in the alphabet scared me but it no longer does. Now I'm nervous about aliens. 'Black Hats."

            "Deety, you were lucky that first time. Because Deety-prime was not at home. But she may be, tonight. Possibly in bed with her husband, named Zebadiah-prime. Unstable cuss. Likely to shoot at a strange car shining lights into his father-in-law's garage. A violent character."

            "You're teasing me."

            "No, Princess; it did worry me. A parallel space, with so small a difference as the lack of one unnecessary letter, but with house and grounds you mistook for your own, seems to imply a father and daughter named 'Iacob' and 'Deiah Thoris." (Captain Zebbie pronounced the names 'Yacob' and 'Deyah Thoris.')

            "Zebadiah, that scares me almost as much as aliens."

            "Aliens scare me far more. Hello, Gay."

            "Howdy, Zeb. Your nose is runny."

            "Smart Girl, one gee vertically to one klick. Hover."

            "Roger dodger, you old codger."

            We rested on our backs and head rests for a few moments, then with the stomach-surging swoosh of a fast lift, we leveled off and hovered. Zebbie said, "Deety, can the autopilot accept a change in that homing program by voice? Or does it take an offset in the verniers?"

            "What do you want to do?"

            "Same ell-and-ell two klicks above ground."

            "I think so. Shall I? Or do you want to do it, Captain?"

            "You try it, Deety."

            "Yes, sir. Hello, Gay."

            "Hi, Deety!"

            "Program check. Define 'Home."

            "Home.' Cancel any-all inertials transitions translations rotations. Return to preprogrammed zero latitude longitude, ground level."

            "Report present location."

            "One klick vertically above 'Home."

            "Gay. Program revision."

            "Waiting, Deety."

            "Home program. Cancel 'Ground level.' Substitute 'Two klicks above ground level, hovering."

            "Program revision recorded."

            "Gay Deceiver, take us home!"

            Instantly, with no feeling of motion, we were much higher.

            Zeb said, "Two klicks on the nose! Deety, you're a smart girl!"

            "Zebadiah, I bet you tell that to all the girls."

            "No, just to some. Gay, you're a smart girl."

            "Then why are you shacked up with that strawberry blonde with the fat knockers?"

            Zebbie craned his neck and looked at me. "Sharpie, that's your voice."

            I ignored him with dignity. Zebbie drove south to the Grand Canyon, eerie in starlight. Without slowing, he said, "Gay Deceiver, take us home!"-and again we were hovering over our cabin. No jar, no shock, no nothing.

            Zebbie said, "Jake, once I figure the angles, I'm going to quit spending money on juice. How does she do it when we haven't been anywhere?-no rotation, no translation."

            "I may have given insufficient thought to a trivial root in equation ninetyseven. But it is analogous to what we were considering doing with planets. A five-dimensional transform simplified to three."

            "I dunno, I just work here," Captain Zebbie admitted. "But it looks like we will be peddling gravity and transport, as well as real estate and time. Burroughs and Company, Space Warps Unlimited-'No job too large, no job too small.' Send one newdollar for our free brochure."

            "Captain," suggested Jacob, "would it not be prudent to translate into another space before experimenting further? The alien danger is still with us- is it not?"

            Zebbie sobered at once. "Copilot, you are right and it is your duty to advise me when I goof off. However, before we leave, we have one duty we must carry out."

            "Something more urgent than getting our wives to safety?" my Jacob asked-and I felt humble and proud.

            "Something more urgent.' Jake, I've bounced her around not only to test but to make it hard to track us. Because we must break radio silence. To warn our fellow humans."

            "Oh. Yes, Captain. My apologies, sir. I sometimes forget the broader picture."

            "Don't we all! I've wanted to run and hide ever since this rumpus started. But that took preparation and the delay gave me time to think. Point number one: We don't know how to fight these critters so we must take cover. Point number two: We are duty-bound to tell the world what we know about aliens. While that little isn't much-we've stayed alive by the skin of our teeth-if five billion people are watching for them, they can be caught. I hope."

            "Captain," asked Deety, "may I speak?"

            "Of course! Anyone with ideas about how to cope with these monsters must speak."

            "I'm sorry but I don't have such ideas. You must warn the world, sir-of course! But you won't be believed."

            "I'm afraid you're right, Deety. But they don't have to believe me. That monster in the garage speaks for itself. I'm going to call rangers-real rangers!-to pick it up."

            I said, "So that was why you told me just to leave it! I thought it was lack of time."

            "Both, Hilda. We didn't have time to sack that cadaver and store it in the freezer room. But, if I can get rangers-real rangers-to that garage before 'Black Hats' get there, that corpse tells its own story: an undeniable alien lying in its goo on a ranger's uniform that has been cut away from it. Not a 'close encounter' UFO that can be explained away, but a creature more startling than the duckbill platypus ever was. But we have to hook it in with other factors to show them what to look for. Your booby-trapped car, an arson case in Logan, Professor Brain's convenient disappearance, my cousin's death in Sumatra-and your six-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry."

            I said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Can't we move somewhere away from right over our cabin before you break silence? I'm jumpy-'Black Hats' are hunting us.',

            "You're right, Sharpie; I'm about to move us. The story isn't long-all but the math-so I taped a summary while the rest of you were getting ready. Gay will speed-zip it, a hundred to one." Zebbie reached for the controls. "All secure?"

            "Captain Zebadiah!"

            "Trouble, Princess?"

            "May I attempt a novel program? It may save time."

            "Programming is your pidgin. Certainly."

            "Hello, Gay."

            "Hi, Deety!"

            "Retrieve last program. Report execute code."

            "Reporting, Deety. 'Gay Deceiver, take us home!"

            "Negative erase permanent program controlled by execute-code Gay Deceiver take us home. Report confirm."

            "Confirmation report. Permanent program execute-coded Gay Deceiver take us home negative erase. I tell you three times."

            "Deety," said Zeb, "a neg scrub to Gay tells her to place item in perms three places. Redundancy safety factor."

            "Don't bother me, dear! She and I sling the same lingo. Hello, Gay."

            "Hello, Deety!"

            "Analyze latest program execute-coded Gay Deceiver take us home. Report."

            "Analysis complete."

            "Invert analysis."

            "Null program."

            Deety sighed. "Typing a program is easier. New program."

            "Waiting, Deety."

            "Execute-code new permanent program. Gay Deceiver, countermarch! At new execute..code, repeat reversed in real time latest sequence inertials transitions translations rotations before last use of program execute-code Gay Deceiver take us home."

            "New permanent program accepted."

            "Gay, I tell you three times."

            "Deety, I hear you three times."

            "Gay Deceiver-countermarch!"

            Instantly we were over the Grand Canyon, cruising south. I saw Zeb reach for the manual controls. "Deety, that was slick."

            "I didn't save time, sir-I goofed. Gay, you're a smart girl."

            "Deety, don't make me blush."

            "You're both smart girls," said Captain Zebbie. "If anyone had us on radar, he must think he's getting cataracts. Vice versa, if anyone picked us up here, he's wondering how we popped up. Smart dodge, dear. You've got Gay Deceiver so deceptive that nobody can home on us. We'll be elsewhere."

            "Yes-but I had something else in mind, too, my Captain."

            "Princess, I like your ideas. Spill it."

            "Suppose we used that homing preprogram and went from frying pan into fire. It might be useful to have a preprogram that would take us back into the frying pan, then do something else quickly. Should I try to think up a third escape-maneuver preprogram?"

            "Sure-but discuss it with the court magician, your esteemed father-not me. I'm just a sky jockey."

            "Zebadiah, I will not listen to you disparage yours-"

            "Deety! Lifeboat rules. Jake, are your professional papers aboard? Both theoretical and drawings?"

            "Why, no, Zeb-Captain. Too bulky. Microfilms I brought. Originals are in the basement vault. Have I erred?"

            "Not a bit! Is there any geometer who gave your published paper on this six-way system a friendly reception?"

            "Captain, there aren't more than a handful of geometers capable ofjudging my postulate system without long and intensive study. It's too unorthodox. Your late cousin was one-a truly brilliant mind! Uh.. . I now suspect that Doctor Brain understood it and sabotaged it for his own purposes."

            "Jake, is there anyone friendly to you and able to understand the stuff in your vault? I'm trying to figure out how to warn our fellow humans. A fantastic story of apparently unrelated incidents is not enough. Not even with the corpse of an extra-terrestrial to back it up. You should leave mathematical theory and engineering drawings to someone able to understand them and whom you trust. We can't handle it; every time we stick our heads up, somebody takes a shot at us and we have no way to fight back. It's a job that may require our whole race. Well? Is there a man you can trust as your professional executor?"

            "Well. . . one, perhaps. Not my field of geometry but brilliant. He did write me a most encouraging letter when I published my first paper-the paper that was so sneered at by almost everyone except your cousin and this one other. Professor Seppo Rãikannonen. Turku. Finland."

            "Are you certain he's not an alien?"

            "What? He's been on the faculty at Turku for years! Over fifteen."

            I said, "Jacob. . . that is about how long Professor Brain was around."

            "But-" My husband looked around at me and suddenly smiled. "Hilda my love, have you ever taken sauna?"

            "Once."

            "Then tell our Captain why I am sure that my friend Seppo is not an alien in disguise. 1-Deety and I-attended a professional meeting in Helsinki last year. After the meeting we visited their summer place in the Lake Country. . . and

took sauna with them."          -

            "Papa, Mama, and three kids." agreed Deety. "Unmistakably human."

            "Brainy' was a bachelor," I added thoughtfully. "Cap'n Zebbie, wouldn't disguised aliens have to be bachelors?"

            "Or single women. Or pseudo-married couples. No kids, the masquerade wouldn't hold up. Jake, let's try to phone your friend. Mmm, nearly breakfast time in Finland-or we may wake him. That's better than missing him."

            "Good! My comcredit number is Nero Aleph-"

            "Let's try mine. Yours might trigger something. . . if 'Black Hats' are as smart as I think they are. Smart Girl."

            "Yes, Boss."

            "Don Ameche."

            "To hear is to obey, 0 Mighty One."

            "Deety, you've been giving Gay bad habits."

            Shortly a flat male voice answered, "The communications credit number you have cited is not a valid number. Please refer to your card and try again. This is a recording."

            Zebbie made a highly unlikely suggestion. "Gay can't send out my comcredit code incorrectly; she has it tell-me-three-times. The glitch is in their system. Pop, we have to use yours."

            I said, "Try mine, Zebbie. My comcredit is good; I predeposit."

            A female voice this time: "-not a valid number. Puh-lease refer to your card and try again. This is a recording."

            Then my husband got a second female voice: "-try again. This is a recording."

            Deety said, "I don't have one. Pop and I use the same number."

            "It doesn't matter," Cap'n Zebbie said bitterly. "These aren't glitches. We've been scrubbed. Unpersons. We're all dead."

            I didn't argue. I had suspected that we were dead since the morning two weeks earlier when I woke up in bed with my cuddly new husband. But how long had we been dead? Since my party? Or more recently?

            I didn't care. This was a better grade of heaven than a Sunday School in Terre Haute had taught me to expect. While I don't think I've been outstandingly wicked, I haven't been very good either. Of the Ten Commandments I've broken six and bent some others. But Moses apparently had not had the last Word from on High-being dead was weird and wonderful and I was enjoying every minute. . . or eon, as the case may be.