"Just the biggest on Earth, is all. And not only on Earth. He operates in all the systems for a hundred parsecs around, and he never sinks a dry hole. Every well he drills is a gusher that blows the rig clear up into the stratosphere. Everybody wonders how he does it. My guess is that his wife's an oil-witch, which is why he lugs his whole family along wherever he goes. Why else would he?"
"Maybe he loves her. It happens, you know."
"Huh?" Eddie snorted. "After twenty years of her? Comet-gas! Anyway, would you have the sublime gall to make passes at Warner Oil's heiress, with more millions in her own sock than you've got dimes?"
"I don't make passes."
"That's right, you don't. Only at books and tapes, even on ground leaves; more fool you. Well, then, would you marry anybody like that?"
"Certainly, if I loved...." Deston paused, thought a moment, then went on: "Maybe I wouldn't, either. She'd make me dress for dinner. She'd probably have a live waiter; maybe even a butler. So I guess I wouldn't, at that."
"You nor me neither, brother. But what a dish! What a lovely, luscious, toothsome dish!" Eddie mourned.
"You'll be raving about another one tomorrow," Deston said, unfeelingly, as he turned away.
"I don't know; but even if I do, she won't be anything like her," Eddie said, to the closing door.
And Deston, outside the door, grinned sardonically to himself. Before his next watch, Eddie would bring up one of the prettiest girls aboard for a gold badge; the token that would let her--under approved escort, of course--go through the Top.
He himself never went down to the Middle, which was passenger territory. There was nothing there he wanted. He was too busy, had too many worthwhile things to do, to waste time that way ... but the hunch was getting stronger and stronger all the time. For the first time in all his three years of deep-space service he felt an overpowering urge to go down into the very middle of the Middle; to the starship's main lounge.
He knew that his hunches were infallible. At cards, dice, or wheels he had always had hunches and he had always won. That was why he had stopped gambling, years before, before anybody found out. He was that kind of a man.
Apart from the matter of unearned increment, however, he always followed his hunches; but this one he did not like at all. He had been resisting it for hours, because he had never visited the lounge and did not want to visit it now. But something down there was pulling like a tractor, so he went. He didn't go to his cabin; didn't even take off his side-arm. He didn't even think of it; the .41 automatic at his hip was as much a part of his uniform as his pants.
Entering the lounge, he did not have to look around. She was playing bridge, and as eyes met eyes and she rose to her feet a shock-wave swept through him that made him feel as though his every hair was standing straight on end.
"Excuse me, please," she said to the other three at her table. "I must go now." She tossed her cards down onto the table and walked straight toward him; eyes still holding eyes.
He backed hastily out into the corridor, and as the door closed behind her they went naturally and wordlessly into each other's arms. Lips met lips in a kiss that lasted for a long, long time. It was not a passionate embrace--passion would come later--it was as though each of them, after endless years of bootless, fruitless longing, had come finally home.
"Come with me, dear, where we can talk," she said, finally; eying with disfavor the half-dozen highly interested spectators.
And a couple of minutes later, in cabin two hundred eighty-one, Deston said: "So this is why I had to come down into passenger territory. You came aboard at exactly zero seven forty-three."
"Uh-uh." She shook her yellow head. "A few minutes before that. That was when I read your name in the list of officers on the board. First Officer, Carlyle Deston. I got a tingle that went from the tips of my toes up and out through the very ends of my hair. Nothing like when we actually saw each other, of course. We both knew the truth, then. It's wonderful that you're so strongly psychic, too."
"I don't know about that," he said, thoughtfully. "All my training has been based on the axiomatic fact that the map is not the territory. Psionics, as I understand it, holds that the map is--practically--the territory, but can't prove it. So I simply don't know what to believe. On one hand, I have had real hunches all my life. On the other, the signal doesn't carry much information. More like hearing a siren when you're driving along a street. You know you have to pull over and stop, but that's all you know. It could be police, fire ambulance--anything. Anybody with any psionic ability at all ought to do a lot better than that, I should think."
"Not necessarily. You've been fighting it. Ninety-nine per cent of your mind doesn't want to believe it; is dead set against it. So it has to force its way through whillions and skillions of ohms of resistance, so only the most powerful stimuli--'maximum signal' in your jargon, perhaps?--can get through to you at all." Suddenly she giggled like a schoolgirl. "You're either psychic or the biggest wolf in the known universe, and I know you aren't a wolf. If you hadn't been as psychic as I am, you'd've jumped clear out into subspace when a perfectly strange girl attacked you."
"How do you know so much about me?"
"I made it a point to. One of the juniors told me you're the only virgin officer in all space."
"That was Eddie Thompson."
"Uh-huh." She nodded brightly.
"Well, is that bad?"
"Anything else but. That is, he thought it was terrible--outrageous--a betrayal of the whole officer caste--but to me it makes everything just absolutely perfect."
"Me, too. How soon can we get married?"
"I'd say right now, except...." She caught her lower lip between her teeth and thought. "No, no 'except'. Right now, or as soon as you can. You can't, without resigning, can you? They'd fire you?"
"Don't worry about that," he grinned. "My record is good enough, I think, to get a good ground job. Even if they fire me for not waiting until we ground, there's lots of jobs. I can support you, sweetheart."
"Oh, I know you can. I wasn't thinking of that. You wouldn't like a ground job."
"What difference does that make?" he asked, in honest surprise. "A man grows up. I couldn't have you with me in space, and I'd like that a lot less. No, I'm done with space, as of now. But what was that 'except' business?"
"I thought at first I'd tell my parents first--they're both aboard--but I decided not to. She'd scream bloody murder and he'd roar like a lion and none of it would make me change my mind, so we'll get married first."
He looked at her questioningly; she shrugged and went on: "We aren't what you'd call a happy family. She's been trying to make me marry an old goat of a prince and I finally told her to go roll her hoop--to get a divorce and marry the foul old beast herself. And to consolidate two empires, he's been wanting me to marry a multi-billionaire--who is also a louse and a crumb and a heel. Last week he insisted on it and I blew up like an atomic bomb. I told him if I got married a thousand times I'd pick every one of my husbands myself, without the least bit of help from either him or her. I'd keep on finding oil and stuff for him, I said, but that was all...."
"Oil!" Deston exclaimed, involuntarily, as everything fell into place in his mind. The way she walked; poetry in motion ... the oil-witch ... two empires ... more millions than he had dimes.... "Oh, you're Barbara Warner, then."
"Why, of course; but my friends call me 'Bobby'. Didn't you--but of course you didn't--you never read passenger lists. If you did, you'd've got a tingle, too."
"I got plenty of tingle without reading, believe me. However, I never expected to----"
"Don't say it, dear!" She got up and took both his hands in hers. "I know how you feel. I don't like to let you ruin your career, either, but nothing can separate us, now that we've found each other. So I'll tell you this." Her eyes looked steadily into his. "If it bothers you the least bit, later on, I'll give every dollar I own to some foundation or other, I swear it."
He laughed shamefacedly as he took her in his arms. "Since that's the way you look at it, it won't bother me a bit."
"Uh-huh, you do mean it." She snuggled her head down into the curve of his neck. "I can tell."
"I know you can, sweetheart." Then he had another thought, and with strong, deft fingers he explored the muscles of her arms and back. "But those acrobatics in plus gee--and you're trained down as hard and fine as I am, and it's my business to be--how come?"
"I majored in Physical Education and I love it. And I'm a Newmartian, you know, so I teach a few courses----"
"Newmartian? I've heard--but you aren't a colonial; you're as Terran as I am."
"By blood, yes; but I was born on Newmars. Our actual and legal residence has always been there. The tax situation, you know."
"I don't know, no. Taxes don't bother me much. But go ahead. You teach a few courses. In?"
"Oh, bars, trapeze, ground-and-lofty tumbling, acrobatics, aerialistics, high-wire, muscle-control, judo--all that kind of thing."
"Ouch! So if you ever happen to accidentally get mad at me you'll tie me right up into a pretzel?"
"I doubt it; very seriously. I've tossed lots of two-hundred-pounders around, of course, but they were not space officers." She laughed unaffectedly as she tested his musculature much more professionally and much more thoroughly than he had tested hers. "Definitely I couldn't. A good big man can always take a good little one, you know."
"But I'm not big; I'm just a little squirt. You've probably heard what they call me?"
"Yes, and I'm going to call you 'Babe', too, and mean it the same way they do. Besides, who wants a man a foot taller than she is and twice as big? You're just exactly the right size!"
"That's spreading the good old oil, Bobby, but I'll never tangle with you if I can help it. Buzz-saws are small, too, and sticks of dynamite. Shall we go hunt up the parson--or should it be a priest? Or a rabbi?"
"Even that doesn't make a particle of difference to you."
"Of course not. How could it?"
"A parson, please." Then, with a bright, quick grin: "We have got a lot to learn about each other, haven't we?"
"Some details, of course, but nothing of any importance and we'll have plenty of time to learn them."
"And we'll love every second of it. You'll live down here in the Middle with me, won't you, all the time you aren't actually on duty?"
"I can't imagine doing anything else," and the two set out, arms around each other, to find a minister. And as they strolled along: "Of course you won't actually need a job, ever, or my money, either. You never even thought of dowsing, did you?"
"Dowsing? Oh, that witch stuff. Of course not."
"Listen, darling. All the time I've been touching you I've been learning about you. And you've been learning about me."
"Yes, but----"
"No buts, buster. You have really tremendous powers, and they aren't latent, either. All you have to do is quit fighting them and use them. You're ever so much stronger and fuller than I am. All I can do at dowsing is find water, oil, coal, and gas. I'm no good at all on metals--I couldn't feel gold if I were perched right on the roof of Fort Knox; I couldn't feel radium if it were frying me to a crisp. But I'm positive that you can tune yourself to anything you want to find."
He didn't believe it, and the argument went on until they reached the "Reverend's" quarters. Then, of course, it was dropped automatically; and the next five days were deliciously, deliriously, ecstatically happy days for them both.
II.
At the time of this chronicle the status of interstellar flight was very similar to that of intercontinental jet-plane flight in the nineteen-sixties. Starships were designed by humanity's best brains; carried every safety device those brains could devise. They were maintained and serviced by ultra-skilled, ultra-trained, ultra-able crews; they were operated by the creme-de-la-creme of manhood. Only a man with an extremely capable mind in an extremely capable body could become an officer of a subspacer.
Statistically, starships were the safest means of transportation ever used by man; so safe that Very Important Persons used them regularly, unthinkingly, and as a matter of course. Statistically, the starships' fatality rate per million passenger-light-years was a small fraction of that of the automobiles' per million passenger-miles. Insurance companies offered odds of tens of thousands to one that any given star-traveler would return unharmed from any given star-trip he cared to make.
Nevertheless, accidents happened. A chillingly large number of lives had, as a total, been lost; and no catastrophe had ever been even partially explained. No message of distress or call for help had ever been received. No single survivor had ever been found; nor any piece of wreckage.
And on the Great Wheel of Fate the Procyon's number came up.
In the middle of the night Carlyle Deston came instantaneously awake--feeling with his every muscle and with his every square inch of skin; listening with all the force he could put into his auditory nerves; while deep down in his mind a huge, terribly silent voice continued to yell: "DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!"
In a very small fraction of a second Carlyle Deston moved--and fast. Seizing Barbara by an arm, he leaped out of bed with her.
"We're abandoning ship--get into this suit--quick!"
"But what ... but I've got to dress!"
"No time! Snap it up!" He practically hurled her into her suit; clamped her helmet tight. Then he leaped into his own. "Skipper!" he snapped into the suit's microphone. "Deston. Emergency! Abandon ship!"
The alarm bells clanged once; the big red lights flashed once; the sirens barely started to growl, then quit. The whole vast fabric of the ship trembled and shuddered and shook as though it were being mauled by a thousand impossibly gigantic hammers. Deston did not know and never did find out whether it was his captain or an automatic that touched off the alarm. Whichever it was, the disaster happened so fast that practically no warning at all was given. And out in the corridor: "Come on, girl--sprint!" He put his arm under hers and urged her along.
She did her best, but in comparison with his trained performance her best wasn't good. "I've never been checked out on sprinting in spacesuits!" she gasped. "Let go of me and go on ahead. I'll follow----"
Everything went out. Lights, gravity, air-circulation--everything.
"You haven't been checked out on free fall, either. Hang onto this tool-hanger here on my belt and we'll travel."
"Where to?" she asked, hurtling through the air much faster than she had ever gone on foot.
"Baby Two--that is, Lifecraft Number Two--my crash assignment. Good thing I was down here in the Middle; I'd never have made it from up Top. Next corridor left, I think." Then, as the light of his headlamp showed numbers on the wall: "Yes. Square left. I'll swing you."
He swung her and they shot to the end of the passage. He kicked a lever and the lifecraft's port swung open--to reveal a blaze of light and a startled, gray-haired man.
"What happened.... What hap ...?" the man began.
"Wrecked. We've had it. We're abandoning ship. Get into that cubby over there, shut the door tight behind you, and stay there!"
"But can't I do something to help?"
"Without a suit and not knowing how to use one? You'd get burned to a cinder. Get in there--and jump!"
The oldster jumped and Deston turned to his wife. "Stay here at the port, Bobby. Wrap one leg around that lever, to anchor you. What does your telltale read? That gauge there--your radiation meter. It reads twenty, same as mine. Just pink, so we've got a minute or so. I'll roust out some passengers and toss 'em to you--you toss 'em along in there. Can do?"
She was white and trembling; she was very evidently on the verge of being violently sick; but she was far from being out of control. "Can do, sir."
"Good girl, sweetheart. Hang on one minute more and we'll have gravity and you'll be O. K."
The first five doors he tried were locked; and, since they were made of armor plate, there was nothing he could do about them except give each one a resounding kick with a heavy steel boot. The sixth was unlocked, but the passengers--a man and a woman--were very evidently and very gruesomely dead.
So was everyone else he could find until he came to a room in which a man in a spacesuit was floundering helplessly in the air. He glanced at his telltale. Thirty-two. High in the red, almost against the pin.
"Bobby! What do you read?"
"Twenty-six."
"Good. I've found only one, but we're running out of time. I'm coming in."
In the lifecraft he closed the port and slammed on full drive away from the ship. Then, wheeling, he shucked Barbara out of her suit like an ear of corn and shed his own. He picked up a fire-extinguisher-like affair and jerked open the door of a room a little larger than a clothes closet. "Jump in here!" He slammed the door shut. "Now strip, quick!" He picked the canister up and twisted four valves.
Before he could get the gun into working position she was out of her pajamas--the fact that she had been wondering visibly what it was all about had done nothing whatever to cut down her speed. A flood of thick, creamy foam almost hid her from sight and Deston began to talk--quietly.
"Thanks, sweetheart, for not slowing us down by arguing and wanting explanations. This stuff is DEKON--short for Decontaminant, Complete; Compound, Adsorbent, and Chelating, Type DCQ-429.' Used soon enough, it takes care of radiation. Rub it in good, all over you--like this." He set the foam-gun down on the floor and went vigorously to work. "Yes, hair, too. Every square millimeter of skin and mucous membrane. Yes, into your eyes. It stings 'em a little, but that's a lot better than going blind. And your mouth. Swallow six good big mouthfuls--it's tasteless and goes down easy.
"Now the soles of your feet--O. K. The last will hurt plenty, but we've got to get some of it into your lungs and we can't do it the hospital way. So when I slap a gob of it over your mouth and nose inhale hard and deep. Just once is all anybody can do, but that's enough. And don't fight. Any ordinary woman I could handle, but I can't handle you fast enough. So if you don't inhale deep I'll have to knock you cold. Otherwise you die of lung cancer. Will do?"
"Will do, sweetheart. Good and deep. No fight," and she emptied her lungs.
He slapped it on. She inhaled, good and deep; and went into convulsive paroxysms of coughing. He held her in his arms until the worst of it was over; but she was still coughing hard when she pulled herself away from him.
"But ... how ... about ... you?" She could just barely talk; her voice was distorted, almost inaudible. "Let ... me ... help ... you ... quick!"