Tiny grunted. “You won’t get any. I don’t know how you sneaked in, but get this, McNye, or Gloria, or whatever. you’re fired. You go back on the next ship. Meanwhile we’ll try to keep the men from knowing we’ve got a woman aboard.”
I could see her count ten. “May I speak,” she said finally, “or does your Captain Bligh act extend to that, too?”
“Say your say.”
“I didn’t sneak in. I am on the permanent staff of the Station, Chief Communications Engineer. I took this vacancy myself to get to know the equipment while it was being installed. I’ll live here eventually; I see no reason not to start now.”
Tiny waved it away. “There’ll be men and women both here some day. Even kids. Right now it’s stag and it’ll stay that way.”
“We’ll see. Anyhow, you can’t fire me; radio personnel don’t work for you.” She had a point; communicators and some other specialists were lent to the contractors, Five Companies, Incorporated, by Harriman Enterprises.
Tiny snorted. “Maybe I can’t fire you; I can send you home. Requisitioned personnel must be satisfactory to the contractor, meaning me. Paragraph Seven, clause M; I wrote that clause myself.”
“Then you know that if requisitioned personnel are refused without cause the contractor bears the replacement cost”
“I’ll risk paying your fare home, but I won’t have you here.”
“You are most unreasonable!”
“Perhaps, but I’ll decide what’s good for the job. I’d rather have a dope peddler than have a woman sniffing around my boys!”
She gasped. Tiny knew he had said too much; he added, “Sorry, Miss. But that’s it. You’ll’ stay under cover until I can get rid of you.”
Before she could speak I cut in. “Tiny-look behind you!” Staring in the port was one of the riggers, his eyes bugged out. Three or four more floated up and joined him.
Then Tiny zoomed up to the port and they scattered like minnows. He scared them almost out of their suits; I thought he was going to shove his fists through the quartz.
He came back looking whipped. “Miss,” he said, pointing, “wait in my room.” When she was gone he added, “Dad, what’ll we do?”
I said, “I thought you had made up your mind, Tiny.”
“I have,” he answered peevishly. “Ask the Chief Inspector to come in, will you?”
That showed how far gone he was. The inspection gang belonged to Harriman Enterprises, not to us, and Tiny rated them mere nuisances. Besides, Tiny was an Oppenheimer graduate; Dalrymple was from M.I.T.
He came in, brash and cheerful. “Good morning, Superintendent. Morning, Mr. Witherspoon. What can I do for you?”
Glumly, Tiny told the story. Dalrymple looked smug. “She’s right, old man. You can send her back and even specify a male relief. But I can hardly endorse ‘for proper cause’ now, can I?”
“Damnation. Dalrymple, we can’t have a woman around here!”
“A moot point. Not covered by contract, y’know.”
“If your office hadn’t sent us a crooked gambler as her predecessor I wouldn’t be in this am!”
“There, there! Remember the old blood pressure. Suppose we leave the endorsement open and arbitrate the cost. That’s fair, eh?”
“I suppose so. Thanks.”
“Not at all. But consider this: when you rushed Peters off before interviewing the newcomer, you cut yourself down to one operator. Hammond can’t stand watch twenty-four hours a day.”
“He can sleep in the shack. The alarm will wake him.”
“I can’t accept that. The home office and ships’ frequencies must be guarded at all times. Harriman Enterprises has supplied a qualified operator; I am afraid you must use her for the time being.”
Tiny will always cooperate with the inevitable; he said quietly, “Dad, she’ll take first shift. Better put the married men on that shift.”
Then he called her in. “Go to the radio shack and start makee-learnee, so that Hammond can go off watch soon. Mind what he tells you. He’s a good man.”
“I know,” she said briskly. “I trained him.”
Tiny bit his lip. The C.I. said, “The Superintendent doesn’t bother with trivia-I’m Robert Dalrymple, Chief Inspector. He probably didn’t introduce his assistant either-Mr. Witherspoon.”