The whistle blew. Virgilia Samms, all smiles, toed the base-line and became the personification and embodiment of smoothly flowing motion. The ball whizzed over the net, barely clearing it—a sizzling service ace. The game went on.
And a few minutes later, in the shower room, where Jack Kinnison was caroling lustily while plying a towel, a huge young man strode up and slapped him ringingly between the shoulder blades.
“Congratulations, Jack, and so forth. But there’s a thing I want to ask you.
Confidential, sort of. . .?”
“Shoot! Haven’t we been eating out of the same dish for lo, these many moons?
Why the diffidence all of a sudden, Mase? It isn’t in character.”
“Well . . . it’s. . . I’m a lip-reader, you know.”
“Sure. We all are. What of it?”
“It’s only that . . . well, I saw what you and Miss Samms said to each other out there, and if that was lovers’ small talk I’m a Venerian mud-puppy.”
“Lovers! Who the hell ever said we were lovers? . . . Oh, you’ve been inhaling some of dad’s balloon-juice. Lovers! Me and that red-headed stinker-that jelly-brained sapadilly? Hardly!”
“Hold it, Jack!” The big officer’s voice was slightly edged. “You’re off course—a hell of a long flit off. That girl has got everything. She’s the class of the Reservation— why, she’s a regular twelve-nineteen!”
“Huh?” Amazed, young Kinnison stopped drying himself and stared. “You mean to say you’ve been giving her a miss just because . . .” He had started to say “because you’re the best friend I’ve got in the System,” but he did not.
“Well, it would have smelled slightly cheesy, I thought.”
The other man did not put into words, either, what both of them so deeply knew to be the truth. “But if you haven’t got . . . if it’s O.K. with you, of course . . .”
“Stand by for five seconds—I’ll take you around.”
Jack threw on his uniform, and in a few minutes the two young officers, immaculate in the space-black-and-silver of the Patrol, made their way toward the women’s dressing rooms.
“ . . but she’s all aright, at that . . . in most ways . . . I guess.” Kinnison was half-apologizing for what he had said. “Outside of being chicken-hearted and pig-headed, she’s a good egg. She really qualifies . . . most of the time. But I. wouldn’t have her, bonus attached, any more than she would have me. It’s strictly mutual. You won’t fall for her, either, Mase; you’ll want to pull one of her legs off and beat the rest of her to death with it inside of a week—but there’s nothing like finding things out for yourself.”
In a short time Miss Samms appeared; dressed somewhat less revealingly than before in the blouse and kilts which were the mode of the moment.
“Hi, Jill! This is Mase—I’ve told you about him. My boatmate. Master Electronicist Mason Northrop.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about you, ‘Troncist-a lot.” She shook hands warmly.
“He hasn’t been putting tracers on you, Jill, on accounta he figured he’d be poaching. Can you feature that? I straightened him out, though, in short order. Told him why, too, so he ought to be insulated against any voltage you can generate.”
“Oh, you did? How sweet of you! But how . . . oh, those?” She gestured at the powerful prism binoculars, a part of the uniform of every officer of space.
“Uh-huh.” Northrop wriggled, but held firm.
“If I’d only been as big and husky as you are,” surveying admiringly some six feet two of altitude and two hundred-odd pounds of hard meat, gristle, and bone, “I’d have grabbed him by one ankle, whirled him around my head, and flung him into the fifteenth row of seats. What’s the matter with him, Mase, is that he was born centuries and centuries too late. He should have been an overseer when they built the pyramids-flogging slaves because they wouldn’t step just so. Or better yet, one of those people it told about in those funny old books they dug up last year-liege lords, or something like that, remember? With the power of life and death – high, middle, and low justice’, whatever that was—over their vassals and their families, serfs, and serving-wenches. Especially serving-wenches! He likes little, cuddly babytalkers, who pretend to be utterly spineless and completely brainless—eh, Jack?”
“Ouch! Touche, Jill—but maybe I had it coming to me, at that. Let’s call it off, shall we? I’ll be seeing you two, hither or yon.” Kinnison turned and hurried away.
“Want to know why he’s doing such a quick flit?” Jill grinned up at her companion; a bright, quick grin. “Not that he was giving up. The blonde over there—the one in rocket red. Very few blondes can wear such a violent shade. Dimples Maynard.”
“And is she . . . er . . . ?”
“Cuddly and baby-talkish? Uh-uh. She’s a grand person. I was just popping off; so was he. You know that neither of us really meant half of what we said . . . or . . . at least . . . “ Her voice died away.
“I don’t know whether I do or not,” Northrop replied, awkwardly but honestly. “That was savage stuff if there ever was any. I can’t see for the life of me why you two –two of the world’s finest people—should have to tear into each other that way. Do you?”
“I don’t know that I ever thought of it like that.” Jill caught her lower lip between her teeth. “He’s splendid, really, and I like him a lot—usually. We get along perfectly most of the time. We don’t fight at all except when we’re too close together . . . and then we fight about anything and everything . . . say, suppose that that could be it? Like charges, repelling each other inversely as the square of the distance? That’s about the way it seems to be.”
“Could be, and I’m glad.” The man’s face cleared. “And I’m a charge of the opposite sign. Let’s got”
And in Virgil Samms’ deeply-buried office, Civilization’s two strongest men were deep in conversation.
“. . . troubles enough to keep four men of our size awake nights.” Samms’ voice was light, but his eyes were moody and somber. “You can probably whip yours, though, in time. They’re mostly in one solar system; a short flit covers the rest. Languages and customs are known. But how—how—can legal processes work efficiently—work at all, for that matter when a man can commit a murder or a pirate can loot a space-ship and be a hundred parsecs away before the crime is even discovered? How can a Tellurian John Law find a criminal on a strange world that knows nothing whatever of our Patrol, with a completely alien language – maybe no language at all—where it takes months even to find out who and where—if any—the native police officers are? But there must be a way, Rod—there’s got to be a way!” Samms slammed his open hand resoundingly against his desk’s bare top. “And by God I’ll find it—the Patrol will come out on top!”
“ ‘Crusader’ Samms, now and forever!” There was no trace of mockery in Kinnison’s voice or expression, but only friendship and admiration. “And I’ll bet you do. Your Interstellar Patrol, or whatever . . .”
“Galactic Patrol. I know what the name of it is going to be, if nothing else.”
“. . . is just as good as in the bag, right now. You’ve done a job so far, Virge. This whole system, Nevia, the colonies on Aldebaran II and other planets, even Valeria, as tight as a drum. Funny about Valeria, isn’t it. . .”
There was a moment of silence, then Kinnison went on:
“But wherever diamonds are, there go Dutchmen. And Dutch women go wherever their men do. And, in spite of medical advice, Dutch babies arrive. Although a lot of the adults died—three G’s is no joke—practically all of the babies keep on living. Developing bones and muscles to fit—walking at a year and a half old—living normally – – they say that the third generation will be perfectly at home there.”
“Which shows that the human animal is more adaptable’ than some ranking medicos had believed, is all. Don’t try to side-track me, Rod. You know as well as I do what we’re up against; the new headaches that interstellar commerce is bringing with it. New vices—drugs—thionite, for instance; we haven’t been able to get an inkling of an idea as to where that stuff is coming from. And I don’t have to tell you what piracy has done to insurance rates.”
“I’ll say not look at the price of Aldebaranian cigars, the only kind fit to smoke!
You’ve given up, then, on the idea that Arisia is the. pirates’ GHQ?”
“Definitely. It isn’t. The pirates are even more afraid of it than tramp spacemen are. It’s out of bounds—absolutely forbidden territory, apparently—to everybody, my best operatives included. All we know about it is the name—Arisia—that our planetographers gave it. It is the first completely incomprehensible thing I have ever experienced. I am going out there myself as soon as I can take the time – not that I expect to crack a thing that my best men couldn’t touch, but there have been so many different and conflicting reports—no two stories agree on anything except in that no one could get anywhere near the planet—that I feel the need of some first-hand information. Want to come along?”