Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

be compulsory, like education. I hypothesize that correlation could be found between

the modern tendency to skimp breakfast and the increase in juvenile delinquency.

I said nothing. Men are my weakness; food my ruin-but I didn’t care.

We lunched at Barstow, only I stayed in the car and tried to nap.

Cliff met us at our hotel and we excused ourselves because Cliff wanted to

drive me out to see the university. When we reached the parking lot he said, “What

has happened? You look as if you had lost your last friend-and you are positively

emaciated.”

“Oh, Cliff!” I said, and blubbered on his shoulder. Presently he wiped my

nose and started the car. As we drove I told him about it. He didn’t say anything,

but after a bit he made a left turn. “Is this the way to the campus?” I asked.

“Never you mind.”

“Cliff, are you disgusted with me?”

Instead of answering me, he pulled up near a big public building and led me

inside; it turned out to be the art museum. Still refusing to talk, he steered me

into an exhibition of old masters. Cliff pointed at one of them. “That,” he said,

“is my notion of a beautiful woman.”

I looked. It was The Judgment of Paris by Rubens. “And that-and that-” added

Cliff. Every picture he pointed to was by Rubens, and I’ll swear his models had

never heard of dieting.

“What this country needs,” said Cliff, “is more plump girls-and more guys

like me who appreciate them.”

I didn’t say anything until we got outside; I was too busy rearranging my

ideas. Something worried me, so I reminded him of the time I had asked his opinion

of Clarice, the girl who is just my size and measurements. He managed to remember.

“Oh, yes! Very beautiful girl, a knockout!”

“But, Cliff, you said-”

He grabbed my shoulders. “Listen, featherbrain, think I’ve got rocks in my

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head? Would I say anything that might make you jealous?”

“But I’m never jealous!”

“So you say! Now where shall we eat? Romanoff’s? The Beachcomber? I’m loaded

with dough.”

Warm waves of happiness flowed over me. “Cliff?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“I’ve heard of a sundae called Moron’s Delight. They take a great big glass and

start with two bananas and six kinds of ice cream and- “That’s passé. Have you ever

had a Mount Everest?” “Huh?”

“They start with a big platter and build up the peak with twenty-one flavors

of ice cream, using four bananas, butterscotch syrup, and nuts to bind it. Then they

cover it with chocolate syrup, sprinkle maltedmilk powder and more nuts for rock,

pour marshmallow syrup and whipped cream down from the top for snow, stick parsley

around the lower slopes for trees, and set a little plastic skier on one of the snow

banks. You get to keep him as a souvenir of the experience.”

“Oh, my!” I said.

“Only one to a customer and I don’t have to pay if you finish it.”

I squared my shoulders. “Lead me to it!”

“I’m betting on you, Puddin’.”

Cliff is such a wonderful man.

AFTERWORD

Santa Claus, Arizona, is still there; just drive from Kin gman toward

Boulder Dam on 93; you’ll find it. But Mrs. Santa Claus (Mrs. Douglas) is no longer

there, and her gourmet restaurant is now a fast-food joint. If she is alive, she is

at least in her eighties. I don’t want to find out. In her own field she was an

artist equal to Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare. I prefer to think of her

in that perfect place where all perfect things go, sitting in her kitchen surrounded

by her gnomes, preparing her hearty ambrosia for Mark Twain and Homer and Praxiteles

and others of her equals.

THE ANSWERS

(to Problems on Pages 334-338)

N.B.: All trips are Earth parking orbit to Earth parking orbit without

stopping at the target planet (Mars or Pluto). I assume that Hot Pilot Tom Corbett

will handle his gravity-well maneuvers at Mars and at Pluto so as not to waste

mass-energy-but that’s his problem. Now about that assumption of “flat space” only

slightly uphill: The Sun has a fantastically deep gravity well; its “surface”