admittedly not good on the ship. On the other hand, with almost no chance at all of
solitude-the few people who had private offices aboard were not the ones he worried
about-there was no danger of sexual trouble. Strictly speaking, he was not responsible
for the morals of his force. He knew that he was being terribly old-fashioned. Nev-
ertheless, he could not argue himself out of the conviction that he was morally
responsible.
Finally he took the thing up with Sandra, who merely laughed at him. “How long have
you been worrying about that. Jarve?”
“Ever since I okayed moving aground the first time. That was one reason I was so glad
to cancel it then.”
“You were slightly unclear-a little rattled? But which factor-the fun and games, which is
the moral issue, or the consequences?”
“The consequences,” he admitted, with a rueful grin. “I don’t give a whoop how much
fun they have; but you know as well as I do just how prudish public sentiment is. And
Project Theta Orionis is squarely in the middle of the public eye.”
“You should have checked with me sooner and saved yourself wear and tear. There’s
no danger at all of consequences except weddings. Lots of weddings, and fast.”
“Weddings and babies wouldn’t bother me a bit. Nor interfere with the job too much,
with the Omans as nurses. But why the ‘fast,’ if you aren’t anticipating any shotgun wed-
dings?”
“Female psychology,” she replied, with a grin. “Aboard ship here there’s no home
atmosphere whatever; nothing but work, work, work. Put a woman into a house, though
especially such houses as the Omans have built and with such servants as they insist
on being-and she goes domestic in a really big way. Just sex isn’t good enough any
more. She wants the kind of love that goes with a husband and a home, and nine times
out of ten she gets it. With these Bu-Sci women it’ll be ten out of ten.”
“You may be right, of course, but it sounds kind of farfetched to me.”
“Wait and see, chum,” Sandra said, with a laugh.
Hilton made his announcement and everyone moved aground the next day. No one,
however, had elected to live alone. Almost everyone had chosen to double up; the most
noteworthy exceptions being twelve laboratory girls who had decided to keep on living
together. However, they now had a twenty-room house instead of a one-room dormitory
to live in, and a staff of twenty Oman girls to help them do it.
Hilton had suggested that Temple and Teddy, whose house was only a hundred yards
or so from the Hilton-Karns bungalow, should have supper and spend the first evening
with them; but the girls had knocked that idea flat. Much better, they thought, to let
things ride as nearly as possible exactly as they had been aboard the Perseus.
“A little smooching now and then, on the Q strictly T, but that’s all, darling. That’s
positively all,” Temple had said, after a highly satisfactory ten minutes alone with him in
her own gloriously private room, and that was the way it had to be.
Hence it was a stag inspection that Hilton and Karns made of their new home. It was
very long, very wide, and for its size very low. Four of its five rooms were merely
adjuncts to its tremendous living-room. There was a huge fireplace at each end of this
room, in each of which a fire of four-foot-long fir cordwood crackled and snapped. There
was a great hi-fi tri-di, with over a hundred tapes, all new.
“Yes, sirs,” Larry and Javvy spoke in unison. “The players and singers who entertained
the Masters of old have gone back to work. They will also, of course, appear in person
whenever and wherever you wish.”
Both men looked around the vast room and Karns said: “All the comforts of home and
a couple of bucks’ worth besides. Wall-to-wall carpeting an inch and a half thick. A
grand piano. Easy chairs and loafers and davenports. Very fine reproductions of our
favorite paintings . . . and statuary.”
“You said it, brother.” Hilton was bending over a group in bronze. “If I didn’t know
better, I’d swear this is the original deHaven ‘Dance of the Nymphs.”
Karns had marched up to and was examining minutely a two-by-three-foot painting, in a
heavy gold frame, of a gorgeously auburn-haired nude. “Reproduction, hell! This is a
duplicate! Lawrence’s ‘Innocent’ is worth twenty million wogs and it’s scaled behind
quad armor glass in Prime Art-but I’ll bet wogs to wiggles the Prime Curator himself,
with all his apparatus, couldn’t tell this one from his!”
“I wouldn’t take even one wiggle’s worth of that. And this `Laughing Cavalier’ and this
`Toledo’ are twice as old and twice as fabulously valuable.”
“And there are my own golf clubs . . .”
“Excuse us, sirs,” the Omans said, “these things were simple because they could be
induced in your minds. But the matter of a staff could not, nor what you would like to eat
for supper, and it is growing late.”
“Staff? What the hell has the staff got to do with . . .” “House-staff, they mean,” Karns
said. “We don’t need much of anybody, boys. Somebody to keep the place shipshape,
is all. Or, as a de luxe touch, how about a waitress? One housekeeper and one
waitress. That’ll be finer.”
“Very well, sirs. There is one other matter. It has troubled us that we have not been
able to read in your minds the logical datum that they should in fact simulate Doctor
Bells and Doctor Blake?”
“Huh?” Both men gasped-and then both exploded like one twelve-inch length of
primacord.
While the Omans could not understand this purely Terran reasoning, they accepted the
decision without a demurring thought. “Who, then, are the two they’re to simulate?”
“No stipulation; roll your own,” Hilton said, and glanced at Karns. “None of these Oman
women are really hard on the eyes.”
“Check. Anybody who wouldn’t call any one of ’em a slurpy dish needs a new set of
optic nerves.”
“In that case,” the Omans said, “no delay at all will be necessary, as we can make do
with one temporarily. The Sory, no longer Sora, who has not been glad since the Tuly
replaced it, is now in your kitchen. It comes.”
A woman came in and stood quietly in front of the two men, the wafted air carrying
from her clear, smooth skin a faint but unmistakable fragrance of Idaho mountain
syringa. She was radiantly happy; her bright, deep-green eyes went from man to man.
“You wish, sirs, to give me your orders verbally. And yes, you may order fresh, whole,
not-canned hens’ eggs.”
“I certainly will, then; I haven’t had a fried egg since we left Terra. But . . . Larry said . . .
you aren’t Sory!”
“Oh, but I am, sir.”
Karns had been staring at her, eyes popping. “Holy Saint Patrick! Talk about
simulation, Jarve! They’ve made her over into Lawrence’s ‘Innocent’-exact to twenty
decimals!”
“You’re so right.” Hilton’s eyes went, half a dozen times, from the form of flesh to the
painting and back. “That must have been a terrific job.”
“Oh, no. It was quite simple, really.” Sory said, “since the brain was not involved. I
merely reddened my hair and lengthened it, made my eyes to be green, changed my
face a little, pulled myself in a little around here . . .” Her beautifully manicured hands
swept the full circle of her waistline, then continued to demonstrate appropriately the
rest of her speech:
“. . . and pushed me out a little up here and tapered my legs a little more-made them a
little larger and rounder here at my hips and thighs and a little smaller toward and at my
ankles. Oh, yes, and made my feet and hands a little smaller. That’s all. I thought the
Doctor Karns would like me a little better this way.”
“You can broadcast that over the P-A system at high noon.” Karns was still staring.
“‘That’s all,’ she says. But you didn’t have time to . . .
“Oh, I did it day before yesterday. As soon as Javvy materialized the `Innocent’ and I
knew it to be your favorite art.” “But damn it, we hadn’t even thought of having you here
then!”
“But I had, sir. I fully intended to serve, one way or another, in this your home. But of
course I had no idea I would ever have such an honor as actually waiting on you at your
table. Will you please give me your orders, sirs, besides the eggs? You wish the eggs
fried in butter-three of them apiece-and sunny side up.”
“Uh-huh, with ham,” Hilton said. “I’ll start with a jumbo shrimp cocktail. Horseradish and
ketchup sauce; heavy on the horseradish.”
“Same for me,” Karns said, “but only half as much horseradish.”