these conditions or not?”
“I . . . I would vote to accept them, Captain. But that weight! One hundred twenty
thousand metric tons-incredible) Are you sure of that figure?”
“Definitely. And that is minimum. The error is plus, not minus.”
“This crippling power-shortage would really be over?” For the first time since Sawtelle
had known him, Gordon showed that he was not quite solid Navy brass.
“It’s over. Definitely. For good.”
“I’d not only agree; I’d raise you a monument. While I can’t speak for the Board, I’m
sure they’ll agree.”
“So am I. In any event, your cooperation is all that’s required for this first load.” The
chips had vanished from Sawtelle’s shoulders. “Where do you want it, Admiral? Aristar-
ehus or White Sands?”
“White Sands, please. While there may be some delay in releasing it to industry . . .”
“While they figure out how much they can tax it?” Sawtelle asked, sardonically.
“Well, if they don’t tax it it’ll be the first thing in history that isn’t. Have you any
objections to releasing all this to the press?”
“None at all. The harder they hit it the wider they spread it, the better. Will you have
this beam switched to Astrogation, please?”
“Of course. And thanks, Captain. I’ll see you at White Sands.”
Then, as the now positively glowing Gordon faded away, Sawtelle turned to his own
staff. “Fenway-Snowden-take over. Better double-check micro-timing with Astro. Put us
into a twenty-four-hour orbit over White Sands and hold us there. We won’t go down.
Let the load down on remote, wherever they want it.”
The arrival of the Ardvorian superdreadnought Orion and the UC-1 (Uranexite Carrier
Number One) was one of the most sensational events old Earth had ever known. Air
and space craft went clear out to Emergence Volume Ninety to meet them. By the time
the UC-1 was coming in on its remote-controlled landing spiral the press of small ships
was so great that all the police forces available were in a lather trying to control it.
This was exactly what Hilton had wanted. It made possible the completely unobserved
launching of several dozen small craft from the Orion herself.
One of these made a very high and very fast flight to Chicago. With all due formality
under the aegis of a perfectly authentic Registry Number it landed on O’Hare Field.
Eleven deeply tanned young men emerged from it and made their way to a taxi stand,
where each engaged a separate vehicle.
Sam Bryant stepped into his cab, gave the driver a number on Oak-wood Avenue in
Des Plaines, and settled back to scan. He was lucky. He would have gone anywhere
she was, of course, but the way things were, he could give her a little warning to soften
the shock. She had taken the baby out for an airing down River Road, and was on her
way back. By having the taxi kill ten minutes or so he could arrive just after she did.
Wherefore he stopped the cab at a public communications booth and dialed his home.
“Mrs. Bryant is not at home, but she will return at fifteen thirty,” the instrument said,
crisply. “Would you care to record a message for her?”
He punched the RECORD button. “This is Sam, Dolly baby. I’m right behind you. Turn
around, why don’t you, and tell your ever-lovin’ star-hoppin’ husband hello?”
The taxi pulled up at the curb just as Doris closed the front door; and Sam, after
handing the driver a five-dollar bill, ran up the walk.
He waited just outside the door, key in hand, while she lowered the stroller handle, took
off her hat and by longestablished habit reached out to flip the communicator’s switch.
At the first word, however, she stiffened rigidly-frozen solid.
Smiling, he opened the door, walked in and closed it behind him. Nothing short of a
shotgun blast could have taken Doris Bryant’s attention from that recorder then.
“That simply is not so,” she told the instrument firmly, with both eyes resolutely shut.
“They made him stay on the Perseus. He won’t be in for at least three days. This is
some cretin’s idea of a joke.”
“Not this time, Dolly honey. It’s really me.”
Her eyes popped open as she whirled. “SAM!” she shrieked, and hurled herself at him
with all the pent-up ardor and longing of two hundred thirty-four meticulously counted,
husbandless, loveless days.
After an unknown length of time Sam tipped her face up by the chin, nodded at the
stroller, and said, “How about introducing me to the little stranger?”
“What a mother I turned out to bel That was the first thing I was going to rave about,
the very first thing I saw you! Samuel Jay the Fourth, seventy-six days old today.” And
so on.
Eventually, however, the proud young mother watched the slightly apprehensive young
father carry their first-born upstairs, where together, they put him-still sound asleep-to
bed in his crib. Then again they were in each other’s arms.
Some time later, she twisted around in the circle of his arm and tried to dig her fingers
into the muscles of his back. She then attacked his biceps and, leaning backward, eyed
him intently.
“You’re you, I know, but you’re different. No athlete or any laborer could ever possibly
get the muscles you have all over. To say nothing of a space officer on duty. And I
know it isn’t any kind of a disease. You’ve been acting all the time as though I were
fragile, made out of glass or something-as though you were afraid of breaking me in
two. So-what is it, sweetheart?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out an easy way of telling you, but there isn’t any. I am
different. I’m a hundred times as strong as any man ever was. Look.” He upended a
chair, took one heavy hardwood leg between finger and thumb and made what looked
like a gentle effort to bend it. The leg broke with a pistol-sharp report and Doris leaped
backward in surprise. “So you’re right. I am afraid not only of breaking you in two, but
killing you. And if I break any of your ribs or arms or legs I’ll never forgive myself. So if I
let myself go for a second-I don’t think I will, but I might-don’t wait until you’re really hurt
to start screaming. Promise?”
“I promise.” Her eyes went wide. “But tell me!”
He told her. She was in turn surprised, amazed, apprehensive, frightened and finally
eager; and she became more and more eager right up to the end.
“You mean that we . . . that I’ll stay just as I am for thousands of years?”
“Just as you are. Or different, if you like. If you really mean any of this yelling you’ve
been doing about being too big in the hips-I think you’re exactly right, myself-you can
rebuild yourself any way you please. Or change your shape every hour on the hour. But
you haven’t accepted my invitation yet.”
“Don’t be silly.” She went into his arms again and nibbled on his left ear. “I’d go
anywhere with you, of course, any time, but this-but you’re positively sure Sammy Small
will be all right?”
“Positively sure.”
“Okay, I’ll call Mother . . .” Her face fell. “I can’t tell her that we’ll never see them again
and that we’ll live . . .” “You don’t need to. She and Pop-Fern and Sally, too, and their
boy-friends-are on the list. Not this time, but in a month or so, probably.”
Doris brightened like a sunburst. “And your folks, too, of course?” she asked.
“Yes, all the close ones.”
“Marvelous! How soon are we leaving?”
At six o’clock next morning, two hundred thirty-five days after leaving Earth, Hilton and
Sawtelle set out to make the Ardans’ official call upon Terra’s Advisory Board. Both
were wearing prodigiously heavy lead armor, the inside of which was furiously
radioactive. They did not need it, of course. But it would make all Ardans monstrous in
Terran eyes and would conceal the fact that any other Ardans were landing.
Their gig was met at the spaceport; not by a limousine, but by a five-ton truck, into
which they were loaded one at a time by a hydraulic lift. Cameras clicked, reporters
scurried and tri-di scanners whirred. One of those scanners, both men knew, was
reporting directly and only to the Advisory Board-which, of course, never took anything
either for granted or at its face value.
Their first stop was at a truck-scale, where each visitor was weighed. Hilton tipped the
beam at four thousand six hundred fifteen pounds; Sawtelle, a smaller man, weighed in
at four thousand one hundred ninety. Thence to the Radiation Laboratory, where it was
ascertained and reported that the armor did not leak-which was reasonable enough,
since each was lined with Masters’ plastics.
Then into lead-lined testing cells, where each opened his face-plate briefly to a sensing