“Sure,” Ross said hollowly. This, he told himself disgustedly, was the damnedest, silliest, ridiculousest. . .
There was a furious hiccup from the door. “So!” Helena said venomously, pushing the door wide and almost falling to the floor. “So!”
Ross flailed out of the bed, kicking the pistol out of Pilot Breuer’s hand in the process. He cried enthusiastically, “Helena, dear!”
“Don’t you ‘Helena-dear’ me!” she said, moving in and kicking the door shut behind her. “I leave you alone for one little minute, and what happens? And you!”
“Sorry,” Pilot Breuer muttered, climbing into her coveralls. “Wrong room. Must’ve had one anti-grav too many.” She licked her lips apprehensively, zipping her coveralls and sidling toward the door. With one hand on the knob, she said diffidently, “If I could have my gun back——?
No, you’re right! I’ll get it tomorrow.” She got through the
door just ahead of a lamp.
“Hussy!” spat Helena. “And you, Ross——”
It was the last straw. As Ross lurched toward her he
regretted only one thing: that he didn’t have a hairbrush. Pilot Breuer had been right. Nobody paid any attention
to the noise.
“Yes, Ross.” Helena had hardly touched her breakfast; she sat with her eyes downcast.
” ‘Yes, Ross’,” he mimicked bitterly. “It better be ‘Yes, Ross.’ This place may look all right to you, but it’s trouble. You don’t want to find yourself stuck here all your life, do you? Then do what I tell you.”
“Yes, Ross.”
He pushed the remains of his food away. “Oh, the hell with it,” he said dispiritedly. “I wish I’d never started out on this fool’s errand. And I double damn well wish I’d left you in the dye vats.”
“Yes, Ro——— I mean, I’m glad you didn’t, Ross,” she said in a small voice.
He stood up and patted her shoulder absently. “Come on,” he said, “we’ve got to get over to the Cavallo place. I wish you had let me talk to them on the phone.”
She said reasonably, “But you said——”
“I know what I said. When we get there, remember that I do the talking.”
They walked through green-lit streets, filled with proud-looking women and sad-eyed men. The Cavallo Machine-Tool Corporation was only a few intersections away, by the map the desk clerk had drawn for Helena; they found it without trouble. It was a smallish sort of building for a factory, Ross thought, but perhaps that was how factories went on Azor. Besides, it was well constructed and beautifully landscaped with the purplish lawns these people seemed to prefer.
Helena led him through the door, as was right and proper. She said to the busy little bald-headed man who seemed to be the receptionist, “We’re expected. Miss Cavallo, please.”
“Certainly, Ma’am,” he said with a gap-toothed smile, and worked a combination of rods arid buttons on the desk beside him. In a moment, he said, “Go right in. Three up and four over; can’t miss it.”
They passed through a noisy territory of machines where metal was sliced, spun, hacked, and planed; no one seemed to be paying any attention to them. Ross wondered who had built the machines, and had a sudden flash of realization as to where those builders were now: On “Minerva,” staring at the unattainable free sky.
Miss Cavallo was a motherly type with a large black cigar. “Sit right down,” she said heartily. “You, too, young man. Tell me what we in Cavallo Company can do for you.”
Helena opened her mouth, but Ross stopped her with a gesture. “That’s enough,” he said quietly. “I’ll take over. Miss Cavallo,” he declaimed from memory, “what follows is under the seal.”
“Is it indeed! What do you know,” she said.
Ross said, “Wesley.”
Miss Cavallo slapped her thigh admiringly. “Son of a gun,” she said admiringly. “How this takes me back—those long-ago childhood days, learning these things at my mother’s knee. Let’s see. Uh—the limiting velocity is C.”
“But C2 is not a velocity,” Ross finished triumphantly. And, from the heart, “Miss Cavallo, you don’t begin to know how happy this makes me.”
Miss Cavallo reached over and pumped his hand, then Helena’s. To the girl she said, “You’ve got a right to be a proud woman, believe me. The way he got through it, without a single stumble! Never saw anything like it in my life. Well, just tell me what I can do for you, now that that’s over.”