won’t hold air-air, hell! She won’t hold shipping crates! All the Wesleys are shot, and all the Q-converters. Half the
Grahams are leaking like sieves, and-”
“Skip that, too. Just a sec-I’ll cut in the downstairs recorder. Now start in at your last check and tell us what’s
happened since.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Unwind it, Runt, I don’t give a damn how long it is. Not a full-detailed report, just hit the high spots-but don’t leave
out anything really important.”
“Wow!” Jones remarked, audibly. “Wotta man, Frenchy! Like the exurbanite said to the gardener: “I don’t want you
to work hard just take big shovelfuls and lots of ’em per minute.”‘
“That’s enough out of you, Herc my boy. You’ll be next. Go ahead, Babe.”
Deston went ahead, and spoke almost steadily for thirty minutes. He did not mention the gangsters; nor any per-
sonal matters. Otherwise, his report was accurate and complete. He had no idea that everything he said was going
out on an Earth-wide hookup; or that many other planets, monitoring constantly all subspace channels, were
hooking on. When he was finally released Captain French said, with a chuckle:
“Off the air for a minute. You’ve no idea what an uproar this has stirred up already. They let them have all your stuff,
but we aren’t putting out a thing until some Brass gets out there and gets the real story-”
“That is the real story, damn it!”
“Oh, sure, and a very nice job, too, for an extemporaneous effort-if it was. Semantics says, though, that in a couple
of spots it smells like slightly rancid cheese, and . . . no-no, keep still! Too many planets listening in-verbum .rap.
Anyway, THE PRESS smells something, too, and they’re screaming their lungs out, especially the sob-sisters.
Now, Here, on the air, you’re orbiting the fourth planet of a sun. What sun? Where?”
“I don’t know. Unlisted. We’re in completely unexplored territory. Standard reference angles are as follows”-and
Jones read off a long list of observations, not only of the brightest stars of the galaxy, but also of the standard
reference points, such as S-Doradus, lying outside it. “When you get that stuff all plotted, you’ll find a hell of a big
confusion; but I hope there aren’t enough stars in it but what you can find us sometime.”
“Off the air-for good, I hope. Don’t make me laugh, Buster. Your probable center will spear it. If there’s ever more
than one star in any confusion you set up, I’ll eat all the extras. But there’s a dozen Big Brains here, gnawing their
nails off up to the wrist to talk to Adams all the rest of the night, so put him on and let’s get back to sleep, huh?
They’re cutting this mike now.”
“Just a minute!” Deston snapped. “What’s your time?” “Three, fourteen, thirty-seven. So go back to bed, you
night-prowling owl.”
“Of what day, month, and year?” Deston insisted. “Friday, Sep-” French’s voice was replaced by a much older one;
very evidently that of a Fellow of the College. After listening for a moment to the newcomer and Adams, Barbara
took Deston by the arm and led him away. “Just a little bit of that gibberish is a bountiful sufficiency” husband
mine. So I think we’d better take Captain French’s advice, don’t you?”
Since there was only one star in Jones’ “Confusion” (by the book, “Volume of Uncertainty”) finding the Procyon
was no problem at all. High Brass came in quantity and the entire story-except for one bit of biology-was told. Two
huge subspace-going machine shops also came, and a thousand mechanics, who worked on the crippled liner for al-
most three weeks.
Then the Procyon started back for Earth under her own subspace drive, under the command of Captain Theodore
Jones. His first, last, and only subspace command, of course, since he was now a married man. Deston had wanted
to resign while still a First Officer, but his superiors would not accept his resignation until his promotion “for
outstanding services” came through. Thus, Ex-Captain Carlyle Deston and his wife were dead-heading, not quite
back to Earth, but to the transfer-point for the planet Newmars.
“Theodore Warner Deston is going to be born on Newmars, where he should be,” Barbara had said and Deston had
agreed.
“But suppose she’s Theodora?” Bernice had twitted her. “Uh-uh,” Barbara had said, calmly. “I just know he’s
Theodore.”
“Uh-uh, I know.” Bernice had nodded her spectacular head. “And we wanted a girl, so she is. Barbara Bernice Jones,
her name is. A living doll.”
Although both pregnancies were well advanced, neither was very near full term. Thus it was clear that both periods
of gestation were going to be well over a year in length; but none of the five persons who knew it so much as men-
tioned that fact. To Adams it was only one tiny datum in an incredibly huge and complex mathematical structure.
The parents did not want to be pilloried as crackpots, as publicity-seeking liars, or as being unable to count; and
they knew that nobody would believe them if they told the truth; even-or especially?-no medical doctor. The more
any doctor knew about gynecology and obstetrics, in fact, the less he would believe any such story as theirs.
Of what use is it to pit such puny and trivial things as facts against rock-ribbed, iron-bound, entrenched
AUTHORITY?
The five, however, knew; and Deston and Jones had several long and highly unsatisfactory discussions; at first with
Adams, and later between themselves. At the end of the last such discussion, a couple of hours out from the
transfer point, Jones lit a cigarette savagely and rasped:
“Wherever you start or whatever your angle of approach, he always boils it down to this: ‘Subjective time is
measured by the number of learning events experienced.’ I ask you, Babe, what does that mean? If anything?”
“It sounds like it ought to mean something, but I’ll be damned if I know what.” Deston gazed thoughtfully at the
incandescent tip of his friend’s cigarette. “However, if it makes the old boy happy and gives the College a toehold
on subspace” what do we care?”
THE IMPERIAL STARS
They were the finest interstellar agents-and greatest circus stars-the Service of the Empire had!
I
DesPlaines (Plan) 75 rev cat 4-7076-9525. Hostile PX-3MRKQ. Pop. (2440) 7500 00. COL 2015 Fr (qv) &
NrAm (qv) phys. cult. Comml stndg, 229th. Prin ctrib gal: Circus d/t Gal, heav met, prec stones. (Encyclopedia
Galactica, Vol. 9, p. 2937).
Jules and Yvette
For twenty-eight minutes The Flying d’Alemberts-who throughout two centuries had been the greatest troupe of
aerialists of the entire Empire of Earth-had kept the vast audience of the Circus of the Galaxy spellbound: densely
silent; almost tranced. For twenty-eight minutes both side rings had been empty and dark. The air over the center
ring, from the hard-packed, imitation-sawdust-covered earth floor up to the plastic top one hundred forty-five feet
above that floor, had been full of flying white-clad forms-singles and pairs and groups all doing something utterly
breath-taking.
Suddenly, in perfect unison, eighteen of the twenty d’Alemberts then performing swung to their perches, secured
their apparatus, and stood motionless, each with his or her right arm pointing upward at the highest part of the Big
Top.
As all those arms pointed up at her, Yvette d’Alembert moved swiftly, smoothly, out to the middle of her high wire
-and that wire was high indeed, being one hundred thirty-two feet above the floor of the ring. She did not carry even
a fan for balance. She maintained her equilibrium by almost imperceptible movements of her bands, feet, and body.
Reaching the center of the span, she stopped and posed. To the audience she appeared as motionless as a statue.
Like all the other d’Alemberts, she was dressed in silver spangled tights that clung to every part of her body like a
second skin. Thus, while she was too short and too wide and too thick to be acceptable as an Earthly high-fashion
model, her flamboyantly female figure made a very striking and very attractive picture-at a distance. Close up, how-
ever, that picture changed.
Her ankles were much larger than any Earthwoman’s should have been. Her wrists were those of a six-foot-four,
two-hundred-fifty-pound timberman. Her musculature” from toenails to ears to fingertips, would have made all the
beach boys of Southern California turn green with envy.
After a few seconds of posing, she turned her head and looked down at her brother Jules. on a perch sixty-one feet
below her and an “impossible” sixty-four feet off to one side. Then, flexing her knees and swinging her horizontally
outstretched arms in ever-increasing arcs, she put more and more power into her tightly stretched steel-and Jules,
grasping a flying ring in his left hand, began to flex his knees and move his body in precise synchronization with the
natural period of the girl-wire system so far above him. Finally, in the last cycle through which she could hold the