The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

Firebrass said, “What the hell?” and stared at her.

“How would you react if he felt your crotch to see if you were a man?”

“Simply thrilled, honey,” Firebrass said. He whooped with laughter and danced around while the other two men looked at him as if they thought he was crazy.

Cyrano got onto his hands and knees and then onto his feet. His face was red, and he was snarling. Jill wanted to back away, especially after he picked up the rapier. But she did not move, and she said, her voice steady, “Do you always take such familiarities with strange women?”

A shudder went over him. The redness faded away, and the snarl became a smile. He bowed. “No, madame, and my apologies for such inexcusable manners. I do not usually drink, since I do not like to cloud my mind, to become bestial. But tonight we were celebrat­ing the anniversary of the departure of the Riverboat.”

“No sweat,” Jill said. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

Though she smiled, she was cursing herself for having begun in such a bad way with a man for whom she had a great admiration. It was not her fault, but she could not expect him to forgive her for having felled him so easily before witnesses. No male ego could survive that.

8

THE MIST THINNED. NOW THEY DID NOT NEED THE FIRELIGHT TO see each other’s faces. Below their waists the grey-white coils were still dense, however. The sky was brightening, though it would be some hours before the sun cleared the eastern peaks. The great white gas sheets that covered one-sixth of the sky had faded away with the lesser stars. Thousands of the giants still flamed red, green, white, blue, but their intensity, like gas jets slowly being turned off, was diminishing.

Westward, a dozen structures towered up from the mists. Her eyes widened, though she had heard about these through the grapevine and the drum-telegraph. Some were four-and-five-story-high buildings of sheet-iron and aluminum. Factories. But the colossus was an aluminum building, a hangar.

“It’s the biggest I ever saw,” she murmured.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Firebrass said. He paused, then said, wonderingly, “So you have come to sign up?”

“I said that once.”

He was The Man. He could hire and fire her. But she’d never been able to conceal irritation at stupidity. Repetition was wasteful and hence stupid. Here was a man who had a Ph.D. in astrophysics and a master’s in electronic engineering. And the United States had not sent any dummies into space, though they may not have been brilliant. Maybe it was the liquor that made him seem stupid. As it did every man. And every woman, she hastened to remind herself. Be fair.

He was close, breathing the whiskey fumes up into her face. He was a head shorter than she, his broad shoulders, muscular arms, and deep chest making a curious contrast with long, skinny legs. His large eyes were brown, the balls bloodshot. His head was large, his forehead bulged, his bronze hair was so curly that it was almost kinky, his skin was bronze-red. He was supposed to be a mulatto, but the Caucasian and Onondaga Indian genes seemed to be domi­nant. He could pass for a Provencal or Catalonian. Or just about anything South European.

He looked her up and down. Was his bold stare supposed to challenge her to knock him down as she had Cyrano?

Jill said, “What are you thinking of? My qualifications for airship officer? Or what kind of body is under these baggy towels?”

Firebrass burst out laughing. When he had recovered, he said, “Both.”

Schwartz looked embarrassed. He was short and slight, blue eyed and brown haired. Jill glared at him, and he turned away. Ezekiel Hardy was, like Cyrano, almost as tall as she. He was narrow faced, high cheekboned, black haired. He stared at her with hard pale-blue eyes.

“I’ll repeat this because it needs to be stressed,” she said. “I’m as good as any man and ready to prove it. And I’m a godsend. I have an engineering degree and I can design an airship from A to Z. I have 8342 hours flight-time in four different types of blimp. I can handle any post, including captain.”