Instead of becoming even more furious at that, she relaxed and grinned up at him. "No, I never did. That would be a brand-new experience."

"Okay. Much more of this sticking out of your beautiful neck and you'll get that brand-new experience. Now let's do some thinking on what to do next. I shot in an order for a special elsie...

"Can you... those kittyhawks went through superstainless like so much cheese. What plating-neotride?" "That's right. Here's the funny-picture." He spread a blueprint out on the bed. "I didn't have much of anything to do with it, though; it's mostly Lew's work.

She studied the drawing for a couple of minutes. "That ought to do it; it'd stop a diamond drill cold... it'd hold a neotride drill for a while... but what are those monstrosities, Babe? All that the croakers will give out with is gobbledegook, soothing syrup, and pure pap."

"n.o.body knows. All the biologists aboard are going not-so-slowly nuts. They can't do anything from up here. "All of us. Nice." She bit her lip.-Without rhenium we can't work down there and we have to work down there to get rhenium. Strictly circular progress."

"It isn't that bad, Curly. There are dozens of nice big chunks of the clear quill-thousands of tons of it-right out in the open down there. That's the special elsie's job, to go clown and get 'em and bring 'em out here to us. The chief wants a good mess of it rushed in to Galmetia, but there's plenty of it lying around loose to take care of him and build five of your installations besides."

"Wonderful! That makes me feel a lot better, Babe I'll talk to you now until the croakers throw you out."

Chapter 10 THE PARTY.

Cecily and Leyton were both up and at work, their wounds completely healed, when the special elsie arrived. This landing craft was special indeed, for the first abortive attempt to approach that fantastically inimical planet had made it perfectly clear that they would have to have hundreds of tons of rhenium before they could begin to work.

This little ship was to get it. Her inner layer of armor was four inches thick, forged of the stubbornest supersteel available. The outer layer, electronically fused to the inner, was one full inch of neotride, the' synthetic that was the hardest substance known to man-five numbers Rockwell harder than the diamond.

The starship carrying the elsie also brought two formally-typed notices-things almost unknown in a day of subs.p.a.ce communicators and tapes. The one addressed to "Cecily Byrd, Ph.D., Sc.D., F.I.A." (Fellow of the Inst.i.tute of Automation) read in part: "You are hereby instructed, under penalty of discharge and blacklist, to stay aloft until complete safety of operation has been demonstrated," and the gist of Deston's was: "I cannot give you orders, but if you have half the brain I think you have, you know enough to stay aloft until safety of operation has been demonstrated."

Cecily's nostrils flared; then her whole body slumped. "He'd do it, too, the d.a.m.ned old tiger... and this is the biggest job I ever dreamed about... and I suppose you'll go down anyway."

"Uh-uh. He makes sense. Actually, neither of us should take the chance. Anyway, the stuff is right out in the open, where they can sit right down on it and grapple it... and besides, my mother told me it isn't sporting to kick a lady in the face when she's down. It isn't done, she said."

"She did? How nice of her! Thanks, Babe, a lot," and she held out her hand.

Thus it was that a.s.sistant Director Leyton and Captain Jones led the down-crew. They both, and two other big, strong men as well, carried .475's; but this time the magnums were not needed. The neotride held up long enough. In spite of everything the rabidly hostile "animals" could do, the elsie grappled five-hundred-ton chunks of the stuff and lugged them up into orbit.

In the meantime the metallurgists, by subjecting the teeth and claws of the dead kittyhawks to intensive study, had solved their biggest basic problem. Or rather, they found out that Nature had solved it for them.

"The composition at maxprop-to get the best mat of longest single crystals, you know-is extremely complex and almost unbelievably critical," Leyton told Deston, happily. "It would have taken us years, and even then we wouldn't have hit it exactly on the nose except by pure luck."

Well, how do you expect to do in a couple of years what it took Old Mother Nature millions of years? Billions even, maybe."

"It's been done. Anyway, we're 'way ahead of Old Mother in one respect-heat-treating. We've got a growth cycle already that makes the original look sick."

The new and improved leybyrdite was poured, forged, neotride-ground, and heat-treated. A tailored-to-order mining head was built; and, in spite of the frantic and highly capable opposition of the local life-forms, was driven into the mountainside.

This first unit took a long time, since everyone had to work in armor and anti-grav. After it was in place, however, the job went much faster, as air was run in and the whole installation was graved down to nine eighty-Earth-normal gravity-and people could work in ordinary working clothes.

Section after section was attached; the whole gigantic a.s.sembly was jacked forward, inch by inch.

Adams and his crew developed a super-flame-thrower which, instead of chemical flames, projected a plasma jet-the heat of nuclear, not chemical, reaction. Cecily had twenty of them made and installed at strategic points. It took a couple of weeks for the various fauna to learn that such heat was quickly and inevitably fatal; but, having learned the fact, they kept their distance and the work went easier and faster.

But the director brushed aside the scientists' pleas for elsies in which to study. "I'm sorry, Adams, but first things have got to come first. When we get a full stream of rhenium coming out of that hole in the ground I'll build you anything you want, but until then absolutely nothing goes that isn't geared directly to production."

And she herself was everywhere. Dressed in leybyrdite helmet, leather packet, leather breeches, and high-laced boots, she was in the point, in the middle, in the tail, and in all stations, for whatever purpose intended. And, since no two operations are ever alike and this one was like nothing else ever built, she was carrying the full load. But she knew what she was doing, and hers was a mind that did not have to follow any book. She ordered special machinery and equipment so regardlessly of cost that Desmond Phelps almost had heart failure. When she wanted ten extra-special units, each of which would cost over a hundred thousand dollars to build, she ordered them as nonchalantly as though they were that many ballpoint pens; and Maynard okayed her every requisition without asking a single question.

She had her troubles, of course, but only one of them was with her personnel-the revolt of her section heads. Some of them resented the fact that she was a woman; some of them really believed that they knew more about some aspects of the job than she did. She called a meeting and told them viciously to do the job her way and quit dragging their feet-or else. Next day, in four successive minutes, she fired four of them; whereupon the others decided that Byrd was a hard-rock man after all and began to play ball.

She had her troubles, of course-what big job has ever gone strictly according to plan?-but she met them unflinchingly head on and flattened them flat. She knew her stuff and she held her crew and her job right in the palm of her hand. Even Maynard was satisfied; not too many men could have run such a hairy job as smoothly as she was doing it.

The last element was installed. The last tape was checked, rechecked, and double-checked. Maynard, Smith, and Phelps, all in person-a truly unprecedented event, this!-inspected and approved the whole project. Project Rhenia Four, fully automatic, was ready to roll in its vast entirety.

Maynard stared thoughtfully at his project chief. Her helmet was under her left arm. She hadn't seen a hairdresser for five months; her rebellious brick-dust-red curls were jammed into a nylon net. Her jacket, breeches, and boots were scuffed, stained, scarred, and worn. She had lost pounds of weight; faint dark rings encircled both eyes. But those eyes fairly sparkled; her whole mien was one of keen antic.i.p.ation. Maynard had never seen her in any such mood as this.

"Okay, Byrd; push the b.u.t.ton," he said.

"Uh-uh, chief, you push it. It's your honor, really; n.o.body else in all s.p.a.ce would have stood back of me the way you have."

"Thanks. It'd tickle me to; I've never started a big operation yet," and the whole immense project went smoothly to work.

Strained and tense, they watched it for half an hour. Then Maynard shook her hand.

"You were worth saving, Byrd. You're an operator; a real performer. I hope you've got over that unG.o.dly insecurity complex of yours. You know what I'm going to do to you if you ever start that h.e.l.l-raising again?"

She laughed. "You and Babe both seem to have the same idea; he says he'll knock me as cold as ice-cream. You, too?"

No, I don't think that's the indicated treatment. I'll get you pie-eyed on the best brandy in Beardsley's cellar."

"Don't tempt me, chief!" she laughed again as Smith, Phelps, Leyton, Deston, Jones, and the others came up to add their congratulations to Maynard's.

They kept on watching the tremendous installation, less and less tensely and with more and more eating and sleeping, for fifty more hours, during which time a hundred freighters departed with their heavy loads. Then all tension disappeared. Having run this long, it would continue to run; with only normal supervision and maintenance.

"Now for the usual party," Smith said. "Unusual, it should be, since this is a highly unusual installation. How about it, everybody?"

"Let's have a big dance," Barbara suggested. "Dress up and everything."

"Oh, let's!" Cecily almost squealed. She was still in her scuffed leathers, still ready for any emergency. Her hair was still a tightly-packed mop. "We're all rested enough-I just had fourteen hours' sleep and two big steaks. Let's go!"

We're off, Curly." Bernice took her arm. "We'll help each other get all prettied up. Herc, how about locking the ships together, so we won't get all mussed up in those horrible suits?"

"Can do, pet." Jones gave his wife the smile reserved for her alone; a smile that softened wonderfully his hard, craggy, deeply-tanned face. "For beauty in distress we'd do even more than that."

In about an hour, then, the party began. Bernice and Cecily were standing together when Jones and Leyton came up to them. The red-head was a good inch taller than tall Bernice; she would have stood five feet ten without her four-inch heels. Both gowns were as tight as they could be without showing stress-patterns; both were strapless, backless, and almost frontless; both hemlines bisected kneecaps.

The two men were just about of a size-six feet three, and twenty pounds or so over two hundred. Leyton was handsome; Jones very definitely was not. Leyton was the softer; it was not part of his job to keep himself at the peak of physical fitness. He was, however, by no means soft. Being "softer" than Theodore Jones left a lot of room for a man to be in very good shape indeed, and Lewis Leyton was.

Both men stopped and Jones whistled expressively; a perfectly-executed wolf-whistle. "This must be Miss Byrd." He smiled as he took her hand and bowed over it-and, as a s.p.a.ce officer, he really knew how to bow. "Miss Byrd, may I have the honor and the pleasure of the second number, please?"

She dipped a half-curtsy and laughed. "You may indeed, sir," and Leyton swept her away.

Jones danced first with his wife, of course; then led Cecily out onto the floor. For a minute they danced in silence, each conscious of what a superb performer the other was and of how perfectly they matched. She was the first to speak.

"You're looking at my hair. Don't, Here, please. n.o.body in all s.p.a.ce can do anything with it, and I didn't have time. to let your beauty-shop even try."

"Do you really mean that, Curly; or are you just fishing?"

"Of course I mean it! Look at Bun's hair, or Bobby's, or anybody's! They can fix it any way they please and change it any time they please. But this stuff?" She shook her intractable mop. "This carroty-pink-sorrel mess of rusty steel-turnings? n.o.body can do anything with it whatever. I can't even bleach it or dye it-or even wear a wig. It's bad enough, the color and the way it is now, but with it anything else, with my turkey-egg face, I look just simply like the wrath of G.o.d. Honestly."

"If that's really the way you look at it, I think I'll tell a tale out of school. You know Bun isn't the jealous type."

Of course she isn't. My G.o.d, with what she's got, why should she be? How could she be?"

"Okay. Since she met you she's told me a dozen times that if anybody in all s.p.a.ce could make a hair-piece like that-n.o.body can, she says-she'd shave her head and get one tomorrow."

Cecily leaned back-she had been dancing very close -far enough to look into his eyes. "Why, you great big d.a.m.n liar..."

"Ask her, next time you see her."

"I'll do just that. In the meantime, for the prize-winning big lie of the year, tell me that next to Bun I'm the prettiest girl here; not a hard-boiled hard-rock man in a hall gown."

"I'll tell you something a lot better than that. You've got stuff by the cubic mile that no merely pretty girl ever did have or ever will have."

"Such as?" she scoffed.

"If you really don't know, take a complete inventory of yourself sometime."

"I have, thousands of times." "Wrong system, then. Change it."

She leaned still farther away from him. "You sound as though you really mean that."

"I do, Scout's Honor. And Bun agrees with me."

"She does? I'll bet she does. You've got a nice line, Here."

"No line, Curly; believe me."

"It'd be nice if I could... but Here, the chief thinks I have a terrific case of inferiority complex... except he called it insecurity'... and Babe said... do you think so?"

"I'm no psych, so I wouldn't know. But why in all the h.e.l.ls of s.p.a.ce should you have?"

She actually missed a step. "Why should I have! Just look at me! Or can't you imagine what it's like, being the ugliest duckling in the pond all your life.?"

"Can't I? You have got a complex. Look at me, you dumb... what do you think I've been all my life?" She stared at him in amazement. "Why, you're positively distinguished-looking!"

"Comet-gas! I've always been the homeliest guy around, but I got so I didn't let it throw me."

"Anyway, men don't have to be good-looking." "Neither do women. Look at history."

"Let's look at Bun instead-one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. You wouldn't have..."

"I certainly would have. Beauty helps, of course-and I admit that I like it, that she's a beauty-but over the long route it isn't a drop in the bucket and you know it. She'll still be a charmer at ninety, and so will you. She's prettier than you are, but you've got a lot of stuff she hasn't. What did you think I was talking about, a minute ago'?"

"s.e.x. Anybody can throw that around."

"Not the way you can. But that wasn't it, at all; that's only one phase. It's the total personality that carries the wallop. You've got it. So has Bun. And Bobby. Who else aboard? n.o.body."

"I wonder..." They danced in silence for a time. "You could be right, I suppose... after all, you and Maynard and Babe are certainly three of the smartest men I know."

"You know we're right. So why don't you cut the jaw flapping and get down to reality?"

"Maybe you are right. Thanks, Here, the thought is one to dwell on. You know what I'm going to do?" She giggled suddenly. "I haven't done it since my Freshman Frolic." She drew herself up very close to him, snuggled her head down onto his shoulder, and closed both eyes.

And thus they finished the dance. He brought her back to a place beside his wife, thanked her, and turned away toward Barbara.

Cecily stared after his retreating figure. "That's a lot of man you have there, Bun," she breathed, as Smith and Phelps came up to claim them.

"I know," Bernice agreed.

Ten minutes later, in the improvised powder room, Bernice continued the conversation quite as though it had not been interrupted. "You wouldn't by any chance have it in mind to do anything about it, would you, darling?"

Each woman studied the other. Both were tall and superb of figure. Each projected in quant.i.ty-and not only unconsciously-the tremendous basic force that is s.e.x appeal. But there all resemblance ceased. Bernice, as has been said, was one of the most beautiful women of her time. And besides beauty of face and figure, besides strength of physique and of character, she had the poise and confidence of her status and of her sure knowledge of her husband's love. Cecily Byrd, on the other hand, radiated a personality that was uniquely hers and that made itself tellingly felt wherever she was. In addition, she had the driving force, the sheer willpower, and the ruthlessly competent brain of the top bracket executive she had so fully proved herself to be.

"It'd be fun," the red-head said, thoughtfully. "That would really be a battle."

"As Here likes to say, you chirped it that time, birdie." "Ordinarily, that would make it all the more fun, but I'll be working like a dog yet for quite a while-I'll hardly have time enough in bed even to sleep. So let's take a rain-check on it, shall we, my dear?"

'Any time, darling. Any time at all. Whenever you please." Blue eyes stared steadily into eyes of Irish green.

Then Cecily shook her head. "I'm not going to try, Bun. I think too much of both of you... and besides, I might not be able to... You know, Bun..." She paused, then went on, slowly, "I never have liked women very much; they're such flabby, gutless things... but you're a lot of woman yourself."

"We're a lot alike in some ways, Curly-there aren't very many women like you and me and Barbara-for which fact, of course, most men would say Thank G.o.d!' " "You're so right!"

Not being men, the two almost-antagonists did not shake hands; but at that moment the ice began definitely to melt.

"But listen," Bernice said. "There are hundreds of men around here. Good men and big ones."

Cecily grinned. "But not usually both; and just being big isn't enough to make me come apart at the seams. He has to have a brain, too; and maybe what Here just called a total personality'."

"'That doer narrow the field... just about to Lew, I guess... but I suppose Executives' Code cuts both ways."

"It's supposed to, probably, but I wouldn't care about that if he weren't such a stuffed shirt... but I'm getting an idea. Let's go hunt Babe up." Then, as Bernice looked at her quizzically, "My G.o.d, no-who except a half-portion like Bobby would want him? I just want to ask him a question."

They found Deston easily enough. "Babe," Cecily said, you said there's a lot of tantalum here. As much as on Tantalia Three?"

"More. Thousands of times as much. Why?"

"Then Perce Train ought to come out here and look it over. I'll tell the chief so. Thanks, Babe."

"Perce Train?" Bernice asked, the next time they sat together. "The boy friend?"