Alan broke in. "Excuse me, Mr. Hall. I am Dr. Chase. Won't you join my table? Three of the people a.s.signed places there are Almazanians, a diplomatic mission, I think, and they naturally prefer to have their own cuisine in their own cabins, so we have room for three more."

"How about it, Steward," said Tom. "Any objections?"

Shrugging his shoulders, Davis strolled away.

Tom glared at the retreating back. "That guy has the face of a murderer.

He can't be decent to anybody with less than a million credits."

Dorothy laughed. "Never mind, Tom. Someday you'll be the most famous lawyer in the Interstellar courts, and maybe you'll get a chance to prosecute him for arson or treason."

Alan led them to the rear of the dining room, where his two table companions were finishing the last sips of their coffee, and lighting the first cigarette of the morning.

"Miss Taganova, may I present Tom and Dorothy Hall, who would like to share our table."

Tanya lifted her beautiful auburn head and smiled a welcome. Professor Larrabee stood up, his pink cheeks crinkling with pleasure as he shook hands with Tom.

"Young people make the best companions," he said, "especially on long journeys."

Alan sat down and reached for the vitamin dispenser. "These particular young people want privacy. They're on their honeymoon, and would hardly shed a tear if all the rest of the world suddenly ceased to exist."

"It's not quite like that, Dr. Chase," said Tom, his face reddening, "but those people at our other table were just out of our cla.s.s, one way or another. The men talked all the time about their bank accounts, and the women clawed at each other about which one had the biggest house, and the biggest pearls and diamonds and emeralds, until we began to feel smothered in a blanket of credits and diamonds."

"Credits and diamonds must be very nice things to have," said Tanya.

"I've never managed to collect many of either."

"I've nothing against them in themselves," said Tom, "but right now they don't seem to matter very much. We had to wait five long years to be married, five years for me to finish my law training, and for Dorothy to wear out her family's opposition. They didn't want her to throw herself away on a penniless lawyer."

"As if I were a child who didn't know her own mind," said Dorothy.

"Well, I wanted Tom, penniless or not; and anyway, in a few years he's going to be the finest lawyer in the Interstellar Courts."

"I hope you'll always be as happy as you are now, children." The professor's eyes were misty as he stood up. "Come, Miss Tanya. Take a stroll with me, and bring back to an old man a brief illusion of youth."

"But you'll never be old!" she said affectionately. "You're still the most fascinating man on the ship."

Like every other man in the room, Alan watched with envious eyes as Tanya took the professor's arm and sauntered to the door, the heavy taffeta skirts of her pearl-gray gown swishing and rustling as she walked.

Within the sealed hulk of the _Star Lord_ the twenty-four Piles silently did their work, out of sight, out of the thoughts of the pa.s.sengers.

Driving the ship through the unknowable infinities of hypers.p.a.ce, they held her quiet, steady, seemingly without motion. They behaved as they were intended to, their temperatures remained docilely within the normal limits of safety, and the ship sped on.

The technicians and maintenance men, the navigators, the nucleonics men, all kept aloof from the social eddies frothing at the center of the ship. They lived in another world, a world of leashed power, in which the trivial pursuits of the pa.s.sengers were as irrelevant as the twitterings of birds.

In the central tiers occupied by the pa.s.sengers, each morning the walls of the lounges and dining rooms resumed their daily routine of simulating the panorama of earth's day. Lights glowed into a clear sunrise, brightened into a sunny sky across which light clouds scudded.

Children played in the nurseries, grownups idled through the hours, eating the delicious food, taking a dip in the priceless pool, attending the stereodrams, and playing games. At the c.o.c.ktail hour, the orchestra played jaunty tunes, old-fashioned polkas, waltzes, mazurkas; at dinner, it shifted to slower, muted melodies, suitable background for high feminine voices, deep male laughter, and the heavy drone of talk.

In the walls, the sun set, twilight crept in, and the stars came out.

After the stars had been advancing for several hours, people finished their dancing and card games, walked out of the theaters, had a final drink at the Bar, paused at the bulletin board which detailed the ship's daily progress, and went to bed.

Dr. Alan Chase followed his own routine. Each morning and each evening he geigered his cabin and found the radiation still below the earth normal. He was surprised to find that he was holding his own, physically, instead of becoming progressively weaker, as he had expected, and he began to feel hopeful that he might quickly regain his health on the inert atmosphere of Almazin III. He was not strong enough, however, to take part in the active games of the pa.s.sengers, and had not enough energy to try to make friends, except for the people at his dining table--particularly Tanya.

Of all the lovely women on board, he thought Tanya Taganova the loveliest. He knew he was not alone in this, for the arresting planes of her face, the dramatic color of her rustling taffeta gowns, attracted many followers. He would sit in the lounge at night and watch her dancing, and then realize, suddenly, that she had disappeared, long before the evening was over. She was an elusive creature, as unpredictable as a b.u.t.terfly.

Wandering listlessly about the ship, one afternoon he stepped through the open door of the Library. In the almost empty room he saw the auburn head of Tanya, bent over so as to hide her face and show him only her glowing hair. She raised her head as he approached.

"Are you looking for a book, Dr. Chase?"

"No, I just wondered what was interesting you so much."

She shifted her seat, to let him see a large sheet of rough drawing paper covered with a chalk sketch of a desolate gray marsh over which green waves swirled from the sea, behind them loomed rose-colored granite hills.

"I'm a scene designer, you know. But at home, somehow, I never have time to myself. People will never believe I'm serious, and when I want to get some real work done, I run away on a trip, by myself. Right now I'm sketching out a set for a new stereodrama we're staging next autumn.

This particular one is for a melancholy suicide on Venus. I've several more here." She pointed to a scattered heap of drawings.

The soft chime of the library telephone interrupted them. Tanya rose and moved to the desk.

"Yes? Not now, youngster. I'm working. Yes, maybe tomorrow."

Alan had been examining her drawings. "Is this what you do during the hours when you disappear?".

"Usually. Sometimes I drop into the playroom to chat with the children.

They're more interesting than their parents, for the most part, and n.o.body ever seems to pay much attention to them."

"But do you have to work at night, too? When you disappear in the middle of the evening, everybody misses you. The men all watch for you to come back, their wives sigh with relief, and old man Jasperson toddles around and searches the dance floor and bleats, 'Where's Miss Tanya? She was here just a little while ago, and now I can't find her anywhere!'"

"I know. But one dance an evening with him is about all I can stand. I don't really like the man."

"But why? He's a little stupid, but he seems a harmless sort of duck. In a financial deal, of course, I can see that he'd be sharp and ruthless--that's how men like him become millionaires--but he can't knife anybody on shipboard."

Tanya slashed a heavy black line across her drawing, bearing down so hard that she broke the chalk, and threw the pieces to the floor.

"He's a coward! Haven't you ever noticed the way he bullies the waiters?

How he patronizes Professor Larrabee, and ignores the young Halls? And to hear him tell it, you'd think only his advice makes it possible for Captain Evans to run the ship! I'm afraid of men like that. They're cowardly and boastful, and in a crisis they are dangerous!"

"What an outburst over a fat little bald-headed man! Aren't you letting your dramatic sense run away with you?"

Laughing, Tanya picked up her chalk and resumed sketching. "Probably, but after all, I earn my living with my imagination."

"Then you aren't just a rich young woman dabbling in the theater?"

"No indeed. If you could see my bank account! No, I'm going to Almazin III to make authentic sketches of the landscape. We may do a show set in that locale, next year."

"I wish I could see some of the shows you stage."

"When we get home, I'll send you a pa.s.s."