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"Excuse me, please," she said to the other three at her table. "I must go
now." She tossed her cards down onto the
table and walked straight toward him; eyes still holding eyes.-
He backed hastily out into the corridor, and as the door closed behind her
they went naturally and wordlessly into
each other's arms. Lips met lips in a kiss that lasted for a long, long time.
It was not a passionate embrace-passion
would come later-it was as though each of them, after endless years of
bootless" fruitless longing, bad come
finally home.
"Come with me, dear, where we can talk," she said" finally; eyeing with
disfavor the half-dozen highly interested
spectators.
And a couple of minutes later" in cabin two hundred eighty-one, Deston said:
"So this is why I had to come down
into passenger territory. You came aboard at exactly zero seven forty-three."
"Uh-uh." She shook her yellow head. "A few minutes before that. That was when
I read your name in the list of
officers on the board. First Officer" Carlyle Deston. I got a tingle that went
from the tips of my toes up and out
through the very ends of my hair. Nothing like when we actually saw each
other, of course. We both knew the truth,
then. It's wonderful that you're so strongly psychic" too."
"I don't know about that," he said, thoughtfully. "All my training has been
based on the axiomatic fact that the map is
not the territory. Psionics, as I understand it" holds that the map
is-practically-the territory, but can't prove it. So I
simply don't know what to believe. On one hand, I have had real hunches all my
life. On the other, the signal doesn't
carry much information. More like hearing a siren when you're driving along a
street. You know you have to pull
over and stop, but that's all you know. It could be police, fire,
ambulance-anything. Anybody with any psionic ability
at all ought to do a lot better than that, I should think."
"Not necessarily. You've been fighting it. Ninety-nine per cent of your mind
doesn't want to believe it; is dead set
against it. So it has to force its way through whillions and skillions of ohms
of resistance, so only the most
powerful stimuli-'maximum signal' in your jargon, perhaps?-can get through to
you at all." Suddenly she giggled
like a schoolgirl. "You're either psychic or the biggest wolf in the known
universe, and I know you aren't a wolf. If
you hadn't been as psychic as I am, you'd've jumped clear out into subspace
when a perfectly strange girl attacked
you."
"How do you know so much about me?"
"I made it a point to. One of the junniors told me you're the only virgin
officer in all space."
"That was Eddie Thompson." "Uh-huh." She nodded brightly. "Well, is that bad?"
"Anything else but. That is, he thought it was terrible outrageous-a betrayal
of the whole officer caste-but to me it
makes everything just absolutely perfect."
"Me, too. How soon can we get married?"
"I'd say right now, except. . . ." She caught her lower lip between her teeth
and thought. "No, no 'except.' Right now,
or as soon as you can. You can't, without resigning" can you? They'd fire
you?"
"Don't worry about that," he grinned. "My record is good enough, I think, to
get a good ground job. Even if they fire
me for not waiting until we ground" there's lots of jobs. I can support you,
sweetheart."
"Oh, I know you can. I wasn't thinking of that. You wouldn't like a ground
job."
"What difference does that make?" he asked, in honest surprise. "A man grows
up. I couldn't have you with me in
space" and I'd like that a lot less. No. I'm done with space" as of now. But
what was that 'except' business?"
"I thought at first I'd tell my parents first-they're both aboard-but I
decided not to. She'd scream bloody murder and
he'd roar like a lion and none of it would make me change my mind" so we'll
get married first."
He looked at her questioningly; she shrugged and went on. "We aren't what
you'd call a happy family. She's been
trying to make me marry an old goat of a prince and I finally told her to go
roll her hoop-to get a divorce and marry
the foul old beast herself. And to consolidate two empires, he's been wanting
me to marry a multibillionaire-who is
also a louse and a crumb and a heel. Last week he insisted on it and I blew up
like an atomic bomb. I told him if I
got married a thousand times I'd pick every one of my husbands myself, without
the least bit of help from either
him or her. I'd keep on finding oil and stuff for him, I said, but that was
all. . . ."
"Oil!" Deston exclaimed, involuntarily, as everything fell into place in his
mind. The way she walked; poetry in
motion . . . the oil-witch . . . two empires . . . more millions than he had
dimes. . . . "Oh" you're Barbara Warner"
then."
"Why, of course; but my friends call me 'Bobby.' Didn't you-but of course you
didn't-you never read passenger
lists. If you did, you'd've got a tingle, too."
"I got plenty of tingle without reading, believe me. However, I never expected
to-"
"Don't say it, dear!" She got up and took both his hands in hers. "I know how
you feel. I don't like to let you ruin
your career, either, but nothing can separate us" now that we've found each
other. So I'll tell you this." Her eyes
looked steadily into his. "If it bothers you the least bit, later on, I'll
give every dollar I own to some foundation or
other, I swear it."
He laughed shamefacedly as he took her in his arms. "Since that's the way you
look at it, it won't bother me a bit."
"Uh-huh, you do mean it." She snuggled her head down into the curve of his
neck. "I can tell."
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