"Okay," I said. "Hire me as a plainclothes cop. Put me into an evening dress; call me a dance hostess. When somebody about my size and hopped up on sleet pokes your big cop in his solar plexus and he goes down, I stop pretending to be a lady and go in and rescue him.

"Our masters-at-arms don't need to be protected."

"Maybe. A really big man is usually slow and clumsy. He hardly ever knows much about fighting because he's never really had to fight. He's okay to keep order at a card party. Or to handle one drunk. But suppose the Captain really needs help. A riot. A mutiny. Then you need someone who can fight. Me."

"Leave your application with my assistant. Don't call us; we'll call you."

I went home and thought about where else I could lookÄor should I go to Texas? I had made the same silly, unpardonable mistake with Mr. Fawcett that I had made with Brian... and Boss would have been ashamed of me. Instead of picking up his challenge I should have insisted on a fair testÄbut I should never have laid a finger on the man I was asking to hire me. Stupid, Friday, stupid!

It was not losing that job that bothered me; it was losing any chance of getting a spaceside job with HyperSpace Lines. I was going to have to have a job pretty soon to accomplish the sacred duty of seeing to it that Friday eats (let's face it; I eat like a pig) but it didn't have to be this job. I had decided to ship out with HyperSpace because one voyage with them would let me size up more than half of the colonized planets in explored space.

While I had made up my mind to migrate as Boss had advised, the idea of picking a planet solely from brochures written by advertising copywritersÄwith no return-and-exchange privilegeÄbothered me. I wanted to shop first.

For example: Eden has received more favorable publicity than any other colony in the sky. Hearken to its virtues: A climate much like Southern California over most of its land mass, no dangerous predators, no noxious insects, surface gravity 9 percent less than Earth, oxygen content of air 11 percent higher, metabolic environment compatible with Terran life and soil so rich that two or three bumper crops a year are routine. Scenery delightful no matter where you look. Population today just under ten million.

So what's the catch? I found out one evening in Luna City through letting a ship's officer pick me up and take me to dinner. The company placed a high price on Eden from the time it was discovered and touted it as the perfect retirement home. And it is. After the pioneer party had prepared it, nine-tenths of the people who moved there were elderly and wealthy.

The government is a democratic republic but not one like the California Confederacy. To be eligible to vote a person must be seventy Terran years old and a taxpayer (i.e., landowner). Residents from ages twenty to thirty perform public service, and if you think that means waiting on the elderly hand and foot you are utterly right, but it includes also anything else unpleasant that needs to be

done and therefore would command high wages if it were not done by conscript labor.

Is any of this in any of the company brochures? Hollow laugh!

I needed to know the unadvertised facts about each colonial planet before buying a one-way ticket to one of them. But I spoiled my best chance by "proving" to Mr. Fawcett that an unarmed female can place a come-along on a male bigger than she isÄthat merely got me on his blacklist.

I do hope I grow up before Cheyne-Stokes breathing sets in.

Boss scorned crying over spilt milk quite as much as he despised self-pity. Having killed my chances of being hired by HyperSpace it was time to leave Las Vegas while I was still solvent. If I couldn't make the Grand Tour myself, there was still a way to get the ungarnished word about colonial planets the way I had acquired the truth about Eden: cultivate ships' crew members.

The way to do that was by going to the one place where I was sure to find them: Stationary Station, up the Beanstalk. Freighters were not likely to come farther down Earth's gravity well than to Eli-Four or -FiveÄthat is, to Lunar orbit without the disadvantage of entering Luna's own gravity well. But passenger ships usually touched at Stationary Station. All of HyperSpace Lines' giant liners, Dirac, Newton, Forward, and Maxwell, left from there, returned there, received maintenance and chandlery there. Shipstone complex had a branch there (Shipstone Stationary) primarily to sell power to ships and especially these big ships.

Officers and ratings going on leave arrived and left from there; those not on leave might sleep in their ships but they were likely to drink and eat and party a bit in the Station.

I dislike the Beanstalk and I don't care much for the twenty-fourhour Station. Aside from its spectacular and always changing view of Earth it has nothing to offer but high prices and cramped quarters. Its artificial gravity surges uncomfortably and always seems to go out just in time to put soup in your face.

But there are jobs to be had there if you are not fussy. I should be able to support myself there long enough to be sure that I received

frank opinions concerning each of the colonized planets from one or more jaundiced spacemen.

It was even possible that I might bypass Fawcett an~I ship out from there with HyperSpace. Ships are reputed always to sign on a few at the last minute to fill unexpected vacancies. If such a chance opened up, I would not compound my follyÄI would not ask for a master-at-arms billet. Waitress, scullery, chambermaid, bath attendantÄif the job would swing me around the Grand Tour, I would grab it.

Having thus picked my new home, I looked forward to boarding the same ship, by choice, as a luxury-class passenger, passage paid under the odd terms of my foster father's will.

I gave notice to the leaseholder of the mousetrap I lived in, then took care of some chores before leaving for Africa. AfricaÄ Would I have to cross via Ascension? Or would SBs be running again? Africa made me think of Goldie, and Anna and Burt, and sweet Doe Krasny. I might reach Africa before they did. Irrelevant as there was only one probable war there now (that I knew of) and I intended to shun that area like the plague.

Plague! I must at once prepare a report on plague for Gloria Tomosawa and for my friends at EI1-Five, Mr. and Mrs. Mortenson. It seemed preposterously unlikely that anything I could say would persuade them or anyone else that a Black Death epidemic was coming in only two and a half yearsÄI hadn't believed it myself. But, if I could make responsible people uneasy enough so that antirat measures were tightened and health checks at CHI barriers be made more than a meaningless ritual, it mightÄit just mightÄsave space colonies and Luna.

UnlikelyÄ But I had to try.

The only other thing I had to do was make one more check on my missing friends... then let the matter rest until I came down from Stationary Station or (one may hope!) returned from the Grand Tour. Surely one can call Sydney or Winnipeg or anywhere from Stationary Station... but at much higher cost. I had learned lately that wanting something and being able to pay for it were not the same.

I punched the Tormeys' Winnipeg call code, resigned to hearing:

"The code you have signaled is temporarily out of service at the subscriber's request."

What I got was: "Pirates Pizza Palace!"

I muttered, "Sorry, I punched wrong," and cleared the board. Then I punched again, most carefullyÄ

Äand got: "Pirates Pizza Palace!"

This time I said, "I'm sorry to bother you. I'm in Las Vegas Free State and have been trying to reach a friend in WinnipegÄbut twice I've reached you. I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

"What code did you punch?','