Shizuko refused to let me be on time. She led me to the Captain's Lounge timed so that I went through the receiving line at seven minutes after the hour. The cruise hostess already knew my (current) name and the Captain bowed over my hand. It is my considered opinion that being a VIP in a spaceship is a better deal than being a spaceship master-at-arms.

"Sherry" includes highballs, cocktails, Icelandic Black Death, Spring Rain from The Realm (deadlyÄdon't touch it), Danish beer, some pink stuff from Fiddler's Green, and, I have no doubt, Panther Sweat if you ask for it. It also includes thirty-one different sorts (I counted) of tasty tidbits you eat with your fingers. I was a credit to Mr. Sikmaa; I really did take sherry and only one small glass, and I greatly restrained myself when offered, again and again and again and again, those thirty-one tasty temptations.

And it is well that I resisted. This ship puts on the nosebag eight times a day (again I counted): early morning coffee (caf‚ corn pletÄ that is, with pastry), breakfast, midmorning refreshment, tiffin, afternoon tea with sandwiches and more pastry, cocktail-hour hors d'oeuvres (those thirty-one sinful traps), dinner (seven courses if you can stay the route), midnight buffet supper. But if you feel peckish at any hour, you can always order sandwiches and snacks from the pantry.

The ship has two swimming pools, a gymnasium, a Turkish bath, a Swedish sauna, and a "Girth Control" clinic. Two and a third times around the main promenade is a kilometer. I dOn't think this is enough; some of our shipmates are eating their way across the galaxy. My own major problem will be to arrive at the imperial capital still able to find my bellybutton.

Dr. Jerry Madsen, Junior Medical Officer, who doesn't look old enough to be a sawbones, cut me out of the mob at the Captain's sherry, then was waiting for me after dinner. (He does not eat at the Captain's table or even in the dining room; he eats with the other younger officers in the wardroom.) He took me to the Galactic Lounge, where we danced, then there was a cabaret showÄsinging, specialty dancing, and a juggler who did magic tricks on the side (which made me think of those pigeons, and of Goldie, and I felt suddenly wistful but suppressed it).

Then there was more dancing and two other young officers, Tom Udell and Jaime Lopez, rotated with Jerry, and finally the lounge shut down and all three took me to a little cabaret called The Black Hole, and I firmly declined to get drunk but danced whenever I was asked. Dr. Jerry managed to outsit the others and took me back to cabin BB at an hour quite late by ship's time but not especially late by the Florida time by which I had gotten up that morning.

Shizuko was waiting, dressed in a beautiful formal kimono, silk slippers, and high makeup of another sort. She bowed to us, indicated that we should sit down at the lounge endÄthe bedroom end is shut off by a screenÄand served us tea and little cakes.

After a short time Jerry stood up, wished me a good night, and left. Then Shizuko undressed me and put me to bed.

I did not have any firm plans about Jerry though no doubt he could have persuaded me had he worked on itÄmy heels are quite short, I know. But both of us were sharply aware that Shizuko was sitting there, hands folded, watching, waiting. Jerry did not even kiss me good-night.

After putting me to bed, Shizuko went to bed on the other side of the screenÄsome deal with bedclothes she took out of a cupboard.

I was never before quite so closely chaperoned, even in Christchurch. Could this be part of my unwritten contract?

XXIX

A spaceshipÄa hyperspaceshipÄis a terribly interesting place. Of course it takes very, very advanced knowledge of wave mechanics and multidimensional geometry to understand what pushes the ship, education that I don't have and probably never will (although I would like to back up and study for it, even now). RocketsÄno problem; Newton told us how. AntigravÄa mystery until Dr. Forward came along and explained it; now it's everywhere. But how does a ship massing about a hundred thousand tonnes (so the Captain told me) manage to speed up to almost eighteen hundred times the speed of light?Äwithout spilling the soup or waking anyone.

I don't know. This ship has the biggest Shipstones I've ever seen but Tim Flaherty (he's second assistant engineer) tells me that

they are charged down only at the middle of each jump, then they finish the voyage having used only "parasitic" power (ship's heat, cooking, ship's auxiliary services, etc.).

That sounds to me like a violation of the Law of Conservation of Energy. I was brought up to bathe regularly and to believe that There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch; I told him so. He grew just a touch impatient and assured me that it was indeed the Law of Conservation of Energy that caused it to work out that wayÄ it worked just like a funicular; you got back what you put in.

I don't know. There aren't any cables out there; it can't be a funicular. But it does work.

The navigation of this ship is even more confusii~g. Only they don't call it navigation; they don't even call it astrogation; they call it "cosmonautics." Now somebody is pulling Friday's leg because the engineer officers told me that the officers on the bridge (it's not a bridge) who practice cosmonautics are cosmetic officers because they are there just for appearances; the computer does all the workÄand Mr. Lopez the second officer says that the ship has to have engineering officers because the union requires it but the computer does it all.

Not knowing the math for either one is like going to a lecture and not knowing the language.

I have learned one thing: Back in Las Vegas I thought that every Grand Tour was Earth, Proxima, Outpost, Fiddler's Green, Forest, Botany Bay, Halcyon, Midway, The Realm, and back to Earth because that's how the recruiting posters read. Wrong. Each voyage is tailored. Usually all nine planets are touched but the only fixed feature in the sequence is that Earth is at one end and The Realm, almost a hundred light-years away (98.7 +), is at the other. The seven way stations can be picked up either going out or coming back. However, there is a rule that controls how they are fitted in: Going out the distance from Earth must be greater at each stop, coming back the distance must decrease. This is not nearly as complex as it sounds; it simply means the ship does not double backÄjust the way you would plan a shopping trip of many stops.

But this leaves lots of flexibility. The nine stars, the suns of these planets, are lined up fairly close to a straight line. See the sketch with the Centaur and the Wolf. Looking from Earth, all those stars, as you can see, are either at the front end of the Centaur or close by in the Wolf. (I know the Wolf doesn't look too well but the Centaur has been clobbering him for thousands of years. Besides, I've never seen a wolfÄa four-legged wolf, that isÄand it's the best I can do. Come to think of it, I've never seen a Centaur, either.)

That's the way those stars cluster in Earth's night sky. You have to be about as far south as Florida or Hong Kong to see them at all, and even then, with bare eyes you will see only Alpha Centauri.

But Alpha Centauri (Rigil Kentaurus) really shines out, third brightest star in Earth's sky. Three stars it is, actually, a brilliant one that is the twin brother of Sol, one not as bright that it is paired with, and a distant, dim, small companion that swings around both of them about a fifteenth of a light-year away. Years ago Alpha Centauri was known as Proxima. Then somebody bothered to measure the distance to this inconsequential third cousin and found that it was a hair closer, so the title of Proxima or "Nearest" was moved to this useless chunk of real estate. Then, when we set up a colony on the third planet of Alpha Centauri A (the twin of Sol), the colonists called their planet Proxima.