"Say at right now. I want to talk to that gerbil."

Jerry convinced me. He went over the details, showing just how each test was conducted. Miracles do happen and I was demonstrably pregnant... so that's why my breasts had been feeling sort of tender lately. He had a little pamphlet for me, telling me what to do, what to eat, how to bathe, what to avoid, what to expect, and dreary so forth. I thanked him and took it and left. Neither of us mentioned the possibility of abortion and he made no wisecracks about women "who hadn't done nothin'."

Only I hadn't. Burt was the last time and that was two periods back and anyhow I had been rendered surgically sterile at menarche and had never used contraception of any sort in all my very busy social life. All those hundreds and hundreds of times and now he tells me I'm pregnant!

I am not totally stupid. Having accepted the fact, the old Sherlock Holmes rule told me when and where and how it had happened. Once back in cabin BB I went into the bathroom, latched the door, took off my clothes, and lay down on the floorÄspread both hands around my navel, tensed my muscles, and pushed.

A little nylon sphere popped out and I grabbed it.

I examined it carefully. No doubt about it; this was the same little marble I had worn in there since the trick surgery was done to me, always worn except when I was carrying a message there. Not a container for an ovum in stasis, not a container for anythingÄjust a small, featureless, translucent sphere. I looked at it again and popped it back in.

So they had lied to me. I had wondered at the time about "stasis" at body temperature because the only stasis for living tissues I had

ever heard of involved cryogenic temperatures, liquid nitrogen or lower.

But that was Mr. Sikmaa's problem and I don't claim to be a biophysicistÄif he had confidence in his scientists, it was not my place to argue. I was a courier; my sole responsibility was to deliver the package.

What package? Friday, you know durn well what package. Not one in your navel. One about ten centimeters farther inside. One that was planted in you one night in Florida when you were induced to sleep sounder than you knew. One that takes nine months to unload. That postpones your plans to complete the Grand Tour, does it not? If this fetus is what it has to be, they won't let you leave The Realm until after you unload.

If they wanted a host mother, why the blinkin' hell didn't they say so? I would have been reasonable about it.

Wait a moment! The Dauphiness has to give birth to this baby. That is what the whole hanky-panky is about: an heir to the throne, free of any congenital defects, from the DauphinessÄunarguably from the Dauphiness, born in the presence of about four court physicians and three nurses and a dozen members of the court. Not you, you mongrel AP with the phony birth certificate!

Which took me back to the original scenario with just the slightest variation: Miss Marjorie Friday, wealthy tourist, goes groundside on The Realm to enjoy the glories of the imperial capital... and catches a bad cold and has to go to hospital. And the Dauphiness is brought to the same hospital andÄno, hold it! Would the Dauphiness do anything so plebeian as to be a patient in a hospital open to tourists?

Okay, try this: You enter hospital with a bad cold, as instructed. About three in the morning you go out the back door on a meat wagon with a sheet draped over you. You wind up in the Palace. How soon? How long will it take the Palace physicians to fiddle her royal body chemistry into receptiveness for the fetus? Oh, forget it, Friday; you don't know and don't have to know. When she is ready, they place both of you on operating tables and spread your legs and take it out of you and plant it in her, while it's small and no problem.

Then you get paid a fancy price and you leave. Does The First Citizen thank you? Probably not in person. But possibly incognito ifÄ Stop it, Friday! Don't daydream; you know better. At a lecture clear back in basicÄone of Boss's orientation lectures, it wasÄ "The trouble with this sort of mission is that, after an agent has

successfully completed it, something permanent happens to that agent, something that keeps him from talking, then or later. So, no matter how lavish the fee, it is well to avoid this class of mission."

XXXI

During the leg to Botany Bay I mulled that thought over and over, trying to find some flaw in it. I recalled the classic case of J. F. Kennedy. His putative assassin had been killed (assassinated) too quickly for even a preliminary hearing. Then there was that dentist who had gunned down Huey LongÄgunned down himself a few seconds later. And any number of agents during the long Cold War who had lived just long enough to carry out their missions and "just happened" to walk in front of speeding vehicles.

But the picture that kept coming back to my mind was so old that it is almost mythology: A lonely beach and a pirate chief supervising the burying of treasure. The hole is dug, the chests of loot placed thereinÄand the men who dug the hole are shot; their bodies help to fill the hole.

Yes, I'm being melodramatic. But it is my womb we are talking about, not yours. Everybody in the Known Universe knows that the father of the present First Citizen climbed to the throne over uncounted dead bodies and his son stays on that throne by being even more ruthless than his father.

Is he going to thank me for having improved his line? Or is he going to bury my bones in his deepest dungeon?

Don't kid yourself, Friday; knowing too much is a capital offense. In politics it always has been. If they ever had any intention of treating you fairly, you would not be pregnant. Therefore you are forced

to assume that they will not treat you fairly after they take this royal fetus out of you.

What I had to do was obvious.

What was not obvious was how I could do it.

It no longer seemed a clerical error that my name had not been on the list to go down to the surface at Outpost.

At the cocktail hour the next evening I saw Jerry and asked him to dance with me. It was a classic waltz, which brought my face close enough to his to talk privately. "How's the tummy?" he asked.

"The blue pills do the trick," I assured him. "Jerry, who knows about this besides you and me?"

"Now there's an odd thing. I've been so busy that I haven't had time to enter anything in your medical folder. The notes are in my safe."

"So? How about the lab technician?"

"He's been so overworked that I ran those tests myself."

"Well, well. Do you think that there is a possibility that those notes might be lost? Burned, maybe?"

"We never burn anything in the ship; it annoys the air-conditioning engineer. Instead we shred and recycle. Fear not, little girl; your shameful secret is safe with me."

"Jerry, you're my pal. Dear, if it hadn't been for my maid, I think I could have blamed this baby on you. My first night in the shipÄ remember?"

"I'm not likely to forget. I had an attack of acute frustration."

"Having a maid along is not my idea; my family planted her on me, and she sticks to me like a leech. One would think my family does not trust me merely because they know they can'tÄas you know all too well. Can you think of a way to avoid her chaperonage? I'm feeling very pliable. With you. A man I can trust with secrets."

"Um. I must give it some thought. My stateroom is no good; you have to pass two dozen other officers' rooms and go through the wardroom to reach it. Watch it; here comes Jimmy."

Yes, of course I was trying to bribe him into silence. But besides that I was grateful and felt that I owed him something. If congress with my unvirgin carcass was what he wanted (and it was), I was willingÄand willing on my own account, too; I had been quite underprivileged lately and Jerry is an attractive man. I was not embar