She looked shocked. "Physics doesn't have to have any use. It just is."

"Well, I don't know. The old physics was useful. Take the torch that drives us, for example—"

"Oh, that! That's not physics, that's just engineering"—as if I had mentioned something faintly scandalous.

I will never understand Janet and perhaps it is just as well that she promised to "be a sister to me." She said that she did not mind my being younger than she was, but that she did not think she could look up to a man who could not solve a fourth-degree function in his head. "... and a wife should always look up to her husband, don't you think?"

We were making the boosts at 1.5 gravity now. What with slippage, it cuts each up-boost and each down-boost to about four months, S-time, even though the jumps are longer, During boost I weigh 220 pounds and I've started wearing arch supports, but 50% extra weight is all right and is probably good for us, since it is too easy not to get enough exercise aboard ship.

The LRF has stopped using the drug stuff to help communications at peak, which would have pleased Dr. Devereaux since he disapproved of it so. Now your telepartner patches in with the help of hypnosis and suggestion alone, or you don't patch. Kathleen managed to cross the last peak with me that way, but I can see that we are going to lose communication teams all through the fleet, especially those who have not managed to set up tertiary telepartners. I don't knew where my own team would be without Kathleen. In the soup, I guess. As it is, the Ni ñ a and the Henry Hudson are each down to two teams and the other four ships still in contact with Earth are not much better off. We are probably in the best shape, although we don't get much fleet news since Miss Gamma fell out of step with her sisters—or lost them, as the case may be; the Santa Maria is listed as "missing" but the Marco Polo is simply carried as "out of contact" as she was approaching peak when last heard from and won't be out of it for several Greenwich years.

We are headed now for a little G-type star so dim from Earth that it doesn't rate a name, nor even a Greek-letter constellation designation, but just a catalog number. From Earth it lies in Phoenix, between Hydrus the Sea Serpent and Cetus the Whale. ("Hydrus," not "Hydra"—Hydra is six R.A. hours over and farther north.) Unc called it a "Whistle Stop" so that is what we dubbed it, because you can't reel off a Palomar Catalog number each time you speak of where you are going. No doubt it will get an impressive name if it turns out to have a planet half as good as Connie. Incidentally, Connie will he colonized in spite of the epidemic we may have picked up there; the first shiploads are on their way. Whatever the bug was that bit us (and it very possibly may have come from Earth), it is no worse than half a dozen other diseases men have had and have fought back at and licked. At least, that is the official view and the pioneer ships are going on the assumption that they will probably catch it and have to conquer it.

Personally, I figure that one way of dying is as dangerous as another; when you're dead, you're dead—even if you die from "nothing serious." And the Plague, bad as it was, didn't kill me.

"Whistle Stop" wasn't worth a stop. We're on our way to Beta Ceti, sixty-three light-years from Earth.

I wish Dusty were still hooked up to transmit pictures; I would like one of my great-grandniece Vicky. I know what she looks like—carroty red hair, freckles across her nose, green eyes, a big mouth and braces on her teeth. At present she is sporting a black eye as well, picked up at school when somebody called her a freak and she resented it—I would love to have seen that fight! Oh, I know what she looks like but I'd like a picture anyhow.

It is funny how our family has run to girls. No, when I add it up, counting all descendants of my sisters as well as my brother, it comes out about even. But Maude and Pat had two girls and no boys, and I went away and did not get married, so the Bartlett name has died out,

I certainly would like to have a picture of Vicky. I know she is homely, but I'll bet she is cute, too—the kind of tomboy who always has scabs on her knees because she won't play the ladylike games. She generally hangs around for a while after we are through transmitting and we talk. Probably she is just being polite, for she obviously thinks of me as being as old as her great-grandfather Bartlett even though her mother has told her that I am not. I suppose it depends on where you sit. I ought to be in my last year in college now, but she knows that I am Pat's twin.

If she wants to put a long white beard on me, that is all right with me, for the sake of her company. She was in a hurry this morning but nice about it. "Will you excuse me, please, Uncle Tom? I've got to go study for a quiz in algebra."

("Realio trulio?") I said.

"Realio trulio, cross my heart. I'd like to stay."

("Run along, Freckle Face. Say hello to the folks.")

" Bye! I'll call you a little early tomorrow."

She really is a nice child.

XIV ELYSIA

Beta Ceti is a big star in the main spectral sequence, almost big enough to be classed as a giant—a small giant, thirty-seven times as bright as the Sun. It looks so bright from Earth that it has a name of its own, Deneb Kaitos, but we never call it that because "Deneb" brings to mind the other Deneb, Alpha Cygni, which is a real giant in a different part of the sky almost sixteen hundred light-years away.

Since Beta Ceti is so much brighter than the Sun, the planet we had been looking for, if it existed at all, had to be nearly six hundred million miles out, farther than Jupiter is from Sol.

We've found one, at five hundred and eighty million miles, which is close enough. Better yet, it is the smallest planet in a system that seems to run to outsizes; the one in the next track beyond is bigger than Jupiter.

I scheduled most of the routine skyside survey of Elysia, under Harry Gates' absentminded supervision. Harry is as eager as a fox terrier to finish his magnum opus before he has to knock off and take charge of the ground survey. He wants to transmit it back Earthside and preserve his name

in science's hall of fame—not that he puts it that way, for Harry isn't stuck up; nevertheless, he thinks he has worked out a cosmogony for solar systems which includes Bode's Law. He says that if he is right, any star in the main spectral sequence will have planets.

Maybe... I would not know. But I can't see what use a star is without planets and I don't believe all this complicated universe got here by accident. Planets are meant to be used.

Acting as Harry's Man Friday has not been difficult. All I had to do was to dig the records of the preliminary survey of Connie out of the microfilms and write up similar schedules for Elysia, modified to allow for our loss of personnel. Everybody was eager to help, because (so far as we know) we are the only ship to draw a lucky number twice and only one of four to hit even once. But we are down now, water-borne, and waiting for medicine to okay Elysia for ground survey; I'm not quite so rushed. I tried to get in touch with Vicky and just chat this evening. But it happens to be evening back home, too, and Vicky is out on a date and politely put me off.

Vicky grew up some when we peaked this last jump; she now takes notice of boys and does not have as much time for her ancient uncle. ("Is it George?") I asked when she wanted to know if my call was important.