"He's doing a stint of administrative duty on Xanthos."

"Serves him right," David chuckled.

"X&A says not to worry. It looks as if Old Folks left the established routes right after Mama's last message. Joshua says that he'll have a patrol take a look in-galaxy from that point next time one is passing."

"Sounds as if Josh isn't too worried."

"I am. And so is Sarah."

"Well, Sarah would be."

"Now, David."

David smiled wryly. "How are Sarah and all the brood?" Sarah had married well, at least by her standards, plucking a plum out of the T-Town social circle, a gold-plated plum that gave her a ten bedroom town house and country homes in all of the right spots. Happy as a grasping little woman could be, she had immediately started producing offspring so that her rich husband would have heirs.

"She would like very much to see you," Ruth said.

"Let's get back to Josh. He doesn't seem to be too worried?"

"He says that if Papa were really intent on doing some planet prospecting he could spend every month of the three years for which he had provisions laying down blink routes out there in the unexplored areas.

He says there'd be no communications because the temporary beacons a small ship carries don't pass blink signals."

"Right. The tug was provisioned for three years?"

"With a store of condensed space rations sufficient for another year of rather boring eating."

"Hummm. So they've got decent food for another fourteen months and reserves to spare."

"David, I don't want to say it, hate to think it—"

"I'll go out there," David said.

"Thank you."

"Hey," he said, "they're my parents, too."

"I knew you'd do something."

"I think if Joshua thought it necessary he'd have already done something," David said.

"You know Joshua. He can get pretty well self-involved. Right now his biggest concern is getting good ratings from his superiors. He says that a tour of administrative duties at headquarters is a prerequisite for promotion to captain."

"I think you might be doing old Josh a disservice, thinking like that."

Ruth shrugged. "You haven't asked about our little sister."

"Haven't had a chance," David said. "How is the Queen?"

"She's on a frontier planet in toward the core filming still another version of the Legend of Miaree," Ruth said, smiling fondly. "She has the lead."

"Oh, Lord, Sheba with wings?"

"She'll be cute."

"She is always cute," David said, remembering his youngest sister with fondness. "So she doesn't know about this?"

"There's nothing she could do," Ruth said. "I thought it best to let her finish her work before telling her. By that time maybe we'll know what—"

She paused as the door chimes announced an arrival.

It was the delivery from the men's store. David explained to Ruth what it was all about as he gave the delivery boy his card and watched as the charge was recorded. When the boy was gone, he said, "Just put these things on a top shelf somewhere until the next time I visit."

"If you weren't going to use them, why didn't you send them back?"

He shrugged. It would have been difficult to explain to Ruth that the few hundred credits involved meant nothing to him. Ruth, the serious one in the family, had majored in basic education. To a schoolteacher a fewhundred credits meant something. Ruth had never married. Her job was her life, the children she taught her family. More than once David, as her twin, had brought up the subject of marriage only to be told fondly but firmly that, one, the right man had not come along, and, two, that she had no desire to be married in the first place. Although it was against his morality and everything that Fran Webster had taught her children, David hoped that now and then a gentleman caller sneaked into Ruth's pristine bed. She was simply too much woman to be wasted. He loved all of his siblings, even Sarah, but his twin sister was special and he wanted her to have everything that life had to offer. It made him angry when he offered to do things such as buy her a larger and more luxurious home only to be refused. She was her own woman, content to live on her teacher's income, reserved, sometimes distant, perhaps just a bit warped by her years of living alone. It embarrassed her for him to kiss her on the cheek when saying good-bye or hello after a long absence. She had accepted his gift of a sporty little aircar with some reluctance; she walked back and forth to her school, took the aircar out only on special occasions.

He watched as she placed his purchases carefully on a table.

"Will you leave soon?" she asked.

"The sooner the better," he said. "The sooner I leave the sooner you'll be relieved of your worry."

"May I go with you?" She asked the question in a small voice, as if afraid that he would refuse.

"Of course," he said.

She looked stricken.

"Hey, if you don't want to go—"

"I do, really. It's just that I didn't expect such instant agreement to my request. You'll have to tell me what to pack."

"Pack as if you were going to spend a year in the house with all the doors and windows permanently locked. That means you won't need too much clothing. The ship's stores will have all of the toilet articles. She's state-of-the-art, a rich man's toy, so there's even a good selection of cosmetics and perfumes and a supply of one-piece disposable jumpsuits ina variety of colors."

"Like the women wear on X&A ships?"

"Yep."

"A bit too revealing for me."

"Comfortable, though." He grinned. "Actually, bring along whatever you want to bring. There's lots of room. Ship's laundry will handle washing and ironing."

"Some books? A few films?"

"You won't need any entertainment material unless it's something so esoteric it isn't found in the Library of the Confederation."

She nodded. "Yes. I forgot the capacity of the new computers. Yes, I suppose that will be enough."

He laughed. A person would have to live multiples of the average six-score life span to read and view the millions of volumes and films that were stored in the Fran Webster's entertainment banks.

"Tomorrow morning too soon?" he asked.

She paled, bit her lip. "I guess I can call my superintendent tonight."

"Take more time if you need it."

"Thank you," she said. "Perhaps another day?"

CHAPTER THREE

Commander Joshua Webster was out of uniform when the door chimes began to demand that he divert his attention away from the sleek, feminine curves of the lovely young lieutenant who was also in a total state of undress. His first thought was to ignore the musical clamor.

"Josh," the lieutenant complained, "I really can't concentrate with all that noise."

"They'll give up in a few seconds," Josh said, as he let his lips scale a luscious, small, darkly pointed mountain.

"Josh," she protested, pushing at him.

"All right, damn it," he said. He stood beside the bed for a moment, smiling down at her. He was a tautly built man, lean of waist, with the long, smooth muscles that spoke of good but not fanatic physical conditioning. "Don't go away."

She let her eyes fall to his narrow hips, his manhood. "Not a chance."

Josh slipped into a silk-smooth dressing gown, brushed his blond hair back with his fingers as he glanced into a mirror, and padded barefoot to the entrance.

"Oh, no," he said, as he looked into the matched faces of his twin siblings.

"I do like these loving, enthusiastic, familial greetings," David Webster said.

"I think that we may have come at a bad time," Ruth said, smiling ingenuously at Joshua. "Did we interrupt something, Brother Joshua?"

"You could say that," Josh admitted sheepishly.

"Well, we could come back later," David said.