down, calling for clearance. The skies of Jan's Planet were no longer theirs and theirs alone. He made one of the patented, wild, heart-stopping Jaynes landings. A ground vehicle wheeled up to the yacht. As the four boarded, Julie admired the building ahead. It was set in the center of a vast, deeply grassed plain. «You picked a spot for it, all right,» she said. The ground vehicle delivered them to an impressive entrance under a sign which said: JAYNES MUSEUM OF ANCIENT WEAPONS OF WAR. Pete and Dean fell behind as the tour of the new museum began. The curator hired by Pete, noting that the two men seemed to want to talk, directed his comments to Jan and Julie. «You made a wise decision, Pete,» Richards said, «taking the finder's fee in land.» «I didn't think so the first few years,» Pete said. «That mining contract on the eastern desert didn't hurt you.» «Nope.» «Hope you're seeing to it that they don't mess up the land.» «Sure,» Pete said. «It's a clean operation, all underground. There's the same desert up above that was there when we first saw it.» A flash of memory. Jan's Planet in his viewers for the first time, the loss of the old Stranden 47, the terrible moment when he'd seen nuclear fire burn up through the domed roof of the old fort on South America. He'd named the continents of the western hemisphere after similar landmasses on old Earth. The first few years of residence on one of their vast tracts of land on the continent he'd named North America. And, not quite so pleasant, the months of investigations which had finally resulted in confirmation of their claim to the planet, and to the salvage contract on U.P.S. Rimfire. Favorable testimony by Dean Richards and his officers had helped, and a firm friendship had resulted. «Guess you've heard that the Academy and the service are now using old-mode hangup time for pounding education into the heads of empty- headed cadets,» Richards said. «Read something about it.» He halted in front of a battered, partly melted tug. The 47, lifted from the eastern desert, had a permanent home in the museum. «Pete, I'm always pleased when we can stop off here, but I made a special trip this time,» Richards said. Pete turned, brought his mind back from the sweet, sweet days aboard that old Mule of a tug. «Department of Space and Alien Exploration suggested it,» Richards said. «You've made yourself quite a reputation with those papers on theoretical effects of blink-generator tunings.» «Ummm,» Pete said. «They've assigned me to research your theory that the pre-blink signal can be read both ways.» «Good,» Pete said. «I'll be glad to see some work done on that.» It needed someone with the power of deductive reasoning, he felt. An old Academy kick-out could only take it so far, reasoning that although subspace has dimension, of sorts, that that dimension is infinitely large or small and that there should be a way to take the short way to infinity, read the emergence of a pre-blink signal and use that signal to make blinks into previously unexplored space. By doing so, the long, tedious exploration to lay new blink routes would be eliminated. «X&A has authorized me to offer you a temporary admiralcy,» Dean said. Pete's fingers went to his skull, played there for only a second. «What in the hell for?» «To be consultant on the project. We'll use Julie's ship, the old Rimfire. I'll be project boss.» Lord, Lord, he was thinking. Admiral Peter Jaynes. He laughed. «Intrigues you, doesn't it?» Richards asked. «It does.» If it had come a few years earlier he would have leaped at it. «Like to have you and Jan aboard.» «Dean, I wish to hell I could.» «Thinking about little Dean?» «Yeah. We're away from him enough as it is. And we've just started renovation of the fort in the desert. It's the best-preserved one. Give people a chance to see the kind of things men did back when we fought wars. And we've got our first crop of wheat coming up out on the plains.» «Well,» Richards said, «I told them I wouldn't be able to pry you away.» «I'm afraid not. You'll keep me posted, I hope.» «Sure. Might be calling on you for some of that nondeductive reasoning of yours, too. You know what it will mean if you're right about this.» He knew. A ship could move through space, through any space, in galaxy or out, just as fast as the blink charge would build. No more careful probes to be sure blink lines were clear. Julie Rainbow, for example, could take the Rimfire out past the periphery, send an exploratory pre-blink signal, clear the area, and be on the fringe of another galaxy in one blink. «Well, our ladies are waiting,» Richards said. A quick, low orbit of the planet showed the two service officers how well settlement and development were going, and then they were on the launch headed back for Rimfire. The sleek atmospace yacht blinked outward, past Rimfire, even as she pointed her blink signal for the familiar blackness of intergalactic space. Jan's Planet headed inward, hit the New Earth range, and blinked to come to rest in normal space near blink beacon NE795. Nearby, a Stranden Mule kept vigil over the junction of blink routes. The two-man crew, man and wife, had a few moments of interest in a boring, three-year hitch as the pre-blink signal of the yacht came and a brief courtesy greeting was exchanged. The man-wife, with four months to go to relief, were dreaming of a holiday back on Tigian. «Every year, same time,» the tugboat man told his wife. «New yacht this time,» the wife said. «Same name.» «Yes.» The man adjusted the visuals to have the yacht in view. «Every year same thing. They say hello and then put up a privacy screen. I wonder what the hell they do over there for two weeks same time every year?» Jan came into the lounge on board Jan's Planet in a silken singlet. «Ready for coffee?» she asked. «Sounds good,» Pete said. She poured. He sighed in contentment. Two weeks. Two glorious weeks of nothing. Nothing but Jan. Little Dean was in good hands living it up on the farms. Two glorious weeks. She looked more like a Tri-D star than a girl he'd talked away from the Spacer's Rest, Lord, how many years ago? «You'd like to be out there with Dean and Julie, wouldn't you?» Jan asked, as she sat beside him and he felt the silken touch of her hip against his. «In a way. But not now. This is my time.» «And, sir, your time is my time,» she said. «Sure you don't think this is a dull way to spend a vacation?» «What do you think?» His fingers went to his skull. She reached for his hand. «I'll tell you what I think,» she said. She said it with silent, moist, pressing lips.
