record I don't think we need expect any difficulty,» he said. «I'm not requesting to see anything you haven't seen,» she said. «You understand that I'm not questioning your work or your abilities.» Sahara meant the words, but she also felt it necessary to say them. Women had come a long, long way, but they were still women. They had basic differences, differences in strength, in viewpoint. There were still men around, some of them in the service, who said that women were the true aliens, that their minds worked on a different plane from the minds of men. In short, remnants of resentment among certain kinds of men still remained. Webb, apparently, was not that kind of man. «Sure,» he said. «I know how you feel, Hara.» «Not being smart with you, Matt, but I doubt that.» She smiled wryly. «Because I'm not even sure I know how I feel.» The human mind is a curious thing. In privacy, it allows itself thoughts that, if known generally, would cause consternation. And, Hara thought, as she walked out of Webb's office, it is true that no one really knows himself. Was there actually a moment of relief when she heard of Plank's disappearance? No. Of course not. Only the quick feeling that a problem was solved. Then the sadness. For there was a conflict. While marriage between spacers was not totally impossible, it was feasible only under certain circumstances. The vast distances, the time involved in traveling, made a woman married to a spacer a widow for years at a stretch. Marriages were common aboard the big colonizer ships; but then the partners traveled together and were not separated while one of them went out to Centauri at what, to the universe, was a snail's pace. If Plank had chosen service instead of free enterprise, the problem would have been solved, but Plank was intent on making his stake. She on the other hand, had spent years preparing herself for her job. Theoretically, a woman had an equal chance to be accepted into the academy, but in practice more qualified women were passed over than qualified men. She had always had to work extra hard to achieve her goal. From primary school on she knew that she wanted to go into space; her competition came from millions of boys who were physically stronger, some of them quicker, some of them more intelligent. She set her goal and worked toward it, doing secondary level work as a primary, entering college two years ahead of schedule. It wasn't easy. She kept her body in shape with athletics and honed her brain constantly, doing without proper sleep to cram for exams she could have passed easily, in her efforts for the top mark, knowing that she had to be the very best to beat thousands of male applicants for each appointment to the academy. Men and women were equal in the eyes of the law, but at the academy it seemed that some instructors had not read the law. There, the female cadets were singled out, and to survive she developed a hardness, a callousness, which allowed her to take anything they could dish out. She excelled in her marks and survived the physical rigors. She graduated with honors and saw the first space berths given to men with lesser qualifications. In spite of all, she was not a man hater. She recognized things as they were, and she would never change them. She tried to keep under her protective, hard exterior a certain femininity, and apparently she succeeded, for she was pursued. From the time she was pubescent, boys noticed her. She developed her figure early and it improved with age. In the academy she was taut-skinned and shapely. Her measurements would have qualified her for any beauty contest, had such antique rites been retained in the society. She had perfect teeth revealed in their lovely whiteness as she smiled. Her hair was heavy in texture, unusual for a natural ash blonde, and she could do anything she wanted with it. Usually she wore it down, brushing over her shoulders, closing in on her face to accent her eyes. Her social life could have been active. She did not lack, invitations. She limited her dating, however, to official events, never letting any boy or man to become close enough to her to arouse her interest. Not until she met Plank. She had seen him during her first years at the academy many times. He was one year ahead of her and, on occasion, was in charge of details of which she was a member. He was, during the early years there, merely another cadet. She was not surprised when Plank asked her to be his date at the graduation ball for Plank's class. His invitation was one of several. She surprised herself by choosing him as her escort. She would have had difficulty explaining it to anyone, even herself. He was not her kind of man. Dark, somewhat stocky, he looked at her from under bushy eyebrows with eyes that seemed to undress her—and she was no man's sex object. But it was Plank who called for her at the girl's dorm and it was Plank who
danced like a perfect gentleman, holding her politely close, thanking her at the end of each dance. It was Plank with whom she walked, in the early hours of a lovely spring morning, and talked of her ambitions. Plank shared her dreams of the stars. Plank was a good listener. Throughout the long evening and night, he did not even attempt to kiss her. He managed to return to the academy for her graduation dance and this time he wore service blue. He had been to Mars. He talked about it and about space with an excitement and an intensity that moved her. Later, when he slowly drew her into his arms, giving her every opportunity to say no, he moved her in another way, in a way she'd never been moved before. And when he called her his love she melted against him and let her kiss speak for her. It was a strange courtship. When he was away, she longed for him, wanted to see those dark eyes under his bushy eyebrows, wanted to feel the touch of his hand. When she was in space, off duty, she could remember every detail of his face, could repeat every word he'd ever said to her. She was, indeed, a woman in love. They talked about being assigned to the same colonizer. Plank chose his way, chose to work the Mars jobs and go into free enterprise, begging her to resign her commission and join him, painting nice pictures about the two of them spending months of time in space together. But she had, at last, reached her goal and she was totally incapable of tossing over a lifetime of work (it seemed to be a lifetime then, although, with the life expectancy of her time, she was still very young), not even to marry the man she loved. They saw each other at long intervals and tried to work out their differences. Plank made a run to the Centauri systems, and her feelings did not change during the years of separation. He fared well on the trip and, once again, pleaded with her to leave the service and join him. She was tempted. But she was due for promotion. «My career means as much to me as your work means to you,» she would tell him. «There is still time for us.» So it was, when she learned that Plank had disappeared in deep space,
that she felt a mixture of emotions. First that spontaneous feeling of relief.
There would be no more conflict. Then guilt, for it was after all Plank, her man, who was missing. Then more quick guilt for not having given in to him. If she had married him she would have been with him on the Pride. Then she would at least know. But now her emotions were in conflict as she remembered him, felt in her mind the strength of his arms, the tenderness of his kiss, and she began to be angry. Something would have to be done. She didn't know exactly what, but she would see to it that something was. CHAPTER THREE Anyone, Plank thought, can recite the physical statistics of the galaxy.
It is simple to say that our galaxy is a highly flattened discoidal system of stars with a radius in the order of 2,000 parsecs. Elementary school
children could tell you that a parsec equals 3.26 light-years or 3.1 X 10 to the 13th power, kilometers. Most Earthlings older than two had seen a model of the galaxy, a slowly rotating wheel with a white core of dense stars, which have a central bulge when viewed head on. Seen from the top, the model shows the effects of the slow rotation. Groupings of stars trail into spiraling arms. On the model, Earth is an insignificant speck toward the inner end of the Orion arm, 30,000 parsecs outward from the center. The Orion Arm is 400 parsecs wide. Four hundred parsecs equal 1,304 light-years. Compared with the galactic core, the Orion Arm is thinly populated. Distances between stars are vast. Yet Plank, looking into the arm with the eyes of his starship body, saw a number of stars which, on occasion, awed him. Glowing salt on a black platter. By the millions. And he was among them. He could place his position, roughly. He was, however, denied that overall view, as if seeing the galaxy as a model. He knew that he was in the area of the inner extension of the arm. He could position the galactic core to his right and take into account the known and distant star markers. He knew where he was. He was in the ball park. But
it was a ball park of such vast dimensions that finding his way to first base
was, he had decided, going to be a long process of trial, search and failure. Still, it should have been simple. His mind contained the knowledge of the heavens as seen from both the Earth and the Centauri systems. He should have been able to relate those positions, zero in, find the characteristic glow of either Sol or the two Centauri stars and return home in one jump. He made the calculations again and again. Time after time the position was the relatively open areas of space outside the arm. He could only arrive at several conclusions. One, something had happened to his head. Something either accidental or deliberate to knock the sure knowledge of home from his brain. His present condition would have a bearing there. Some minute trauma resulting from his brain being taken from his body and being encapsulated as the driving force of a most impressive starship? Some deliberate alteration making it impossible for him to go home? Two, it was obvious that he had run afoul of some intelligence not from the old Earth. Earth science was not yet prepared to build a ship like the new Plank's Pride. Certainly a race capable of making Plank a starship was capable of making minute alterations in his head to prevent him from finding his way home. The question was, why? Why put him into a ship capable of leaping unlimited distances in an instant and then send him zigzagging down the Orion Arm toward Perseus, star-hopping, planet-checking. Plank knew that, for all practical purposes, he was immortal. Oh, he could die. If he were careless enough to dive into a star the ship
