Patron of the Arts

technicians, a nurse or two, even an administrator or scientist, and certainly a few contract wives, each with a solid degree in some field necessary out there.

So I was not all that surprised at finding a physically beautiful woman, but I was surprised at finding magic. That sort of chemistry was just something I was neither looking for, nor expected. And I could not deny the electric charge of that magic, and it disturbed me. It had passed through my thoughts to “arrange” for some subsidiary of mine to send Arleen or Karin along, or perhaps the exotic Charla, someone to accompany me on the long voyage there and back. They would have jumped at the chance, mainly to have me, and my millions, alone to themselves. But I had decided I didn’t need that, and trusted none of them to keep silent. Taking a beautiful woman along would be like buying an ad in global prime time.

But here was a woman whose beauty had hit a resonating chord within me. She sat like a queen in the steel core of a battered, scarred old freighter. I smiled into my yoghurt. All I needed was fog outside the ports, a secret formula, Hitler’s great-grandson with plans to raise the swastika on red soil, a comic character or two, and a drunken doctor to perform the necessary brain surgery. Pelf was a secret agent and Nova Sunstrum was his accomplice. Quam Lem had some dastardly plot to take over Mars concealed in his spacesuit and the ancient race of Martians would be brought alive with the tanna leaves that the thin ecologist had secreted in the lining of his jumpsuit.

Brian Thorne and the Empress of Mars.

Strikes Again.

Blues.

I began to think that they had caught on back home and had staged the whole thing to “get it out of his system so he can settle down.”

I finished the meal, suited up, and headed toward the observation blister again, without so much as a look at Nova Sunstrum’s waist-long black hair, her tilted dark eyes, her golden skin, or her softly smiling mouth.

Only that’s just what Brian Thorne would have done. Let ’em come to me. Even the ones that played it smart and didn’t seem eager just placed themselves in my path for me to fall over.

Yup. that’s what the suave, worldly Brian Thorne would have done all right, so that’s what I did. Except that I was Diego Braddock and I was going on being Diego Braddock as long as possible. I stared out at the ever-so-slowly retreating blue-green-white-tan disk but I was seeing the dark eyes and the fall of black hair. Nova Sunstrum.

Nova Sunstrum.

There was an unconscious use of her sensuality that I found very exciting, even though I thought she was aware of much of her sexuality. A month of that kind of closeness would surely affect both the male and the bisexual females of the ship. Suddenly I saw the position she was in. She was not the only woman. There were two computer techs, a plump botanist, a brace of nurses, three contract wives with seven degrees between them, and a sturdy adminofficer ticketed through to the Russian base at Nabokov.

But Nova Sunstrum was the obvious physical beauty, the head-turner. She must have been the focus of many desires even on Earth. Shipboard protocol brought us together rather rapidly. The second dinner saw me at the Captain’s table, for even a lowly publicist has his status, and his uses to the Navio Estrella company that operated the Balboa. I was introduced to Nova Sunstrum by Capitano Garcia Ramirez.

Her eyes regarded me calmly. She raised a tulip glass of wine to her lips. “And what do you do, Mr. Braddock?” She sipped the wine as I thought about my answer.

“I point a finger,” I said. She raised her eyebrows. She ignored the politician on her left who was trying to capture her attention with a tale of how he had mastered a tricky situation with the natives at Ares Center. She was watching me steadily. I felt constrained to explain a little further.

“I point and make appropriate noises and people start paying attention. The pointee becomes famous, or at least noticed.”

“Do you like being a pointer, Mr. Braddock?” she asked. Just for a second I thought that perhaps the fragile disguise I had concocted for this adventure had been penetrated. A slight dyeing of my hair from dark brown to near-black, a change of name and papers, and the simple unlikelihood of B. Thorne being aboard had seemed sufficient. Somehow, now, I was not so certain.

“Sometimes,” I said, answering her question. “It depends at what I point.”

“Do you point at things or people?” The lady botanist at my side had joined the conversation.

“Both,” I said. “Whichever interests me.”

“He’s a flack for Publitex,” the politician said quickly. “Miss Sunstrum, may I call you Nova? I know your father, of course. Fine man. We are going to be together here for quite some time and —“