He looked around the field. "Well, I'll wave in my story on the takeoff stuff. There's nothing else for the noon leads."

I watched him leave. And then I looked for Debby—and watched her. From a distance she looked mighty nice, it was true. She had a funny way of moving, a little awkwardly like a young animal, but it had its appeal. And so did her red hair, which was short and curly and never in place. She was young all over except for her figure which was as grown up as it had to be. What no one could understand, though, was why the best looking gal in Marsport hadn't been trapped by any one guy as yet. And how anyone that good looking could also be good. So far from home it didn't usually work out that way. The girls did as they pleased and no one blamed them. It was one of the rewards for being a sucker and doing a stint on Mars.

It gradually dawned on me, as I watched her, that she wasn't doing much active picture-taking. Her usual intensity was curiously missing. She seemed to be thinking about something else as she aimed her camera, up there on top of the Starfish. I made a mental note of this. I had learned that when Deborah appeared abstracted there was usually a damned interesting reason for it.

I fished out my communication gimmick and flicked a button. I got the control tower, or, more accurately, underground shelter, and the latest poop. Then I signalled Kibby and dictated a story to him. While I was talking privately into the 'com. Vechi watched me in a disinterested way. Raeburn, his assistant, arrived and they wandered off among the fibreboard crates for a private conversation.

"Paragraph, Kibby," I said into the mouthpiece. "'The vast rocket terminal at Marsport is soberly alive this morning with preparations for the giant rescue job awaiting the joint forces of the U.F.S. Rocket Auxiliary, and the Martian disaster crew....'"

Pundra Doh, the Martian premier, was in the lead ship, Electra. But there wasn't time for an interview. Thin, electric-blue spits of exhaust flickered all over the spaceport by the time I had finished dictating. The high, keening sound of the rockets revving up tore through my helmet and I shouted at Deborah who was still up there, on top of the Starfish. My voice in her helmet must have blasted her eardrums.

"Damn you, Steve," she screamed back at me. Then she clicked another wide-angle shot of the field, sat down suddenly and slid down the polished tail of the Starfish on her fanny.

It's a 

 Prev. P 8/26 next