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By Root 336 0

of working out procedures for the interception of the derelict—and there he expected her to help him work his way through his not inconsiderable private stock of hard liquor. Grimes had no worries on this score. Her capacity for strong drink, he had learned, was greater than his, and his was greater than Delamere's. And there was the black eye that the captain tried to hide with talcum powder before coming into the wardroom for dinner and—a day or so later—the scratches on his face that were even more difficult to conceal. Too, Una—on the rare occasions that she found herself alone with Grimes—would regale him with a blow by blow account of the latest unsuccessful assault on the body beautiful.

Grimes didn't find it all that amusing.

"The man's not fit to hold a commission!" he growled. "Much less to be in command. Make an official complaint to me—after all, I'm the senior officer aboard this ship after himself—and I take action!"

"What will you do?" she scoffed. "Call a policeman? Don't forget that I'm a policewoman—with the usual training in unarmed combat. I've been gentle with him so far, John. But if he tried anything nasty he'd wind up in the sick bay with something broken . . . ."

"Or out of the airlock wrapped up in the Survey Service flag . . ." he suggested hopefully.

"Even that. Although I'd have some explaining to do then."

"I'd back you up."

"Uncommonly decent of you, Buster. But I can look after myself—as Frankie boy knows, and as you'd better remember!"

"Is that a threat?"

"It could be," she told him. "It just could be."

* * *

For day after day Skink fell through the immensities, through the Continuum warped by the temporal precession field of her Mannschenn Drive. As seen from her control room the stars were neither points of light nor appreciable discs, but pulsing spirals of iridescence. For day after day the screen of the mass proximity indicator was a sphere of unrelieved blackness—but Delamere's navigator, an extremely competent officer, was not worried. He said, "If the F.I.A. mathematicians got their sums right—and I've heard that they're quite good at figuring—Delta Geminorum is still well outside the maximum range of our MPI."

"Damn it all!" snarled his Captain. "We're wasting time on this wild goose chase. We should be well on our way to Olgana by now, not chauffeuring the civilian fuzz all round the bleeding Galaxy!"

"I thought you liked Miss Freeman, sir," observed the navigator innocently.

"Keep your thoughts to yourself, Lieutenant!"

"If my sums have come out right, we should pick up the derelict at about 0630 hours, ship's time, tomorrow."

"Your sums had better come out right!" snarled Delamere.

* * *

Reluctantly, Delamere asked Grimes up to the control room at the time when the first sighting was expected. He made it plain that he did so only because the other was to be in charge of the boarding operations. He growled, "You're supposed to be looking after this part of it. Just try not to waste too much of my time."

"Your time," said Grimes, "belongs to the Survey Service, as mine does. And it's all being paid for with the taxpayer's money."

"Ha, ha."

"Ha, ha."

The officers, and Una Freeman, looked on with interest. Una remarked that having two captains in the same control room was worse than having two women in the same kitchen. The watch officer, an ensign, sniggered. Either a very brave or a very foolish young man, thought Grimes.

"And where's your bloody derelict, Mr. Ballantyre?" Delamere snarled at his navigator. "I make the time coming up to 0633."

"It's been showing in the screen, sir, at extreme range, for the last three minutes. Just the merest flicker, and not with every sweep, but a ship's a small target . . . ."

Pushing his officers rudely aside Delamere went to the MPI, staring down into the sphere of blackness. Grimes followed him. Yes, there it was, an intermittently glowing spark, at green eighty-three, altitude seventeen negative.

"Extrapolate, please, Mr. Ballantyre," he said.

"This is not your control room, Mr. Grimes," said Delamere.

"But I am