THE LUMINOUS BLONDE

As the frilly-bloused rockette bent over him to unbuckle his safticorsette, newly appointed Commissioner-For-Economics-For-Mars J. Edwin Elbert peeked. But her fingernails tatted so hastily at the buckle that he raised his surprisingly youthful blue eyes to her face. She was blushing there too. A pretty little baby face.

Skillfully he swallowed a rising belch that was a natural consequence of the cessation of gravity upon a paunch overbloated with farewell champagne, Venus-dipped cold crab and too sweet apricot bread.

"Director Hugens is to be congratulated upon his choice of rockettes," he rumbled, sneaking his fat, glossily manicured fingers about her wrist. The click of the powder-room door would warn him of his wife's return. "Just the other day I was telling him that the new Bolo II should have only the best. I see he has exceeded even my most hopeful expectations."

She giggled nervously.

"Tell me my dear, when does the Bolo go into Hugens' celebrated centrigrav? This weightlessness is rather unsettling to one's stomach."

"Can I get you a demamine pill, sir?"

"No, thank you. When does—"

"Oh! At 1900 hours," she gushed.

"The ship splits in half," she added helpfully, and dimpled in that winning way of little girls who will never grow up.

"Remarkable. They tell me some sort of cable will tie us together."

"Yes sir, when we are far enough out in space so there isn't any air friction, Mr. Webley, the pilot, pulls a little lever and the nose flies off. He'll be all alone out there for forty-two days."

"And only a thin cable connects our passenger section to his control section?" He was quite familiar with the details since he had lobbied for the initial appropriation. Her forearm had a nice warm smooth feeling.

"Oh, you understand it perfectly, sir. When we're a mile apart a little rocket in the side makes us spin round and round. Then I can take off these old iron shoes." She followed his gaze to her legs and tittered.

He speculated that similar magnets must be holding down the hem of her nylon skirt.

"And does this spinning about a common axis continue until we near Mars?"

"Yes sir, for forty-two days. Excuse me sir, I think null gravity is making that lady ill."

After carefully wiping his palm on his coatsleeve he replaced his unlit cigar in his broad, gleaming face. He was in the smiling sensuality of a daydream when the powder-room door clicked.

His wife was beautiful.

Uptilting his cigar he watched her drift down the aisle. With one scarlet-tipped finger she prevented her diaphanous skirt from floating very high above her knees. A lovely lady. He champed on the cigar. It's not every man whose wife is a natural blonde ex-starlet young enough to be his daughter.

But a little discipline was in order.

"Landa, I wish you had remembered to have Hykato pack my golf things."

"Edwin please, this null gravity is upsetting my tummy."

"Well, it's the least you could have done."

"And how would we have gotten it on the ship?" her voice shrilled unexpectedly. "You embarrassed me enough as it was."

"Listen, I'm the Commissioner. No two-bit pilot is going to tell me what I can't take. The luggage limit is ridiculous!"

"What are you complaining about? He let you take everything, didn't he?"

"After you smiled at him."

"I was only trying to be pleasant."

"Pleasant is it? Last time you said it was to influence him to take all my luggage."

"Yeah and you got sore because you weren't a big enough shot to swing the deal alone," her voice rasped through its lady-like veneer.

"That's a lie. Furthermore I don't want to catch you smiling at him again."

"I give up," she exclaimed and reached for a telemag.

But he wouldn't drop it there. "I didn't like that fellow's looks. Pads in his shoulders, little waxed mustache. Who does he think he is, Captain Future?"

"Oh, don't be funny. Just think what he thinks of you after what you said to him in front of all the other passengers and crew."

"Taking his side now?"

"I am not." She gave a little sniff and fumbled for her handkerchief. "You're so mean and masterful I'm surprised you don't make me go up front and tell him what a sap he is."

"He was a sap smiling at my wife all right." He uplifted his cigar with a mollified grin. "He wasted a smile there. Two-bit pilot, who does he think he is?"

"He did smile at me though," she appended in a small voice.

His voice snapped out again: "And you smiled back!" He ground his unlit cigar into the ash tray. "I think you were just now trying to flatter me; I think you were trying to turn me off the track when you said you'd go up and tell him what a sap he is."

"I was not."

"Don't try to wiggle out of it. That's what you said."

"All right, if you think I should, I will."

"Well now—" He paused smiling and carefully trimmed the crushed end of his cigar with a gold plated cigar cutter before he continued: "If you insist, go ahead."

"There's not much time left," she said, pointing at the neon-dialed clock above the powder-room door. Beneath it hung an orange luminescent sign: U. S. Eastern Standard Earth Time Equivalent.

"1850 hours," he snorted. "Don't try to wiggle out on that account. You have a half hour."

"O.K., if you say so," she shrugged and chewed the inside of her cheek. "This isn't very nice."

"Let's not get that way. You coolly slip the shaft in me enough. And stop powdering your nose."

Without another word she rose and floated down the aisle, taking little care to suppress her skirt. Somebody whistled and the Commissioner angrily craned his thick neck around. He couldn't see who had done it. But he suspected the three grinning Cadet Astronauts in the last row of seats.

She rose and floated down the aisle, taking little care to suppress her rising, diaphanous skirt.

As the door to the control room clanged shut, the powder-room door clicked open and the rockette tapped out on her iron shoe-soles. Commissioner Elbert rolled his eyes and smiled, but she seemed preoccupied with a smaller female with pigtails and the hiccups.

Guess I'll have a look forward myself, he thought. Just like a woman to go up there, wait in the hall a minute and come back.

Rising, he floated past the rockette toward the control room door.

"Don't open that, sir. The ship's about to separate."

"What? It's only 1855 hours."

"That is Eastern Standard Time, sir. The clock at the other end of the aisle, over the men's room, gives the Standard Star Time our ship schedule operates on."

Those neon hands pointed at 1900.

With a strangled yell he lunged for the door, but as his hand closed about the handle something clicked and it resisted his straining and then his pounding fists.

A buzzer sounded and a cheery masculine voice spoke over the intercom. "Hello again passengers, this is your pilot Hugh Webley wishing you a pleasant crossing. Please re-enter your safticorsettes. The Bolo II will now separate."

"Intercom," the Commissioner shouted. Shoving past the slack-jawed rockette, he literally swam down the gravityless aisle to the engineering hatchway. It opened to his shouts.

"Yeah?" A giant with a handlebar mustache peered up at him.

"I'm Commissioner Elbert. Call your pilot at once. I order the ship not to separate."

Hastily the giant lifted the phone. Commissioner Elbert could hear the steady buzz.

"Sorry sir, Webley's cut us off. He does that so no one will interrupt him while he's setting the auto controls."

"Get him somehow. My wife's up there."

The giant coughed and strangled and turned his face away. "I'll keep trying sir," he gasped. "But sometimes he cuts us off for days. He sleeps a lot."

"Forehatch," the Commissioner shouted suddenly. "Unlock the forehatch."

Wearily the giant clambered up. He towered above Elbert.

"Didn't you hear what I said," the Commissioner yelled. "Unlock the door to the control room."

"Sorry sir, the lock's automatic."

"Well dammit, blast it down."

Noisily the giant scratched his crewcut. "Maybe I could crowbar it."

"Quick, you fool."

"No, I can't. I can't sir. The ship might separate while the hatch was open and our own air pressure would blow us all into the vacuum. I can't risk the lives of our passengers, sir."

"I'm Commissioner Elbert. Give me that crowbar."

The giant held it behind him.

"That's an order."

"Sorry sir, better reclaim your seat before the jolt." The giant signalled with his fingers at the rockette.

Elbert snatched at the crowbar. As the two men grappled for it, whirling like fighting cocks in the air, a tremendous surge hurled them the length of the aisle. Another slammed them against the powder-room door. When the giant helped the bleeding Commissioner to his feet, artificial gravity held them down.

Emitting motherly sounds, the rockette tried to wipe the blood from his forehead. But he shoved her aside.

"I'll sue. I'll have your transport license revoked."

"Please sir," the rockette squeaked, "I'll bring you a sedative."

"Hugens will hear about this," he shouted, writhing in the engineer's brawny arms. But then he sobbed: "I sent her up there. My fault, my idea, she didn't want to go. She was worried about the time and I told her there was plenty of time."

As he gulped the sedative he looked like a punctured balloon.

"I don't want a sedative," he shouted. But he had just swallowed it. He sagged again. "My fault. I told her there was plenty of time." He rubbed his sleeve across his nose.

After they had settled him groggily in his seat, the rockette drew the engineer aside. Her pretty little brow wrinkled.

"Dan, I can't figure it. Why does he think it's his fault? Gee, when we were in the powder-room together she asked me about why the clocks told different times, and I explained how we figure time by positions of stars instead of the earth and sun and all that stuff. You'd think she'd understood. She talked bright enough."

The giant squeezed her arm affectionately. Lucky Webley, sap Commish, bright dame. Forty-two days and an alibi.

He chuckled and walked his fingers up her arm.

"Carol, you can't ever tell. All dames don't have the same amount of brightness you do."

She giggled and shivered a little at his hand. "We learned all about time in rockette school."