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him-dropping hints that everyone could hear, while Parnell pretended not to
notice.
Peace up a pipe! Was she going to rape him right here?
Siddenour leaned over, talking to Parnell in a raucous mumble. All Zelde heard
was, ". . . and we can talk priva'lly-\iprivately."\i Lurching, she stood and
hauled at his arm. Brows raised, Parnell looked once at Zelde. Then he
shrugged, and let the woman lead him away.
Well. Zelde guessed she'd need a place to sleep tonight. Her own official
Third Hat quarters were empty, except for
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a few things stored there. She got some fresh bedding, and made do until it
was time to get up and go on watch.
When Dopples relieved her, Parnell hadn't shown up in Control. Gesturing at
the wig, the First Hat
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for you, M'tana."
"Not supposed to-sir. Just has me looking different. You know why."
"Yes. Well-" He read out the brief watch log. "No problems, I see. All right.
Relieved." She stood, and he took the watch seat.
Her training work these days gave Zelde a good appetite. In the galley she
took seconds, and then sat with one cup of coffee after another. When she got
tired of coffee, still she sat-she wasn't sleepy, and she had no place else to
go.
Carrying a tray, Turk Kestler joined her. UET's tabling of officers, ratings,
and crew separately had broken down a lot; friends sat together where they
wanted to.
Turk said, "Seen the skipper this morning?" and from her sidelong look, Zelde
knew the story was all over the ship. Well, her own feelings were clear
enough-but how to get them across without saying too much?
"Not in Control, or here." Nothing more, yet-figure this out as it went along.
If Turk felt easy, it didn't show on her. "Look, Zelde- with the authority
that cow has, he couldn't help it!"
"I know that. Wasn't sure you did, though."
Then they both grinned, and Zelde said, "Hey-where'd you get the teeth?" For
the gaps in Turk's smile, all but one of them, were filled. On a real close
look, the new parts wouldn't fool anybody-but who
\ilooked\i that close?
"The medic, Fesler," Turk said, "and Henty Monteil. She can build just about
anything, once somebody tells her how it's supposed to work. And he figured
which way these things had to be braced."
Exposing the new teeth again, she smiled. "One more to go. Tomorrow, Henty
says."
Again Zelde congratulated her friend; then Turk stood to leave for work. "One
more thing," said Zelde.
"I don't own Ragir Parnell. He says I do, but I don't."
Nearly an hour later, Parnell brought Eldra Siddenour into the galley. Zelde
pretended not to watch.
Moving slowly, the woman hung on his arm. Face puffed and slack-
\r 95
\rfeatured-\iI've seen some hangovers in my time, but . . .\i When the two
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were done eating-Siddenour picked at her food, no appetite to notice-Parnell
led her out. Twenty minutes later he came back, got a cup of coffee, and sat
across from Zelde.
"Good morning." His voice didn't tell anything. She nodded. "Morning to you,
too, Ragir. You look healthy enough. Not cheered a lot, though." "Zelde! Do
you think-"
She couldn't reach his mouth but her hand moved as if to cover it. "Nothing
you need to say. Except-if she's coming back any, I'll want some clothes kept
in Third Hat's quarters."
He shook his head. "No. She's back to Summit Bay-in the air by now, I'd
guess-and we'll be off-planet before her next inspection here. But, Zelde-"
"But, Zelde, nothing! I saw how you looked, being dragged out of here last
night; that's all I need to know. If you'd seemed happy, now-well, that's
still your own business. But I'd of thought your taste stunk."
He spread his hands. "I tried to feed her enough booze to pass her out." Zelde
didn't speak. "Don't you want to know if it worked?"
"Not for me, no. For you, if you have to say about it." Like machinery running
out of oil, Parnell laughed. "Do you know what the worst part was?" "Not
hardly. I wasn't there."
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"No." What his mouth did, then, wasn't any smile. "You'd think-but physically,
age and fat and all of it, her body doesn't shame her. Any man who wanted to
be with her, she could delight him. And she's a cleanly person-in the shower I
had to keep her from falling down, but that's what got her awake again, damn
it. No-it's none of those things."
"Then what, Parnell? I wouldn't want her picture on the table, to look at over
breakfast."
He shook his head. "It's not even that. Lying back, looking up with her face
relaxed and smoothed out, her bones are too good to let her look ugly."
She waited, and he said it. "But I couldn't forget-I was in bed with that
goddamned UET \imind."\i
Seeing the hurt in his face, she reached to touch him. "Poor love." And then
he smiled.
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Nearly a meter each way, the Nielson cube came in a box twice that size.
Helping to unpack it, wearing heavy gloves that shielded her against stray
discharges from the untamed device, Zelde saw that only the rough outline made
a cube. The eight corners were beveled off to make space for connector
interfaces-capped now, but Parnell said they were all identical. The center of
each face was sunken, and these six connectors were larger than the eight. And
at the center of each of the cube's edges was a flattened part making room for
a smallish terminal; each of these twelve leaked a steamy vapor.
"Eight, six, and twelve," Parnell said, during a pause in the work. "The
eight-well, the prime diagonals of a cube are as close to a set of
four-dimensional axes as we can get in only three. It's-well, Zelde, it's
hooking mere space into \ispace-time."\i Knowing he really didn't expect her
to understand, she nodded.
"The terminals on the six faces do their pulsing in \iour\i three dimensions."
he went on. "And the twelve on the edges-they monitor and modulate, and
basically keep the whole thing from turning into a big puff of nothing. And
the ship with it."
He raised one eyebrow. "Do you know any more than you did before?"
"No." Zelde grinned. "But you do tell it good."
"All right." He turned to the entire work gang. "Come on-let's get the old
cube out and this one in, before it warms up enough to go sour." And after
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another forty minutes the two were exchanged, each safely back into the grim
chill that kept such a unit in one piece. Parnell looked for his Chief
Engineer.
"Harger? What do you think?"
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