3
t could be interrogated from outside had triggered safe and secure. But no human contact had been accomplished. The fourth sheet--which bore the calligraphy on its upper right corner: Attention Callum--assumed that the crew of 231, a survey team and con alternate, had met with an accident or series of accidents of undetermined origin and extent in the course of carrying out the duty described as follow-up exploration on the Earth-type planet, herein and heretofore designated Epsilon-Terra, and must therefore be considered--
"The news is--" I started to say.
"Pure delirium," Gravis interrupted. "Haven't you read Paragraph Six? We know exactly where the ship is because it's exactly where it should be. It's the crew that's missing."
Paragraph Seven concluded: We therefore recommend that an agent of experience be dispatched soonest to the designated star system.
"Experienced or expendable?" I muttered.
"Ivy, after ten years in Interstel, you should know that experience and expendability are synonymous."
* * * * *
Inside the GS section of the Lunar Complex, I had the occasion to think semantically again.
Words like instanter and soonest seldom match their literal meaning when applied to the physical transport of human beings, but in my job--I hadn't even had time to get my gee-legs.
I stepped off the glide strip in front of the ramp marked OUTGOING PERSONNEL, handed the efficient looking redhead my Q-chit and ID, and said: "Priority one."
"Quarantine, O.K.," she checked, smiling. "Feeling antiseptic?"
I had to admit, privately, that I did not. As applied to her, the term: coveralls, regulation, gray was strictly a euphemism. Perhaps it was the combination of low gravity and controlled conditions that made Lunatics of female persuasion blossom so anatomically. Or maybe she was a plant, a deliberate psych experiment to put outbound starmen in a particular frame of mind.