"However it suits your convenience," answered John. "You may billet us all together if you prefer."
Third Sarge Elfor took them at their word. They were conducted to a single room, evidently in the heart of officers' quarters. Here again they ran into the same anomaly that had impressed them since they landed.
There were gleaming electric fixtures, but orderlies brought them tallow candles as dusk fell. There was plumbing of the most advanced order, but when they turned the taps no water came. The orderlies brought buckets full of hot water for their baths in the bright-tiled tub.
"I don't understand this at all, Ann," said John. He was towelling himself vigorously, while she brushed the quartet's clothing clean of the dust of the road. Phil lolled in luxurious undress on one of the four beds, reading a book from the well-stocked bookcase. Fran, preparing for her bath, was binding up her hair before a full-length mirror. "Even the cold water doesn't run a drop."
"Plumbing gets out of order in the best of families, John," Ann reminded him with a smile.
He glanced affectionately at her. Blue-eyed, black-haired Ann had been John's companion in the six-months exploration of Deneb III, and their seven-year-old son now was learning to read in the starship's school. John and Ann clashed like flint and steel in the crowded confines of the starship and consequently maintained no association while aspace. But they were a happy team in the free, challenging atmosphere of a planet.
"Electricity, too, at the same time?" he asked. "And it's not just that. The whole place reeks of latent power and high science, but they use an absolute minimum of it."
"I've got a partial solution to the garrison state of affairs and the military set-up, anyhow," said Phil from the bed. "They've had a war since we've been gone."
"That's no surprise," commented Fran. Chubby, blonde Fran and dark, stocky Phil had been companions for a year aboard the Discovery. They had volunteered jointly for the exploration mission. "They should have had several of them in 250 years."
"This was an interplanetary war," retorted Phil mildly. "Or rather, it wasn't war, but occupation of the Earth by the enemy. The Jovians were smart enough not to attack Earth directly, but threw their strength at the crucial moment behind the weaker side in the war between Eurasia and the American Alliance. Then they moved in to take over the war-weakened victors."