Carolyn put a soft hand against his face and then looked down. He reached for her chin and lifted it. She blinked a few times, and then smiled faintly. "Of course I knew what it was," she said. "And I know that I am immune, so I took it and wore it. I wanted to see how you would react. I wanted to find out why you did it. If you had done it for the usual reason, I was going to lead you on until you were incapable of control and then I was going to laugh at you and send you packing." She looked up at him shyly. "I didn't want to think it was for the usual reason."
She leaned toward him, but he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the telescope. At this, Carolyn put her head back against his shoulder and rubbed her cheek against his.
"None of that," he said with a sharp laugh. "Hell, woman, you do fine without a hellflower."
She turned in his arms and melted against him. He held her close for awhile and then pushed her away from him. "We're running by the rules, remember?" he said softly. "No fair, Carolyn. Think of my poor, broken-down blood pressure, woman. Let's get back to astronomy. I may live longer that way."
Astronomy is a fascinating hobby. Besides, this study required quite a bit of close proximity, with his arms loosely around her so that he could handle the setting-wheels on the telescope or Carolyn leaning back against him as he looked over her shoulder to set the piece on another object in the sky.
At midnight Farradyne showed her to her stateroom, and it was only after he was in his own room that he remembered that she had carefully ducked the explanation of how he could tell a love lotus from a gardenia. He wondered at that. Maybe she thought he had not noticed the careful steering away from the subject—and maybe a man who was going into the business for what it was worth would not have noticed the evasion.
Then there was the question of his own moral sense. So far as he had appraised himself he had damned little such sense and most of this was a matter of personal taste rather than observance of a set of rules. More strange was the moral sense of the Niles family. It seemed to be high except for their completely amoral disregard for what happened to the hapless victims of their racket.
He went to sleep murmuring a line from a poem many hundreds of years old that he had read as a youngster.
"... their honor rooted in dishonor...."
Take-off was scheduled for six o'clock and Farradyne barely made it. Fortunately there was only an Albemarle Seventy-One coming in on a landing beam and he could take his Lancaster up with his eyes closed. The Tower signed him out with a few remarks about sleepy people who just got up and a yawn over the near-at-hand bedtime. Then the contact was closed and Farradyne was a-space on the next leg of his journey.