"Oh the devil. I want to land. If waiting overnight is dangerous, we'll slide in there and out again inside of an hour. But, darn it, I want to plant my number eleven EE's on that planet. Anyone agree?"
"Anyone who doesn't like the idea may get out and walk," said Hammond. "Hold your hat, fellows. Here we go again—"
Sandra Drake reached out of her luxurious bed and pulled a cord. She did it in a languorous move, like a lithe and lazy cat. She did it with a sort of God-given right to do so, and her expression was one of deep self-delight. Whatever she got from Telfu, they owed to Sandra Drake—
Her second pull on the call-cord was more of an impertinent yank. Her self-delight changed to exasperation that they should keep her waiting. Yet she would forgive them, for they were ignorant, in forgiving them her grace would be more evident. They would love her the more for forgiving them their sins of omission—
Sandra's third pull caused the collapse of the call-bell box, and the cord fell, landing in long, graceful loops over her outstretched arm.
Sandra rolled out of bed and threw the cord across the room, where it draped itself about the throat of a marble nude of a Telfan woman. It could not have been placed there with more delicacy; adding just the right touch of decoration to the nude. The center of the cord depended across the chest of the statue in a graceful loop, the bottom of which crossed just above the upper pair of breasts. The ends of the cord passed once more about the throat in opposite directions, and the ends crossed the looped center to dangle between the lower breasts.
The decorative touch did not strike a responsive chord in Sandra Drake. She wanted rip-roaring action, not interior decoration. So she stamped over and jerked the cord from the statue and tried to rend it in her hands. She was not strong enough to do the cord any damage but she did succeed in breaking a one-inch fingernail.
She stormed and stamped, and said a few things that are better mentioned in the abstract, including references to the statue's maker and his family for several generations coming and going. To Sandra's Terran-minded ideas of beauty, the statue was an abomination in spite of its perfection of workmanship. It was not merely un-Terran and therefore strange, it was almost-but-not-quite human, and therefore downright repulsive, and Sandra said so in unladylike language. That the same reactions, in reverse, applied in the Telfan-Sandra relationship was not yet clear to her. Her language sounded more adapted to caisson workers, space-ship builders, or mule skinners than it did the luxury of her present abode.
Then at long and exasperating last, the door opened gingerly and a serving woman entered.