His cargoes were invariably bid-basis job lots, instead of valuable merchandise with a delivery factor. He ran mail loads mostly—mail that could not, for legal reasons, be micro-microfilmed, transmitted by facsi-wave, or recomposed by infrawave at the receiving end. Legal contracts, documents, and the like, the one-and-only original of which must bear the bona fide signature of both parties.
Norton took the spacecraft up, fired the warp-generator, and headed for Castor Three at about forty parsecs per hour. Then, with the control room on the full automatic, he went down to the salon, because it had been a couple of months of Sundays since he had been pilot-host to anyone as young and attractive as Miss Alice Hemingway. Most of his passengers had been businessmen. The few women had been wives of such businessmen, a bit on the dowager side, and therefore more boring than interesting.
But Miss Alice Hemingway was interesting. Not that Jock Norton favored her ash-blond and dark-eyed attractiveness more than he would have admired a redhead or an olive-skinned brunette. He favored all women under thirty who were properly rounded here and there—especially there—and who had clear-skinned faces with regular features.
That Alice Hemingway, secretary, was traveling with her boss made her even more interesting. Norton had cased Mr. Charles Andrews carefully and put him down as a Napoleon type, peppery and active, and probably well-to-do, but not personally attractive to the opposite sex. It was money, decided Norton, that bought a reasonable facsimile of affection to Mr. Charles Andrews.
It would be masculine virility, thought Jock Norton, that would offset the money of Charles Andrews and really bring a proper emotional response from the girl.
"Good morning," he greeted them from the last step of the ladder that led down from the control room.
"How do you do, Pilot Norton," responded Andrews.
"My goodness!" exclaimed Alice. "Isn't that dangerous?"
"Isn't what dangerous?" asked Norton, with a wide, lazy smile.
"Your leaving the ship to run itself."