"Look," said Jock Norton angrily, "I'm still running this lifeship the way it's supposed to be run."
"At a hundred an hour."
"Maybe so. But let me ask you, which one of us would you rather have around right now? The trained spaceman or the captain of industry?"
"That's a fool question," said Alice. "Loaded to the gills. You know the answer to that. But once we get back home, then?"
"You're not hoping to marry that dried-up little—"
Alice laughed, almost hysterically.
"This will kill you, but until you assumed that I was sleeping with him as well as taking his dictation, I hadn't really looked upon Charles Andrews as anything but an employer. Sure, he's male. So is my Uncle Ned, my brother, and my nephew. Not to mention my father and grandfather. But Mr. Andrews is not my idea of a lover."
Jock Norton nodded soberly. He took a deep breath of satisfaction. Alice underwent a swift revision in his mental classification of her. She changed from a luxury-bought mistress to be seduced by the offer of real fun and passion into a woman with no emotional connections, to be seduced for the fun of it. Both, in Norton's mind, were fair game.
"What's wrong with me?" he asked.
"Nothing much, Jock Norton, except that you're essentially lazy."