Walter Stanton glanced at the lethal fighter ship nested across the landing-lock and essayed their old joke again, but his heart wasn't in it. "What would Marge say, Mel?"
Mel Cramer laughed. "She gave up to Mel's Mistress a year ago. OK to go?"
Walter Stanton thought of the letter in his pocket. "No, Mel, I think not." Then suddenly: "Is the Mistress armed ... all ready to go?"
Mel sounded hurt. "Of course, Walt. She's always ready.... Why?"
Stanton pulled himself to the hatch in the hub. "Meet me in Control, Mel. I want to talk to you."
Walter Stanton belted himself to his desk chair and pulled out the letter from De La Rue, reading it again. He felt a surge of nostalgia at the Old Man's quaint English; the Secretary-General's white-hot internationalism had never impelled him to improve his languages. But there was nothing quaint about the content of the letter....
Mel Cramer shuffled in with the strange gait that they had all developed within days of arriving in space. Automatically he snapped his safety belt to a grommet on Mel's desk, then sat on the top.
"What's on your mind, Walt?"
"This...." Walter Stanton handed him the letter. "Torrance brought it. I guess De La Rue didn't have enough to go on to send a dispatch, so he wrote the letter."