"Sylvia? That's pretty valuable information," he said, beginning to grin in a sleepy old fashion. "But she only dates astronauts. If you haven't made at least three orbits, she won't even have dinner with you."
I stopped at Sylvia's desk with half an idea of asking her for a date. "Well, Dr. Seaman," she demanded as I chewed on my pacifier. "What did you learn?"
I thought about it. "That a lot depends on knowing where to put your feet," I said, puffing smoke. "And my name is Mike."
She sniffed. "If you think Paul Cleary hasn't been around long enough to catch Fred Stone trying to fake him out of position with a meaningless test," she said, "you have another think coming!"
"He'd never have tried it," I told her, "if he'd known Cleary had you to look after him." That got me a much louder sniff and toss of the dark curly head, which broke up my plans to ask her to dinner.
The telemetry results had been decoded, of course, so that a mere mortal could read them. I didn't have a pipe, which probably meant I'd be a failure as a physicist, so I chewed cigars ragged for about three days and did some serious thinking. When I got a result, I looked up Shouff, Sylvia, Secy./Mgr./Dsgn., in the phone directory, and talked to my favorite brunette.
"Mr. Cleary's office," she said.
"When would he like to see Mike Seaman?" I tried.
"Probably never," she told me. "But I suppose he'll have to. Isn't Fred Stone going to run your errand for you?"
"I'm running Fred Stone's errands, isn't that what you really think, Sylvia?" I asked her.