The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure. Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life. Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!" Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean, women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world! Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face, then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably," she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for? Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female ever told any Venus man what to do.