"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you, Captain," Hayes said accusingly.
"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back. "So it can't have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else."
"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member of your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep looking. Somebody's hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then in ten days she'd ..."
"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to the ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all the possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."
"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could lead us to the guy who's hiding her."
"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board my ship," the captain said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.
Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide direct intervention.
"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship," the operator said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis will talk to him."
"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded urgently.
"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarreled back.