"I'm hungry, mommy," said Freddie who had missed out on breakfast altogether. Celia gave him a soggy hors d'oeuvre, which was all that was left from the Mendelsohn's party.
I had been thinking about what to do with our expensive car. I brought it down almost a mile from the star-ship Pericles.
"You two will have to walk the rest of the way," I said cheerily. "I'll meet you at our rendezvous point in about twenty-five minutes."
The time was now seven-thirty. The ship blasted off at nine. I put our car in a steep climb and circled the field at an altitude of ten thousand feet, where I could see which of the many spaceships were loading passengers.
I chose one ship arbitrarily at the opposite end of the field from the star-ship. It turned out to be an Asteroid surveyor, paying its way with a hundred or so passengers to Ganymede. I set down in the adjoining lot, and fixed the degravity controls so that the ship hovered a few inches off the ground, and left it that way to drift across the field with the wind until it attracted the inevitable attention.
I walked to the next shuttle bus stop and rode across to the Pericles. It was a gigantic ship, twenty times the capacity of a Venus or Mars rocket. Comet-shaped, engineered to approach fifty per cent of the speed of light through cumulative acceleration, the star-ship had two vast cargo entrances in addition to the passenger airlock. In one, which was now closing, I caught sight of crated farm machinery. Into the other, herds of cattle were being driven.
It was nearly eight o'clock. I approached the Pericles warily. We were all supposed to meet by the livestock gate. Dozens of people were milling about, some ranchers, some colonizers, bargaining at the last minute over a sheep or a goat or a horse or a cow to replace a dead or sick animal. That some of the men were detectives I did not doubt. I saw Celia close to the entrance with Freddie. We exchanged glances of recognition, but kept widely separated.
Solly came up. "I checked with the captain about Dolly and me waiving our right to have a child during the voyage, and taking Freddie with us instead. You were right. He wouldn't buy it."
"That was tremendously generous of you even to offer."
"But," said Solly, "there's been one cancellation!"