And so they were married, and Bordman was very, very happy. But people who can serve their fellow-men are never left alone. We humans get into so many predicaments!
Bordman had lived contentedly on Lani III for only three years when there was an emergency on Kalen IV and no other qualified Space Survey officer could possibly be gotten to the spot in time to handle it. A special ship raced to ask him to act,—just for this once. And, reluctantly, he went to do what he could, with the assurance to Riki that he would be back in three months. But he was gone two years, and his youngest child did not remember him when he came back.
He stayed home one year, and then there was an emergency on Seth IV. That kept him only four months, but before he could get back to Lani he was urgently required to check out a colony on Aleph I, whose colonists could not enter into possession until a short-handed Survey service licensed it. Then there was another call....
In the first ten years of his marriage, Bordman spent less than five with his family. But he didn't like it. When he'd been married fifteen years he'd made it clear at Headquarters that he was only carrying on until a new class graduated from Space Survey training. Then he was going home to stay.
SAND DOOM
Bordman knew there was something wrong when the throbbing, acutely uncomfortable vibration of rocket-blasts shook the ship. Rockets were strictly emergency devices, these days, so when they were used there was obviously an emergency.
He sat still. He had been reading in the passenger-lounge of the Warlock—a very small lounge indeed—but as a Senior Colonial Survey Officer with considerable experience he was well-traveled enough to know when things did not go right. He looked up from the book-screen, waiting. Nobody came to explain the eccentricity of a space-ship using rockets. The explanation would have been immediate on a regular liner, but the Warlock was practically a tramp. This trip it carried just two passengers. Passenger service was not yet authorized to the planet, and would not be until Bordman had made the report he was on his way to compile. At the moment, though, the rockets blasted, and stopped, and blasted again. There was something definitely wrong.
The Warlock's other passenger came out of her cabin. She looked surprised. She was Aletha Redfeather, a very lovely Amerind. It was extraordinary that a girl could be so self-sufficient on a tedious space-voyage, and Bordman approved of her. She was making the journey to Xosa II as a representative of the Amerind Historical Society, but she'd brought her own book-reels and some elaborate fancy-work which—woman-fashion—she used to occupy her hands. She hadn't been at all a nuisance. Now she tilted her head on one side as she looked inquiringly at Bordman.
"I'm wondering too," he told her, just as an especially sustained and violent shuddering of rocket-impulsion made his chair legs thutter on the floor.
There was a long period of stillness. Then another violent but much shorter blast. A shorter one still. Presently there was a half-second blast which must have been from a single rocket-tube because of the mild shaking it produced. After that there was nothing at all.