Then a funny thing happened. The Skipper, strangely scarlet of face, rose suddenly from Andy's side. He croaked, "You—you wouldn't like to lay a little bet on that, Dugan?"
"Huh?" I said. "On what? I don't understand—"
The Old Man moaned softly.
"Neither do I, Dugan. But you were wrong! Slops, here, ain't no man at all, and never was! He—he's a girl!"
Well, looking back on it now I can see how we should have realized it from the beginning. Sure, Captain Slops was a girl! That high, mellow voice ... the oversized uniform coat ... that prudishness which was not prudishness at all, but understandable modesty.
Later, as we were streaking the spaceways toward our Callisto rendezvous, the Leo completely repaired, we demanded and received an explanation. I might add that in female togs the pint-sized chef looked just the right size, and a hundred percent O.Q.
"I didn't exactly lie about my name," she explained. "It is 'Andy Laney'—only you spell it a bit differently. I am really 'Ann Delaney.' My father was a spaceman, so was my grandfather and my great-grandfather. Daddy was always sorry he had a daughter instead of a son. He wanted to see the old tradition of a 'Delaney in space' go on. But you thick-headed males have rules against allowing women to take to the spaceways except as passengers, so there was nothing I could do."
"You," I told her admiringly, "did all right."
"More than all right!" acknowledged the Skipper. "If it hadn't been for you—Don't worry, Miss Delaney. I'll see that the proper authorities hear all about this. Only—" A crease puckered his forehead—"There's something I ain't yet puzzled out. How come you ordered Mr. Dugan to shoot not at, but above the ships? At the Bog? And how come the rocks came tumbling down thataway?"