Fitz scratched his head. "I don't know. Never noticed it before."
The Venusian girl had seen it, but had no more idea than Fitz what lay beyond.
Gavin spent most of his four-hour watch trying to ascertain the secret of its mechanism. He was still sweating over it profusely when Sally Wilde, the second assistant-engineer, arrived in her wheel chair to relieve him.
The second was a tall, gray-eyed blonde, handsome after a rangy fashion. One of her long legs was propped straight ahead of her in a plastic cast. She was wheeled down by the relieving watch and shook hands with Gavin like a man.
"I've been curious about what you were like," she informed him with a roguish smile. She wore a green wrapper thrown about her indifferently, and that was all. She caught the direction of his eye. "Damned nuisance to dress with this lump of plastic on my leg."
She was, Gavin perceived, the arch type of emancipated female whom he detested so heartily. He mumbled something about being glad she was doing so nicely.
"The last third," she explained, "was a disappointment. But you're a pleasant surprise, Mr. Murdock. So virile." She thumped the transparent plastic cast. "When I get rid of this we'll do something about it."
Gavin fled up the ladder.
He came out on the observation deck and recognized Nadia in her gray coveralls seated in a deck chair and staring upward at the stars. They floated in the void like gems on black velvet.