Pink frowned momentarily. There was a false note somewhere, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He tried to remember all he could about the dying race of Martians. What Ynohp was saying was correct, as nearly as he could recall, but ... he shrugged. My God! he thought, this critter's over four thousand years old!
Well, Circe's about forty-five.
The hell she is. She's twenty-seven, which was her age when her ship was wrecked, plus about one actual year of life which equals the eighteen she was lost in the Slugjet. Twenty-eight, then, really. I'm thirty-one. Not a bad combination.
Hey, boy, you're a confirmed bachelor, remember?
He chuckled. Who says so? He took a look at Circe. The prettiest spaceman who ever came my way, he said to himself happily.
The dinner broke up. Space etiquette demanded that he escort the Martian to his stateroom first, for the four-armed little gray man was senior to a mere organicus officer; when he returned to the mess hall, he found that Joe Silver had whisked Circe away to show her the new improvements in space drives and other technical details.
"At least," said Bill Calico, "he said he was going to."
Pink went off to talk to Jerry, who was a lousy substitute for a beautiful girl.
He found his O. O. tinkering with the life-scanner.
"Something wrong," Jerry said through his teeth. He was a slim young man—Pink, who stood six-three and hefted in at two hundred, would have made two of Jerry—and his normally joyous expression was now writhed into a frown. "The red light's not on, but the scanner's not working."