“Wait a minute, honey! What’s your name?”
“Theodore McArdle,” Teddy said. “What’s yours?”
“My name?” said the girl, smiling. “My name’s Ensign Mathewson.”
Teddy watched her press down on her stapler. “I knew you were an ensign,” he said. “I’m not sure, but I believe when somebody asks your name you’re supposed to say your whole name. Jane Mathewson, or Phyllis Mathewson, or whatever the case may be.”
“Oh, really?”
“As I say, I think so,” Teddy said. “I’m not sure, though. It may be different if you’re in uniform. Anyway, thank you for the information. Goodbye!” He turned and took the stairs up to the Promenade Deck, again two at a time, but this time as if in rather a hurry.
He found Booper, after some extensive looking, high up on the Sports Deck. She was in a sunny clearing—a glade, almost—between two deck-tennis courts that were not in use. In a squatting position, with the sun at her back and a light breeze riffling her silky, blond hair, she was busily piling twelve or fourteen shuffleboard discs into two tangent stacks, one for the black discs, one for the red. A very small boy, in a cotton sun suit, was standing close by, on her right, purely in an observer’s capacity. “Look!” Booper said commandingly to her brother as he approached. She sprawled forward and surrounded the two stacks of shuffleboard discs with her arms to show off her accomplishment, to isolate it from whatever else was aboard ship. “Myron,” she said hostilely, addressing her companion, “you’re making it all shadowy, so my brother can’t see. Move your carcass.” She shut her eyes and waited, with a cross-bearing grimace, till Myron moved.
Teddy stood over the two stacks of discs and looked down appraisingly at them. “That’s very nice,” he said. “Very symmetrical.”
“This guy,” Booper said, indicating Myron, “never even heard of backgammon. They don’t even have one.”
Teddy glanced briefly, objectively, at Myron. “Listen,” he said to Booper. “Where’s the camera? Daddy wants it right away.”