in deep space? Have you looked everywhere? Checked the lifeboats? Maybe
she took one and tried to get down to her husband by herself."

"We've looked everywhere. No lifeboats missing. No port has opened. You
ought to know we wouldn't bother you until we'd checked everything out
first."

"She can't have disappeared into thin air, thin space," Hayes quarreled
back. "She must be on your ship somewhere. When was she last seen?"

"That's--ah--that's mainly why I'm calling you, Bill," the captain said.
"A wild tale, obviously a mistake. One of the crewmen passed her
stateroom about an hour ago. Door was open and he looked in, the way
anybody does. Says he saw her standing inside her cabin embracing a man.
Says he didn't stop to look close, but he was pretty sure it was E Gray.
Says he knows because he's had access to the viewscope and has watched E
Gray on the surface of Eden."

"There's been no report of any ship leaving Eden, joining you, Captain,"
Hayes said accusingly.

"Because there hasn't been any," the captain snapped back. "So it can't
have been E Gray she was embracing. That's why I called you. Looks like
we're going to have some petty scandal mixed up with everything else."

"Looks like it, then," Hayes said with a vast weariness. "Some member of
your crew, or one of the scientists," he said. "Keep looking. Somebody's
hiding her, probably to keep the scandal from breaking. But it seems odd
to me that she was so anxious to get out there near her husband and then
in ten days she'd ..."

"Maybe her real anxiety was to be near somebody already assigned to the
ship," the captain said. "I mean, we've got to consider all the
possibilities. Somebody she knew there at E.H.Q."

"Keep checking, Captain. I'll see if the Board wants to contact E
McGinnis. Maybe he knows what's been going on around here that could
lead us to the guy who's hiding her."

"I'll keep checking, but she's not on board _my_ ship," the captain
said. He sighed. Bill Hayes sighed. They broke connection.

Hayes made contact with the Board chairman. It took only a few minutes
to spin the latest tale of woe. Another minute for the Board to decide
direct intervention.

"Now they want me to make contact with the other ship," the operator
said to the supervisor. "The Wheel himself wants to know if E McGinnis
will talk to him."

"Well, contact it, contact it," the supervisor commanded urgently.

"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" the operator quarrele