throw herself
away on a penniless lawyer."

"As if I were a child who didn't know her own mind," said Dorothy.
"Well, I wanted Tom, penniless or not; and anyway, in a few years he's
going to be the finest lawyer in the Interstellar Courts."

"I hope you'll always be as happy as you are now, children." The
professor's eyes were misty as he stood up. "Come, Miss Tanya. Take a
stroll with me, and bring back to an old man a brief illusion of youth."

"But you'll never be old!" she said affectionately. "You're still the
most fascinating man on the ship."

Like every other man in the room, Alan watched with envious eyes as
Tanya took the professor's arm and sauntered to the door, the heavy
taffeta skirts of her pearl-gray gown swishing and rustling as she
walked.

* * * * *

Within the sealed hulk of the _Star Lord_ the twenty-four Piles silently
did their work, out of sight, out of the thoughts of the passengers.
Driving the ship through the unknowable infinities of hyperspace, they
held her quiet, steady, seemingly without motion. They behaved as they
were intended to, their temperatures remained docilely within the normal
limits of safety, and the ship sped on.

The technicians and maintenance men, the navigators, the nucleonics men,
all kept aloof from the social eddies frothing at the center of the
ship. They lived in another world, a world of leashed power, in which
the trivial pursuits of the passengers were as irrelevant as the
twitterings of birds.

In the central tiers occupied by the passengers, each morning the walls
of the lounges and dining rooms resumed their daily routine of
simulating the panorama of earth's day. Lights glowed into a clear
sunrise, brightened into a sunny sky across which light clouds scudded.

Children played in the nurseries, grownups idled through the hours,
eating the delicious food, taking a dip in the priceless pool, attending
the stereodrams, and playing games. At the cocktail hour, the orchestra
played jaunty tunes, old-fashioned polkas, waltzes, mazurkas; at dinner,
it shifted to slower, muted melodies, suitable background for high
feminine voices, deep male laughter, and the heavy drone of talk.

In the walls, the sun set, twilight crept in, and the stars came out.
After the stars had been advancing for several hours, people finished
their dancing and card games, walked out of the theaters, had a final
drink at the Bar, paused at the bullet