clung to his arm and watched his face admiringly, as though he were the only man in the world.

"But Steward," said the young man, "Dorothy and I—that is, Mrs. Hall and I—we felt sure we'd be able to have a table by ourselves. We don't want to be unreasonable, it's only that this is our honeymoon, maybe the only time we'll ever get to spend together, really, and we like to eat alone, together, I mean. That's the reason we chose the Star Lord, because the advertisements all talked about how big and roomy it was, and how it didn't have to be so miserly with its space as they did in earlier ships. They said you could have privacy, and not have to crowd all together in one stuffy little cabin, the way they used to."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Hall," said the Steward crisply. "We are all proud of the spaciousness of our ship, but not even the Star Lord can provide separate tables for everybody who—Oh, good morning, Mr. Jasperson! Glad to see you, sir." Turning his back on Tom, he smiled and bowed to the new arrival "Everything all right, sir?"

"Good morning, Dr. Chase. No nightmares last night? 'Morning Davis. Tell that waiter of mine to be more particular about giving me plenty of ice water. I like plenty of water, and I like it cold."

"Sorry, sir. I'll speak to him at once." He bowed again as Jasperson strode on.

"Then could we—" Tom began.

Davis whirled with an impatient frown. "What? Are you still here? Surely I made it clear that there's nothing I can do, Mr. Hall?"

"But couldn't you at least move us to another table?"

"I regret that you are dissatisfied with our arrangements. All table space was allocated before we took off from Y-port."

"But you've put us with such noisy people!" said Tom stubbornly. "They keep talking about how much money they made in deutonium, and they refer to us, right in front of us, as the babes in the woods. They may be rich, but they haven't the manners of a six-year old. We can't stay at that table."

"Mr. Hall, I can't waste any more time with you. If all our passengers were to demand special privileges—" He shrugged his shoulders.

Dorothy Hall whispered shyly, "Ask him, then, what about that man?" and she nodded her head slightly to the right.

"Yes," said Tom. "You say there isn't enough room, but what about that table over there? It's made to seat two, and there's just that one man who eats alone."

Davis glanced over. "Oh, yes. But that's Mr. Jasperson! He likes to be by himself."

"Who's Mr. Jasperson?"

"A very important man."

"And I'm not?"

Alan broke in. "Excuse me, Mr. Hall. I am Dr. Chase. Won't you join my table? Three of the people assigned places there are Almazanians, a diplomatic mission, I think, and they naturally prefer to have their own cuisine in their own cabins, so we have room for three more."

"How about it, Steward," said Tom. "Any objections?"

Shrugging his shoulders, Davis strolled away.

Tom glared at the retreating back. "That guy has the face of a murderer. He can't be decent to anybody with less than a million credits."

Dorothy laughed. "Never mind, Tom. Someday you'll be the most famous lawyer in the Interstellar courts, and maybe you'll get a chance to prosecute him for arson or treason."

Alan led them to the rear of the dining room, where his two table companions were finishing the last sips of their coffee, and lighting the first cigarette of the morning.

"Miss Taganova, may I present Tom and Dorothy Hall, who would like to share our table."

Tanya lifted her beautiful auburn head and smiled a welcome. Professor Larrabee stood up, his pink cheeks crinkling with pleasure as he shook hands with Tom.

"Young people make the best companions," he said, "especially on long journeys."

Alan sat down and reached for the vitamin dispenser. "These particular young people want privacy. They're on their honeymoon, and would hardly shed a tear if all the rest of the world suddenly ceased to exist."

"It's not quite like that, Dr. Chase," said Tom, his face reddening, "but those people at our other table were just out of our class, one way or another. The men talked all the time about their bank accounts, and the women clawed at each other about which one had the biggest house, and the biggest pearls and diamonds and emeralds, until we began to feel smothered in a blanket of credits and diamonds."

"Credits and diamonds must be very nice things to have," said Tanya. "I've never managed to collect many of either."

"I've nothing against them in themselves," said Tom, "but right now they don't seem to matter very much. We had to wait five long years to be married, five years for me to finish my law training, and for Dorothy to wear out her family's opposition. They didn't want her to 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 bulletin board which detailed the ship's daily progress, and went to bed.

Dr. Alan Chase followed his own routine. Each morning and each evening he geigered his cabin and found the radiation still below the earth normal. He was surprised to find that he was holding his own, physically, instead of becoming progressively weaker, as he had expected, and he began to feel hopeful that he might quickly regain his health on the inert atmosphere of Almazin III. He was not strong enough, however, to take part in the active games of the passengers, and had not enough energy