The Yellow Fraction

by Rex Gordon

  Duncan responded to Penny’s touch and look and got up. Before he turned to the spiral stair, he looked at them. "Who’s going to volunteer to keep ship-watch on this deck tonight, while the rest of us are in our cabins?”

  They had all begun to move when Duncan did, and then they stopped. Don’t all volunteer at once, Len thought.

  Lucinda said, “Len and I will.”

  Len wondered as he watched them all move and begin to go more quickly. They were heading for their cabins before he and Lucinda changed their minds about their offer. Yet they had all seen Lucinda work. They knew what she was capable of. Sometimes, it just did not register.

  When the others had gone, and the last head had disappeared down the hatchway in the deck, Len began to collect loose equipment and put it to one side. There was some talk and slamming of doors below. When it stopped, he went to the stairhead. Then he began to put the loose equipment on the stair. Thoughtfully, he tied a notice to it.

  Lucinda was releasing the foam rubber from the blast-off couches, and laying a square of it, eight feet by six, in the center of the deck. She looked a little shy when Len caught her eye. “It’s more spacious up here,” she said. “And besides, the view is better.”

  “I know,” Len said. “And if the watchkeeper were to see anything in space tonight, he couldn’t do a thing about it.”

  Salford had said their luck was good, and as Len undressed under the immense hemisphere of heavens above the dome, he knew that this night they would have to rely on it, until tomorrow, when the control equipment could be reassembled. Then Len stopped thinking of things like that entirely.

  It was the sight of Lucinda, naked, with the starlight gleaming on her hair and figure, and her toes barely touching the deck in the light gravity of the starship as she came toward him. He had not realized that that too was something she had thought of.

  It was not long before what Len saw of the universe was its reflection in miniature in Lucinda’s dark eyes.

  “After all, the stars have seen this kind of thing before,” she told him.

  Contents

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