"Today's Day" newscast interviewed a midwife who claimed to have delivered Miss Molly Maguire of child ten days before her sensational two-nation sky dive. The sensie star promptly sued newcaster, station, and videonet.
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The Lunar Commission made permanent its trial policy of screening out-migration solely on physical and mental examination with no percentage points either plus or minus from past record. The Director said: "In a new world a man must start with a clean slate. No other policy is practical." Under sharp questioning he admitted that contributions for unsubsidized vocations remained unchanged but insisted that this was a fiscal matter controlled by the condominium governments and in no way affected the basic principle.
HOT WORDS IN CAP-PUN DEBATE: "‘—does not deter!' So he tells us. Is the Senator from the great State of Puerto Rico aware that our major problem is recidivism? Can the Senator cite one case in which a killer committed still another murder after he was executed?"
"Whee! Joe, see how she runs before the wind!"
"Swell."
"Gets me clear down in my gizzard," Joan Eunice said happily. "Let's go aft. Winnie's got the wheel and be sure to be impressed; she's proud as can be that Tom has let her go on the watch list. She's a natural sailor, salt water in her veins. Gigi, what's the matter, dear? You aren't smiling. Feeling queasy?"
"A little, maybe."
"I must admit that the ‘Pussy Cat' does have a rocking-horse motion when she's running free. Love it myself but some don't. Never mind, dear; Doctor Roberto has a surefire pill for tipsy tummy. I'll fetch you one and in five minutes the motion won't bother you and you'll be hungry as a horse."
"I don't take pills, Joan. I'm all right."
"You aren't all right and when we go below you won't want lunch and Hester told me she was fixing something special in your honor. Look, darling, Roberto feeds these pills to Winnie—one before breakfast every day and he had her on them for morning sickness before they came aboard. He's a careful doctor, hon; he wouldn't give them to his own wife if they could hurt. Nobody ever gets a pill of any sort in the ‘Pussy Cat' unless our ship's surgeon dispenses it. Pretty please? Huh?"
"Gigi."
"Yes, Joe."
"Take pill."
"Yes, Joe. Thanks, Joan, I do feel fluttery. I guess you think I'm silly but I've seen so many kids hooked on pills I'm scared of ‘em."
"I don't like pills but I take ‘em when Doctor Roberto says to. He's got me on supplements right now for this little monster inside me. You stay up here in the breeze, dear, while I find Roberto."
"‘Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main!' "Mr. Jacob Salomon bellowed, as he swung up into the control console.
"Morning. Ski."
"Good morning, Captain. On port tack with basic course one five—"
"I see what it is. Beat it down below and get your breakfast." Salomon slid into the saddle and glanced at the compass as he took the wheel. "We didn't leave you anything but you can scrounge ship's biscuit out of the lifeboat."
"Hester won't let me starve, sir."
"Nor Olga. Now beat it." Jake eyed his sails, decided he could point a touch higher, reached out with his right hand to the running rigging controls, kept tapping a switch to shorten his main sheet, his eye on her mainsail, while he handled the wheel by touch till he had her settled down on a lighter tack. Then he adjusted his jibe and relaxed.
"Good morning, Captain."
"Tom, save that for witnesses. It's all very well for Mrs. Salomon to want me dubbed with an honorary title but we all know who's the sailing master by our ship's papers. You're skipper and have the responsibility; I'm just the owner and unlicensed first mate. Eunice ought not to do it—but we have to cater to the little darlings. Speaking of little darlings, how are your two this fine morning? Didn't see Eve at breakfast."
"She ate before you got up, sir. Seen her and told her she's goin' to have to wear pants from now on, except in the pool or near it."
"Don't see why she should, the other gals don't unless it happens to suit them. I just don't want her swarming into my lap, naked as an eel and twice as lively. Gives me delusions of youth."
"I'll clamp down on her, sir."
"Tom, I don't want the child ‘clamped down on.' I want everybody to enjoy this cruise—one big happy family. Ask Hester to tell her quietly that old Uncle Jake loves her but doesn't like to be pawed. A lie, that last, but an official lie. Speaking of the pool, how's the filter?"
"Filter's okay, was just a clog in makeup feed line. Kelp. No huhu."
"Has the surgeon tested the water?"
"Safe."
"That's good. Tom, when I was a kid, striking for quartermaster third, we used to swim off the boat booms and thought nothing of it. But today even the Pacific Ocean can't soak up all the crud they dump into it. You can put swimming call on the bull horn and take the Skull-and-Crossbones sign off the pool."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Half a second while I make eight bells." Jake reached out with his left hand, picked the last touchplate of a row of eight; the quadruple double Bong! marking the beginning of the forenoon watch rang through the vessel. He then picked still another touchplate and sounded swimming call himself. "Tom, if a man didn't have to eat or sleep, he could sail this wagon around the world by himself. Three men could do it easily. Even two."
"Maybe."
"You sound doubtful, Tom."
"Even one man could, sir—if nothin' never went wrong. Something always does."
"I stand corrected. And with two pregnant women aboard—three if you don't keep a close eye on Eve—"
"Oh, Dr. Garcia got her on the junior pill. I don't take no chances, sir."
"So? Tom, my respect for you—high—has just increased. She's safe from her Uncle Jacob... but I make no promises about any other male in this bucket. There is something in salt air that hikes up the metabolism. And there is much truth in the old saw about ‘when they're big enough, they're old enough and nothing can be done about it.' Better to roll with the punch."
"She is and she has and we did—I had this here talk with the Doc. Hester and me don't expect no more from Eve different than we did ourselves. Anybody knows when a broad starts getting broad she's goin' to land on her back."
"Yes, everybody knows it—yet most parents don't believe it when it comes to their own kids. I know, I had a family law practice for years. Tom, you're such an all-around sensible man I'm surprised that you ever got in trouble."
His sailing master shrugged. "Comes o' believing what I was told, sir. ‘M chief officer of this rust bucket and Captain says keep my lip tight and see nothin' and we make ten times as much on one voyage. All fixed. Only he got smart and hung onto the bribe money hisself. Thought he could run it in the dark. You'da thought he'd never heard of radar. Wham. Coast Guard." Finchley shrugged again. "No complaints, sir, I was a fool. But two years and four months and I get this much better job driving for Mr. Smith-as-was. Smellin' like a rose. Not so trusting now, is all. Don't trust too much, you don't get your ass burned."