She looked up at him and scowled. "What were you doing with Chipsie? Answer me that!"
It got his back fur up. "Nothing," he said stiffly. "If you will excuse me, ma'am, I'll get on with my work." He turned his back and bent over his broom.
She grabbed his arm and swung him around. "Answer me! Or ... or--I'll tell the Captain, that's what I'll do!"
Max counted ten, then just to be sure, recalled the first dozen 7-place natural logarithms. "That's your privilege, ma'am," he said with studied calmness, "but first, what's your name and what is your business here? I'm in charge of these compartments and responsible for these animals--as the Captain's representative." This he knew to be good space law, although the concatenation was long.
She looked startled. "Why, I'm Eldreth Coburn," she blurted as if anyone should know.
"And your business?"
"I came to see Mr. Chips--of course!"
"Very well, ma'am. You may visit your pet for a reasonable period," he added, quoting verbatim from his station instruction sheet. "Then he goes back in his cage. Don't disturb the other animals and don't feed them. That's orders."
She started to speak, decided not to and bit her lip. The spider puppy had been looking from face to face and listening to a conversation far beyond its powers, although it may have sensed the emotions involved. Now it reached out and plucked Max's sleeve. "Max," Mr. Chips announced brightly. "Max!"
Miss Coburn again looked startled. "Is that your name?"
"Yes, ma'am. Max Jones. I guess he was trying to introduce me. Is that it, old fellow?"
"Max," Mr. Chips repeated firmly. "Ellie."
Eldreth Coburn looked down, then looked up at Max with a sheepish smile. "You two seem to be friends. I guess I spoke out of turn. Me and my mouth."
"No offense meant I'm sure, ma'am."
Max had continued to speak stiffly; she answered quickly, "Oh, but I was rude! I'm sorry--I'm always sorry afterwards. But I got panicky when I saw the cage open and empty and I thought I had lost Chipsie."
Max grinned grudgingly. "Sure. Don't blame you a bit. You were scared."
"That's it--I was scared." She glanced at him. "Chipsie calls you Max. May I call you Max?"
"Why not? Everybody does--and it's my name."
"And you call me Eldreth, Max. Or Ellie."
She stayed on, playing with the spider puppy, until Max had finished with the cattle. She then said reluctantly, "I guess I had better go, or they'll be missing me."
"Are you coming back?"
"Oh, of course!"
"Ummm ... Miss Eldreth ..."
"Ellie."
"--May I ask a question?" He hurried on, "Maybe it's none of my business, but what took you so long? That little fellow has been awful lonesome. He thought you had deserted him."
"Not 'he'--'she'."
"Huh?"
"Mr. Chips is a girl," she said apologetically. "It was a mistake anyone could make. Then it was too late, because it would confuse her to change her name."
The spider puppy looked up brightly and repeated, "'Mr. Chips is a girl.' Candy, Ellie?"
"Next time, honey bun."
Max doubted if the name was important, with the nearest other spider puppy light-years away. "You didn't answer my question?"
"Oh. I was so mad about that I wanted to bite. They wouldn't let me."
"Who's 'they'? Your folks?"
"Oh, no! The Captain and Mrs. Dumont." Max decided that it was almost as hard to extract information from her as it was from Mr. Chips. "You see, I came aboard in a stretcher--some silly fever, food poisoning probably. It couldn't be much because I'm tough. But they kept me in bed and when the Surgeon did let me get up, Mrs. Dumont said I mustn't go below 'C' deck. She had some insipid notion that it wasn't proper."
Max understood the stewardess's objection; he had already discovered that some of his shipmates were a rough lot--though he doubted that any of them would risk annoying a girl passenger. Why, Captain Blaine would probably space a man for that.
"So I had to sneak out. They're probably searching for me right now. I'd better scoot."
This did not fit in with Mr. Chips' plans; the spider puppy clung to her and sobbed, stopping occasionally to wipe tears away with little fists. "Oh, dear!"
Max looked perturbed. "I guess I've spoiled him-- her. Mr. Chips, I mean." He explained how the ceremony of walking the baby had arisen.
Eldreth protested, "But I must go. What'll I do?"
"Here, let's see if he--she--will come to me." Mr. Chips would and did. Eldreth gave her a pat and ran out, whereupon Mr. Chips took even longer than usual to doze off. Max wondered if spider puppies could be hypnotized; the ritual was getting monotonous.
Eldreth showed up next day under the stern eye of Mrs. Dumont. Max was respectful to the stewardess and careful to call Eldreth "Miss Coburn." She returned alone the next day. He looked past her and raised his eyebrows. "Where's your chaperone?"
Eldreth giggled. "La Dumont consulted her husband and he called in your boss--the fat one. They agreed that you were a perfect little gentleman, utterly harmless. How do you like that?"
Max considered it. "Well, I'm an ax murderer by profession, but I'm on vacation."
"That's nice. What have you got there?"
It was a three-dimensional chess set. Max had played the game with his uncle, it being one that all astrogators played. Finding that some of the chartsmen and computermen played it, he had invested his tips in a set from the ship's slop chest. It was a cheap set, having no attention lights and no arrangements for remote-control moving, being merely stacked transparent trays and pieces molded instead of carved, but it sufficed.
"It's solid chess. Ever seen it?"
"Yes. But I didn't know you played it."
"Why not? Ever play flat chess?"
"Some."
"The principles are the same, but there are more pieces and one more direction to move. Here, I'll show you.
She sat tailor-fashion opposite him and he ran over the moves. "These are robot freighters ... pawns. They can be commissioned anything else if they reach the far rim. These four are starships; they are the only ones with funny moves, they correspond with knights. They have to make interspace transitions, always off the level they're on to some other level and the transition has to be related a certain way, like this--or this. And this is the Imperial flagship; it's the one that has to be checkmated. Then there is ..." They ran through a practice game, with the help of Mr. Chips, who liked to move the pieces and did not care whose move it was.
Presently he said, "You catch on pretty fast."
"Thanks."
"Of course, the _real_ players play four-dimensional chess."
"Do you?"
"Well, no. But I hope to learn some day. It's just a matter of holding in your mind one more spatial relationship. My uncle used to play it. He was going to teach me, but he died." He found himself explaining about his uncle. He trailed off without mentioning his own disappointment.
Eldreth picked up one of the starship pieces from a tray. "Say, Max, we're pretty near our first transition, aren't we?"
"What time is it?"
"Uh, sixteen twenty-one--say, I'd better get upstairs."
"Then it's, uh, about thirty-seven hours and seven minutes, according to the computer crew."
"Mmm ... you seem to know about such things. Could you tell me just what it is we do? I heard the Astrogator talking about it at the table but I couldn't make head nor tail. We sort of duck into a space warp; isn't that right?"
"Oh no, not a space warp. That's a silly term--space doesn't 'warp' except in places where _pi_ isn't exactly three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine seven nine three two three eight four six two six four three three eight three two seven, and so forth--like inside a nucleus. But we're heading out to a place where space is _really_ flat, not just mildly curved the way it is near a star. Anomalies are always flat, otherwise they couldn't fit together--be congruent."