menu_book Chapter 1

Story No. 1 of Three Science-Fiction Stories by William Tin Venus is a Man's World The story was first published in Galaxy Science-Fiction July 1951. Venus is a Man's World by William Tin I've always said that even if Sis is seven years older than me, and a girl besides, she

don't always know what's best. Put me on a spaceship jam-packed with three hundred females just aching to get themselves husbands in the one place there's still to be had, the planet Venus, and you know I'll be in trouble. Bad trouble, with a law which is the worst a boy can get into.

Twenty minutes after we lifted from the Sahara space port, I wriggled out of my acceleration hammock and started for the door of our cabin. Now, you be careful, Ferdinand. Sis called after me as she opened a book called Family Problems of the Frontier Woman. Remember, you're a nice boy.

Don't make me ashamed of you. I tore down the corridor. Most of the cabins had purple lights on in front of the doors, showing that the girls were still inside their hammocks. That meant only the ship's crew was up and about.

Ship's crews are men. Women are too busy with important things like government to run ships. I felt free all over and happy. Now was my chance to really see the Eleanor Roosevelt. It was hard to believe I was travelling in space at last.

Ahead and behind me, all the way up to where the companion-way curved in out of sight, there was nothing but smooth black wall and smooth white doors. On and on and on. Gee, I thought excitedly, this is one big ship. Of course every once in a while I would run across a big scene of stars in the void set

in the wall, but they were only pictures. Nothing that gave the feel of great empty space like I'd read about in the boy rocketeers. No portholes, no visiplates, nothing. So when I came to the crossway I stopped for a second, then turned left. To the right, see, there was deck four, then deck three, leading inward past the engine

and focacil, to the main jets and the grav helix, going purr, purr, purrty purr in the comforting way big machinery has when it's happy and oiled. But to the left, the crossway led all the way to the outside level, which ran just under the hull. There were portholes in the hull.

I'd studied all that out in our cabin, long before we'd lifted on the transparent model of the ship hanging like a big cigar from the ceiling. Sis had studied it too, but she was looking for places like the dining salon and the library and lifeboat sixty-eight, where we should go in case of emergency. I looked for the important things.

As I trotted along the crossway I sort of wished that Sis hadn't decided to go after a husband on a luxury liner. On a cargo ship now I'd be climbing from deck to deck on a ladder instead of having gravity underfoot all the time, just like I was home on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. But women always know what's right, and a boy can only make faces and do what they say,

same as the men have to. Still it was pretty exciting to press my nose against the slots in the wall and see the sliding panels that would come charging out and block the crossways into an air-tight fit in case a meteor or something smashed into the ship. And all along there were glass cases with space suits standing in them,

like those knights they used to have back in the Middle Ages. In the event of disaster affecting the oxygen content of Companion Way, they had the words etched into the door, break glass with hammer upon wall, remove a space suit, and proceed to don it in the following fashion. I read the following fashion until I knew it by heart.

Boy, I said to myself, I hope we have that kind of disaster. I sure like to get into one of those. Bet it would be more fun than those diving suits back in undersea. And all the time I was alone. That was the best part.

Then I passed deck twelve and there was a big sign, notice passengers not permitted past this point, a big sign in red. I peeked around the corner. I knew it. The next deck was the hull. I could see the portholes. Every twelve feet they were, filled with the velvet of space and the

dancing of more stars than I'd ever dreamed existed in the universe. There wasn't anyone on the deck as far as I could see, and this distance from the grav helix the ship seemed mighty quiet and lonely if I just took one quick look. But I thought of what Sis would say and I turned around obediently.

Then I saw the big red sign again. Passengers not permitted. Well, didn't I know from my civics class that only women could be earth citizens these days? Sure, ever since the male desuffrage act. Didn't I know that you had to be a citizen of a planet in order to get an

interplanetary passport? Sis had explained it all to me in the careful, patient way. She always talks politics and things like that to men. Technically, Ferdinand, I'm the only passenger in our family. You can't be one because not being a citizen you can't acquire an earth passport. However, you'll be going to Venus on the strength of this

clause. Miss Evelyn Sparling and all dependent male members of family. This number not to exceed the registered quota of subregulations pertaining and so on. I want you to understand these matters so that you will grow into a man who takes an active interest in world affairs. No matter what you hear, women really like and appreciate such men.

Of course, I never pay much attention to Sis when she says such dumb things. I'm old enough, I guess, to know that it isn't what women like and appreciate that counts when it comes to people getting married. If it were Sis and three hundred other pretty girls like her, wouldn't be on their way to Venus to hook husbands. Still, if I wasn't a

passenger, the sign didn't have anything to do with me. I know what Sis would say to that, but at least it was an argument I could use if it ever came up. So I broke the law. I was glad I did. The stars were exciting enough, but away off to the left about five times as big as I'd ever seen it, except in the movies,

was the moon, a great blob of grey and white pockmarks holding off the black of space. I was hoping to see the earth, but I figured it must be on the other side of the ship or behind us. I pressed my nose against the port and saw the tiny flicker of a spaceship taking off Mars-bound. I wish I was on that one.

Then I noticed a little farther down the companion way a stretch of blank wall where there should have been portholes. High up on the wall in glowing red letters were the words, Lifeboat 47, Passengers 32, Crew 11, Unauthorized Personnel Keep Away. Another one of those signs. I crept up to the porthole nearest it and could just barely make out the

stern jets where it was plastered against the hull. Then I walked under the sign and tried to figure the way you were supposed to get into it. There was a very thin line going around in a big circle that I knew must be the door, but I couldn't see any knobs or switches to open it with, not even a button you could press. That meant it was a sonic lock like

the kind we had on the outer keeps back home in undersea. But knock or voice? I tried the two knock combinations I knew and nothing happened. I only remembered one voice key, might as well see if that's it, I figured. 2023, Open Sesame.

For a second I thought I'd hit it just right out of all the million possible combinations. The door clicked inward toward a black hole and a hairy hand as broad as my shoulders shot out of the hole. It closed around my throat and plucked me inside as if I'd been a baby sardine. I bounced once on the hard Lifeboat floor. Before I got my breath and

sat up, the door had been shut again. When the light came on I found myself staring up the muzzle of a highly polished blaster and into the cold blue eyes of the biggest man I'd ever seen. He was wearing a one piece suit made of some scaly green stuff that looked hard and soft at the same time. His boots were made of it too, and so was the hood hanging

down his back. And his face was brown. Not just ordinary tan, you understand, but the deep dark burned all the way in brown I'd seen on the lifeguards in New Orleans whenever we took a surface vacation, the kind of tan that comes from day after broiling day under a really hot sun. His hair looked as if it had once been blonde, but now there were

just long combed out waves with the yellowish tinge that boiled all the way down to his shoulders. I hadn't seen hair like that on a man except maybe in history books. Every man I'd ever known had his hair cropped in the fashionable soup bowl style. I was staring at his hair, almost forgetting about the blaster, which I knew it was against the law

for him to have at all, when I suddenly got scared right through. His eyes! They didn't blink, and there seemed to be no expression around them, just coldness. Maybe it was the kind of clothes he was wearing that did it, but all of a sudden I was reminded of a crocodile I'd seen in a surface zoo that had stared quietly at me for twenty minutes until

it opened two long tooth-studded jaws. Rain shatters, he said suddenly, only a tadpole. I must be getting jumpy enough to splash. Then he shoved the blaster away in a holster made of the same scaly leather, crossed his arms on his chest, and began to study me. I grunted to my feet, feeling a lot better. The coldness

had gone out of his eyes. I held out my hand the way sister taught me. My name is Ferdinand Sparling. I am very pleased to meet you, Mr.—Mr.— Hope, for your sake, he said to me, that you aren't what you seem, tadpole brother to one of them husbandless Anora. What? A Noran is a female looking to nest. Anora is a herd of the same.

Come from flat-folk ways. Flat-folk are the Venusian natives, aren't they? Are you a Venusian? What part of Venus do you come from? Why did you say you hope? He chuckled, and swung me into one of the bunks that lined the lifeboat. Questions you ask, he said in a soft voice.

Venus is a sharp enough place for a dryhorn, let alone a tadpole dryhorn with a boss-minded sister. I'm not a dryleg, I told him proudly. We're from undersea. Dryhorn, I said, not dryleg. And what's undersea? Well, in undersea we call foreigners and newcomers drylegs.

Just like on Venus, I guess, you call them dryhorns. And then I told him how undersea had been built on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico when the mineral resources of the land began to give out, and engineers figured that a lot could still be reached from the sea bottoms.

He nodded. He'd heard about the sea-bottom mining cities that were bubbling under protective domes in every one of the earth's oceans, just about the same time settlements were springing up on the planets. He looked impressed when I told him about Mom and Pop being one of the first couples to get married in undersea. He looked thoughtful when I

told him how Sis and I had been born there and spent half our childhood listening to the pressure pumps. He raised his eyebrows and looked disgusted when I told him how Mom, an undersea representative on the World Council, had been one of the framers of the male desuffrage act after the Third Atomic War had resulted in the maternal revolution.

He almost squeezed my arm when I got to the time Mom and Pop were blown up in a surfacing boat. Well, after the funeral there was a little money, so Sis decided we might as well use it to migrate. There was no future for her on earth, she figured. You know, the three out of four. How's that?

The three out of four. No more than three women out of every four on earth can expect to find husbands, not enough men to go around. Way back in the twentieth century it began to be felt, Sis says, what with the wars and all. Then the wars went on and a lot more men began to die or get no good from the radioactivity. Then the best men went to the

planets, Sis says, until by now even if a woman can scrounge a personal husband he's not much to boast about. The stranger nodded violently. Not on earth he isn't. Those busy-body anora make sure of that. What a place, suffering gridnicks, I had a belly full.

He told me about it. Women were scarce on Venus and he hadn't been able to find any who were willing to come out to his lonely little islands. He had decided to go to earth where there was supposed to be a surplus. Naturally, having been born and brought up on a very primitive planet, he didn't know it's a woman's world like the older

boys in school used to say. The moment he landed on earth he was in trouble. He didn't know he had to register at a government-operated hotel for transient males. He threw a bartender through a thick plastic window for saying something nasty about the length of his hair and imagined he not only resisted arrest, resulting in three

hospitalized policemen, but he sassed the judge in open court. Told me a man wasn't supposed to say anything except through female attorneys. Told her that where I come from a man spoke his piece when he'd a mind to and his woman walked by his side. What happened? I asked breathlessly. Oh, guilty of this in contempt of

that. That blown-up brinosaur took my last munit for fines and then explained that she was remitting the rest because I was a foreigner and uneducated. His eyes grew dark for a moment. He chuckled again. But I wasn't going to serve all those fancy little prison sentences. Forcible citizenship indoctrination, they call it, shook the dead dry

dust of the misbegotten, God-forsaken mother world from my feet forever. The women on it deserved their men. My pockets were folded from the fines and the paddle feet were looking for me so close I didn't dare radio for more munit. So I stowed away. For a moment I didn't understand him. When I did I was almost ill.

You mean, I choked, that you're breaking the law right now and I'm with you while you're doing it? He leaned over the edge of the bunk and stared at me very seriously. What breed of tetpole are they turning out these days? Besides, what business do you have this close to the hull? After a moment of sober reflection I nodded. You're

right. I've become almost a male outside the law. We're in this together. He guffawed. Then he sat up and began cleaning his blaster. I found myself drawn to the bright killer-tube with exactly the fascination cyst and cyst such things have always had for men. Ferdinand, your label? That's not right for a sprouting tetpole. I'll

call you Ford. My name's Butt. Butt Lee Brown. I like the sound of Ford. Is Butt a nickname too? Yeah, short for Alberta, but I haven't found a man who can draw a blaster fast enough to call me that. You see, Pop came over in the eighties, the big wave of immigrants when they evacuated Ontario, named all us boys after Canadian provinces. I

was the youngest, so I got the name there was saving for a girl. You had a lot of brothers, Mr. Butt? He grinned with a mighty set of teeth, a whole one nestful. Of course they were all killed in the blue Chicago Rising by the McGregor boys, all except me and Saskatchewan. Then Sask and me hunted the McGregors down. It took a heap of time. We

didn't float jock McGregor's ugly face down the Tuscany till both of us were pretty near grown up. I walked up close to where I could see the tiny bright copper coils of the blaster above the firing-puddin'. Have you killed a lot of men with that, Mr. Butt? Butt, just plain Butt to you, Ford.

He frowned and sighted at the light globe. No more than twelve, not counting five government paddle-feet, of course. I'm a peaceable planter. Way I figure it, violence never accomplishes much, that's important. My brother sass now. He had just begun to work into a wonderful anecdote about his brother

when the dinner-gong rang. Butt told me to scat. He said I was a growing tadpole and needed my vitamins. And he mentioned, very offhand, that he wouldn't at all object if I brought him some fresh fruit. It seemed there was nothing but processed foods in the lifeboat and Butt was used to a farmer's diet. Trouble was he was a special kind of

farmer. Ordinary fruit would have been pretty easy to sneak into my pockets at meals. I even found a way to handle the kelp and giant watercress Mr. Brown liked. But things like seaweed salt and Venusian mud grapes just had too strong a smell. Twice the mechanical hamper refused to accept my jacket for laundering and I had to wash it

myself. But I learned so many wonderful things about Venus every time I visited that stowaway. I learned three wild wave songs of the flat folk and what it is that the native Venusians hate so much. I learned how to tell the difference between a lousy government paddle-foot from New Kalamazoo and the slap-toe slinker who is the planter's friend.

After a lot of begging Butt Lee Brown explained the workings of his blaster, explained it so carefully that I could name every part and tell what it did from the tiny round electrodes to the long spirals of transformer. But no matter what he would never let me hold it. Sorry for it, old Ted. He would drawl, spinning around and around in the

controlled swivel chair with the nose of the lifeboat. But the way I look at it a man who lets somebody else handle his blaster is like a giant whose heart was in an egg that an enemy found. When you've grown enough so's your pop feels you ought to have a weapon why then's the time to learn it and you might as well learn fast. Before then you're

plain too young to be even near it. I don't have a father to give me one when I come of age. I don't even have an older brother as head of my family like your brother Labrador. All I have is sis and she. She'll marry some fancy dryhorn who'd never been further south than the polar coast. And she'll stay head of the family if I know her breed of

green shot a bossy opinionated. By the way, Forty, he said rising and stretching so the fish leather bounced and rippled off his biceps. That sister, she ever—and he'd be off again, cross-examining me about Evelyn. I sat in the swivel chair he'd vacated and tried to answer his questions. But there was a lot of stuff I didn't know. Evelyn was a

healthy girl, for instance. How healthy exactly I had no way of finding out. Yes, I'd tell him, my aunts on both sides of my family, each had had more than the average number of children. No, we'd never done any farming to speak of back in undersea, but—yes, I guess Evelyn knew about as much as any girl there when it came to diving

equipment and pressure-pump regulation. How would I know? That stuff would lead to trouble for me. Sis had insisted I come along to the geography lecture. Most of the other girls who were going to Venus for husbands talked to each other during the lecture, but not my sister. She hung on every word, took

notes even, and asked enough questions to make the perspiring purser really work in those orientation periods. I am very sorry, Miss Sparling, he said with pretty heavy sarcasm, but I cannot remember any of the agricultural products of the Marco continent. Since the human population is well below one per

thousand square miles, it can readily be understood that the quantity of till soil, land, or subsurface is so small that—wait, I remember something. The macro continent exports a fruit, though not exactly an edible one, the wild dunging drug is harvested there by criminal speculators. Contrary to belief on earth, the traffic has been growing

in recent years. In fact— Pardon me, sir, I broken, but doesn't dunging come only from Leif-Erics and Island off the Moscow peninsula of the macro continent? You remember, purser, Wang Li's third exploration, where he proved the island and the peninsula didn't meet for most of the year?

The purser nodded slowly. I forgot, he admitted. Sorry, ladies, but the bar is right. Please make the correction in your notes. But Sis was the only one who took notes, and she didn't take that one. She stared at me for a moment, biting her lower lip thoughtfully,

while I got sicker and sicker. Then she shut her pad with the final gesture of the right hand that Mom used to use just before challenging the opposition to come right down on the council floor and debate it out with her. Ferdinand, Sis said, let's go back to our cabin.

The moment she sat me down and walked slowly around me I knew I was in for it. I've been reading up on Venusian history in the ship's library, I told her in a hurry. No doubt, she said dryly.

She shook her night black hair out. But you aren't going to tell me that you read about dunging in the ship's library. The books there have been censored by a government agent of earth against the possibility that they might be read by susceptible young male minds like yours.

She would not have allowed this Terran agent, Paddlefoot, I sneered. Sis sat down hard in our Zoom air chair. Now that's a term, she said carefully, that is used only by Venusian riff-raff. They're not. Not what?

Riff-raff, I had to answer, knowing I was getting in deeper all the time and not being able to help it. I mustn't give Mr. Brown away. They're trappers and farmers, pioneers and explorers who are building Venus, and it takes a real man to build on a hot, hungry, hell-like Venus.

Does it now, she said, looking at me as if I were beginning to grow a second pair of ears. Tell me more. You can't have meek, law-abiding women ruled men when you start civilization on a new planet. You've got to have men who aren't

afraid to make their own law if necessary, with their own guns. That's where law begins. The books get written up later. You're going to tell Ferdinand what evil criminal male is speaking through your mouth. Nobody, I insisted. They're my own ideas.

They are remarkably well organized for a young boy's ideas. A boy who, I might add, has previously shown a ridiculous but nonetheless entirely masculine boredom with political philosophy. I plan to have a government career on that new planet you talk about Ferdinand, after I have found a good, steady husband, of course, and I don't

look forward to a masculinist radical in the family. Now, who's been filling your head with all this nonsense? I was sweating. Cis has that deadly bull-dog approach when she feels someone is lying. I pulled my pulp-pest handkerchief from my pocket to wipe my face. Something rattled to the floor. What is that picture

of me doing in your pocket, Ferdinand? A trap seemed to be hinging noisily into place. One of the passengers wanted to see how you look in a bathing suit. The passengers on this ship are all female. I can't imagine any of them that curious about my appearance. Ferdinand, it's a man who has been giving you these antisocial ideas, isn't it?

A warmongering masculinist like all the frustrated men who want to engage in government and don't have the vaguest idea how to. Except, of course, in their ancient bloody ways. Ferdinand, who has been perverting that sunny and carefree soul of yours? Nobody, nobody.

Ferdinand, there's no point in lying. I demand—I told you, Cis, I told you, and don't call me Ferdinand, call me Ford. Ford? Now you listen to me, Ferdinand. After that it was all over but the confession. That came in a few moments. I couldn't fool Cis. She just knew me too well, I decided miserably. Besides, she was a girl. All the same, I

wouldn't get Mr. Butley Brown into trouble if I could help it. I made Cis promise she wouldn't turn him in if I took her to him. And the quick nodding way she said she would made me feel just a little better. The door opened on the signal, sesame. When But saw somebody was with me he jumped and the ten inch blaster barrel grew out of his fingers. Then

he recognized Cis from the pictures. He stepped to one side and with the same sweeping gesture holstered his blaster and pushed his green hood off. It was Cis's turn to jump when she saw the wild mass of hair rolling down his back. An honour, Miss Sparling, he said in that rumbly voice. Please come

right in, there's a hurry-up draught. So Cis went in, and I followed right after her. Mr. Brown closed the door. I tried to catch his eye so I could give him some kind of hint or explanation, but he had taken a couple of his big strides and was in the control section with Cis. She didn't give ground, though, I'll say

that for her. She only came to his chest, but she had her arms crossed sternly. First, Mr. Brown, she began, like talking to a cluck of a kid in class, you realize that you are not only committing the political crime of travelling without a visa, and the criminal one of stowing away without

paying your fare, but the moral delinquency of consuming stores intended for the personnel of this ship solely in emergency. He opened his mouth to its maximum width and raised an enormous hand. Then he let the air out and dropped his arm. I take it you either have no defence or care to make none, Cis added

caustically, but laughed slowly and carefully, as if he were going over each word. Wonder if all the honor a talk like that. And you want to foul up Venus. We haven't done so badly on earth after the mess you men made of politics. It needed a revolution of the mothers before needed nothing.

Everybody wanted peace. Earth is a weary old world. It's a world of strong moral fibre compared to yours, Mr. Alberta Lee Brown. Hearing his rightful name made him move suddenly and tower over her. Cis said with a certain amount of hurry and change of tone, what do you have to say about storing away and using up lifeboat stores? He cocked his head and

considered a moment. Look, he said finally, I have more than enough munit to pay for round-trip tickets, but I couldn't get a return visa because of that brontosaur judge and all the charges she hung on me. Had to store away. Pick the Eleanor Roosevelt, because a couple of the boys in the crew

were friends of mine, and they were willing to help. But this lifeboat, don't you know that every passenger ship carries four times as many lifeboats as it needs? Not to mention the food I didn't eat, because it stuck in my throat. Yes, she said bitterly, you had this boy steal fresh fruit for you. I

suppose you didn't know that under space regulations that makes him equally guilty. No, Cis, he didn't, I was beginning to argue. All he wanted— Sure, I knew. And I knew that if I'm picked up as a stowaway I'll be sent back to earth to serve out those fancy little sentences.

Well, you're guilty of them, aren't you? He waved his hands at her impatiently. I'm not talking law, female, I'm talking sense. Listen, I'm in trouble because I went to earth to look for a wife. You're standing here right now because you're on your way to Venus

for a husband. So let's— Cis actually staggered back. Let's? Let's what? Or are you daring to suggest that that— Now, Miss Sparling, no hoopla. I'm saying let's get married, and you know it. You've figured out from what the boy told you that I was

chewing on you for a wife. You're healthy and strong, got good heredity. You know how to operate subsurface machinery, you've lived under water, and your disposition's no worse than most of the anorta I've seen. Prolific stock, too. I was so excited I just had to yell, Jesus, say yes.

My sister's voice was steaming with scorn. And what makes you think that I'd consider you a desirable husband? He spread his hands genially. Bigger if you wanted a poodle, you're pretty enough to pick one up on earth. Figure if you charge off to Venus, you don't want a poodle, you want a man. I'm one. I own three

islands in the Galartan archipelago. That'll be good oozing mud grape land when they're cleared, not to mention the rich Braziliad beds off shore. I got no bad habits outside of having my own way. I'm also passable good-looking for a slap-toe planter. Besides, if you marry me you'll be the first maiden on this ship, and that's the

splash most nesting females like to make. There was a longest stretch of quiet. Sis stepped back and measured him slowly with her eyes. There was a lot to look at. He waited patiently while she covered the distance from his peculiar green boots to that head of hair. I was so excited I was gulping instead of

breathing. Imagine having butt for a brother-in-law and living on a wet plantation in flat-fold country. But then I remembered Sis's level head and I didn't have much hope any more. You know,' she began, "'there's more to marriage than just—' So there is,' he cut in, "'well, we can try each other for taste.' And

he pulled her in, both of his great hands practically covering her slim straight back. Neither of them said anything for a bit after he let go, but spoke up first. Now me,' he said, "'I'd vote yes.' Sis ran the tip of her tongue kind of delicately from side to side of her mouth. Then she stepped back slowly and looked at him as if she

were figuring out how many feet high he was. She kept on moving backward, tapping her chin, while Butt and I got more impatient. When she touched the lifeboat door she pushed it open and jumped out. Butt ran over and looked down the crossway. After a while he shut the door and came back beside me.

"'Well,' he said, swinging to a bunk, "'that's sort of it.' "'You're better off, Butt,' I burst out. You shouldn't have a woman like Sis for a wife. She looks small and helpless, but don't forget she was trained to run an under-water city.' "'Wasn't worried about that,' he grinned. I grew up in the fifteen

long years of the Blue Chicago Rising.' "'Nope.' He turned over on his back and clicked his teeth at the ceiling. Think we'd have nested out nicely.' I hitched myself up to him and we sat on the bunk, glooming away at each other. Then we heard the tramp of feet in the crossway.'

Butt swung down and headed for the control compartment in the nose of the lifeboat. He had his blaster out and was cursing very interestingly. I started after him, but he picked me up by the seat of my jumper and tossed me toward the door. The captain came in and tripped over me. I got all tangled up in his gold braid and million

mile space buttons. When we finally got to our feet and started outright he was breathing very hard. The captain was a round little man with a plump golden face and a very scared look on it. He humped at me, just the way Sis does, and lifted me by the scruff of my neck. The chief mate picked me up and passed me to the second assistant

engineer. Sis was there, being held by the purser on one side and the chief computer's mate on the other. Behind them I could see a flock of wide-eyed female passengers. "'You cowards!' Sis was raging, letting your captain face a dangerous outlaw all by himself.

"'I don't know, Miss Sparling,' the computer's mate said, scratching the miniature sly rule insignia on his visor with his free hand. The old man would have been willing to let it go with a log entry, figuring the spaceport paddle-feet could pry out the stowaway when we landed. But you had to quote the mother-Renita law at him, and he's

in there doing his duty. He figures the rest of us are family men, too, and there's no sense making orphans.' "'You promise, Sis?' I told her through my teeth. "'You promised you wouldn't get Bud into trouble.' She tossed her spiral curls at me and ground to heel into the purser's

instep. He screwed up his face and scowled, but he didn't let go of her arm. "'Shush, Ferdinand, this is serious.' "'It was,' I heard the captain say. "'I'm not carrying a weapon, Brown.'

"'Then get one.' But slow, lazy voice floated out. "'No, thanks. You're as handy with that thing as I am with the rocket-board.' The captain's words got a little fainter as he walked forward, but growled like a gusher about to blow. "'I'm counting on your being a good guy, Brown.' The captain's voice

quavered just a bit. I'm banking on what I heard about the blast happy Browns every time I lifted graphs in New Kalamazoo. They have a code they don't burn unarmed men.' Just about this time events in the lifeboat went down to a mumble. The top of my head got wet and I looked up. There was sweat rolling

down the second assistant's forehead. It converged at his nose and bounced off the tip in a sizable stream. I twisted out of the way. "'What's happening?' Sis gritted, straining toward the lock. "'Butts trying to decide whether he wants him fried or scrambled.' The computer's mate said, pulling her back.

"'Hey, Purs, remember when the whole family with their pop at the head went into heat wave to argue with Colonel Leclerc?' "'Eleven dead, sixty-four injured,' the purser answered mechanically, and no more army stationed south of Ice-Box. His right ear twitched irritably.

"'But what are they saying?' Suddenly we heard. "'My authority vested in me under the Pomona College Treaty,' the captain was saying very loudly, "'I arrest you for violation of articles 16 to 21 inclusive of the

Space Transport Code and order your person and belongings impounded for the duration of this voyage as set forth in sections 41 and 45.' "'43 and 45,' Sis groaned. "'Sections 43 and 45,' I told him. I even made him repeat it after me. Of the Mother Anita Law, SC-2136, Emergency Interplanetary Directives.

We all waited breathlessly for Butts' reply. The seconds ambled on, and there was no clatter of electrostatic discharge, no smell of burning flesh. Then we heard some feet walking. A big man in a green suit swung out into the crossway. That was Butt. Behind him came the captain, holding the blaster gingerly with both hands.

Butt had a funny, thoughtful look on his face. The girls surged forward when they saw him, scattering the crew to one side. They were like a school of sharks that had just caught sight of a dying wheel. Mmm! are all Venusians built like that? Men like that are worth the mileage. I want him. I want him. I want him.'

Sis had to let go. She grabbed my free hand and pulled me away. She was trying to look only annoyed, but her eyes had bright little bubbles of fury popping in them. The cheap extroverts, and they call themselves responsible women. I was angry too, and I let her know once we were in our cabin. What about that promise, Sis? You said you wouldn't turn him in. You promised.

She stopped walking around the room as if she had been expecting to get to Venus on foot. I know I did, Ferdinand, but he forced me. My name is Ford, and I don't understand. Your name is Ferdinand, and stop trying to act forcefully like a girl. It doesn't become you. In just a few days you'll forget all this and be your simple carefree self again.

I really truly meant to keep my word. From what you'd told me, Mr. Brown seemed to be a fundamentally decent chap, despite his barbaric notions on equality between the sexes, or worse. I was positive I could shame him into a more rational social behaviour, and make him give himself up. Then he—he— She pressed her fingernails into her palms and let out a long glaring sigh at the door.

Then he kissed me. Oh, it was a good enough kiss. Mr. Brown has evidently had a varied and colourful background, but the galling idiocy of the man trying that. I was just getting over the colossal impudence involved in his proposing marriage, as if he had to bear the children, and was considering the offer seriously on its merits, as one should consider all suggestions, when he deliberately dropped the pretense of reason. He appealed to me, as most of the savage

ancients appeal to their women, as an emotional machine. Throw the correct sexual switches, says this theory, and the female surrenders herself ecstatically to the doubtful and bloody murk of masculine plans. There was a double knock on the door, and the captain walked in without waiting for an invitation. He was still holding but splaster. He pointed it at me. Get your hands up for Nan's sprawling, he said.

I did. I hereby order your detention for the duration of this voyage, for aiding and abetting a store away, as set forth in sections 41 and 45. 43 and 45, sis interrupted him, her eyes getting larger and rounder. But you gave me your word of honour that no charges would be lodged against the boy. 41 and 45, he corrected her courteously, still staring fiercely at me. I looked it up. Of the Anita Mason Law, Emergency Interplanetary Directives.

That was the usual promise one makes to an informer, but that was before I knew it was But Lee Brown you were talking about. I didn't want to arrest But Lee Brown. You forced me, so I'm breaking my promise to you just as I understand you broke your promise to your brother. They'll both be picked up at the new Kalamazoo spaceport and sent to Terrid Ward for trial. But I used all of our money to buy passage, sis wailed.

And now you'll have to return with the boy. I'm sorry, Miss Sparling, but as you explained to me, a man who has been honoured with an important official position should stay close to the letter of the law for the sake of other men who were trying to break down terrestrial anti-male prejudice. Of course there's a way out. There is? Tell me, please. Can I lower my hands a minute? I asked. No, you can't, son, not according to the armed

surveillance provisions of the Mother Anita Law. Miss Sparling, if you'd marry Brown, now, now, don't look at me like that. We could let the whole matter drop. A shipboard wedding and he goes on your passport as a dependent male member of family, which means, so far as the law is concerned, that he has a regulation passport from the beginning of this voyage. And once we touch Venusian soil he can contact his bank and pay for passage. On the record, no crime was ever committed.

He's free, the boy's free, and you— Are married to an uncombed desperado who doesn't know enough to sit back and let a woman run things? Oh, you should be ashamed. The captain shrugged and spread his arms wide. Perhaps I should be, but that's what comes of putting men into responsible positions, as you say.

See here, Miss Sparling, I didn't want to arrest Brown, and if it's at all possible I'd still prefer not to. The crew, officers, and men all go along with me. We may be legal residents of Earth, but our work requires us to be on Venus several times a year. We don't want to be disliked by any member of the highly irritable Brown clan or its collateral branches. But Lee Brown himself, for all of his savage appearance in your civilized eyes, is a man of much influence on the polar continent.

In his own bailiwick, the Gallertan Archipelago, he makes breaks and occasionally readjusts officials. Then there's his brother Saskatchewan, who considers but a helpless put-upon youngster. Much influence, you say, Mr. Brown has? Sis was suddenly thoughtful. Power, actually. The kind of strong man usually wheels in a newly settled community. Besides Miss Sparling, you're going to Venus for a husband, because the male-female ratio on Earth

is reversed. Well, not only is but Lee Brown a first-class catch, but you can't afford to be too particular in any case. While you're fairly pretty, you won't bring any wealth into a marriage, and your high degree of opinionation is not likely to be well received on a backward masculinist world. Then, too, the woman-hunger is not so great any more, what with the Marie Curie and the Fatima having already deposited their cargoes, the Mademoiselle Soniazin due to arrive

next month— Sis nodded to herself, waved the door open, and walked out. Let's hope, the captain said. Like any father used to say, a man who knows how to handle woman, how to get around them without their knowing it, doesn't need to know anything else in his life. I'm plain wasted in space. You can lower your hands now, son.

We sat down, and I explained the blaster to him. He was very interested. He said all but had told him in the lifeboat when they decided to use my arresting-court. The only reason he was so happy to be called in as a club over Sis was to keep the safety catch all the way up against his thumb. I could see he really had been excited about carrying a lethal weapon around. He told me that back in the old days captains—see, captains, that is—actually had

the right to keep guns in their cabins all the time to put down mutinies and other things our ancestors did. The tele-wall flickered, and we turned it on. Everything's all right, captain. Come up and marry us, please." What did you stick him for? he asked. What was the price? Sis's full lips went thin and hard the way mom's used to. Then she thought better of it and laughed.

Mr. Brown is going to see that I'm elected sheriff of the Galertin archipelago. And I thought she's settled for a country clerkship. The captain muttered as we spun up to the brig. The doors were open and girls were chattering in every corner. Sis came up to the captain to discuss arrangements.

I slipped away and found Butt sitting with folded arms in the corner of the brig. He grinned at me. Hi, Tadpole. Like the splash? I shook my head unhappily. Butt, why did you do it? I'd sure love to be your brother-in-law, but gosh,

you don't have to marry Sis. I pointed to some of the bustling females. Sis was going to have three hundred bridesmaids. Any one of them would have jumped at the chance to be your wife. And once on any woman's passport you'd be free. Why, Sis? That's what the captain said in the lifeboat.

Told him the same thing I'm telling you. I'm stubborn. What I like at first I keep on liking. What I want at first I keep on wanting until I get. But making Sis sheriff, and you'll have to back her up with your blaster, what'll happen to that man's world? Wait'll after we nest and get out to my islands.

He produced a hard-lipped smug grin, citing it at Sis's slender back. She'll find herself sheriff over a bunch of natives and exactly two earth-males, you and me. I've got a hunch that'll keep her pretty busy, though. End of Venus is a Man's World by William Tinn