“Heh, Mom,” Bay said. “Just hold everything. We don’t want a kid around the house next year—or any year.”

“He sent a picture of her. Look. She isn’t a kid. She’s grown up.”

Dina Drake, on her way to the dining room, turned and joined the three. “In a parka I’ll bet.”

But she wasn’t. “Say!” Bay exclaimed.

“I remember,” Dave said. “Nice little kid. I saw her once when Czar brought her along for a meeting or something. In my office, she sat as quiet as a mouse—no, it was Caswell’s office—anyway she sat there, didn’t budge, she couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. Bright yellow hair. And the blackest eyes. Now how did I happen to remember that!”

“You’re not the boy to forget a blonde,” Bay said.

“I know now. When the meeting broke up—she’d been asleep through it—waiting there for Czar to finish—she said good-bye, polite as you please, and then she looked at me as if she didn’t like me. Real mean look, I mean.”

“Now, David, you’re not going to hold that against her, for heaven’s sake! A child. I’d be bored, too, and mean-looking if I had to sit and listen to you men yak-yakking about business. Why, I remember when I first came to Seattle a bride—–”

“We can put the yellow roses in the library,” Dina said, “and have a fruit centerpiece instead. Do you think she’ll stay here with you?”

Louise Husack followed Dina into the dining room, she referred again to the letter in her hand. “It says here, no. Czar’s letter says a little two-room apartment near the U., she likes to be independent.”

18

AS SHE AND THOR stood at the Baranof airport exit awaiting their plane’s flight announcement, Chris saw him as he swiftly crossed the strip and ran up the loading stairway.

“There’s Ross,” she exclaimed. “He got the run.” She turned now to Bridie who had just bustled up to join them. “Ross is going to pilot us as far as Oogruk. I just saw him go into the plane. He didn’t even know last night. Isn’t it wonderful!”

Bridie Ballantyne jerked her hat forward and settled her shoulders and jiggled her handbag in a series of twitches. “Maybe, if he keeps on flying. When I’m on a plane I don’t want any pilot to be giving a floor show, visiting around spreading the charm and explaining the scenery and so on. Let them fly the plane and I’ll find my own scenery.”

The twin-engine plane was an ancient but respectable DC-3. Humbled in service but still proud, still functioning gallantly, it gave the outer effect at least of a grande dame though inside the cabin the seat springs sagged and indeed one whole side of the passenger space might be filled with incredible species of freight, lashed together with rope.

As Thor and Bridie and Chris entered (the stewardess again was Gerda Lindstrom, who greeted them like a hostess welcoming guests to dinner) they saw, without thinking it at all remarkable, that the seats had been removed along one entire side. This space was packed with the frozen skinned carcasses of moose mingling affably with the chilled passengers across the aisle. A too-hasty passenger might bark a shin against an ice-hard moose leg protruding to trip the unwary.