Finally he took the thing up with Sandra, who merely laughed at him. "How long have you been worrying about _that_, Jarve?" "Ever since I okayed moving aground the first time. That was one reason I was so glad to cancel it then." "You _were_ slightly unclear--a little rattled? But which factor--the fun and games, which is the moral issue, or the consequences?" "The consequences," he admitted, with a rueful grin. "I don't give a whoop how much fun they have; but you know as well as I do just how prudish public sentiment is. And Project Theta Orionis is squarely in the middle of the public eye." * * * * * "You should have checked with me sooner and saved yourself wear and tear. There's no danger at all of consequences--except weddings. Lots of weddings, and fast." "Weddings and babies wouldn't bother me a bit. Nor interfere with the job too much, with the Omans as nurses. But why the 'fast', if you aren't anticipating any shotgun weddings?" "Female psychology," she replied, with a grin. "Aboard-ship here there's no home atmosphere whatever; nothing but work, work, work. Put a woman into a house, though--especially such houses as the Omans have built and with such servants as they insist on being--and she goes domestic in a really big way. Just sex isn't good enough any more. She wants the kind of love that goes with a husband and a home, and nine times out of ten she gets it. With these BuSci women it'll be ten out of ten." "You may be right, of course, but it sounds kind of far-fetched to me." "Wait and see, chum," Sandra said, with a laugh. Hilton made his announcement and everyone moved aground the next day. No one, however, had elected to live alone. Almost everyone had chosen to double up; the most noteworthy exceptions being twelve laboratory girls who had decided to keep on living together. However, they now had a twenty-room house instead of a one-room dormitory to live in, and a staff of twenty Oman girls to help them do it. Hilton had suggested that Temple and Teddy, whose house was only a hundred yards or so from the Hilton-Karns bungalow, should have supper and spend the first evening with them; but the girls had knocked that idea flat. Much better, they thought, to let things ride as nearly as possible exactly as they had been aboard the _Perseus_. "A _little_ smooching now and then, on the Q strictly T, but that's all, darling. That's _positively_ all," Temple had said, after a highly satisfactory ten minutes alone with him in her own gloriously private room, and that was the way it had to be.