"_What?_" Belle broke in again. "Have you lost your mind?" "There will be little if any lepping, and nothing else at all. At the table, if we want sugar, we will reach for it or have it passed. We will pick up things, such as cigarettes, with our fingers. We will carry lighters and use them. When we go from place to place, we will walk. Is that clear?" "You seem to be talking English," Belle sneered, "but the words don't make sense." "I didn't think you were that stupid." Eyes locked and held. Then Garlock grinned savagely. "Okay. You tell her, Lola, in words of as few syllables as possible." "Why, to get used to it, of course," Lola explained, while Belle glared at Garlock in frustrated anger. "So as not to reveal anything we don't have to." "Thank you, Miss Montandon, you may go to the head of the class. All monosyllables except two. That should make it clear, even to Miss Bellamy." "You ... you _beast_!" Belle drove a tight-beamed thought. "I was never so insulted in my life!" "You asked for it. Keep on asking for it and you'll keep on getting it." Then, aloud, to all three, "In emergencies, of course, anything goes. We will now proceed with business." He paused, then went on, bitingly, "If possible." "One minute, please!" Belle snapped. "Just why, Captain Garlock, are you insisting on oral communication, when lepping is so much faster and better? It's stupid--reactionary. Don't you ever lep?" "With Jim, on business, yes; with women, no more than I have to. What I think is nobody's business but mine." "What a way to run a ship! Or a project!" "Running this project is my business, not yours; and if there's any one thing in the entire universe it does _not_ need, it's a female exhibitionist. Besides your obvious qualifications to be one of the Eves in case of Ultimate Contingency...." he broke off and stared at her, his contemptuous gaze traveling slowly, dissectingly, from her toes to the topmost wave of her hair-do. "Forty-two, twenty, forty?" he sneered. "You flatter me." Her glare was an almost tangible force; her voice was controlled fury. "Thirty-nine, twenty-two, thirty-five. Five seven. One thirty-five. If any of it's any of your business, which it isn't. You should be discussing brains and ability, not vital statistics." "Brains? You? No, I'll take that back. As a Prime, you _have_ got a brain--one that really works. What do _you_ think you're good for on this project? What can you do?" "I can do anything any man ever born can do, and do it better!" "Okay. Compute a Gunther field that will put us two hundred thousand feet directly above the peak of that mountain." "That isn't fair--not that I expected fairness from you--and you know it. That doesn't take either brains or ability...." "Oh, no?" "No. Merely highly specialized training that you know I haven't had. Give me a five-tape course on it and I'll come closer than either you or James; for a hundred credits a shot."