"--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 would 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 members of the highly irritable Brown clan or its collateral branches. Butt 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 Galertan Archipelago, he makes, breaks and occasionally readjusts officials. Then there's his brother Saskatchewan who considers Butt a helpless, put-upon youngster--" "Much influence, you say? Mr. Brown has?" Sis was suddenly thoughtful. "_Power_, actually. The kind a strong man usually wields 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 Butt 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 _Mme. Sun Yat Sen_ 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 women, how to get around them without their knowing it, doesn't need to know anything else in this 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 Butt had told him--in the lifeboat when they decided to use my arrest 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--sea 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 telewall flickered, and we turned it on. Sis smiled down. "Everything's all right, Captain. Come up and marry us, please." "What did you stick him for?" he asked. "What was the price?"