Do have some more Madeira, Mr.
Oak. It's really an excellent year."

I let him refill my glass.

"That, I think, will cover your real activities well enough. My
daughter will, of course, take a tour of the plant on Ceres, which
will allow you to do whatever work is necessary."

He smiled at me.

I didn't smile back.

"Up till now, this sounded like a pretty nice assignment," I said.
"But I don't want it now. I can't take care of a teenage girl with a
desire for the bright lights of Earth while I investigate a sabotage
case."

I knew he had an out; I was just prodding him into springing it.

He did. "Of course not. My daughter is not as scatterbrained as I have
painted her. She is going to help you."

"_Help_ me?"

"Exactly. You are ostensibly her bodyguard. If she turns up missing,
you will, of course, leave no stone unturned to find her." He
chuckled. "And Ceres is a fairly large stone."

I thought it over. I still didn't like it too well, but if Jaqueline
wasn't going to be too much trouble to take care of, it might work
out. And if she did get to be too much trouble, I could see to it that
she was unofficially detained for a while.

"All right, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, "you've got yourself a man for
both jobs."

"Both?"

"I find out who is trying to sabotage the McGuire ship, and I baby-sit
for you. That's two jobs. And you're going to pay for both of them."

"I expected to," said Shalimar Ravenhurst.

Fifteen minutes later, I was walking into the room where I'd left my
vac suit. There was a girl waiting for me.

She was already dressed in her vac suit, so there was no way to be sure,
but she looked as if she had a nice figure underneath the suit. Her face
was rather unexceptionally pretty, a sort of nice-girl-next-door face. Her
hair was a reddish brown and was cut fairly close to the skull; only a
woman who never intends to be in a vac suit in free fall can afford to let
her hair grow.

"Miss Ravenhurst?" I asked.

She grinned and stuck out a hand. "Just call me Jack. And I'll call
you Dan. O.K.?"

I grinned and shook her hand because there wasn't much else I could
do. Now I'd met the Ravenhursts: A father called Shalimar and a
daughter called Jack.

And a spaceship named McGuire.

* * * * *

I gave the flitterboat all the push it would take to get us to Ceres
as fast as possible. I don't like riding in the things. You sit there
inside a transite hull,