Maureen, I said, you've overdone this starvation business; now you are out of your head.

Between the station and the cottage were two incredible little dolls' houses. One was marked Cinderella's House and Mistress Mary Quite Contrary was making the garden grow. The other one needed no sign; the Three Little Pigs, and Big Bad Wolf was stuck in its chimney.

"Kid stuff!" says Junior, and added, "Hey, Pop, do we eat here? Huh?"

"We just gas up," answered Daddy. "Find a pebble to chew on. Your mother has declared a hunger strike."

Mother did not answer and headed toward the cottage. We went inside, a bell bonged, and a sweet contralto voice boomed, "Come in! Dinner is ready!"

The inside was twice as big as the outside and was the prettiest dining room imaginable, fresh, new, and clean. Heavenly odors drifted out of the kitchen. The owner of the voice came out and smiled at us.

We knew who she was because her kitchen ap.r.o.n had "Mrs. Santa Claus" embroidered across it. She made me feel slender, but for her it was perfectly right.

Can you imagine Mrs. Santa Claus being skinny?

"How many are there?" she asked.

"Four," said Mother, "but-" Mrs. Santa Claus dis appeared into the kitchen.

Mother sat down at a table and picked up a menu. I did likewise and started to drool-here is why:

Minted Fruit Cup Rouge Pot-au-feu a la Creole Chicken Velvet Soup Roast Veal with Fine Herbs Ham Souffle Yankee Pot Roast Lamb Hawaii Potatoes Lyonnaise Riced Potatoes Sweet Potatoes Maryland Glazed Onions Asparagus Tips with Green Peas Chicory Salad with Roquefort Dressing Artichoke Hearts with Avocado Beets in Aspic Cheese Straws Miniature Cinnamon Rolls Hot Biscuits Sherry Almond Ice Cream Rum Pie Peches Flambees Royales Peppermint Cloud Cake~ Devil's Food Cake Angel Berry Pie Coffee Tea Milk

(Our water is trucked fifteen miles; please help us save it.) Thank you. Mrs. Santa Claus

It made me dizzy, so I looked out the window. We were still spang in the middle of the grimmest desert in the world.

I started counting the calories in that subversive doc.u.ment. I got up to three thousand and lost track, because fruit cups were placed in front of us. I barely tasted mine-and my stomach jumped and started nibbling at my windpipe.

Daddy came in, said, "Well!" and sat down, too. Junior followed.

Mother said, "Charles, there is hardly anything here you can touch. I think I had better-" She headed for the kitchen.

Daddy had started reading the menu. He said, "Wait, Martha! Sit down." Mother sat.

Presently he said, "Do I have plenty of clean handkerchiefs?"

Mother said, "Yes, of course. Why-"

"Good. I feel an attack coming on. I'll start with the pot-au-feu and- Mother said, "Charles!"

"Peace, woman! The human race has survived upwards of five million years eating anything that could be chewed and swallowed." Mrs. Santa Claus came back in and Daddy ordered lavishly, every word stabbing my heart. "Now," he finished, "if you will have that carried in by eight Nubian slaves-"

"We'll use a jeep," Mrs. Santa Claus promised and turned to Mother.

Mother was about to say something about chopped gra.s.s and vitamin soup but Daddy cut in with, "That was for both of us. The kids will order for themselves." Mother swallowed and said nothing.

Junior never bothers with menus. "I'll have a double cannibal sandwich," he announced.

Mrs. Santa Claus flinched. "What," she asked ominously, "is a cannibal sandwich?"

Junior explained. Mrs. Santa Claus looked at him as if she hoped he would crawl back into the woodwork. At last she said, "Mrs. Santa Claus always gives people what they want. But you'll have to eat it in the kitchen; other people will be coming in for dinner."

"Oke," agreed Junior.

"Now what would you like, honey?" she said to me.

"I'd like everything," I answered miserably, "but I'm on a reducing diet."

She clucked sympathetically. "Anything special you mustn't eat?"

"Nothing in particular-just food. I mustn't eat food."

She said, "You will have a hard time choosing a lowcaloric meal here. I've never been able to work up interest in such cooking. I'll serve you the same as your parents; you can eat what you wish and as little as you wish."

"All right," I said weakly.

Honestly, I tried. I counted up to ten between bites, then I found I was counting faster so as to finish each course before the next one arrived.

Presently I knew I was a ruined woman and I didn't care. I was surrounded by a warm fog of calories. Once my conscience peeked over the edge of my plate and I promised to make up for it tomorrow. It went back to sleep.

Junior came out of the kitchen with his face covered by a wedge of pinkstriped cake. "Is that a cannibal sandwich?" I asked.

"Huh?" he answered. "You should see what she's got out there. She ought to run a training table."

A long time later Daddy said, "Let's. .h.i.t the road. I hate to."

Mrs. Santa Claus said, "Stay here if you like. We can accommodate you."

So we stayed and it was lovely.

I woke up resolved to skip even my twenty-eight calories of tomato juice, but I hadn't reckoned with Mrs. Santa Claus. There were no menus; tiny cups of coffee appeared as you sat down, then other things, decep tively, one at a time. Like this: grapefruit, milk, oatmeal and cream, sausage and eggs and toast and b.u.t.ter and jam, bananas and cream-then when you were sure that they had played themselves out, in came the fluffiest waffle in the world, more b.u.t.ter and strawberry jam and syrup, and then more coffee.

I ate all of it, my personality split hopelessly between despair and ecstasy. We rolled out of there feeling wonderful. "Breakfast," said Daddy, "should be compulsory, like education. I hypothesize that correlation could be found between the modern tendency to skimp breakfast and the increase in juvenile delinquency.

I said nothing. Men are my weakness; food my ruin-but I didn't care.

We lunched at Barstow, only I stayed in the car and tried to nap.

Cliff met us at our hotel and we excused ourselves because Cliff wanted to drive me out to see the university. When we reached the parking lot he said, "What has happened? You look as if you had lost your last friend-and you are positively emaciated."

"Oh, Cliff!" I said, and blubbered on his shoulder. Presently he wiped my nose and started the car.

As we drove I told him about it. He didn't say anything, but after a bit he made a left turn. "Is this the way to the campus?" I asked.

"Never you mind."

"Cliff, are you disgusted with me?"

Instead of answering me, he pulled up near a big public building and led me inside; it turned out to be the art museum. Still refusing to talk, he steered me into an exhibition of old masters. Cliff pointed at one of them. "That," he said, "is my notion of a beautiful woman."

I looked. It was The Judgment of Paris by Rubens. "And that-and that-" added Cliff. Every picture he pointed to was by Rubens, and I'll swear his models had never heard of dieting.

"What this country needs," said Cliff, "is more plump girls-and more guys like me who appreciate them."

I didn't say anything until we got outside; I was too busy rearranging my ideas. Something worried me, so I reminded him of the time I had asked his opinion of Clarice, the girl who is just my size and measurements. He managed to remember. "Oh, yes! Very beautiful girl, a knockout!"

"But, Cliff, you said-"

He grabbed my shoulders. "Listen, featherbrain, think I've got rocks in my head? Would I say anything that might make you jealous?"

"But I'm never jealous!"

"So you say! Now where shall we eat? Romanoff's? The Beachcomber? I'm loaded with dough."

Warm waves of happiness flowed over me. "Cliff?"

"Yeah, honey?"

"I've heard of a sundae called Moron's Delight. They take a great big gla.s.s and start with two bananas and six kinds of ice cream and- "That's pa.s.se. Have you ever had a Mount Everest?" "Huh?"

"They start with a big platter and build up the peak with twenty-one flavors of ice cream, using four bananas, b.u.t.terscotch syrup, and nuts to bind it. Then they cover it with chocolate syrup, sprinkle maltedmilk powder and more nuts for rock, pour marshmallow syrup and whipped cream down from the top for snow, stick parsley around the lower slopes for trees, and set a little plastic skier on one of the snow banks. You get to keep him as a souvenir of the experience."

"Oh, my!" I said.

"Only one to a customer and I don't have to pay if you finish it."

I squared my shoulders. "Lead me to it!"

"I'm betting on you, Puddin'."

Cliff is such a wonderful man.

AFTERWORD.

Santa Claus, Arizona, is still there; just drive from Kin gman toward Boulder Dam on 93; you'll find it. But Mrs. Santa Claus (Mrs. Douglas) is no longer there, and her gourmet restaurant is now a fast-food joint. If she is alive, she is at least in her eighties. I don't want to find out. In her own field she was an artist equal to Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare. I prefer to think of her in that perfect place where all perfect things go, sitting in her kitchen surrounded by her gnomes, preparing her hearty ambrosia for Mark Twain and Homer and Praxiteles and others of her equals.

THE ANSWERS.

(to Problems on Pages 334-338)

N.B.: All trips are Earth parking orbit to Earth parking orbit without stopping at the target planet (Mars or Pluto). I a.s.sume that Hot Pilot Tom Corbett will handle his gravity-well maneuvers at Mars and at Pluto so as not to waste ma.s.s-energy-but that's his problem. Now about that a.s.sumption of "flat s.p.a.ce" only slightly uphill: The Sun has a fantastically deep gravity well; its "surface" gravity is 28 times as great as ours and its escape speed is 55 + times as great-but at the distance of Earth's...o...b..t that grasp has attenuated to about one thousandth of a gee, and at Pluto at 31.6 A.U. it has dropped off to a gnat's whisker, one millionth of gee.

(No wonder it takes 21/2 centuries to swing around the Sun. By the way, some astronomers seem positively gleeful that today Pluto is not the planet farthest from the Sun. The facts: Pluto spends nine-tenths of its time outside Neptune's...o...b..t, and it averages being 875,000,000 miles farther out than Neptune-and at maximum is nearly 2 billion miles beyond Neptune's...o...b..t (1.79 x lO~ miles)-friends, that's more than the ROUND TRIP BOOST.

COMPARISON OF ELAPSED TIME.

Earth-Mars-Earth - Earth- Pluto-Earth @1 gee 4.59 days vs. 4.59 weeks ~w'Iio gee 14.5 days vs. 14.5 weeks ~~/too gee 45.9 days vs. 45.9 weeks ~1/tO0O gee 145 days vs. 145 weeks distance from here to Ura.n.u.s, nearly four times as far as from here to Jupiter. When Pluto is out there-l 865 or 2114 A.D.-it takes light 6 hours and 50 minutes to reach it. Pluto-the Winnuh and still Champeen! Sour grapes is just as common among astronomers as it is in school yards.) -and the rabbit is out of the hat. You will have noticed that the elapsed-time figures are exactly the same in both columns, but in days for Mars, weeks for Pluto-i.e., with constant-boost ships of any sort Pluto is only 7 times as far away for these conditions as is Mars even though in miles Pluto is about 50 times as far away.

If you placed Pluto at its aphelion (stay alive another century and a quarter-quite possible), at one gee the Pluto round trip would take 5.72 weeks, at 1/to gee 18.1 weeks, at 1/too gee 57.2 weeks-and at 'Iiooo gee 181 weeks, or 3 yrs & 25 wks.

I have added on the two ill.u.s.trations at 'Iwoo of one gravity boost because today (late 1979 as I write) we do not as yet know how to build constant-boost ships for long trips at 1 gee, 1/10 gee, or even 1/too gee; Newton's Third Law of Motion (from which may be derived all the laws of rocketry) has us (temporarily) stumped. But only temporarily. There is E = mc2, too, and there are several possible ways of "living off the country" like a foraging army for necessary reaction ma.s.s. Be patient; this is all very new.

Most of you who read this will live to see constant-boost ships of 1/10 gee or better-and will be able to afford vacations in s.p.a.ce- soon, soon! I probably won't live to see it, but you will. (No complaints, Sergeant-I was born in the horse & buggy age; I have lived to see men walk on the Moon and to see live pictures from the soil of Mars. I've had my share!) But if you are willing to settle today for a constantboost on the close order of magnitude of 1/1000 gee, we can start the project later this afternoon, as there are several known ways of building constant-boost jobs with that tiny acceleration-even light-sail ships.

I prefer to talk about light-sail ships (or, rather, ships that sail in the "Solar wind") because those last ill.u.s.trations I added (l/t000 gee) show that we have the entire Solar System available to us right now; it is not necessary to wait for the year 2000 and new breakthroughs.

Ten weeks to Mars . . . a round trip to Pluto at 31.6 A.U. in 2 years and 9 months. . . or a round trip to Pluto's aphelion, the most remote spot we know of in the Solar System (other than the winter home of the comets).

Ten weeks-it took the Pilgrims in the Mayflower nine weeks and three days to cross the Atlantic.

Two years and nine months-that was a normal commercial voyage for a China clipper sailing out of Boston in the last century . . . and the canny Yankee merchants got rich on it.

Three years and twenty-five weeks is excessive for the China trade in the 19th century.. . but no one will ever take that long trip to Pluto because Pluto does not reach aphelion until 2113 and by then we'll have ships that can get out there (constant boost with turnover near midpoint) in three weeks.

Please note that England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal all created worldwide empires with ships that took as long to get anywhere and back as would a Vtooo-gee s.p.a.ceship. On the high seas or in s.p.a.ce it is not distance that counts but time. The magnificent accomplishments of our astronauts up to now were made in free fall and are therefore a.n.a.logous to floating down the Mississippi on a raft. But even the tiniest constant boost turns sailing the Solar System into a money-making commercial venture.

Now return to page 338.

"Tomorrow we again embark upon the boundless sea."

-Horace, Odes, I, i.