I had to caution her not to wear them to bed.

I took her to town a couple of times while I was selecting cargo, but I coddled her-not much walking or standing around. She came along when I invited her but was always willing to stay aboard and read.

In the meantime Joe worked long hours, only one day off in seven. So just before we left, I had him quit his job and I took my kids on a proper holiday; a sleigh hired for the day, with reindeer instead of power, sightseeing that was truly sightseeing on a clear, sunny day that was almost warm, lunch in the country at a fine restaurant with a view of snow-covered crags of Jotunheimen range, dinner at a still finer restaurant in the city, one with live music and entertainment as well as superb food-and a stop for tea at the little gourmet spot where Joe had labored so that he could be addressed as "Friherr Lang" by our host, instead of "Hey, you!"-and have a chance to show off his beautiful, bulging bride.

And beautiful she was, Minerva. On Valhalla both sexes wear, under heavy outdoor clothes, indoor clothes that are essentially pajamas. The difference between those worn by women and by men lies in material, cut, and such. I had bought one party outfit for each of them. Joe looked smart and so did I, but all eyes were on Llita. She was covered from shoulders to boots-but only technically. The cloth of that harem outfit shimmered with changing lights, orange and green and gold, without obstructing the view. Anyone who cared to look could see that her nipples were crinkled with excitement-and everyone cared to look. That she clearly had only a couple of months to go gave her a large bonus vote toward being picked as "Miss Valhalla."

She looked grand and knew it, and her face showed her happiness. She was self-confident, too, as I had coached her in local table manners, and how to stand and how to sit and how to behave and such, and she had already got through lunch without a bobble.

It was all right to let her display herself and enjoy the silent, or sometimes not silent, applause; not only were we leaving right away, but also Joe and I had our knives in sight in our boot tops. True, Joe was no knife fighter. But the wolves there didn't know that, and not one was inclined to bother our beautiful bitch when she was flanked by wolves of her own.

-early next morning despite a short night. We loaded all day long, with Llita handling manifests and Joe checking numbers while I made sure I wasn't being robbed. Late that night I had us in n-space, with my pilot computer sniffing out the last decimal places for the first leg to Landfall. I set the gravistat to bring us slowly down from Valhalla surface-normal to a comfortable quarter gee-no more free-fall until Llita had her baby-then locked the control room and headed down to my cabin, stinking and tired and trying to kid myself that tomorrow was soon enough for a bath.

Their door was open-their bedroom door, the room that had been Joe's before I turned their rooms into a suite. Door open and them in bed-they had never done that before.

I soon learned why. They piled out of bed and paddled toward me; they wanted me to join their fun-they wanted to thank me...for that party day, for buying them, for everything else. His idea? Hers? Both? I didn't try to find out; I just thanked them and told them that I was whipped to the red, worn out, and dirty-all I wanted was soap and hot water and twelve hours of shut-eye-and for them to sleep late; we'd set up ship's routine after we were rested.

I did let them bathe me and massage me to sleep. That did not break discipline; I had taught them a bit about massage, and Joe in particular had a firmly gentle touch; he had been massaging her daily during her pregnancy-even while working long hours in that restaurant.

But, Minerva, had I not been so bushed, I might have broken my rule about dependent females.

(Omitted)

-every tape, every book available in Torheim for a refresher in obstetrics and gynecology, plus instruments and supplies I had not expected to need aboard ship. I kept to my cabin until I had mastered all new art and was at least as skilled in baby-cotching as I had been as a country doctor on Ormuzd long before.

I kept a close eye on my patient, watched her diet, made her exercise, checked her gizzards daily-and permitted no-undue familiarity.

Dr. Lafayette Hubert, MD, aka Captain Aaron Sheffield aka The Senior, et al., worried excessively over his one patient. But he kept her and her husband from seeing it and applied his worry constructively in planning for every obstetric emergency known to the art at that time. Hardware and supplies he had obtained on Valhalla paralleled in every major respect the equipment of Frigg Temple in Torheim, where fifty births a day were not uncommon.

He smiled to himself at the mass of junk he had taken aboard, recalling a country doctor on Ormuzd who had delivered many a baby with nothing but bare hands, while the mother sat in her husband's lap, knees pulled high and wide by her husband so that old Doc Hubert could kneel in front of them and catch the baby.

True-but he had always had with him all the gear a husky pacing borri could tote, even though he might never open a saddlebag if everything went right. That was the point: to have the stuff at hand if things did not go right.

One item purchased in Torheim was not for emergency: the latest improved-model delivery chair-hand grips, padded support arms; leg, foot, and back supports adjustable independently in three axes of translation and rotation with controls accessible both to midwife and patient, quick-release restraints. It was a marvelously flexible piece of mechanical engineering to enable the mother to position herself-or be positioned-so that her birth canal was vertical and as wide open as possible at the moment of truth.

Dr. Hubert-Sheffield had it set up in his cabin, checked its many adjustments before signing for it-then looked at it and frowned. A good gadget, and he had paid its high price without a quiver. But it had no love in it; it was as impersonal as a guillotine.

A husband's arms, a husband's lap, were not as efficient- but there was much to be said, in his opinion, for having parents go through the ordeal together, she with her husband's arms holding her, comforting her, while he gave both muscular and emotional support that left the midwife free to concentrate on physical aspects.

A husband who had done this had no doubt that he was a father. Even if some passing stranger had slipped her the juice, such fact became irrelevant, swallowed up by this greater experience.

So how about it, Doc? This gadget? Or Joe's arms? Did the kids need this second "marriage ceremony"? Could Joe take it, physically and emotionally? There was no doubt that Llita was the more rugged member of the team although Joe outmassed her even when she was near term. What if Joe fainted and dropped her-at the exact wrong, instant?

Sheffield worried these matters while he led auxiliary controls from the gravistat in the control room to the delivery chair. He had decided that, nuisance though it was, his cabin had to be the delivery room; it was the only compartment with enough deck space, a bed at hand, and its own bath. Oh, well, he could stand the nuisance of squeezing past the pesky thing to reach his desk and wardrobe for the next fifty days- sixty at the outside, if he had Llita's date of conception right and had judged her progress correctly. Then he could disassemble it and stow it.

Perhaps he could sell it at a profit on Landfall; it was in advance of the art there, he felt sure.

He positioned the chair, bolted it to the deck, ran it up to maximum height, placed its midwife's stool in front of it, adjusted the stool until he was comfortable in it, found he could lower the delivery chair ten or twelve centimeters and still have room to work. That done, he climbed into the delivery chair and fiddled with its adjustments-found that it could be made to fit even a person of his height-predictable; some women on Valhalla were taller than he was.