Me, I'm the wholesome type; if it weren't for those advertisements on my chest, men wouldn't give me a second glance. Hilda is a miniature Messalina, pure sex in a small package. Funny how a person can grow up never really believing that the adults you grow up with have sex-just gender. Now my saintly father turns out to be an insatiable goat, and Aunt Hilda, who had babied me and changed my diapers, is sexy enough for a platoon of Marines.

I let her go while thinking pleasant thoughts about teaching my husband technique I had learned-unless Hilda had taught him in the past. No, or he would have taught me-and he hadn't shown her style of virtuosity. Zebadiah, just wait till I get you alone!

Which might not be too soon. Gay Deceiver is wonderful but no honeymoon cottage. There was space back of the bulkhead behind my head-like a big phone booth on its side-where Zebadiah kept a sleeping bag and (he says) sometimes sacked out. But it had the space-time twister in it and nineteen dozen other things. Hilda and I were going to have to repress our primary imperative until our men found us a pied-a-terre on some planet in some universe, somewhere, somewhen.

Mars-Barsoom seemed to have grown while I was curing Aunt Hilda's space sickness. Our men were talking astrogation. My husband was saying, "Sorry, but at extreme range Gay's radar can see a thousand kilos. You tell me our distance is about a hundred times that."

"About. We're falling toward Mars. Captain, we must do it by triangulation."

"Not even a protractor where I can get at it. How?"

"Hmmmm- If the Captain pleases, recall how you worked that 'Tennessee windage."

My darling looked like a school boy caught making a silly answer. "Jake, if you don't quit being polite when I'm stupid, I'm going to space you and put Deety in the copilot's seat. No, we need you to get us home. I'd better resign and you take over."

"Zeb, a captain can't resign while his ship is underway. That's universal."

"This is another universe."

"Transuniversal. As long as you are alive, you are stuck with it. Let's attempt that triangulation."

"Stand by to record." Zebadiah settled into his seat, pressed his head against its rest. "Copilot."

"Ready to record, sir."

"Damn!"

"Trouble, Captain?"

"Some. This reflectosight is scaled fifteen mils on a side, concentric circles crossed at center point horizontally and vertically. Normal to deck and parallel to deck, I mean. When I center the fifteen-mil ring on Mars, I have a border around it. I'm going to have to guesstimate. Uh, the border looks to be about eighteen mils wide. So double that and add thirty."

"Sixty-six mils."

"And a mil is one-to-one-thousand. One-to-one-thousand-and-eighteen and a whisker, actually-but one-to-a-thousand is good enough. Wait a halfi I've got two sharp high lights near the meridian-if the polar caps mark the meridian. Le'me tilt this buggy and put a line crossing them-then I'll yaw and what we can't measure in one jump, we'll catch in three."

I saw the larger "upper" polar cap (north? south? well, it felt north) roll gently about eighty degrees, while my husband fiddled with Gay's manual controls. "Twenty-nine point five, maybe... plus eighteen point seven... plus sixteen point three. Add."

My father answered, "Sixty-four and a half" while I said, six four point five in my mind and kept quiet.

"Who knows the diameter of Mars? Or shall I ask Gay?"

Hilda answered, "Six thousand seven hundred fifty kilometers, near enough."

Plenty near enough for Zebadiah's estimates. Zebadiah said, "Sharpie! How did you happen to know that?"

"I read comic books. You know-'Zap! Polaris is missing."

"I don't read comic books."

"Lots of interesting things in comic books, Zebbie. I thought the Aerospace Force used comic-book instruction manuals."

My darling's ears turned red. "Some are," he admitted, "but they are edited for technical accuracy. Hmm- Maybe I had better check that figure with Gay."

I love my husband but sometimes women must stick together. "Don't bother, Zebadiah," I said in chilly tones. "Aunt Hilda is correct. The polar diameter of Mars is six seven five two point eight plus. But surely three significant figures is enough for your data."

Zebadiah did not answer....ut did not ask his computer. Instead he said, "Copilot, will you run it off on your pocket calculator? We can treat it as a tangent at this distance."

This time I didn't even try to keep still. Zebadiah's surprise that Hilda knew anything about astronomy caused me pique. "Our height above surface is one hundred four thousand six hundred and seventy-two kilometers plus or minus the error of the data supplied. That assumes that Mars is spherical and ignores the edge effect or horizon bulge....egligible for the quality of your data."

Zebadiah answered so gently that I was sorry that I had shown off: "Thank you, Deety. Would you care to calculate the time to fall to surface from rest at this point?"

"That's an unsmooth integral, sir. I can approximate it but Gay can do it faster and more accurately. Why not ask her? But it will be many hours."

"I had hoped to take a better look. Jake, Gay has enough juice to put us into a tight orbit, I think... but I don't know where or when I'll be able to juice her again. If we simply fall, the air will get stale and we'll need the panic button-or some maneuver-without ever seeing the surface close up."

"Captain, would it suit you to read the diameter again? I don't think we've simply been falling."

Pop and Zebadiah got busy again. I let them alone, and they ran even the simplest computations through Gay. Presently, Pop said, "Over twenty-four kilometers per second! Captain, at that rate we'll be there in a little over an hour."

"Except that we'll scram before that. But, ladies, you'll get your closer look. Dead sea bottoms and green giants. If any."

"Zebadiah, twenty-four kilometers per second is Mars' orbital speed."

My father answered, "Eh? Why, so it is!" He looked very puzzled, then said, "Captain-I confess to a foolish mistake."

"Not one that will keep us from getting home, I hope."

"No, sir. I'm still learning what our continua craft can do. Captain, we did not aim for Mars."

"I know. I was chicken."

"No, sir, you were properly cautious. We aimed for a specific point in empty space. We transited to that point... but not with Mars' proper motion. With that of the Solar System, yes. With Earth's motions subtracted; that is in the program. But we are a short distance ahead of Mars in its orbit... so it is rushing toward us."

"Does that mean we can never land on any planet but Earth?"

"Not at all. Any vector can be included in the program-either before or after transition, translation or rotation. Any subsequent change in motion is taken into account by the inertial integrator. But I am learning that we still have things to learn."

"Jake, that is true even of a bicycle. Quit worrying and enjoy the ride. Brother, what a view!"

"Jake, that doesn't look like the photographs the Mars Expedition brought back."

"Of course not," said Aunt Hilda. "I said it was Barsoom."

I kept my mouth shut. Ever since Dr. Sagan's photographs anyone who reads The National Geographic-or anything-knows what Mars looks like. But when it involves changing male minds, it is better to let men reach their own decisions; they become somewhat less pig-headed. That planet rushing toward us was not the Mars of our native sky. White clouds at the caps, big green areas that had to be forest or crops, one deep blue area that almost certainly was water-all this against ruddy shades that dominated much of the planet.

What was lacking were the rugged mountains and craters and canyons of "our" planet Mars. There were mountains-but nothing like the Devil's Junkyard known to science.