"Deety, you wouldn't fib to your pool' old broken-down husband?"

when my husband is pow' and old 'md broken-down, I will 'not fib to him."

"Hmm- If I hadn't already promised my support to Hilda, I would vote for you for captain."

Aunt Hilda cut in: "Zebbie, I release you! I'm not a candidate."

"No, Sharpie, once having promised political support an honorable man never welches. So it's all right for Gay to listen in?"

"Certainly, sir. For display I must have her. Hello, Gay."

"Hi, Deety."

"Display dayside, globe." At once Gay's largest screen showed the western hemisphere of Earth, our Earth in our universe-Terra. Early afternoon at Snug Harbor? Yes, the clock in my head said so and GMT on the instrument board read 20:23:07. Good heavens, it had been only twenty hours since my husband and my father had killed the fake "ranger." How can a lifetime be crowded into less than a day? Despite the clock in my head it seemed years since I had walked down to our pool, a touch tiddly and hanging onto my bridegroom for support.

"Display meridians parallels. Subtract geographical features," Gay did so. "From program coded A Tramp Abroad' display locus.'

Gay used orthographic projection, so the 45' parallels were straight lines. ace I had told her to display davside, these two bright lines ran to the left edge of the display, that being the sunrise line. But the right edge of the locus was an irregular line running southwest. "Add display Russian Valley."

To the right of the locus and touching it, Gay displayed as solid brightness a very long and quite wide blotch. "Subtract Russian Valley." The area we had sketchily explored disappeared.

"Deety," my husband asked, "how is Gay doing this? Her perms have no reference points for Mars-not even Mars of our own universe."

"Oh. Gay, display 'Touchdown."

"Null program."

"Mmm, yes, that's right; the Sun has just set where we were parked. Zebadiah, shall I have her rotate the globe enough to show it? All she would show would be a bright spot almost on the equator. I have defined the spot where we grounded as zero meridian-Greenwich for Mars. This Mars."

"And zero parallel? An arbitrary equator?"

"Oh, no, no! While we slept Gay adjusted her gyrocompass to match this planet. Which gave her true north and latitude. She already knows the radius and curvature of Mars-I started to tell her and found she had retrieved it from her perms. Aerospace Almanac?"

"I suppose so. But we discussed Mars' diameter last night while Gay was awake. Both you and Hilda knew it; Jake and I did not."

As I remembered it, Aunt Hilda spoke up-then Pop kept quiet. If Pop wanted to sit back and be proud of Aunt Hilda's encyclopedic memory that was all right with me. If my husband has a flaw, it is that he has trouble believing that females have brains... probably because he is so intensely interested in the other end. I went on with my lecture:

"Once I start Gay, she will say and record nothing unless ordered. She will make random transitions inside that locus until someone yells 'Bingo!' She won't slow down even then. She will place a bright point on the map at that latitude and longitude, record both latitude and longitude, and the exact time. She will display the Bingo time, too, for one second. If you want to retrieve that Bingo, you had better jot down that time-to the second. Because she'll be doing twenty jumps each minute. Don't worry about the hour, just the minute and the second. Oh, you could still retrieve it if you had the minute right, as I can ask her to run through all Bingoes in a given minute. Can't be more than twenty and your Bingo might be the only one.

"When we've done one hour of this, that map could, at most, have twelve hundred dots on it-but may have only a few-or none. If they are clustered, I'll reduce the locus and we'll run it again. If not, we can sleep and eat and do it for the other day side, the one twelve hours away. Either way, Gay will find the British-and we'll be safe."

"I hope you're right. Ever heard of the Opium Wars, Deety?"

"Yes, Captain. Sir, every nation is capable of atrocities, including our own. But the British have a tradition of decent behavior no matter what blemishes there are."

"Sorry. Why a one-hour program?"

"We may have to shorten it. A decision every three seconds for sixty minutes may be too tiring. If we start showing a marked hot spot sooner than that, we can shorten the first run and reduce the locus. We'll have to try it and see.

But I feel certain that a one-hour run, a short rest, then another one-hour run, will locate the British if they are now on the day side."

"Deety, what do you define as 'Bingo'?"

"Anything that suggests human settlement. Buildings. Roads. Cultivated fields. Walls, fences, dams, aircraft, vehicles- But it is not 'Bingo'just because it looks interesting. Although it might be 'Stop!"

"What's the difference?"

"Stop' does not tell Gay to record or to display. For that you must add 'Bingo.' 'Stop' is for anything you want to look at more than three seconds. Maybe it looks promising and a few seconds more will let you decide. But please, everyone! There should not be more than a dozen calls for 'Stop!' in the hour. Any more questions?"

We started. Hilda gave the first Bingo. I saw it, too-farm buildings. Aunt Hilda is faster than I. I almost broke my own injunction; I had to bite down on "Stop!" The temptation to take a longer look was almost overpowering.

All of us made mistakes-but none serious. Hilda racked up the most Bingoes and Zebadiah the fewest-but I'm fairly certain that my husband was "cheating" by waiting to give Pop or me first crack at it. (He would not be competing with Aunt Hilda; port-forward and starboard-after seats have little overlapping coverage.)

I thought it would be tedious; instead it was exciting-but dreadfully tiring. Slowly, less than one a minute, bright dots appeared on the display. I saw with disappointment that most Bingoes were clustered adjacent to the irregular margin marking Russian territory. It seemed probable that these marked Russian territory, so very probable that it hardly seemed worthwhile to check for onion spires.

Once my husband called "Stop" and then "Bingo" at a point north and far west, at least fifteen hundred kilometers from the nearest Bingo light. I noted the time-Greenwich 21:16:51-then tried to figure out why Zebadiah had stopped us. It was pretty country, green hills and lightly wooded and I spotted a wild stream, not a canal. But I saw no buildings or anything suggesting settlement.

Zebadiah wrote something on his knee pad, then said, "Continue." I was itching to ask why he had stopped, but when a decision must be made every three seconds there is no time to chat.

When the hour was nearly up, a single Bingo light in the far west that had been shining since the first five minutes was joined by another when Hilda scored another Bingo and two minutes later Pop said "Bingo!" and we had an equilateral triangle twenty kilometers on a side. I noted the time most carefully-then told myself not to be disappointed if inspection showed onion towers; we still had a hemisphere to go.

I decided to believe in that British colony the way one has to believe hard in fairies to save Tinker Bell's life. If there were no British colony, we might have to risk Earth-without-a-J. Gay Deceiver was a lovely car but as a spaceship she had shortcomings. No plumbing. Air for about four hours and no way

to recycle. No plumbing. Limited food storage. No plumbing. No comfortable way to sleep in her. No plumbing.

But she had talents no other spaceship had. Her shortcomings (according to my father and husband) could be corrected at any modern machine shop. But in the meantime we did not have even an outhouse behind the barn.