d**k WAS WAITING BEFORE the open lock of the Cuchulainn. d**k could do anything, everything at once. He took The Pooch into the circle of his left arm, helped his mother aboard, said, “Shut up, kid, you’re enough to wake the dead. Watch that guard-panel, Elly. Papers all set, Pop?” And he tickled The Pooch’s dimpled cheek with an oily finger. “You act just like your mama,” he said irrelevantly, and the baby gurgled. Eleanor cried, “d**k—those dirty hands!”
“Everything is in order, Richard,” said Pop.
“Good. You folks go in and strap down. I’ll seal. Here comes the cradle-monkey now.”
Pop said, “Come along, Robert,” and the others went inside. Bobby waited, though, to see the cradle-monkey, the man under whose orders spacecraft lifted gravs. The cradle-monkey was a dour man with gnarled
