The Science Fiction anthology. Andre Norton

platinum blonde with an entertainer’s busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.

      At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn’t know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.

      She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody’s interest.

      It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.

      What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn’t rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.

      Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman’s life.

      But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn’t take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.

      She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn’t had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn’t worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....

      Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.

      She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.

      It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!

      Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: “Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!”

      Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....

      The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren’t nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.

      She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist’s conception, but even so....

      And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.

      It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn’t think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn’t tell her even if they had.

      But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!

      She took another look at the poster.

      The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.

      IV

      The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.

      But she didn’t intend to buy it.

      She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn’t be back for five minutes.

      Time enough, at any rate.

      The dress was lying loose, so she didn’t have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.

      She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.

      “Let go of me!” she ordered in a frostily offended voice.

      “Sorry, miss,” the man said politely, “but I think we have a short trip to take.”

      She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She’d get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she’d be out again.

      They couldn’t do anything to her that mattered.

      She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.

      In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.

      “Why did you steal it?” the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn’t look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.

      “I don’t have anything to say,” she said. “I want to see a lawyer.”

      She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.

      And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn’t just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.

      “Name?” he asked in a tired voice.

      She knew the statistics he wanted. “Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file.”

      The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.

      The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.

      A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:

      “... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration.”

      “In view of some complicating factors, we’re going to give you a choice,” the judge finally said. “You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus.”

      She thought for a minute that she hadn’t heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying