Robert Heinlein - Expanded Universe

Junior never bothers with menus. "I'll have a double cannibal sandwich," he announced.

Mrs. Santa Claus flinched. "What," she asked ominously, "is a cannibal sandwich?"

Junior explained. Mrs. Santa Claus looked at him as if she hoped he would crawl back into the woodwork. At last she said, "Mrs. Santa Claus always gives people what they want. But you'll have to eat it in the kitchen; other people will be coming in for dinner."

"Oke," agreed Junior.

"Now what would you like, honey?" she said to me.

"I'd like everything," I answered miserably, "but I'm on a reducing diet."

She clucked sympathetically. "Anything special you mustn't eat?"

"Nothing in particular - just food. I mustn't eat food."

She said, "You will have a hard time choosing a low caloric meal here. I've never been able to work up interest in such cooking. I'll serve you the same as your parents; you can eat what you wish and as little as you wish."

"All right," I said weakly.

Honestly, I tried. I counted up to ten between bites, then I found I was counting faster so as to finish each course before the next one arrived.

Presently I knew I was a ruined woman and I didn't care. I was surrounded by a warm fog of calories. Once my conscience peeked over the edge of my plate and I promised to make up for it tomorrow. It went back to sleep.

Junior came out of the kitchen with his face covered by a wedge of pink striped cake. "Is that a cannibal sandwich?" I asked.

"Huh?" he answered. "You should see what she's got out there. She ought to run a training table."

A long time later Daddy said, "Let's hit the road. I hate to."

Mrs. Santa Claus said, "Stay here if you like. We can accommodate you."

So we stayed and it was lovely.

I woke up resolved to skip even my twenty - eight calories of tomato juice, but I hadn't reckoned with Mrs. Santa Claus. There were no menus; tiny cups of coffee appeared as you sat down, then other things, deceptively, one at a time. Like this: grapefruit, milk, oatmeal and cream, sausage and eggs and toast and butter and jam, bananas and cream - then when you were sure that they had played themselves out, in came the fluffiest waffle in the world, more butter and strawberry jam and syrup, and then more coffee.

I ate all of it, my personality split hopelessly between despair and ecstasy. We rolled out of there feeling wonderful. "Breakfast," said Daddy, "should be compulsory, like education. I hypothesize that correlation could be found between the modern tendency to skimp breakfast and the increase in juvenile delinquency.

I said nothing. Men are my weakness; food my ruin - but I didn't care.

We lunched at Barstow, only I stayed in the car and tried to nap.

Cliff met us at our hotel and we excused ourselves because Cliff wanted to drive me out to see the university. When we reached the parking lot he said, "What has happened? You look as if you had lost your last friend - and you are positively emaciated."

"Oh, Cliff!" I said, and blubbered on his shoulder. Presently he wiped my nose and started the car. As we drove I told him about it. He didn't say anything, but after a bit he made a left turn. "Is this the way to the campus?" I asked.

"Never you mind."

"Cliff, are you disgusted with me?"

Instead of answering me, he pulled up near a big public building and led me inside; it turned out to be the art museum. Still refusing to talk, he steered me into an exhibition of old masters. Cliff pointed at one of them. "That," he said, "is my notion of a beautiful woman."

I looked. It was The Judgment of Paris by Rubens. "And that - and that - " added Cliff. Every picture he pointed to was by Rubens, and I'll swear his models had never heard of dieting.

"What this country needs," said Cliff, "is more plump girls - and more guys like me who appreciate them."

I didn't say anything until we got outside; I was too busy rearranging my ideas. Something worried me, so I reminded him of the time I had asked his opinion of Clarice, the girl who is just my size and measurements. He managed to remember. "Oh, yes! Very beautiful girl, a knockout!"

"But, Cliff, you said - "

He grabbed my shoulders. "Listen, featherbrain, think I've got rocks in my head? Would I say anything that might make you jealous?"

"But I'm never jealous!"

"So you say! Now where shall we eat? Romanoff's? The Beachcomber? I'm loaded with dough."

Warm waves of happiness flowed over me. "Cliff?"

"Yeah, honey?"

"I've heard of a sundae called Moron's Delight. They take a great big glass and start with two bananas and six kinds of ice cream and - "That's passй. Have you ever had a Mount Everest?" "Huh?"

"They start with a big platter and build up the peak with twenty - one flavors of ice cream, using four bananas, butterscotch syrup, and nuts to bind it. Then they cover it with chocolate syrup, sprinkle malted milk powder and more nuts for rock, pour marshmallow syrup and whipped cream down from the top for snow, stick parsley around the lower slopes for trees, and set a little plastic skier on one of the snow banks. You get to keep him as a souvenir of the experience."

"Oh, my!" I said.

"Only one to a customer and I don't have to pay if you finish it."

I squared my shoulders. "Lead me to it!"

"I'm betting on you, Puddin'."

Cliff is such a wonderful man.

Santa Claus, Arizona, is still there; just drive from Kingman toward Boulder Dam on 93; you'll find it. But Mrs. Santa Claus (Mrs. Douglas) is no longer there, and her gourmet restaurant is now a fast - food joint. If she is alive, she is at least in her eighties. I don't want to find out. In her own field she was an artist equal to Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare. I prefer to think of her in that perfect place where all perfect things go, sitting in her kitchen surrounded by her gnomes, preparing her hearty ambrosia for Mark Twain and Homer and Praxiteles and others of her equals.

THE ANSWERS

(to Problems on Pages 334 - 338)

N.B.: All trips are Earth parking orbit to Earth parking orbit without stopping at the target planet (Mars or Pluto). I assume that Hot Pilot Tom Corbett will handle his gravity - well maneuvers at Mars and at Pluto so as not to waste mass - energy - but that's his problem. Now about that assumption of "flat space" only slightly uphill: The Sun has a fantastically deep gravity well; its "surface" gravity is 28 times as great as ours and its escape speed is 55 + times as great - but at the distance of Earth's orbit that grasp has attenuated to about one thousandth of a gee, and at Pluto at 31.6 A.U. it has dropped off to a gnat's whisker, one millionth of gee.

(No wonder it takes 21/2 centuries to swing around the Sun. By the way, some astronomers seem positively gleeful that today Pluto is not the planet farthest from the Sun. The facts: Pluto spends nine - tenths of its time outside Neptune's orbit, and it averages being 875,000,000 miles farther out than Neptune - and at maximum is nearly 2 billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit (1.79 x 10 miles) - friends, that's more than the

ROUND TRIP BOOST

COMPARISON OF ELAPSED TIME

Earth - Mars - Earth - Earth - Pluto - Earth

@1 gee

4.59 days vs. 4.59 weeks

@ 10 gee

14.5 days vs. 14.5 weeks

@ 100 gee

45.9 days vs. 45.9 weeks

@ 1/1000 gee

145 days vs. 145 weeks

distance from here to Uranus, nearly four times as far as from here to Jupiter. When Pluto is out there - l 865 or 2114 A.D. - it takes light 6 hours and 50 minutes to reach it. Pluto - the Winnuh and still Champeen! Sour grapes is just as common among astronomers as it is in school yards.)

- and the rabbit is out of the hat. You will have noticed that the elapsed - time figures are exactly the same in both columns, but in days for Mars, weeks for Pluto - i.e., with constant - boost ships of any sort Pluto is only 7 times as far away for these conditions as is Mars even though in miles Pluto is about 50 times as far away.