Out of the corner of one eye I got a glimpse of Alice moving about and that carried my eye toward the old woman and her wee package. The old woman was standing in the shadow of the ship, and quietly arguing with the robot loader. Behind the old woman floated a seriously overloaded baggage handler.

“Poloskov,” I said, and nodded in the old woman’s direction.

“Oh lord!” came from our famous captain’s lips. “There’s no way I’m going to live through this.”

He made a tiger’s leap for the old woman.

“What’s this?” He thundered.

“The package.” The old woman said timidly.

“Cookies?”

“Cookies.” The old woman was already recovering from fright.

“And why, pray tell, so large.”

“Please, Captain.” The old woman said boldly. “Would you expect my son to get cookies from me and go off and eat them all in hiding, alone, not even bothering to share with his one hundred and thirty fellow researchers. Would you want that?”

“I I want nothing else.” The exhausted Poloskov said. “I am staying home and flying nowhere! Is that clear? I’m not going anywhere!”

The battle with the old woman lasted half an hour and ended in Poloskov’s victory. During that time I remained aboard and oversaw the robots in removing the oranges and the walnut tree prize.

I encountered Alice in a far passage of the cargo hold and was very surprised at our meeting.

“And what are you doing here?” I asked.

Alice hid a half eaten bagel behind her back and answered:

“Just familiarizing myself with the ship.”

“Go to the control room.” I said. “Scat!”

Finally, toward twelve, we had finished the re-loading. Everything was ready. Poloskov and I went over the figures again; when the anti-gravs kicked in, there would be a reserve of two hundred kilograms, our weight would be more than completely neutralized and we would fall toward space. Poloskov used the loud speaker system to get in touch with Zeleny. The engineer was sitting in the control seat, running his hands through his rusty beard.