Bridget Kelly stood at the foot of the rocket lift and watched the loading operation. The freight had long since been inspected and stowed, and now it was the passengers' turn. Bridget was glad that for once she was not responsible. Let others worry and snoop. This time she was a passenger herself, starward bound. Inspected, passed and okayed, she could have the pleasure of watching others squirm. Like that beauty coming aboard with the furs and the orchid. She wouldn't be allowed to keep the orchid, of course. Bridget grinned as she saw the flower tossed into a trash can and imagined the words the beauty was mouthing. The man beside her sported a boutonniere. Yes, there it went into the can. He was still smiling, probably cracking wise. Bridget had separated so many travelers from so many items that she could tell what the passenger was going to say before he said it.
Most people knew that strenuous efforts were being made to keep pests and epidemics away from Earth. Ever since the beginnings of space travel, the quarantine of incoming ships at the Moon had been rigidly observed. But the fact that plagues could also spread from Earth seldom registered on the public's mind.
Bridget was all too well aware of it. For several years she had labored to that end in the Quarantine Service. Now that her savings had accumulated and her abilities as an entomologist were recognized, she was about to board one of the shining ships herself. There were raised eyebrows when her destination was known. An entomologist going to New Eden—a planet where insects were at a minimum. But Bridget only smiled. She knew what she wanted. She was bound for the frontier, where men are men and women are scarce.
The speaker blared. The countdown was beginning.
"Fifteen minutes!" rasped the mechanical voice. "Fifteen minutes to blast-off!"
She took a last look at the planet of her birth and squeezed into the lift. The few remaining passengers pushed in with her. A man in a red waistcoat was commiserating with the woman beside him.
"Don't let the officials get you down," he said. "We'll have to put up with them for the journey. But on New Eden, I hear, the conditions are so good they hardly need any regulations at all."
"It isn't that," sniffed his friend. "It's just that you gave it to me and I was hoping to wear it tonight."
"Perhaps I can buy you something in hydroponics. I had no idea they were so touchy or I'd have had the orchid fumigated."
Bridget felt the scorn of the official for the general public. "If you're going to New Eden, you ought to know we want to keep it that way."
The red waistcoat looked down at her.
"Oh, officialdom without stripes?" he said. "Or are you an old hand? Perhaps you can explain the deal before we get there."
So he was the type that cracked wise, and she had put her foot in it right at the beginning.
"I've never been off Earth before," she admitted. "I read up on it all first."
The lift was at the lock door, and she slipped through without looking back. The speaker was croaking "Ten minutes to go" as she hurried to her cabin and prepared for takeoff. She'd have to do better than this or the trip would be a washout. Better just concentrate on enjoying it ... the new experiences ... the fascination of travel.
The jets roared and Bridget Kelly blacked out.
Several hours later she had recovered enough to spruce up, take the prescribed dose of covitron against space sickness, and make her way to the lounge. She found the table setting with her name on it and had hardly sat down before a familiar voice began at her ear.
"Sure and if it isn't Bridget Kelly, and it's a long time I've been waiting for herself."
She looked up into the same laughing eyes, only this time they were above an emerald-green waistcoat.
"Still determined that New Eden shall not be polluted by snakes? Oh, excuse me, that was St. Patrick. You're worried about bugs."
She laughed in spite of herself and glanced at the place card next hers. "Mr. Patch Maguire," it read.
"I didn't mean to sound stuffy," she said. "It's just that most people don't realize how important it is ... how much trouble just a few insects ... well, I've worked at it and I ought to know."
"Ah, an official entomologist. But in that case, why New Eden? Or are you insurance against people like Carrie and me who might import something?"
"You never can tell. Something may turn up. It's hard to imagine a planet without any insects at all."
"Eden's remarkable that way," put in the young officer sitting across from them. "No stinging bugs or parasites. Makes everything a lot more comfortable. Still, it's pretty new. Only a small part developed so far."
"So we've insurance against the unknown in Bridget Kelly."
"And what might you be insurance against, Mr. Maguire?" she countered.
The officer stared. "Don't you folks know each other? Mr. Maguire's a grower of fancy plants. Sort of goes together ... plants and insects!" He laughed. "Well, it looks like the rest of our table won't show up for this meal."
"What happened to the lady without the orchid? She was with you, wasn't she?" Bridget asked.
"Carrie," said Patch Maguire, "is one of those unfortunates on whom covitron does not work. She won't be with anyone for the duration. I was just hoping our whole table was not similarly afflicted."
"It's a pity," mused the young officer. "So many people make the flight across space only once. If they did it more often, they might get accustomed."
"Don't you take covitron?" Bridget asked, beginning to wonder how soon she should repeat the dose. Some people said it made you sleepy, and she certainly didn't want that with things just getting started ... and Patch Maguire ... Patch Maguire....
Suddenly a window opened in her mind. She saw a letter with short punching sentences. "You think you can get away with this high-handed, overbearing, totally uncalled-for destruction of property? I'll take it to the top! I'll see you idiots in hell ... or at least out of the Service!" Patch Maguire protesting the destruction of his shipment of seeds imported from Regulus V. No amount of explanation that the seeds had been found to harbor a blight which, once let loose on Earth.... Patch Maguire had a reputation as an authority on crossbreeding and mutation of plants ... and also for throwing his weight around. It was several years ago, but Bridget remembered the consternation in the department.
She realized that Maguire and the officer were talking. They were agreeing that space sickness was only a matter of psychology, and that if you just didn't think about it, no covitron was necessary. She hastily swallowed another pill with her coffee and hoped the coffee would keep her awake.
They toured the ship together, she and Patch. They marveled at the scene from the viewport and chatted with the captain in the control room. The steward inquired about his taste in music and stereo, and he even gave advice to the gardeners in hydroponics. All doors were open to Patch, and there were murmurs about the "handsome couple" as they moved through the lounge. By the end of the trip they were making plans for New Eden. Patch insisted that Bridget was in the wrong profession and she agreed that the science of agriculture might be more rewarding than entomology under certain conditions.
At the farewell dinner, Patch gave her a bouquet he'd had made up especially by the gardeners. But she was more interested in the small green leaf he wore in his lapel. He took it out and insisted on fastening it in her hair.
"Sure and it's a shamrock!" he cried, as he arranged it. "And have you forgotten what day it is tomorrow?"
"It's the day we land," Bridget replied. "But what day that is in our time or ship's time ... it's too confusing!"
"It's St. Patrick's Day, that's what it is!" he said. "A great day for the Irish and a great day for us. And I wouldn't be without the shamrock on St. Patrick's Day! They should call the planet New Ireland, that they should. Wasn't Ireland the garden island, all green and fruitful and with no snakes? And I hear this planet's the garden planet and with no insects either to make life miserable. But let you and me be living there a while and we'll make it New Ireland for sure!"
And he planted a kiss on her mouth without a thought of who was looking at them.
As their tablemates drank their health, Bridget blushed and her eyes shone, and after dinner Patch escorted her to the stereo where they sat very close together in the dark. But as the pictures flashed across the screen and as Patch's arm went across her shoulder and drew her close, her mind was besieged by an army of little doubts. Shamrock ... shamrock ... what had she read about the shamrock?
"Patch," she whispered. "Where did you get it?"
"Get what?" Patch murmured, bending over to kiss her.
"The shamrock, Patch? I don't believe they have it in hydroponics."
"Sure, they must have it." Patch's lips brushed hers and she found it difficult to think clearly.
"I never saw it there. Patch! Are you sure?"
"Saw what? I don't see anything but you. That's enough for me."
"About the shamrock, Patch!"
"It looks beautiful on you. Sure and I wouldn't be without a shamrock on St. Patrick's Day."
Bridget gave up. She lay back in the sanctuary of his arm and basked in the warm feeling of his lips on her hair. But the doubts kept crawling about in her mind. What was the matter with her? Couldn't she be happy when everything was perfect? Had she been a cut-and-dried inspector for too many years? But she remembered the words of Professor Schwarzkopf, the day she received her degree: "The inspectors are the watchdogs of the planets. Without them, all that man has built can be destroyed."
When Patch had kissed her good night outside her cabin and his footsteps had died away along the corridor, she crept out into the passage and made her way to hydroponics.
"Why, no," said the chief gardener, "we never carry clover of any sort. Why do you ask?"
On her way to the control room, Bridget tried not to think. She found the young officer from her table on duty with the captain, and the two men listened in surprise as she outlined her fears.
"I don't want to accuse Mr. Maguire of anything," she said. "I'm sure he doesn't realize how serious—and of course there may be nothing to it. It's just that I remember that shamrocks harbor the golden nematode—that is, in the soil around the roots. And it seems likely that if Mr. Maguire has live shamrocks—and I remember what a serious plague they once brought over from Ireland to America...."
The captain pulled his mustache. "It's clearly against regulations. I can't imagine how he'd get it past inspection. But then, Maguire's a very persistent man and he's got pull in odd places. I don't want to rouse the ire of the Irish, but I see your point."
"Couldn't you search his cabin—without his knowing I said to? Oh, I'm sure he'd be very angry. But if I could only look at his plants, then I'd be sure if they're safe. You must have ways of getting in—if there should be a short circuit or something in his cabin."
"Oh, we have ways," the captain said. "Don't we, Lieutenant?"
"Perhaps at breakfast," suggested the young officer. "If Miss Kelly could arrange to make it as leisurely as possible."
"And right afterward you might go to the lieutenant's cabin—with your instruments and without Mr. Maguire."
She had no trouble in making her breakfast leisurely. She could hardly choke it down. Under Patch's admiring gaze and flagrant approval she was uncomfortably conscious of treachery. She left as soon as the protracted meal was over, even though she knew it would give him the opportunity to discover the rape of his plants.
The lieutenant was waiting for her in his cabin. He sat behind his desk eyeing a motley collection of clover in an assortment of little jars and boxes. Bridget brought out her pocket 'scope and without a word pulled the first specimen up by the roots and began to examine it. The lieutenant watched in fascination.
"It's a good thing Mr. Maguire can't see you now," he said. "He'd take an entirely different tone from the one I've been hearing lately."
"I'm hoping he doesn't find out," she muttered. "What he doesn't know.... Oh! Oh! Look here! A fine big cyst! Now if they're all like this...."
............