A Woman's Place
By MARK CLIFTON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionMay 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was the speaking of Miss Kitty's name which half roused her fromsleep. She eased her angular body into a more comfortable position inthe sack. Still more asleep than awake, her mind reflected tartly thatin this lifeboat, hurtling away from their wrecked spaceship back toEarth, the sleeping accommodation was quite appropriately named. Onanother mental level, she tried to hear more of what was being saidabout her. Naturally, hearing one's name spoken, one would.
"We're going to have to tell Miss Kitty as soon as she wakes up." It wasSam Eade talking to Lt. Harper—the two men who had escaped with her.
"Yes, Sam," the lieutenant answered. "What we've suspected all along ispretty definite now."
Still drowsing, she wondered, without any real interest, what they feltthey must tell her. But the other level of her mind was more real. Shewondered how she looked to these two young men while she slept. Did shesleep with her mouth open? Did her tiara slip while she snored?
Vividly, as in full dreaming, she slipped back into the remembered scenewhich had given birth to the phrase. At some social gathering she hadbeen about to enter a room. She'd overheard her name spoken then, too.
"Miss Kitty is probably a cute enough name when you're young," the cattywoman was saying. "But at her age!"
"Well, I suppose you might say she's kept it for professional reasons,"the other woman had answered with a false tolerance. "A school teacher,wanting to be cozy with her kiddies, just a big sister." The tolerancewas too thin, it broke away. "Kind of pathetic, I think. She's so plain,so very typical of an old maid school teacher. She's just the kind tokeep a name like Miss Kitty."
"What gets me," the first one scoffed, "is her pride in having such abrilliant mind—if she really does have one. All those academic degrees.She wears them on every occasion, like a tiara!"
She had drawn back from the door. But in her instant and habitualintrospection, she realized she was less offended than perverselypleased because, obviously, they were jealous of her intellectualaccomplishments, her ability to meet men on their own ground,intellectually as good a man as any man.
The half dream drowsiness was sharply washed away by the belated impactof Sam Eade's question to Lt. Harper. Reality flashed on, and she wassuddenly wide awake in the lifeboat heading back to Earth.
"What is it you must tell me?" She spoke loudly and crisply to the men'sbroad backs where they sat in front of the instrument panel. Theimplication of the question, itself, that they had been holdingsomething back....
Lt. Harper turned slowly around in his seat and looked at her with thatdetested expression of amused tolerance which his kind of adult maleaffected toward females. He was the dark, ruggedly handsome type, thekind who took it for granted that women should fawn over him. The kindwho would speak the fatuous cliche that a woman's place was in the home,not gallivanting off to teach colonists' children on the fourth planetof Procyon. Still, perhaps she was unjust, sh