“Indeed,” the doctor said, giving him a smile that made her tired face look strikingly pretty.  “My best guess, Major, is that they reproduce by ejaculating into warm water, rather than direct sexual contact.  It’s quite likely that they don’t have any real concept of physical love as we understand the term, or bastardry for that matter.  Their society might well be very different from ours.”

Charles had a sudden vision of the aliens leaving sperm and eggs everywhere they went, hoping that they would match up and produce children.  Once conceived, what would happen to the child?  Instead of one parent ... who would take the children in?  Their society must have people trained to serve as mothers and fathers, even if they weren't biologically related to the child’s parents.  Hell, the child’s parents might never even have met!

“There are no other major differences between the sexes,” the doctor added.  “I think that they won’t have invented any form of sexual discrimination, not when females are fully as strong as males.”

“But they miss out on a lot,” Charles mused.  “No sex.”

“It would seem perfectly normal to them,” the doctor pointed out, tartly.  “And besides, do you know how much time is wasting having and rearing children?”

Charles shrugged.  “It used to be that the best years of a woman’s life were the ones where she was expected to have children and bear the burden of raising them,” the doctor explained.  “By the time the children were old enough to flee the nest, their mother couldn't really do anything else.  It was only since the development of technology that the women could go back to work – and now, with life-extension treatments, the women have more years to play with.  How many female geniuses were lost to the ages because of the demands of childbirth?”

The alarms howled before Charles could reply.  He glanced at his terminal, then swore.

“They’re back,” he said.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ted jerked back to full awareness as the alarms sounded.

Shit, he swore, inwardly.  He'd committed the cardinal sin of almost falling asleep on the bridge.  A young midshipman who dozed off while on watch would be lucky if he wasn't demoted all the way back to cadet by his outraged CO.  Ted forced himself to put the thought aside, then stared at the display.  A single red icon was emerging from the tramline they’d taken to reach Alien-Two.

“The battlecruiser, sir,” Farley said.  If he’d noted Ted’s near-collapse, he said nothing.  “They must have assumed that we were planning an ambush.”