But he’d left just before I was supposed to get home. And…hadn’t someone once said that Carlos Wu had a touch of the flatland phobia? I began to understand what was wrong. “Carlos, you did Sharrol and me a valuable favor.”

He laughed without looking at me. “Men have killed other men for such favors. I thought it was…tactful…to be gone when you came home.”

Now I knew. Carlos was here because the Fertility Board on Earth would not favor me with a parenthood license.

You can’t really blame the Board for using any excuse at all to reduce the number of producing parents. I am an albino. Sharrol and I wanted each other, but we both wanted children, and Sharrol can’t leave Earth. She has the flatland phobia, the fear of strange air and altered days and changed gravity and black sky beneath her feet.

The only solution we’d found had been to ask a good friend to help.

Carlos Wu is a registered genius with an incredible resistance to disease and injury. He carries an unlimited parenthood license, one of sixty-odd among Earth’s eighteen billion people. He gets similar offers every week…but he is a good friend, and he’d agreed. In the last two years Sharrol and Carlos had had two children, who were now waiting on Earth for me to become their father.

I felt only gratitude for what he’d done for us. “I forgive you your odd ideas on tact,” I said magnanimously. “Now. As long as we’re stuck on Jinx, may I show you around? I’ve met some interesting people.”

“You always do.” He hesitated, then, “I’m not actually stuck on Jinx. I’ve been offered a ride home. I may be able to get you in on it.”

“Oh, really? I didn’t think there were any ships going to Sol system these days. Or leaving.”

“This ship belongs to a government man. Ever heard of a Sigmund Ausfaller?”

“That sounds vaguely…Wait! Stop! The last time I saw Sigmund Ausfaller, he had just put a bomb aboard my ship!”

Carlos blinked at me. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“Sigmund Ausfaller is in the Bureau of Alien Affairs. Bombing spacecraft isn’t one of his functions.”

“Maybe he was off duty,” I said viciously.

“Well, it doesn’t really sound like you’d want to share a spacecraft cabin with him. Maybe—”

But I’d thought of something else, and now there just wasn’t any way out of it. “No, let’s meet him. Where do we find him?”

“The bar of the Camelot,” said Carlos.

Reclining luxuriously on our travel couches, we slid on air cushions through Sirius Mater. The orange trees that lined the walks were foreshortened by gravity; their trunks were thick cones, and the oranges on the branches were not much bigger than Ping-Pong balls.