Ryo moved hurriedly to the main port in the ship’s control room. A planet drifted below and, above it, a distant and to him very dim sun. Though no astronomer, he thought the world beneath must be far too cold and harsh to support life. Surely it was not their intended destination.

“You’re right,” the cocontroller informed him, without taking his eyes from his instrumentation. “There are eight planets in this system, of which the third and fifth have been colonized.” He smiled. “Mistakenly, too. The colonists who first arrived here thought they’d reached an entirely different star.”

“If this is not our destination, then why are we stopping here?”

“Standard precautions regulating returning exploration craft,” Taourit told him. He pointed to the port. “See that bright spot just ahead? That’s where we’re going.”

The orbital station circling Centaurus’ seventh planet was an enormous wheeled complex, mankind’s farthest outpost. It impressed Ryo. The world it circled was cold and dead.

A large and, Ryo thought, too well-armed cluster of humans met him and his companions when they emerged from the station airlock. They were polite, but he could read emotions other than welcome in some of the faces.

The official who made the short speech and greeted him in a mildly patronizing manner was courteous enough, however. Ryo was conducted to a spacious burrow on the skin of the station. A sweeping port offered a view of the stars and the icy globe rotating below.

The temperature and humidity had been set to his specifications, and plants had been provided to give the burrow a homelike atmosphere. Someone had gone to a great deal of effort to insure his comfort.

After the expected argument he was allowed a computer terminal, one slightly more complicated than the one he’d used on the Seeker. The engineer who instructed him in its use watched with more than a little envy as Ryo utilized sixteen digits and four hands to input requests far more rapidly than any human could have managed.

Days of conversation followed. As long as the station authorities allowed him access to information, Ryo was reasonably happy. The percentages of humans who openly liked him, were uncertain, or unremittingly inimical remained about the same as on board the Seeker. But his visitors were mostly scientists and researchers, he reminded himself. He doubted he would be as well accepted among the general populace.

Occasionally he was visited by members of the Seeker’s crew. They were undergoing debriefing elsewhere on the station and did not try to conceal their pleasure at once more being with their own kind.

Ryo’s guests included one group of three that spent an inordinate amount of time with him. There was one large elderly male and a smaller elderly female who both sported white fur. The third member of this team was a considerably younger male.