Reymont hunkered down and drew their hired boat in. Bond anchors secured the lines to the concrete. He had obtained a special license to park practically anywhere. An interstellar expedition was that big an event. Lindgren and he had spent the morning in a cruise around the Archipelago— a few hours amidst greenness, homes like parts of the islands whereon they grew, sails and gulls and sun-glitter across waves. Little of that would exist at Beta Virginis, and none of it in the distances between.

“I am beginning to feel what a stranger you are to me, Carl,” she said slowly. “To everyone?”

“Eh? My biography’s on record.” The boat bumped against the esplanade. Reymont sprang down into its cockpit. Holding the line taut with one hand, he offered her the other. She had no need to lean heavily on him as she descended, but did. His arm scarcely stirred beneath her weight.

She sat down on a bench next the wheel. He twisted the screw top of the anchor he grasped. Intermolecular binding forces let go with a faint smacking noise that answered the slap-slap of water on hull. His movements could not be called graceful, as hers were, but they were quick and economical.

“Yes, I suppose we’ve all memorized each other’s official accounts.” She nodded. “For you, the absolute minimum you could get by with telling.”

(Charles Jan Reymont. Citizenship status, Interplanetarian. Thirty-five years old. Born in the Antarctic, but not one of its better colonies; the sublevels of Polyugorsk offered only poverty and turbulence to a boy whose father had died early. The youth he became got to Mars by some unspecified means and held a variety of jobs till the troubles broke out. Then he fought with the Zebras, with such distinction that afterward the Lunar Rescue Corps offered him a berth. There he completed his academic education and rose fast in rank, until as colonel he had much to do with improving the police branch. When he applied for this expedition, the Control Authority was glad to accept him.)

“Nothing whatsoever of yourself,” Lindgren observed. “Did you even give that away in the psychological testing?”

Reymont had gone forward and cast off the bow line. He stowed both anchors neatly, took the wheel, and started the motor. The magnetic drive was soundless and the propeller made scant noise, but the boat slipped rapidly outward. He kept his eyes straight ahead. “Why do you care?” he asked.

“We’ll be together for a number of years. Quite possibly for the rest of our lives.”

“It makes me wonder why you spent today with me, then.”

“You invited me.”

“After you gave me a call at my hotel. You must have checked with the crew registry to find where I was.”

Millesgarden vanished in swift-deepening darkness aft. Lights along the channel, and from the inner city beyond, did not show whether she flushed. Her face turned from him, though. “I did,” she admitted. “I… thought you might be lonely. You have no one, have you?”