“No relatives left. I’m only touring the fleshpots of Earth. Won’t be any where we are bound.”

Her sight lifted again, toward Jupiter this time, a steady tawny-white lamp. More stars were treading forth. She shivered and drew her cloak tight around her, against the autumnal air. “No,” she said mutedly. “Everything alien. And when we’ve hardly begun to map, to understand, that world yonder— our neighbor, our sister— to cross thirty-two light-years—”

“People are like that.”

“Why are you going, Carl?”

His shoulders lifted and dropped. “Restless, I suppose. And frankly, I made enemies in the Corps. Rubbed them the wrong way, or outdistanced them for promotion. I was at the point where I couldn’t advance further without playing office politics. Which I despise.” His glance met hers. Both lingered a moment. “You?”

She sighed. “Probably sheer romanticism. Ever since I was a child, I thought I must go to the stars, the way a prince in a fairy tale must go to Elf Land. At last, by insisting to my parents, I got them to let me enroll in the Academy.”

His smile held more warmth than usual. “And you made an outstanding record in the interplanetary service. They didn’t hesitate to make you first officer of your first extrasolar ship.”

Her hands fluttered in her lap. “No. Please. I’m not bad at my work. But it’s easy for a woman to rise fast in space. She’s in demand. And my job on Leonora Christine will be essentially executive. I’n have more to do with… well, human relations… than astronautics.”

He returned his vision forward. The boat was rounding the land, headed into Saltsjön. Water traffic thickened. Hydrofoils whirred past. A cargo submarine made her stately way toward the Baltic. Overhead, air taxis flitted like fireflies. Central Stockholm was a many-colored unrestful fire and a thousand noises blent into one somehow harmonious growl.

“That brings me back to my question.” Reymont chuckled. “My counter-question, rather, since you were pressing in on me. Don’t think I haven’t enjoyed your company. I did, much, and if you’ll have dinner with me I’ll consider this day among the better ones of my life. But most of our gang scattered like drops of mercury the minute our training period ended. They’re deliberately avoiding fheir shipmates. Better spend the time with those they’ll never see again. You, now— you have roots. An old, distinguished, well-to-do family; an affectionate one, I gather; father and mother alive, brothers, sisters, cousins, surely anxious to do everything they can for you in the few weeks that remain. Why did you leave them today?”

She sat unspeaking.

“Your Swedish reserve,” he said after a while. “Appropriate to the rulers of mankind. I ought not to have intruded. Just give me the same right of privacy, will you?”

And presently: “Would you like to join me at dinner? I’ve found quite a decent little live-service restaurant.”

“Yes,” she answered. “Thank you. I would.”

She rose to stand beside him, laying one hand on his arm. The thick muscles stirred beneath her fingers. “Don’t call us rulers,” she begged. “We aren’t. That’s what the whole idea was behind the Covenant. After the nuclear war… that close a brush with world death… something had to be done.”