Hunt stretched back on the grassy bank and clasped his hands behind his head. “Anyhow, life’s full and exciting right now. I don’t need any of that kind of complication. A whole alien civilization. A revolution in science-profound things that need concentration.”
“You need all your time,”Jerry agreed solemnly. “Can’t afford the distraction.”
“To tell you the truth, life has never been simpler and more exhilarating.”
“A good way for it to be.”
Hunt lay back in the sun and closed his eyes. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. All the complications are three thousand miles away now, in Germany, and that’s about where I intend to keep them.”
At the sound of a car coming to a halt, he opened his eyes and sat up again. The metallic bronze car that he had glimpsed approaching a minute or two before had come up the access road and was standing outside the gateway where the driveways from the two apartments merged. It was a newish-looking Peugeot import, sleek in line, but with just the right note of restraint in dark brown upholstery and trim to set it apart from pretentiousness.
The same could be said of the woman who was driving it. She was in her early to mid-thirties, with a sweep of raven hair framing an open face with high cheeks, a slightly pouting, well-formed mouth, rounded, tapering chin, and a straight nose, just upturned enough to
add a hint of puckishness. She was wearing a neatly cut, sleeveless navy dress with a square white collar, and the tanned arm resting along the sill of the open window bore a light silver bracelet.
“Hi,” she said. Her voice was easy and natural. She inclined her head slightly to indicate the still-open hood of Jerry’s Husky. “Since you’re relaxing, I assume you got it fixed.”
Jerry detached himself from the tree and straightened up. “Yes. It’s fine now. Er . . . can we help you?”
Her eyes were bright and alive, with a deep, intelligent quality about them that gave the impression of having taken in everything of note in the scene in a brief, first glance. Her gaze flickered over the two men candidly, curiously, but with no attempt at beguiling. Her manner was neither overly assertive nor defensive, intrusive nor apologetic, or calculated to impress. It was just, simply and refreshingly, the way that strangers everywhere ought to be able to be with each other.
“I think I’m in the right place,” she said. “The sign at the bottom said there were only these two places up here. I’m looking for a Dr. Hunt.”
CHAPTER THREE
The planet Jevlen possessed oceans that were rich in chloride and chlorate salts. Molecules of these found their way high aloft via circulating winds and air currents, where they were readily dissociated by a sun somewhat bluer and hotter than Earth’s, and therefore more active in the ultraviolet. This mechanism sustained a population of chlorine atoms in the upper atmosphere, which resulted in a palish chartreuse sky illuminated by a greeny-yellow sun. The atmosphere also had a high neon content, which with its relatively low discharge voltage added an almost continual background of electrical activity that appeared in the form of diffuse, orange-red streaks and streamers.
This was where, fifty thousand years previously, after the destruction of Minerva, the Thurien Ganymeans installed the survivors of the Lambian branch of protohumanity, when the Cerian branch elected to be returned to Earth. Thereafter, the Jevlenese were given all the benefits of Thurien technology and allowed to share the knowledge gained through the Thurien sciences. The Thuriens readily conferred to them full equality of rights and status, and in time Jevlen became the center of a quasi-autonomous system of Jevlenese— controlled worlds.
As the Thuriens saw things, a misguided woridview resulting from the Lunarians’ predatorial origins had been the cause of the defects that drove them to the holocaust of Minerva. It wasn’t so much that the limited availability of resources caused humans to fight over them, as most Terran conventional wisdom supposed; rather, the instinct to fight over anything led to the conclusion that what was fought over had to be worth it, in other words, of value, and hence in scarce supply.