“No, ma’am,” Larry said. “Most of you wanted the ocean, but many wanted a river or
the mountains. Therefore we razed Omlu and built your new city, Ardane, at a place
where the ocean, two rivers, and a range of mountains meet. Strictly speaking, it is not
a city, but a place of pleasant and rewarding living.”
The space-ship was coming in, low and fast, from the south. To the left, the west, there
stretched the limitless expanse of ocean. To the right, mile after mile, were rough,
rugged, jagged, partially timbered mountains, mass piled upon mass. Immediately
below the speeding vessel was a wide, white-sand beach all of ten miles long.
Slowing rapidly now, the Orion flew along due north.
“Look! Look! A natatorium!” Beverly shrieked. “I know I wanted a nice big. place to
swim in, besides my backyard pool and the ocean, but I didn’t tell anybody to build
that-I swear I didn’t!”
“You didn’t have to, pet.” Poynter put his arm around her curvaceous waist and
squeezed. “They knew. And I did a little thinking along that line myself. There’s our
house, on top of the cliff over the natatorium-you can almost dive into it off the patio.”
“Oh, wonderful!”
Immediately north of the natatorium a tremendous river named at first sight the
“Whitewater”-rushed through its gorge into the ocean; a river and gorge strangely
reminiscent of the Colorado and its Grand Canyon. On the south bank of that river, at
its very mouth-looking straight up that tremendous canyon, on a rocky promontory
commanding ocean and beach and mountains-there was a house. At the sight of it
Temple hugged Hilton’s arm in ecstasy.
“Yes, that’s ours,” he assured her. “Just about everything either of us has ever
wanted.” The clamor was now so great everyone was recognizing his-and-her house
and was exclaiming about it-that both Temple and Hilton fell silent and simply watched
the scenery unroll.
Across the turbulent Whitewater and a mile farther north, the mountains ended as
abruptly as though they had been cut off with a cleaver and an apparently limitless
expanse of treeless, grassy prairie began. And through that prairie, meandering
sluggishly to the ocean from the northeast, came the wide, deep River Placid.
The Orion halted. It began to descend vertically, and only then did Hilton see the
space-port. It was so vast, and there were so many spaceships on it, that from any
great distance it was actually invisible! Each six-acre bit of the whole immense expanse
of level prairie between the Placid and the mountains held an Oman superdreadnought!
The staff paired off and headed for the airlocks. Hilton said: “Temple, have you any
reservations at all, however slight, as to having Dark Lady as a permanent fixture in
your home?” “Why, of course not-I like her as much as you do. And besides”-she
giggled like a schoolgirl-“even if she is a lot more beautiful than I am-I’ve got a few
things she never will have . . . but there’s something else. I got just a flash of it before
you blocked. Spill it, please.”
“You’ll see in a minute.” And she did.
Larry, Dark Lady and Temple’s Oman maid Moty were standing beside the Hiltons’
car-and so was another Oman, like none ever before seen. Six feet four; shoulders that
would just barely go through a door; muscled like Atlas and Hercules combined; skin a
gleaming, satiny bronze; hair a rippling mass of lambent flame. Temple came to a full
stop and caught her breath.
“The Prince,” she breathed, in awe. “Da Lormi’s `Prince of Thebes.’ The ultimate
bronze of all the ages. You did this, Jarve. How did you ever dig him up out of my
schoolgirl crushes?”
All six got into the car, which was equally at home on land or water or in the air. In less
than a minute they were at Hilton House.
The house itself was circular. Its living-room was an immense annulus of glass from
which, by merely moving along its circular length, any desired view could be had. The
pair walked around it once. Then she took him by the arm and steered him firmly
toward one of the bedrooms in the center.
“This house is just too much to take in all at once,” she declared. “Besides, let’s put on
our swimsuits and get over to the Nat.”
In the room, she closed the door firmly in the faces of the Omans and grinned. “Maybe,
sometime, IT get used to having somebody besides you in my bedroom, but I haven’t,
yet . . . Oh, do you itch, too?”
Hilton had peeled to the waist and was scratching vigorously all around his waistline,
under his belt. “Like the very devil,” he admitted, and stared at her. For she,
three-quarters stripped, was scratching, too!
“It started the minute we left the Orion,” he said, thoughtfully. “I see. These new skins of
ours like hard radiation, but don’t like to be smothered while they’re enjoying it. By about
tomorrow, we’ll be a nudist colony, I think.”
“I could stand it, I suppose. What makes you think so?” “Just what I know about
radiation. Frank would be the one to ask. My hunch is, though, that we’re going to be
nudists whether we want to or not. Let’s go.”
They went in a two-seater, leaving the Omans at home. Three-quarter of the staff were
lolling on the sand or were seated on benches beside the immense pool. As they
watched, Beverly ran out along the line of springboards, testing each one and selecting
the stiffest. She then climbed up to the top platform-a good twelve feet above the
board-and plummeted down upon the board’s heavily padded take off. Legs and back
bending stubbornly to take the strain, she and the board reached low-point together,
and, still in sync with it, she put every muscle she had into the effort to hurl herself
upward.
She had intended to go up thirty feet. But she had no idea whatever as to her present
strength, or of what that Oman board, in perfect synchronization with that tremendous
strength, would do. Thus, instead of thirty feet, she went up very nearly two hundred,
which of course spoiled completely her proposed graceful two-and-a-half.
In midair she struggled madly to get into some acceptable position. Failing, she curled
up into a tight ball just before she struck water.
What a splash!
“It won’t hurt her-you couldn’t hurt her with a club!” Hilton snapped. He seized Temple’s
hand as everyone rushed to the pool’s edge. “Look-Bernadine-that’s what I was thinking
about.”
Temple stopped and looked. The platinum-haired twins had been basking on the sand,
and wherever sand had touched fabric, fabric had disappeared.
Their suits had of course approached the minimum to start with. Now Bernadine wore
only a wisp of nylon perched precariously on one breast and part of a ribbon that had
once been a belt. Discovering the catastrophe, she shrieked once and leaped into the
pool any-which-way, covering her breasts with her hands and hiding in water up to her
neck.
Meanwhile, the involuntarily high diver had come to the surface, laughing
apologetically. Surprised by the hair dangling down over her eyes, she felt for her cap. It
was gone. So was her suit. Naked as a fish. She swam a couple of easy strokes, then
stopped.
“Frank! Oh, Frank!” she called.
“Over here, Bev.” Her husband did not quite know whether to laugh or not.
“Is it the radiation or the water? Or both?”
“Radiation, I think. These new skins of ours don’t want to be covered up. But it
probably makes the water a pretty good imitation of a universal solvent.”
“Good-by, clothes!” Beverly rolled over onto her back, fanned water carefully with her
hands and gazed approvingly at herself. “I don’t itch any more, anyway, so I’m very
much in favor of it.”
Thus the Ardans came to their new home world and to a life that was to be more
comfortable by far and happier by far than any of them had known on Earth. There
were many other surprises that day, of course; of which only two will be mentioned
here. When they finally left the pool, at about seventeen hours G. M. T., everybody
was ravenously hungry.
“But why should we be?” Stella demanded. “I’ve been eating everything in sight, just
for fun. But now I’m actually hungry enough to eat a horse and wagon and chase the
driver!”
“Swimming makes everybody hungry,” Beverly said, “and I’m awfully glad that hasn’t
changed. Why, I wouldn’t feel human if I didn’t!”
Hilton and Temple went home, and had a long-drawn-out and very wonderful supper.
Prince waited on Temple, Dark Lady on Hilton; Larry and Moty ran the synthesizers in
the kitchen. All four Omans radiated happiness.
Another surprise came when they went to bed. For the bed was a raised platform of
something that looked like concrete and, except for an uncanny property of molding