We flew for almost four hours. Only one sun was up, and we got thoroughly chilled. Occasionally we passed over islands (including one perfectly round atoll), but otherwise there wasn’t much to see.
Starbase is a little more than one kilometer inland, built on the bank of a wide slow river, surrounded by a sort of pine forest. Most of the buildings are made of logs and the streets are of crushed shell. A quiet, orderly place except for the children, of which there are thousands. It was early afternoon when we landed, though, and most of the youngsters were napping.
We floated down into a square in the middle of the town, where two people were playing a kind of bowling game. They didn’t seem surprised to see us, but pointed out the AED headquarters for us. It was a little cabin on the other side of the square, and the administrator wasn’t in (home for lunch and siesta). But he’d left a note pegged to the door that told us where our mates were.
The couple in the square sent us off in opposite directions: Gus toward a woman named Hester and me toward Ellen. We tried not to move with unseemly haste.
Ellen was waiting for me with a pot of herb tea and the disconcerting news that she was a little off schedule. According to her morning checkup, we’d have to wait at least eight hours.
We drank the tea and talked for a while. Ellen was in planetary atmospheres, specializing in tertiary weather control (so she could get a job on Earth if she got tired of being a Tamer). This would be her fourth and last child; the AED let her have it on 61 Cygnus B so she could take part in raising her eldest daughter.
I couldn’t pronounce her last name, which was African and had a strange “click” in the middle of it (her grandfather was a black American, descended from slaves, who fought in the second Revolution).
She was intelligent and attractive, and under other circumstances I would have enjoyed her company very much. She sensed my agitation, though, and suggested I take a stroll around Starbase: see the sights and come back in the evening.
The pills they give you to prepare for a breeding mission are supposed to maximize sperm count and motility, but as a side effect they induce a powerful and tenacious state of priapism. So being alone with a beautiful woman whom you can’t touch is rather unnerving.
I wandered around town for a few hours, plenty of time to see everything. In a nursery playground I saw a little black girl, about six, who might have been Ellen’s daughter. I wondered whether they had invented terms for relationships like “the man who is my brother’s father but otherwise not related.” Stepfather seems inadequate.
Outside of town I inspected the power station and logging camp, then borrowed a boat to row out into the river. Went back to the logging camp and helped a woman saw down a large tree. My time on the planet was costing the AED more than ten dollars a minute; they might as well get some work out of me.
Around dusk I went back into town. This time of year, it never got really dark, because 61 Cygni A came up about the time B set. It didn’t provide much heat, but was a good deal brighter than the full moon.
I found the planet’s only tavern, a small adjunct to the adults’ dining area. It was almost full, with five patrons. One of them was Gus.
He had accomplished his mission, of course. Hester was out on the river, checking crab pots; she was going to meet him here for the night’s party (everybody coming to watch us disappear). I started to tell him about my problems with Ellen, but he said he knew. The whole town knew.
The only drink was a strong sour beer that they served with ice, flavored with fruit juice. If you drink it fast enough and are careful to avoid the aroma, it’s sort of like a Berlinerweiss. We started talking about that, naturally enough in German, and stayed in German when the conversation shifted to women, our four barmates in particular. And that’s what started the trouble.