Upstairs again, my highest eye was now high enough. I stood it on its tail and collected a view of the distance: Fleecy mobs of clouds boiled and frothed on the other side of Saint Stephen’s. The mountain range seemed a breakwall, a dam, a rocky shoreline. Beyond it, the waters were troubled. My other eye was almost in position. I waited the space of half a cigarette, then it delivered me a sight: Gray, and wet and impenetrable, a curtain across the countryside, that’s what I saw. …And advancing. I called Eleanor. “It’s gonna rain, chillun,” I said. “Worth some sandbags?” “Possibly.” “Better be ready then. Okay. Thanks.” I returned to my watching. Tierra del Cygnus, Land of the Swan–delightful name. It refers to both the planet and its sole continent. How to describe the world, like quick? Well, roughly Earth-size; actually, a bit smaller, and more watery. –As for the main landmass, first hold a mirror up to South America, to get the big bump from the right side over to the left, then rotate it ninety degrees in a counter-clockwise direction and push it up into the northern hemisphere. Got that? Good. Now grab it by the tail and pull. Stretch it another six or seven hundred miles, slimming down the middle as you do, and let the last five or six hundred fall across the equator. There you have Cygnus, its big gulf partly in the tropics, partly not. Just for the sake of thoroughness, while you’re about it, break Australia into eight pieces and drop them after the first eight letters in the Greek alphabet. Put a big scoop of vanilla at each pole, and don’t forget to tilt the globe about eighteen degrees before you leave. Thanks. I recalled my wandering eyes, and I kept a few of the others turned toward Saint Stephen’s until the cloudbanks breasted the range about an hour later. By then, though, the weather satellite had passed over and picked the thing up also. It reported quite an extensive cloud cover on the other side. The storm had sprung up quickly, as they often do here on Cygnus. Often, too, they disperse just as quickly, after an hour or so of heaven’s artillery. But then there are the bad ones–sometimes lingering and lingering, and bearing more thunderbolts in their quivers than any Earth storm. Betty’s position, too, is occasionally precarious, though its advantages, in general, offset its liabilities. We are located on the gulf, about twenty miles inland, and are approximately three miles removed (in the main) from a major river, the Noble; part of Betty does extend down to its banks, but this is a smaller part. We are almost a strip city, falling mainly into an area some seven miles in length and two miles wide, stretching inland, east from the river, and running roughly parallel to the distant seacoast. Around eighty percent of the 100,000 population is concentrated about the business district, five miles in from the river. We are not the lowest land about, but we are far from being the highest. We are certainly the most level in the area. This latter feature, as well as our nearness to the equator, was a deciding factor in the establishment of Beta Station. Some other things were our proximity both to the ocean and to a large river. There are nine other cities on the continent, all of them younger and smaller, and three of them located upriver from us. We are the potential capital of a potential country. We’re a good, smooth, easy landing site for drop-boats from orbiting interstellar vehicles, and we have major assets for future growth and coordination when it comes to expanding across the continent. Our original _raison d’etre_, though, was Stopover, repair-point, supply depot, and refreshment stand, physical and psychological, on the way out to other, more settled worlds, further along the line. Cyg was discovered later than many others–it just happened that way–and the others got off to earlier starts. Hence, the others generally attract more colonists. We are still quite primitive. Self-sufficiency, in order to work on our population:land scale, demanded a society on the order of that of the mid-nineteenth century in the American southwest–at least for purposes of getting started. Even now, Cyg is still partly on a natural economy system, although Earth Central technically determines the coin of the realm. Why Stopover, if you sleep most of the way between the stars? Think about it a while, and I’ll tell you later if you’re right. The thunderheads rose in the east, sending billows and streamers this way and that, until it seemed from the formations that Saint Stephen’s was a balcony full of monsters, leaning and craning their necks over the rail in the direction of the stage, us. Cloud piled upon slate-colored cloud, and then the wall slowly began to topple. I heard the first rumbles of thunder almost half an hour after lunch, so I knew it wasn’t my stomach. Despite all my eyes, I moved to a window to watch. It was like a big, gray, aerial glacier plowing the sky. There was a wind now, for I saw the trees suddenly quiver and bow down. This would be our first storm of the season. The turquoise fell back before it, and finally it smothered the sun itself. Then there were drops upon the windowpane, then rivulets. Flint-like, the highest peaks of Saint Stephen’s scraped its belly and were showered with sparks. After a moment it bumped into something with a terrible crash, and the rivulets on the quartz panes turned back into rivers. I went back to my gallery, to smile at dozens of views of people scurrying for shelter. A smart few had umbrellas and raincoats. The rest ran like blazes. People never pay attention to weather reports; this, I believe, is a constant factor in man’s psychological makeup, stemming perhaps from an ancient tribal distrust of the shaman. You want them to be wrong. If they’re right, then they’re somehow superior, and this is even more uncomfortable than getting wet. I remembered then that I had forgotten my raincoat, umbrella, and rubbers. But it _had_ been a beautiful morning, and W.C. _could_ have been wrong… Well, I had another cigarette and leaned back in my big chair. No storm in the world could knock my eyes out of the sky. I switched on the filters and sat and watched the rain pour past.