"Yes," said Ran. He continued to hold her, but his member had lost its renewing stiffness. There were stories about what you found on the beaches of Ain. . . .
"I think so, yes."
She lifted her right hand from the mattress and combed her fingers through his hair while she balanced on only three points. "What would you do about it if it were your decision, starman?" she asked. Her eyes opened. They reflected the rich light of the planet above.
"I might try to kill them," Ran said, his finger stroking in and out His clothes lay in a neat pile on the other side of the mattress. The pistol was with them.
"That's not a solution," she said, smiling up at him. "Humans have the power. Power to sterilize the planet if they became angry and frightened enough. And the problem isn't humans, it's the kind of humans. Much better to replace them. Over time."
Ran Colville was as still as ice, except for his right hand.
"Silly!" she said. "Not like that, not anything bad."
She seated herself and drew Ran's lips to hers with the same lithe motion. Leaning back from the kiss, she said, "I'm human, darling. You know that."
"Yes," Ran's lips agreed.
"There's a fishing community on the other side of the planet," she said. "It's been growing for fifty years. And it's been very successful commercially."
"That's where you come from?" asked Ran. Her flesh was warm and smooth. The contact reassured him.
"No," she said, "though I visit." Her slim, muscular fingers caressed Ran's bare shoulders.
"They're good people," she said. "Their fathers cared about more things than they could find in Tarek's Bay—or in the New Port either." Her mouth worked in a moue of distaste. "That place is almost worse. It's sterile."
"And their mothers?" Ran asked quietly.
She pulled him close again. Her erect nipples tickled his chest hair. "Their mother cares about the planet," she said. "Very much."
She made a soft purring noise in her throat before she continued. "There's an address in the pocket on the driver's side. It's a public garage. Leave the car there when you get back to Tarek's Bay."
"But . . . ?" Ran said.
"I'm going to stay here and swim for a while," she explained. She giggled. "But afterward."
She drew him down over her. Ran couldn't imagine that he'd be able to do either of them any good under the circumstances—
But the circumstances took over. As she'd said, she was human. Or as close as made no difference.
HOBILO
"Stabilized," said the Second Officer in a tone of relief, as though he personally had been pushing upward to bring the Empress of Earth to a halt above the surface of Hobilo.
"Very good, Mr. Bruns," said Captain Kanawa. "Ms. Seligly, initiate docking sequence."
The First Officer engaged the autopilot. The starliner shuddered as the artificial intelligence took command of the six tugs locked against the hull. Seligly's fingers fanned over the manual keyboard, touching nothing but ready to assert control at the first sign of a hiccough in the software.
The Third Officer's console displayed the Mainland Terminal, a sprawl of buildings on raw red soil. The terminal was in the central highlands of Hobilo's larger continent. A web of pipes and monorail tracking joined at the terminal, but the lines' further ends disappeared into the mist-shrouded lowlands where all other human development on the planet had occurred.
Seven ships were already on the ground at Mainland Terminal, besides the rusting hulks of a dozen more dragged to the edge of the plateau. Four of them were purpose-built tankers, comparable in size to the Empress herself. The others were combination vessels with large cargo holds and provision for a limited number of passengers.
"Sir, we've beaten the Brazil in," the Third Officer noted.
"We have?" said Kanawa. His voice was so empty of emotion that the officers who had served with him for several voyages knew that he was concerned.
The Empress lurched, steadied, and began to drop at a smoothly constant rate of acceleration. Seligly tapped in a command to counteract a hint of rotation. One of the tugs was operating at well below optimum thrust, and the autopilot hadn't gotten the correction factor precisely right.
"Bridge, give me a ground link," said Captain Kanawa, continuing to stand beside his console. His left hand switched the display from figures to a visual of the terminal, but he didn't bother to look at it.
"Empress to Terminal Control," Kanawa continued after a pause.
"Terminal Control," said a colorless voice. Because Kanawa was using the general pickup, the response came through the bridge speakers unless he chose to switch it through a lockout channel to his ears only.