thinking on other things ever since I got here, but first I want to...."

"First," Juba interrupted, for here was her moment, "I ask one thing of you. Only that you radio incorrect coordinates back to your base. Say you have moved on, that this is a barren world."

"Let me talk to you first," he said. "I want to...."

"Please," Juba begged, moving toward him. "It is no loss to you. Only a small favor, to protect our planet from outsiders, in return for ... for whatever pleasures I can provide for you, or my sisters, if I do not please you."

"All right," he said, turning to his communication equipment. "If that's the only way you're going to let me speak to you."

"Your tape," Juba said. "Turn on your tape."

"Tape!"

"I do not speak New-language. I will have to have it translated."

The man looked at Juba hard and worked at the corner of his mouth with his tongue.

"All right," he said, flipping a switch. He turned to his equipment and spoke his strange language into it. It was rough and she liked it.

"Now," he began.

"Give me the tape," Juba interrupted.

He jostled a flat box out of the wall, held the tape up to the light and snapped off a small portion and handed it to Juba.

"Come outside," she said, taking his hand. "My world is more beautiful than your space ship."

"Can't deny that," he said, watching the branches of the Untouchable Bush draw away as they walked through it.

"Now," he said, when he was stretched out on the undulant moss. He felt at the patch of moss sprouting under the warmth of his palm, and watched while an exploratory tendril curled around his little finger. "Now—do you know what it is I want of you?"

"I have," Juba said, "some idea." She hadn't known they talked about it. She thought they just did it.

"Well, you're wrong."

"Oh," she said, and stood up and walked over to the brook so he would not see her face. For she wondered wherein she was lacking and she was embarrassed. "Then," she asked, "what do you want of me?"

"There is, as I said, a war on. I am, as I said, a scout. I'm looking for a communications base halfway between a certain strategic enemy outpost and a certain strategic allied outpost."

"Why?"

"Why? I don't know why. Does the grain of sand know where the beach ends? And if I did know, what would it matter?"

"But why this planet? There are other systems. Even other planets in this system." The moss curled under her feet and pricked at her. She was not doing this right. What did she care about his war? But she did not know what to do. She had been prepared for Seduction, Step II, and had even thought up a few things to say, though conversation is not included in the manual, because there is usually a language barrier. It was his speaking the language that made the difference.

"This is the only immediately habitable planet. You don't realize how expensive and cumbersome and logistically difficult it is to set up the simplest station on an abnormal planet. Tons of equipment are needed just to compensate for a few degrees too much temperature, or a few degrees too little, or excessive natural radiation, or a slight off balance of atmosphere. Or even if a planet is apparently habitable, there's no way of being absolutely sure until there have been people actually living on it for a while. There isn't time for all this. Can't you just believe me?"

"I believe you," Juba said, "and the answer is no. It is not my decision to make. I cannot decide for my people. And if I could, the answer would still be no. That is exactly why we cut ourselves off from the rest of civilization. To stay out of your wars, to carry on civilization when you have laid it waste. That is why we are a planet of parthenogenetic women."

"Is it?" he asked. "Was it to carry on the torch for civilization or to flee from it? Life flows, Juba. If it doesn't flow forward, it flows backward. Which way does your world