“You needn’t shout,” said Kamala. “We are not deaf.” Newhouse looked disconcerted, smoothed it over, and resumed swiftly: “We have to agree, maybe not on anything as elaborate as a constitution, but on a few rules. The way we start will determine the tradition, the whole structure, of our society in the future. Our descendants can bless us or curse us—”

  “Une pause!” Marie leaped to her feet. “What is that it is that which you say? Whose descendants?”

  Newhouse folded his arms, leaned back against the ladder, and smiled. “Ours. Yours and the other ladies’. And mine.”

  “Ohhh!” quavered Hedwig pinkly.

  Teresina jumped up also. “Now wait a minute, Newhouse!” she yelled, and stopped, appalled at her own boldness.

  “You know the law,” said the officer.

  “What law?” asked Kamala through an otherwise stunned silence.

  “Number 298376, Statutes of the United Commonwealths,” said Newhouse.

  The girl shook her dark head. “I never heard of it, and my father has held a seat in Parliament since—”

  “Popularly known as the Reproductive Act.”

  “No, I can’t say—”

  Teresina exchanged glances with Marie. The stewardess shrugged and made a face. Who could keep track of all the laws there were?

  “I imagine it isn’t too familiar to civilians at that,” said Newhouse. “Spacemen are of course very much aware of it, though even in their case the issue seldom arises. But, briefly, the law requires that Terrestrial citizens cast away on any planet where reproduction is at all practical must reproduce, and in such a way as to assure the greatest distribution of all available sound heredity.”

  Teresina shrank back against the comforting bulk of Fred. Newhouse swept a grin across her.

  “But this is outrageous!” screamed Hedwig Trumbull. “Indecent!”

  “Conditions in space don’t always permit the same behavior as at home,” said Newhouse blandly. “The law has several purposes. First, since any band of castaways is sure to be small, inbreeding has to be avoided as much as possible, lest the descendants start degenerating in a century or two. There has to be as much genetic variety made available as circumstances allow: interbreeding in all individual combinations. Second, by enforcing reproduction, the law makes use even of disasters like this one to spread civilization throughout the galaxy. By the time our world is discovered, for instance, there may be quite a flourishing colony. Third, it’s for your own protection. Do you want to be the last survivor, growing old with no one to take care of you?”

  “But—prior marriages—” objected Kamala.

  “They’re automatically annulled,” said Newhouse, “though all children born to the castaways are automatically legitimate.”

  “Somehow,” complained Arsang, “the logic of this escapes me.”

  “Anyway, none of us are married.” Newhouse leered. “Yet.”

  “I will not do it!” exploded Marie. “You—jeune bouc!” When he didn’t seem impressed, she translated: “Young goat.”

  The officer said sternly: “There’s a severe penalty for noncompliance, Miss Quesnay.”

  “But I thought no one was going to rescue us,” said Teresina.

  “If we are rescued, the penalties will apply. Besides…well, let’s face it, I am the only man for God knows how many parsecs.” Newhouse buffed his nails on his shirt, regarded them critically, and smiled again.

  “It’s outrageous!” Hedwig waddled toward him, shaking her fists. It’s indecent, I say, immoral, improper! When do you start?”

  Newhouse’s composure cracked a little. “Oh,” he said. Hedwig fluffed her green hair, revealing gray roots. “I want it known that I am complying only under protest” she said. “Furthermore, if we should be rescued, you must make an honest woman of—”

  “Well,” said Newhouse, jumping down from the ladder and backing away, “let’s not be hasty. I, er, didn’t want to embarrass any of you ladies. I know you’ll, uh, need time to get used to this. To the idea. I’ll t-t-talk to you separately…later…”

  “Don’t think I am afraid,” said Hedwig. “I am prepared to do my duty to civilization, however distasteful.”

  “Fred,” gabbled Newhouse, “we’d better start unloading those power tools. Right away.”

  Since there was nothing obviously dangerous in the neighborhood, Teresina was handed a light rifle just in case and a basket for specimens of potential edibles, to be brought back and analyzed. She was out for some hours, more grateful to be alone than she dared admit.

  Returning through the sun-spattered shade of a little wood, bird song overhead and soft leaf mold underfoot, she felt tired enough to put down alertness. She had plenty of samples, no reason to keep an eye out for more. But that, she soon discovered, was a mistake: she began thinking about her own situation.

  It looked bleaker by the minute. You could make this damned planet as idyllic as you liked, but it was still a jail. She had thought herself asocial, not really unfriendly but fonder than average of curling up with a book in the evening. She had imagined her own interests were centered on analysis situs and the theory of equations. Only now did she realize how much she had been a part of human society—how much everyone is—from teatime chitchat to nightlong argument, from stranger in the street to lifetime friend—and the whole structure of society, not so much its buildings and machines as its books, paintings, concerts…Great Lagrange! She thought of herself as a mathematician, but without a reference library and at least one monthly journal she wasn’t…She shivered in the knowledge.

  Camping and hiking and so on, she thought with a swing back from terror to resentment, were fun as a hobby. As a career, they had no appeal.

  A rustling ahead made her snatch for the rifle. “Hey, what have I done?” grinned Newhouse, emerging from a screen of brush.

  Teresina slung the weapon back over her shoulder. “What are you doing?” she blurted. Her heart didn’t stop jumping.

  “Is that a shift of emphasis?” He fell into step beside her. “Why, we called it a day, or work period, or whatever the term is under these crazy conditions, back at camp. So I thought I’d stroll out and see if I could meet you.”

  Teresina’s face burned. “It’s a big area. The chances were against finding me.”

  “I’m a great one for lopping the odds,” chuckled Newhouse. He tapped a small instrument hung at his belt. “You’re carrying an energy compass, which picks up the weak steady emission from the boat’s converter. I simply tuned this one to yours. Ahem! Speaking of pickups—”

  “Why—What…”

  “Why? You yourself are the answer to that.” Newhouse slipped an arm about her waist.

  Teresina jerked free. “Stop that!”

  He laughed aloud, not in the least abashed. “All right, I won’t be the big bad wolf. Not yet. Though if I chose to be, there wouldn’t be much you could do about it, would there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, as I’ve remarked before, I’m the only human male around. And you are not a girl who’d defy the law.”

  “Oh.” Teresina looked away. “The law.”

  Newhouse moved up behind her. “Don’t be bitter. Am I so horrible?”

  Teresina struggled to speak. She still faced away from him when she got out: “No.”

  “Ah,” said Newhouse and laid his hands on her waist.

  Teresina continued, word by dogged word: “It isn’t personal. Not much. It’s the general idea of it all.”

  “Now, wait,” purred Newhouse, nuzzling her hair. “Don’t fool yourself. I know the female of our species fairly well if I do say so, and I could tell right away you aren’t cold. Reserved, a bluestocking type, sure, but underneath everything, very much a woman.”

  Teresina stared down rustling leafy arches. “I always expected to get married,” she said. She could only think how hard it was to talk so freely about herself to a near stranger. The subject matter seemed almost irrelevant by contrast. “Yes, of course. But I meant married.”

  “If it’s that you’re worried about, I’ve explained the law—”

  “Yes, and of all the stupid, vicious laws there ever were…I’m not interested in what some damned Act of Parliament says. I was talking about marriage. A relationship between me and one man, for all our lives; something that was ours alone. I don’t mean I’d be possessive. I hope not. But, well, I suppose I am a monogamist.”

  “However, since things have worked out otherwise—” Newhouse snuggled her close against him. “What was it George Bernard Shaw wrote, centuries ago?” he said complacently. “A woman would rather have part of a superior man than all of an inferior one.”

  “What?”

  “Being the only man, I think I can safely call myself superior. Believe me, lass, I’d far rather have been abandoned alone with you. But even as it is, we could get quite abandoned, the two of us—”

  Teresina realized, like a fist in her stomach, how she was being held. She tried to jerk free. Newhouse laughed again and held her tightly. She couldn’t break away. He swung her around to face him and lowered his lips toward hers.

  She smacked his nose with her forehead.

  He let go and staggered back, gasping. She unlimbered her rifle. “I don’t want to shoot you,” she choked. “Please don’t make me.” Hastily: “I mean, please don’t force me to shoot!”

  Newhouse dabbed at his nose. “Put that thing away,” he groaned. “You want to commit murder?”

  Her pulse hammered, but she felt an upsurge of strength and self-command, i.e., adrenalin. “And what you were about to commit?” she snapped.

  “My lawful duty,” said Newhouse with as great an air of virtue as possible when one has a nosebleed.

  “To hell with that bleat,” said Teresina, surprising herself. “To hell with that law, also. Do you think I’m so afraid of lonesomeness, now or in my old age, that I’ll sign up in your harem? Give me one good reason why I should help perpetuate your chromosomes!”

  “The survival of this community,” said Newhouse primly.

  Teresina remembered a coarse Anglo-Saxon monosyllable she had encountered a few times on Earth. Experimentally, she pronounced it. Newhouse looked so delightfully shocked that she said it again. “Whatever bunch of old women in trousers wrote that law,” she added, “they must be pretty abject not to have thought that survival isn’t worth just any price whatsoever. Enough is enough, for Gauss’ sake. Now, git!”

  She jerked the rifle. Newhouse stumbled from her. He paused at the edge of a thicket. “What are you going to do?” he asked weakly.

  “I’ll come back to camp,” said Teresina, “after I’ve cooled off. We needn’t say any more about this episode.”

  Newhouse stood thinking for a moment. “I apologize,” he said. “I didn’t understand you as well as I thought.”

  “I suggest you be a little less confident you understand the others.”

  “But there is still the law. And our group is basically law-abiding. If nothing else, they won’t risk the penalties of compounding a felony, if we should be rescued; and that’s what they’d be guilty of, if they allowed you to be this obstinate.”

  Teresina flung back so fast that only later did she have time to admire her own intelligence: “We can argue about that later. The law says this group has to reproduce. All right. It says nothing about the order in which we do so. In fact, it wouldn’t be sensible to have all the women pregnant simultaneously. Very well, Mr. Newhouse, you can start elsewhere. When the first infant is well on its way the issue will arise for the rest of us.”

  He gaped. “Elsewhere?”

  “I suggest Hedwig Trumbull,” sneered Teresina. “She seemed quite prepared to give her all for the colony.”

  Recognizing a perfect exit line, she turned her back on his appalled stare and marched off.

  The slow sunset came during the next work period. For hours the sky burned red and hot gold. But while Teresina had always regretted the swift fading of such beauty on Earth, she found it rather monotonous when it lasted half her waking time. Blue twilight, the earliest stars blinking to life, was downright welcome.

  The party sat outside, under floodlamps rigged near the site of their planned house, and talked. Mostly it was reminiscence, Earth, friends, and do you think we’ll ever see home again, until Hedwig began to snivel. Then Marie called rather sharply for a discussion of practical problems. Labor around the boat could continue through the long night, but it was best to suspend hunting and gathering operations. However, it would also be well to venture a way into the forest, get some idea what to expect there after dark. Fred and Newhouse could…no, Newhouse must not be risked…Fred agreed amiably to do some exploring alone. He had little to fear. Teresina offered to accompany him. Newhouse vetoed it: she must not hazard her own germ plasm unnecessarily. Teresina bridled, spoke of her rights as an individual, and was dismayed when the others sided with Newhouse. Only Arsang voted for her, and that chiefly in a spiteful mood. He had been told off to gather berries earlier that session, and did not think it accorded with the dignity of a Lord High Gongbeater.

  Presently they all went to bed. Automatic alarms had been set up; there was no need to stand watches. Teresina noted maliciously that Newhouse was still retiring alone to his bunk in the boat. Hedwig made an insinuating remark, but he brushed very quickly past her and the door to the pilot turret was heard to slam shut. Arsang and Hedwig entered the passenger section, the rest preferred to stretch sleeping bags out in the mild night. All but Fred, of course: nothing could be done but hang blankets over him.

  Teresina couldn’t fall asleep. After an hour or two of twisting in the sack, she got up, donned sandals and cloak, and wandered toward camp limits.

  It was now approaching true night. The sky was purple-black overhead. Stars crowded it in great blazing strings and clusters; this was indeed a fairly dense region of space. White auroral shimmers leaped noiselessly between the foreign constellations. Even without a moon, she could see how dew glittered in the grass, how the river flashed some kilometers off and the remote hills shouldered upward. She could hear more noises than in the daytime, rustlings, patterings, whistlings, croakings, warblings, nocturnal life up and about its business. She thought vaguely that the daylight and starlight species must be more sharply divided here, more specialized, than on Earth…Strange that a planet otherwise so homelike should have so lazy a rotation. True, its sun was closer, tidal drag would operate. But that could not even affect the spin as much as Luna had slowed Earth: especially since this world was hardly older than her own and probably younger. Sol is fairly well along in years for its type. The planet appeared to have no satellite, certainly none big enough to create significant drag. The normal distribution of angular momentum would presumably guarantee any moonless planet, not too close to its primary, a rotation period of no more than, say, a hundred hours. So what had slowed this globe down?…But its long luminous night was beautiful.

  A closer sound brought Teresina whirling about. For a moment, in the vague tricky light, she stared terrified at a pair of tall black trolls. Then they resolved themselves into Marie Quesnay and Kamala Chatterji, also cloaked.

  “Hello,” said Teresina, a little shakenly. The big darkness made all voices seem a whisper. “So you can’t sleep either?”

  “Why, are you suffering from insomnia, my dear?” asked Kamala. “I only came out to admire the view. While total inner peace is not easily attained, I can show you a simple relaxation technique which—”

  “It is not to make the matter,” interrupted Marie. “I too was tossing wakeful, and when I noticed you leave, Kamala, I got up and joined you. Then we saw Teresina.”

  “But if you will only,” said the Indian girl, “begin by drawing a deep breath—” “I do not—”

  “—eleven times repeated, standing on your toes; then sit down, put your head between your thighs, cross your ankles—”

  “I do not want to sleep!” exclaimed Marie. “It is that I have the thinking to do.”

  “Well, then I should not disturb you,” said Kamala. “Goodnight.”

  “No, stay here. And you, Teresina. It is the thinking we must all do, and we may as well talk it over now, hein?”

  The cool breeze caressed Teresina’s face and sizzled. She said lamely: “You mean…the problem of—”

  “Of that cochon Newhouse, yes.” Marie bit off her words. “He has made the pass at you too, no?”

  “No. I mean yes. But I had a gun along and—”

  “And I know a few judo arts,” said Maria. “In my work, that is always needful. Did he get you alone, Kamala?”

  “Yes,” answered the Indian girl serenely. “I discoursed to him on the Three Principles. I was starting to develop the Five Basic Philosophies from them when he said we had better get back to camp.”

  Marie giggled. “That is the easy way out, that!”

  “I told him,” said Teresina, glad the darkness hid her embarrassment, “that he could, er, well, start with someone who was willing.”

  “And I the same,” nodded Marie. “I think we both suggested the same person, no? Since his interest in her is shall we say, not great, he is so far doing nothing.” She shrugged. But that will not last long, mes amies. He is a healthy young man, healthier than average in some respects. If nothing else, he will follow our proposal. And then a few months hence, he will have—a’em!—clear title to one of us.”

  “Just let him dare!” flared Teresina.

  Kamala said gently: “He will have the extraterrestrials on his side. They will certainly desire a large community here, especially as a provision for their own old age. And there is the question of law, and even of duty.”

  “Duty! Law!” Teresina looked out to the river. Finally she spoke, hard-voiced: