"If it becomes necessary." He moved closer to her, not even looking back
to talk to me. "Give us some time to get acquainted, will you, Dave? And
you might leave some supplies and a bubble at the camp when you move on,
just to make things pleasanter."
By this time he had reached the female. They were as still as space, not
a sound, not a motion. I wanted to hang around, but I knew how I'd feel
if a Zen, say, wouldn't go away if I were the last man alive and had
just met the last woman.
I moved my torch off them and headed back for the _Lucky Pierre_. We all
had a drink to the saving of a great race that might have become
extinct. Ed Reiss, though, had to do some worrying before he could down
his drink.
"What if they don't like each other?" he asked anxiously.
"They don't have much choice," Captain Feldman said, always the realist.
"Why do homely women fight for jobs on the most isolated space
outposts?"
Reiss grinned. "That's right. They look awful good after a year or two
in space."
"Make that twenty-five by Zen standards or three thousand by ours," said
Joe Hargraves, "and I'll bet they look beautiful to each other."
We decided to drop our investigation of Vesta for the time being, and
come back to it after the honeymoon.
Six months later, when we returned, there were twelve hundred Zen on
Vesta!
Captain Feldman was a realist but he was also a deeply moral man. He
went to Yurt and said, "It's indecent! Couldn't the two of you control
yourselves at least a little? _Twelve hundred kids!_"
"We were rather surprised ourselves," Yurt said complacently. "But this
seems to be how Zen reproduce. Can you have only half a child?"
Naturally, Feld got the authorities to quarantine Vesta. Good God, the
Zen could push us clear out of the Solar System in a couple of
generations!