Phaze Doubt

“In that case, yes, I would like to be your social friend. As I remarked, your physique is attractive.”

“Oh, I’m so pleased!” she exclaimed. “I’m sure it will be very nice, the little time it lasts.”

“These affiliations are of limited duration?”

“With me they are. You see, I like smart men, and I can attract them at first, but they always leave me for smarter women.”

“I apologize in advance for doing that.”

She started to laugh, but changed her mind, remembering that he wasn’t much for humor. “Well, let’s make it count.” She leaned over to kiss him.

“Secure belts for landing.” It was the shuttle announcer system, giving warning of higher acceleration. The vessel had been accelerating at just under one gee throughout, backward, its jets toward the planet. In this manner it had reduced the momentum it had started with at the ship. But now it had to make planetfall, and that would require more than one gee.

“Never fails,” Alyc said. “Just when things get interesting.” She kissed him quickly and settled back into her seat, fishing for her harness.

Lysander heeded the directive, and snapped his own seat harness about his humanoid body, glancing around as he did so. The other passengers were all humanoid, most of them seeming to be fully human beings, some seeming to be robots. This was hardly surprising, since Proton was a human colony; few creatures of planets other than Earth found it compatible. Gravity, atmosphere, diurnal cycle, light intensity, and temperature range closely matched those of the colonizing planet.

“Is it all right if I watch the approach?” he asked. “I am of course interested in what you propose, but you will remain, while the vision of the landing will be fleeting.”

“Of course it’s all right,” she said, after a slight hesitation. “I’ll just hold your hand, meanwhile.”

Lysander peered out of the old-fashioned porthole. They were approaching the planet obliquely, and he had an excellent view of it. He was indeed fascinated by it.

The odd thing about Planet Proton was that its South Pole pointed directly toward its sun, always. Most planets in most systems rotated in the planes of their ecliptics, so that their equators were warmest and their poles coldest. Some were skew, so that their poles were alternately heated as they proceeded through their years. But Proton acted as if it were on a fixed axle extending from the star, in seeming defiance of the laws of physics.

The acceleration increased. Gee rose to about 1.5. His right hand felt odd. He tore his eyes away from the porthole and looked at it.

Alyc was holding his arm to her bosom and kissing his hand. It was warmth of her breath on his fingers that had distracted him. Relieved that it was nothing serious—sometimes this body reacted in odd ways to stress, and 1.5 gee was a type of stress—he returned his gaze to the porthole.

What Lysander found hard to figure was how the planet maintained a regular day-night cycle. With the sunlight coming always toward the South Pole, there should be no changes; the southern hemisphere should always be day, the northern hemisphere night. Yet that was not the case. The planet acted as if the light were turned at right angles, and it cast its night shadow to the side. The manual indicated that scientists had never been able to agree exactly how this was possible, but it was so. The prevailing theory of the moment was that the planet acted with respect to light like a black hole, bending the light ninety degrees without affecting anything else. This left formidable questions unanswered, but was the best that was offered. Apparently no competent local study had been undertaken to resolve the mystery.

Then the shuttle changed orientation. The planet seemed to swing back and out of sight. They were coming down to the surface. There was nothing of interest to be seen now.

Alyc still had his hand. She was licking it. Lysander tried to remember whether this was normal procedure, but found no applicable facet. He had to assume that it was within tolerance for the species.

Alyc saw him looking. “I’m sorry,” she said. “High-gee makes me nervous.” She removed her mouth, but did not let go of his hand.

A stress reaction. He filed the information in a facet. Others might have different mechanisms of coping. Still, it was possible that it was not the mere availability of more intelligent companions that caused males to leave this woman.

The gee increased. Then there was a bump, and the gee reverted to one. They were down.

Alyc relaxed. She released Lysander’s hand. “I feel so much safer on solid land,” she said. “Low-gee or high-gee just—“ She shrugged. Then she touched the center of the bra, and it separated and fell away. “We might as well wait for the others to clear,” she said, nodding her head at the people now stepping into the aisle.

Lysander noted that a number of the others had done as Alyc had, and were now naked. They carried their clothing bundled under their arms. They seemed to have no luggage.