They had made no attempt to contact or in any way even alert the neighbors that they were around. The nearest creature colony, stranded aliens like them-or the descendants of stranded aliens-was about fifteen kilometers away and they wanted to keep it that way. The things might well be smart, but something that had a giant sucker for a face and clawed appendages clearly designed for ripping and tearing by some violent evolution were not likely to be easy to talk to, and they did not want to become a new taste treat. The alien colony was oriented towards the ocean shore, not inland. For now that was all right with them.

Nagel saw Randi Queson sitting on a rock under a giant fern and thought she looked like a gnome or some other fairy creature from the old children's books. She had average looks and figure, and was putting on a little weight, as they all were with this heavy sugar and starch diet, but she could afford it.

Spacer crews generally took what the doctors called "lust abater" drugs subcutaneously to keep things from getting out of hand in the close quarters of interstellar space, but because people didn't want them to last forever, they tended to wear off after a set period of time, at which point they could be renewed if need be or let go. It was long past the six-month period since those last implants and, as the only man left alive out of the crew, marooned on a planet with three women, he could hardly hide that fact sometimes, but he tried. It wasn't like any of them could have kids; that was abated as a matter of course until undone by a medical science long out of reach somewhere in those vast starfields beyond. Not that any of them wanted kids, particularly on this hellhole, but it was certain that they weren't going to be like the holy commune over on Balshazzar. There would be no human colony on Melchior.