"This is my first trip to Earth," she said. "How about you?"

"The same." Dallen was intrigued to find that, for one unsettling instant, he had been tempted to pose as a veteran space traveller. "This is all new to me."

"I noticed you coming on board."

Dallen weighed all the connotations of the remark, including her awareness of the fact that he was travelling alone. "You're very observant."

"Not really." The woman locked her gaze with his. "I only see what I like."

"In that case," Dallen said gently, "you're a very lucky person."

He turned away and left the gallery, easily putting the woman out of his thoughts. He was still angry with Cona, still feeling betrayed over their not making the trip as a family, but rebounding to another woman would have been a cheap and ordinary response, the sort of thing that many men would have done, but not Carry Dallen. His best plan, he decided, would be to make maximum use of the ship's gymnasium facilities, burn off his frustrations in sheer physical effort.

All the other passengers appeared to be tourists — couples, family units, dubs, study groups taking advantage of the heavy Metagov subsidy to visit the birthplace of their culture — and Dallen felt himself to be a conspicuously solitary figure as he wound his way through them to fetch his training clothes. The gymnasium was empty when he got there and he went to work immediately, pitting his strength against the resistance frames, repeating the same exercise hundreds of times, aiming for a state of mental and bodily exhaustion which would guarantee his night's sleep.