By the time Eric got back from the Venus run, with three weeks’ accumulated leave, our new maid had settled down as one of the family. Eric took her in his stride; after all, he’d met much odder creatures on the planets. He grumbled about the expense, of course, but I pointed out that now that so much of the housework was taken off my hands, we’d be able to spend more time together and do some of the visiting that had proved impossible in the past. I looked forward to having a little social life again, now that Dorcas could take care of the children.

For there was plenty of social Me at Port Goddard, even though we were stuck in the middle of the Pacific. (Ever since what happened to Miami, of course, all major launching sites have been a long, long way from civilization.) There was a constant flow of distinguished visitors and travellers from all parts of the Earth—not to mention remoter points.

Every community has its arbiter of fashion and culture, its grande dame who is resented yet copied by all her unsuccessful rivals. At Port Goddard it was Christine Swanson; her husband was Commodore of the Space Service, and she never let us forget it. Whenever a liner touched down, she would invite all the officers on Base to a reception at her stylishly antique nineteenth-century mansion. It was advisable to go, unless you had a very good excuse, even though that meant looking at Christine’s paintings. She fancied herself as an artist, and the walls were hung with multicoloured daubs. Thinking of polite remarks to make about them was one of the major hazards of Christine’s parties; another was her metre-long cigarette holder.

There was a new batch of paintings since Eric had been away: Christine had entered her “square” period. “You see, my dears,” she explained to us, “the old-fashioned oblong pictures are terribly dated—they just don’t go with the Space Age. There’s no such thing as up or down, horizontal or vertical out there, so no really modern picture should have one side longer than another. And ideally, it should look exactly the same whichever way you hang it—I’m working on that right now.”