human being, with happiness.

Cap Feldman asked me what was up, and I told him, and he said, "Well,
I'll be blessed!"

I said, "Yurt, are you sure you want us to keep hands off ... just go
off and leave you?"

"Yes, please."

Feldman said, "Well, I'll be blessed."

Yurt, who spoke excellent English, said, "Bless you all."

I took him back to where the female waited. From the ridge, I knew, the
entire crew was watching through binocs. I set him down, and he fell to
studying her intently.

"I am not a Zen," I told her, giving my torch full brilliance for the
crew's sake, "but Yurt here is. Do you see ... I mean, do you know what
you look like?"

She said, "I can see enough of my own body to--and--yes ..."

"Yurt," I said, "here's the female we thought we might find. Take over."

Yurt's eyes were fastened on the girl.

"What--do I do now?" she whispered worriedly.

"I'm afraid that's something only a Zen would know," I told her,
smiling inside my helmet. "I'm not a Zen. Yurt is."

She turned to him. "You will tell me?"

"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