a great
believer in the future of this town."

At the time I didn't understand what that had to do with her lack of
huddling.

The guest house was small, but very comfortable, a place of three
bedrooms and two baths and a square living room with a natural stone
fireplace.

I had my first night of sleep on this planet, and slept very well. I
woke to a cloudy morning, and the sound of someone knocking on the front
door.

It was a servant, and she said, "Miss Decker sent me to inform you that
breakfast will be ready any time you want it, sir. We are eating inside,
this morning, because of the cold."

"I'll be there, soon, thank you," I said, and she went away.

Showering, I was thinking of Akers for some reason and his directed
theory and what was that other theory he'd had? Oh, yes, the twin
planets. Senile, he was, by that time and not much listened to, but a
mind like that? And who had he been associated with at that time? It was
before my birth, but I'd read about it, long ago. The Visitor, Akers had
called this man. The Earth man who had come to Venus. And what had his
name been?

Beer--? Beers--? No, but like that--and it came.

Ambrose Bierce.

Jean wore a light green robe, for breakfast, and it was difficult for me
to take my eyes away from her.

"I'm not usually this informal at mixed breakfasts," she told me,
smiling, "but I thought it might warm up enough for a swim a little
later."

She threw the robe aside, and I saw she was wearing a scanty garment
beneath it. Evidently the huddlers didn't swim naked, and I wondered at
a moral code that sanctioned drinking alcohol but was ashamed of the
human body.

I was glad the house had been cold when I answered the maid's summons,
for I had worn a robe I'd found there.

Fruit juice and wheat cakes and sausage and toast and jelly and eggs and
milk. We ate in a small room, off a larger dining room, a small room
whose walls were glass on two sides.

"It's too old a house to modernize completely," Jean told me. "I grew up
in this house."

"You don't--work, Jean?"

"No. Should I?"

"Work or study. Life must be very dull if you don't do one of those."

"You might have a point there," she said. "I tried everything from the
movies to sculpture. I wasn't very good at anything. What do you do,
Fred?"

"I'm a perpetual guest," I said lightly. "Do you read much, Jean?"

"Too much, though nothing very heavy, I grant you."

"Have you ever read about a ma