, where hues of red and yellow and purple
reflected like bold sweeps of watercolor. In a moment he would see
Gistla, and with the color before his eyes and the sweet perfume of the
flowers in his lungs, he felt again the familiar rise of excitement.

George had not always lived on Venus. The Colony was very new. By 2022,
most of the Earth countries had sent colonizers to Mars. But as yet, in
June of that year, Venus had been touched by only the sparsest invasion
of American civilization. George had arrived just three years ago, when
his father had been appointed Secretary of the colonizing unit.

And that was the whole trouble, really. Father was the Secretary, Mother
was the Secretary's wife, Sister was the daughter of the Secretary.
Everybody was wrapped up in it. Except George.

George loved Gistla.

"Why don't you find yourself some nice little American girl?" his father
had said. "Say like Henry Farrel's little daughter?"

Henry Farrel's little daughter was a sweet sickening girl with a nasty
temper and a nasty tongue. Her father was Governor of the Colony. She
told you about it all the time.

"Or," his father had told him, "why not little what's-her-name, Doug
Brentwood's daughter?"

Little what's-her-name's father was the President of the Council. "My
father is President of the Council," she said. Over and over, as though
in a settlement the size of the Colony, there would be anyone who
wouldn't know her father was the President of the Council.

It was all a very tight and careful circle, chosen on Earth with a great
deal of "common sense."

There were the ordinary settlers, of course. They had daughters. Some of
them were very pretty and long-limbed. And George had thought about
that.

Certainly there wasn't a decent-looking girl in the whole Governing
circle, and the sight of a girl with flashing eyes and a nice red mouth,
who was shaped a little like something besides a tree stump, was indeed
an exciting sight.

But there were limitations to the settler girls.

They had no background to speak of, and though that didn't make any
difference, George assured himself, they knew nothing about art, music,
poetry, or anything really worth while. And, too, while George's father
had said, "Now, George, we're all one here. Each of us is as good as
another. Joe Finch, who cares for the flowers outside, is every bit as
good a man as I am"--still George knew, if he told his parents he was
going to marry Joe F