the Moon, and viewed the Earth as a huge bright globe against the constellations....

Finally the door slid aside and she appeared, carrying the usual tray of food. She smiled at him, making dimples in her golden skin and revealing a perfect set of teeth, and put the tray on the table.

"I think you are wonderful," she laughed. "You get everything you want, even from Swarts, and I have not been able to get even a little of what I want from him. I want to travel in time, go back to your 20th Century. And I wanted to talk with you, and he would not let me." She laughed again, hands on her rounded hips. "I have never seen him so irritated as he was this noon."

Maitland urged her into the chair and sat down on the edge of the bed. Eagerly he asked, "Why the devil do you want to go to the 20th Century? Believe me, I've been there, and what I've seen of this world looks a lot better."

She shrugged. "Swarts says that I want to go back to the Dark Age of Technology because I have not adapted well to modern culture. Myself, I think I have just a romantic nature. Far times and places look more exciting...."

"How do you mean—" Maitland wrinkled his brow—"adapt to modern culture? Don't tell me you're from another time!"

"Oh, no! But my home is Aresund, a little fishing village at the head of a fiord in what you would call Norway. So far north, we are much behind the times. We live in the old way, from the sea, speak the old tongue."

He looked at her golden features, such a felicitous blend of Oriental and European characteristics, and hesitantly asked, "Maybe I shouldn't.... This is a little personal, but ... you don't look altogether like the Norwegians of my time."

His fear that she would be offended proved to be completely unjustified. She merely laughed and said, "There has been much history since 1950. Five hundred years ago, Europe was overrun by Pan-Orientals. Today you could not find anywhere a 'pure' European or Asiatic." She giggled. "Swarts' ancestors from your time must be cursing in their graves. His family is Afrikander all the way back, but one of his great-grandfathers was pure-blooded Bantu. His full name is Lassisi Swarts."

Maitland wrinkled his brow. "Afrikander?"

"The South Africans." Something strange came into her eyes. It might have been awe, or even hatred; he 

 Prev. P 11/21 next