you. If we find her, later, I shan't stand in the way."

He chewed his lips. "That's all over, now. The first thing we must do is to check up on the food, water, and sanitation system. Just how long the machines will run without human supervision is questionable—not long, at any rate. The robots cannot do everything alone, either."

Her eyes were calm and clear, her voice a breath of cool air in the heat of his anguish. "Then let's do it the same way, Eric. Nothing is going to happen for awhile. Let's tackle the problem after we're refreshed." She moved to free herself from him; he had, automatically, slipped his arm around her waist, drawn her to him. "You—you can use the lab for your quarters. Good night, Eric."

He held her back. "Natalla."

"Let me go," she murmured.

"Natalla, wait. I didn't tell you all I saw. It was more than—the cloud." He fell silent, breathing rapidly.

"Well?" she said.

"I was reading some of the old books yesterday. Some of them centuries old. The people then, most of them, didn't live as well as we do but they were very much like us in some other ways.

"They—well, sometimes a man would think he had fallen out of harmony with his mate. In this book, the man thought he'd found another woman more suitable to his psyche. He was about to obtain a release—divorce I think they used to call it—when she was injured in an accident. His mate, I mean. The medical experts did not think she could live.

"He realized then, when it seemed to be too late, that there could never be any other mate for him. They didn't have psychoadjusters in those days, so, if she died, he would be affected for many years. The only way emotional upsets could wear off was through the primitive process of letting time wear them down, little by little. It all ended well, however, because medical experts discovered that it was only her psyche that made the injury seem fatal; when she found that he still wanted her to be his mate, she recovered."

"Eric, what are you trying to tell me?"

"That I don't want to be released from you ever. Even if this had never happened, if what I saw out there was 

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