"It's part of a job I have on hand," said Calhoun. He considered. "How about some music?"
She looked astonished. But he set up an instrument and fed microtape into it and settled back to listen. Then there was music such as she had never heard before. Again it was a device to counteract isolation and monotonous between-planet voyages. To keep it from losing its effectiveness, Calhoun rationed himself on music, as on other things. Calhoun deliberately went for weeks between uses of his recordings, so that music was an event to be looked forward to and cherished.
When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee with tranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers, Maril regarded him with a very peculiar gaze indeed.
"I think I understand now," she said slowly, "why you don't act like other people. Toward me, for example. The way you live gives you what other people have to try to get in crazy ways,—making their work feed their vanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But you can put your whole mind on your work."
He thought it over.
"Med Ship routine is designed to keep one healthy in his mind," he admitted. "It works pretty well. It satisfies all my mental appetites. But naturally there are instincts—"
She waited. He did not finish.
"What do you do about instincts that work and music and such things can't satisfy?"
Calhoun grinned wrily;