When John Davis Drumstetter set his skip down beside the live oak tree, Scientist Norcross and Monica Drake Lane were waiting for him. He was gaunt from hunger and weary from travel, but the expression in his eyes was not one to be assuaged by any food cubicle. Nor was it love he had been seeking and not found, for Prime Center had seen to it that opportunities were offered, from austere tropical girls to the warmth-seeking women of the north, who would even eat with a member of the opposite sex.
He greeted Scientist Norcross and his fiancee with an offhandedness that Norcross had not expected, and asked that he be excused from any long immediate association with them, due to the press of uncompleted work.
"But, Johnny," said Monica Drake Lane, "I've made a bower close by, and you seem very tired."
"There's work to be done," said the young man firmly. "I have no time to—Wait. I'll see your bower."
As they walked over the lush artificial grass, Scientist Norcross explained that his results from the overdrive relay equations were in the mind machine even now, but John Davis Drumstetter only patted him on the shoulder in a friendly way and told him not to bother.
When they reached the bower, Scientist Norcross expected that Drumstetter would sleep there after all, for it was an exceptionally pleasant design. The force field was night, and the sky was filled with adapted creatures from Mars dancing to their susurrate music, and the air was permeated with the bitter-sweet and exciting scent of a Venusian lake, the very odor of romance. In the background was the song of the sea.
John Davis Drumstetter stepped out of the bower and said gently, "It's one of the nicest I've ever seen, and we spent some happy nights in it a year ago, didn't we, Monica?"
He kissed her gently, as he might kiss a child, and walked back to the oak tree.
"He's behaving very oddly," reported Norcross to Prime Center, as soon as he could, and gave the details.
"I'd give a lot to have him meet a human female," said Prime Center wistfully.