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Updated: May 22, 2025
"We bring you in on emergency and you fork over a thousand buck fine." Mryna asked to be allowed to speak to someone in authority in the government. The Chicago port manager told her the request was absurd. For nine minutes Mryna argued, with a mounting sense of urgency, before he gave his grudging consent. Her trouble was that she had to skate close to the truth without admitting it directly.
A speaker under the viewport throbbed with the sound of a human voice. "Auto-shuttle SC 539, attention. You are assigned landing slot seven-three-one, Port Chicago. I repeat, seven-three-one. Dial that destination. Do you read me?" Three times the message was repeated before Mryna concluded that it was meant for her.
On the fertile soil of Rythar there were one hundred women and thirty men. All the boys had taken mates before they reached seventeen. Seventy girls were left unmarried, with no prospect of ever having husbands. A score or more became second wives in polygamous homes, but plural marriage had no appeal for Mryna. She was firmly determined to possess a man of her own.
"From Rythar," one of them was saying. "A woman from Rythar!" "And we've blasted the communication center. We've no way of sending the warning back to Earth " They were gone. Mryna moved back into the spoke corridor. She felt her way silently toward the circular hub room and the god-car.
She searched it for clothing, and found nothing. She went through four more dormitory rooms before she came upon anything she could use brief shorts, clearly made for a man, and a loose, white tunic. It wasn't suitable; it wasn't the way she wanted to be dressed when she faced him. But it had to do. Mryna was pawing through a footlocker looking for boots when she heard a hesitant step behind her.
Let the gods come down to Rythar, then, and discover what a real female was like in the lush, green, Rytharian paradise. Mryna went to the desk and glanced at the typed reports. They had been written by a man who signed himself "Commander in Charge, Guardian Wheel," and they were addressed to the Congress of the world government.
Desperately she closed the voice toggle again. "Send them quickly!" she cried. "You must not let me land!" No reply came from the speaker. Her auto-shuttle began to circle a large city which lay at the southern tip of an inland lake. Three minutes more. The ship nosed toward the spaceport. "Why don't you do something?" Mryna screamed. "What are you waiting for?"
When she became hungry, she took food from the cabinet. She slept when she was tired. To pass the time, she turned the reading films through the projector. Most of the film stored in the shuttle covered material Mryna already knew. The Earthmen, clearly, had not denied any information to Rythar. Only one thing had been restricted astronomy.
The god-car was clamped against the hub, from which eight corridors radiated outward like wheel spokes toward the rim. Far below the gigantic wheel Mryna saw the sphere of Rythar, invisible behind its shroud of glowing mist. She moved along the rim corridor, past the mica wall, until she came to a door that stood open. The room beyond was a sleeping compartment and it was empty.
"It isn't right," the woman persisted, "for them not to send a piloted shuttle after you, Dick. It isn't dignified. You're our assistant medical director and " Her words were cut off as the door slid shut behind them. Mryna tried to fit this new information into what she already knew or thought she knew about the Earth-god. It didn't add up to a pretty picture.
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