50 in 50

"To Kiiskinen.” Gulyas said. He had read the records and knew about the tragedy that was still fresh in Hautamaki's thoughts.

"Thank you. To Kiiskinen." They drank.

"I wish we could have met him.” Tjond said, a tendril of feminine curiosity tickling at her.

"A fine man.” Hautamaki said, seeming anxious to talk now that the subject had been broached for the first time since the accident. "One of the very finest. We were twelve years on this ship."

"Did you have. . children?" Tjond asked.

"Your curiosity is not fitting," Gulyas snapped at his wife. "I think it would be better if we dropped—"

Hautamaki held up his hand. "Please. I understand your natural interest. We Men have settled only a dozen or so planets, and I imagine our customs are curious to you, — we are only in a minority as yet. But if there is any embarrassment it is all your own. Are you embarrassed about being bisexual? Would you kiss your wife in public?"

"A pleasure," Gulyas said, and did.

"Then you understand what I mean. We feel the same way and at times act the same way, though our society is monosexual. It was a natural result of ectogenesis."

"Not natural," Tjond said, a touch of color in her cheeks. "Ectogenesis needs a fertile ovum. Ova come from females; an ectogenetic society should logically be a female society. An all-male one is unnatural."

"Everything we do is unnatural," Hautamaki told her without apparent anger. "Man is an environment-changing animal. Every person living away from Earth is living in an 'unnatural' environment. Ectogenesis on these terms is no more unnatural than living, as we are now, in a metal hull in an unreal manifestation of space-time. That this ectogenesis should combine the germ plasm from two male cells rather than from an egg and a sperm is of no more relevancy than your vestigial breasts."

"You are being insulting," she said, blushing.

"Not in the least. They have lost their function, therefore they are degenerative. You bisexuals are just as natural — or unnatural — as we Men. Neither is viable without the 'unnatural' environment that we have created."

The excitement of their recent discovery still possessed them, and perhaps the stimulants and the anger had lowered Tjond's control. "Why — how dare you call me unnatural — you—"

"You forget yourself, woman!" Hautamaki boomed, drowning out the word, leaping to his feet. "You expected to pry into the intimate details of my life and are insulted when I mention some of your own taboos. The Men are better off without your kind!" He drew a deep, shuddering breath, turned on his heel and left the room.

Tjond stayed in their quarters for almost a standard week after that evening. She worked on her analysis of the alien characters and Gulyas brought her meals. Hautamaki did not mention the events, and cut Gulyas off when he tried to apologize for his wife. But he made no protest when she appeared again in the control section, though he reverted to his earlier custom of speaking only to Gulyas, never addressing her directly.

"Did he actually want me to come too?" Tjond asked, closing her tweezers on a single tiny hair that marred the ivory sweep of her smooth forehead and skull. She pulled it out and touched her brow. "Have you noticed that he really has eyebrows? Right here, great shabby things like an atavism. Even hair around the base of his skull. Disgusting. I'll bet you that the Men sort their genes for hirsuteness, it couldn't be accident. You never answered — did he ask for me to be there?"

"You never gave me a chance to answer," Gulyas told her, a smile softening his words.

"He didn't ask for you by name. That would be expecting too much. But he did say that there would be a full crew meeting at nineteen hours."

She put a touch of pink makeup on the lobes of her ears and the bottoms of her nostrils, then snapped her cosmetic case shut. "I'm ready whenever you are. Shall we go see what the shipmaster wants?"

"In twenty hours we'll be breaking out of jump-space," Hautamaki told them when they had met in the control section. "There is a very good chance that we will encounter the people — the aliens — who constructed the beacon. Until we discover differently we will assume that they are peacefully inclined. Yes, Gulyas?"

"Shipmaster, there has been a good deal of controversy on the intentions of any hypothetical race that might be encountered. There has been no real agreement…"