Monica Drake Lane agreed, for morality, which is essentially organized taboo that changes as society changes, had, in the 26th Century, been confined exclusively to eating. Scientist Norcross had often amused himself by imagining how people of other ages would have been outraged by the moral standards of his own era, but his famous sense of humor was not rugged enough to be amused by the moral standards of the past. Not, at any rate, if he had had to endure them, though he found them sufficiently comic as history. She built a bower, an attractive courtship custom that had been adopted from the birds, and the day ended much more pleasantly than Scientist Norcross had expected at lunch. * * * * * The reports came in from Prime Center. Drumstetter stayed in Los Angeles two days, in San Francisco three, and then consulted with Dowson in Honolulu. He skipped to New Zealand, back north to Japan, and swung across Siberia with short stops at various laboratories and universities. He was in Finland for three days with old Scientist Theophil Gertsley, who, though little better than a witch doctor, called himself a psychologist. 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?"