"I'm sorry if I startled you," I said. "I didn't mean to stare, but I couldn't very well help myself. I don't quite know how to say it. You're not just an attractive woman. I wouldn't have stared if you were just one woman in ten--or one woman in twenty. I stared because I think you're the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." She flushed scarlet. "I thought you'd never stop staring," she said. "You're angry," I said. "Don't be. Many men must have told you how beautiful you are. I just happen to mean it." "Please," she whispered. "Are Terrans always that abrupt?" "We have a reputation for candor," I said. "If I hadn't told you why you left me speechless you'd have been angry for the wrong reason. You may take that as a compliment." "I'm not sure I want to." "You must know how lovely you are," I protested. "Why should you resent being told the simple truth?" "Perhaps this is one of my bad-tempered days," she said, her eyes searching my face. "You don't look like the kind of man who would deliberately try to embarrass anyone. No man is wise enough to be gallant by design, and make the pretense seem casual and completely honest. You're right, of course. I had no reason to be angry." She came toward me, straightening her hair, her eyes crinkling with undisguised amusement. "I still don't know who you are." "The name's Hargon," I said. "Taro Hargon. I came here to trade with the natives. I get on fairly well with them." Her eyebrows went up. "Natives? I haven't seen any." "You will," I promised her. You can accept almost any reality when it's thrust upon you, even the wonder of a woman of Tragor facing you in a wilderness Eden with a warmth so unmistakable it makes your senses reel. Her name was Kallatah, and she had come to Dracona alone in a faster-than-light cruiser to collect zoological specimens for the natural history museum at Tagga. Just for the record, Dracona's the fourth planet of a second-magnitude sun in the Constellation Cygnus, and it's as far from Tragor City as it is from Earth. Tagga is a suburb of Tragor City--a white and beautiful metropolis in its own right. "It's my first important assignment," she told me. "Naturally I've got to make good at it. You see, there's a new director of biological research on the Guiding Council, and from all reports he's the kind of man who is only impressed by results. When I have my first interview with him he'll forget I'm a woman. I'll have to shine as a scientist who doesn't make mistakes." "You've made one already," I told her. I walked past her, stared into the net. The captive lizard was twisted into a repulsive-looking knot, its verdigris-colored tail thrashing furiously back and forth. Draconian flying lizards are monstrous brutes. They're four feet in length and have a metallic green sheen to them, and when they have reason to hate their jaws can close with a ferocity unparalleled in nature.