a strong chin - a look, somehow, of hunger and wildness. Everything about him spoke of strong masculinity. She could almost smell it when she met him, and was struck with fascination at once.
Insigna was still a graduate student in astronomy at the time, completing her stint on Earth, looking forward to returning to Rotor so that she could qualify for work on the Far Probe. She dreamed of the wide advances the Far Probe would make possible (and never dreamed that she herself would make the most astonishing one).
And then she met Crile and found herself, to her own confusion, madly in love with an Earthman - an Earthman. Overnight she felt herself abandoning the Far Probe in her mind, becoming ready to remain on Earth just to be with him.
She could still remember the way he had looked at her in astonishment and said, 'Remain here with me? I'd rather come to Rotor with you.' She could not have imagined that he would want to abandon his world for her. How Crile managed to obtain permission to come to Rotor, Insigna did not know and had never found out.
The immigration rules were strict, after all. Once any Settlement had a sizable population, it clamped down on immigration - first, because it could not exceed a certain definite limit on the number of people it could support comfortably, and, second, because it made a desperate effort to keep its ecological balance stable. People who came on important business from Earth - or even from other Settlements - had to undergo tedious decontamination procedures, a certain degree of isolation, and an enforced departure as soon as possible.
Yet here was Crile from Earth. He complained to her once of the weeks of waiting that had been part of the decontamination, and she was secretly pleased at the way he had persisted. Clearly, he must have wanted her very badly to submit to it.
Yet there were times when he seemed withdrawn and inattentive and she would wonder then what had really driven him to Rotor over such obstacles. Perhaps it was not she, but the need to escape Earth that had been the motivating force. Had he committed a crime? Made a murderous enemy? Fled a woman he had grown tired of? She had never dared ask.
And he had never offered information. Even after he had been allowed to enter Rotor, there was a question as to how long he might be able to remain. The Bureau of Immigration would have to grant a special permit to make him a full citizen of Rotor and that was not ordinarily likely.
Insigna had found all the things that made Crile Fisher unacceptable to Rotorians additional inducements for fascination. She found that his being Earth-born lent him a difference and a glamour. True Rotorians would be bound to despise him as an alien - citizen or not - but she found even that a source of erotic excitement. She would fight for him, and triumph, against a hostile world.
When he tried to find some sort of work that would enable him to earn money and occupy a niche in the new society, it was she who pointed out to him that if he married a Rotorian woman - Rotorian for three generations - that would be a powerful inducement for the Bureau of Immigration to grant him full citizenship.
Crile seemed surprised at that, as though it hadn't occurred to him, and then pleased. Insigna had found it a little disappointing. It would be much more flattering to be married for the sake of love than for the sake of citizenship, but then she thought to herself: Well, if that's what it takes-
So, after a typical long Rotorian engagement, they were married.
Life went on without much change. He was not a passionate lover, but he had not been that before the marriage either. He had offered her an absent affection, an occasional warmth that kept her constantly near happiness if not altogether immersed in it. He was never actively cruel and unkind, and he had given up his world for her and gone through considerable inconvenience to be with her. Surely that might be counted in his favor, and Insigna counted it so.
Even as a full citizen, which he had been granted after their marriage, there remained a kernel of dissatisfaction within him. Insigna was aware of this and could not entirely blame him. He might be a full citizen, yet he was still not a