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another displacement point at which they would instantaneously transit to yet another star.
    The odd though by no means unprecedented doubling back of the displacement lines was a conversational staple for a few days. Then the discovery of another displacement point on the far side of Sirius made it old news. The ships followed a flat hyperbola across the planetless skies and transited to another new sky, this time a properly unfamiliar one.
    They did it two more times. Then they hit the jackpot.

Chapter Two
    Standing in the tropic breeze, looking northward out to sea, and east and west along the curving beach of white sand, Sarnac took a deep breath of salt air and imagined himself home.
    Granted, the swaying trees behind the beach were not palms, nor even related to them. Any resemblance was merely the superficial one of life forms filling similar ecological niches. And the low-tide smell of decaying aquatic animal life was not the same as it would have been had he been standing on Santa Rosa Island, looking south at the Gulf of Mexico. But all such differences paled beside the single tremendous fact that there were animal species to decay, and plant life that had evolved into a multitude of specialized forms. For Danu was one of the few priceless worlds where life had had time to not merely arise but proliferate.
    Soon after emerging from a displacement point of this G3v sun that Shannon had dubbed Lugh, they had become aware that the second planet had free oxygen and, therefore, life. But their jubilation had held a restraint born of experience. Few stars were as old as Sol, and while many stars—perhaps a majority of the main-sequence K, G and late F ones, exclusive of unsuitably close binaries—had worlds with the right conditions for life, most had not yet given birth to it. And of the biospheres that existed, few had developed beyond simple aquatic plants that produced a breathable atmosphere but left the world a bleak place, with continents of naked rock and sand lapped by scummy seas. Such a young planet was a great find, of course, and a prime colonization site. But nothing could match the wonder of a world permeated by life, blossoming with the almost infinite diversity of Earth's own. When this had proved to be such a world, Shannon had again exercised her prerogative and named it after ancient Ireland's goddess of fertility.
    It was time to return to camp, for the slightly too yellow sun was setting behind the western headland. Stars were winking to life near the zenith, the constellation which, remembering Winnie, he'd dubbed Dolphin and the Jolly Mon.
    As he hitched up his satchel of specimens and turned inland, he saw a thin crescent of moon rise swiftly over the sea. Contrary to various Terracentric theories of the early space age, a large natural satellite had not proved to be essential for a planet to bring forth life. But it helped, if only by providing the tidal pools that made ideal nurseries for primordial microorganisms. Maybe that was one reason why Danu's biosphere had had a chance to develop so far—even reaching the rare pinnacle of sentience.
    "I still can't believe it," Frank said, not for the first time. His bluntly handsome face flushed with more than the heat of the campfire. "A toolmaking race! The odds against it . . ."
    "Well," Sarnac drawled, " somebody's got to get lucky. And who more deserving than us? Right, 'Tasha?"
    Natalya nodded seriously. "Let's not get too carried away," she added. "Remember, the most advanced Danuan cultures we've observed from orbit are only high-grade Neolithic. Making contact with those cultures will be a full-time job for the specialists, armed with our data."
    "Oh, I know," Frank waved the point aside. "That's why we're on this island—so any cultural shock waves we cause will be limited to the local Mesolithic food-gatherers. Still . . . !"
    Not even Natalya argued with him. They sat in silence for a moment on the analogue of grass that covered