Poul Anderson - The Star Fox

The maid came in with her tray. Heim welcomed her not only for refreshment, but as an excuse to change the subject.

He wasn’t much of a talker on serious matters. A man did what he must; that sufficed.

The girl ducked her head. “ Un voleur s’approche, monsieur,” she reported.

“Good,” Heim said. “That’ll be Endre Vadász and his wife. You’ll like them, Moshe. He was the man who really bailed us out of this mess. Now he’s giving his Magyar genes full rein on a 10,000-hectare ranch in the Bordes Valley—and he’s still one solar flare of a singer.”

“I look forward.” Peretz followed the maid’s departure with an appreciative eye. “Do you know, Gunnar,” he murmured, “I observe a very sound reason for you to stay here. The proportion of pretty girls on New Europe is fabulous, and every one of them seems to idolize you.”

A brief bleakness crossed Heim’s eyes. “I’m afraid the mores here are a little different from Earth’s. Oh, well.” He raised his glass. “ Skål.”

“Shalom.”

Both men got up when the Vadászes entered. “ Bienvenu,” Heim said, shook his friend’s hand with gladness, and kissed Danielle’s. By now he’d learned how to do that with authority.

It was a surprise, he thought as he looked at her, how fast a certain wound was healing. Life isn’t a fairy tale; the knight who kills the dragon doesn’t necessarily get the princess. So what?

Who’d want to live in a cosmos less rich and various than the real one? You commanded yourself as you did a ship—with discipline, reasonableness, and spirit—and thus you came to port. By the time he fulfilled his promise to stand godfather to her firstborn, why, his feelings toward her would be downright avuncular.

No, he realized with a sudden quickening of blood, it wouldn’t even take that long. The war was over. He could send for Lisa. He had little doubt that Jocelyn would come along.