THE MULE.… Less is known of “The Mule” than of any character of comparable significance to Galactic history. Even the period of his greatest renown is known to us chiefly through the eyes of his antagonists and, principally, through those of a young bride.…

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

BRIDE AND GROOM

Bayta’s first sight of Haven was entirely the contrary of spectacular. Her husband pointed it out—a dull star lost in the emptiness of the Galaxy’s edge. It was past the last sparse clusters, to where straggling points of light gleamed lonely. And even among these it was poor and inconspicuous.

Toran was quite aware that as the earliest prelude to married life, the Red Dwarf lacked impressiveness and his lips curled self-consciously. “I know, Bay—It isn’t exactly a proper change, is it? I mean from the Foundation to this.”

“A horrible change, Toran. I should never have married you.”

And when his face looked momentarily hurt, before he caught himself, she said with her special “cozy” tone, “All right, silly. Now let your lower lip droop and give me that special dying-duck look—the one just before you’re supposed to bury your head on my shoulder, while I stroke your hair full of static electricity. You were fishing for some drivel, weren’t you? You were expecting me to say ‘I’d be happy anywhere with you, Toran!’ or ‘The interstellar depths themselves would be home, my sweet, were you but with me!’ Now you admit it.”

She pointed a finger at him and snatched it away an instant before his teeth closed upon it.

He said, “If I surrender, and admit you’re right, will you prepare dinner?”

She nodded contentedly. He smiled, and just looked at her.

She wasn’t beautiful on the grand scale to others—he admitted that—even if everybody did look twice. Her hair was dark and glossy, though straight, her mouth a bit wide—but her meticulous, close-textured eyebrows separated a white, unlined forehead from the warmest mahogany eyes ever filled with smiles.

And behind a very sturdily built and staunchly defended facade of practical, unromantic hard-headedness towards life, there was just that little pool of softness that would never show if you poked for it, but could be reached if you knew just how—and never let on that you were looking for it.

Toran adjusted the controls unnecessarily and decided to relax. He was one interstellar jump, and then several millimicroparsecs “on the straight” before manipulation by hand was necessary. He leaned over backwards to look into the storeroom, where Bayta was juggling appropriate containers.

There was quite a bit of smugness about his attitude towards Bayta—the satisfied awe that marks the triumph of someone who has been hovering at the edge of an inferiority complex for three years.

After all he was a provincial—and not merely a provincial, but the son of a renegade Trader. And she was of the Foundation itself—and not merely that, but she could trace her ancestry back to Mallow.

And with all that, a tiny