Slade shrugged. "The background, though . . . . All the men on Erlette had died, not a few years before from a sex-linked plague, but thirty-odd years back even then. And they'd been killed by the women."
"Don, none of that's true!" The Mayor gasped. "At least, I mean about the men here on—"
"Can it, honey," Slade said. "I'm not going to hurt you, you hear?" He glared at the woman until she subsided. "It was true ten, twelve years ago when I heard it, and it's true now. Word was, no men were allowed to live on Erlette since that—incident. There was a sperm bank and normal reproduction to keep up the population at a viable level . . . . but male offspring got deep-sixed at birth."
The tanker shrugged again. "That's your business," he said. "I don't interfere. But I didn't much like the notion that the same thing happened to visiting spacers—after they'd contributed to the gene pool directly and through the sperm bank."
"Donald," the Mayor whispered, "that's all the most vicious lies. You and your men aren't in any danger, I swear it."
Slade nodded. "Then there won't be any trouble," he said. "All I want is for all the—all my men—to be sent back to the ship unharmed. And we'll leave. Anybody in the Sperm Bank tonight?"
Delores' face hardened. "Why?"
"Because it's solider than this place," Slade said, "and because I figure it's too important—" The glint in the woman's eyes agreed with his assumption even before he finished stating it. "—for any of your, ah, friends to try and be heroes around it. They might risk you, but if somebody puts a batch of holes through that place, your whole society goes down the tubes. Right?"
"There's no one there," the woman said. Her pause had stretched dangerously long. "You're completely wrong, Mister Slade . . . but I suppose we can humor you if you want no more than you say. I'm sorry that things had to work out this way."
"Oh, lady," said the tanker wearily.