After waking up from cryogenic sleep, Ray felt still unimportant - his body obeyed poorly, and his head was spinning slightly. Interstellar ships with NEDs — Ne-Einstein engines — could travel faster than the speed of light, but at the same time, the subjective time “inside” the ship went much faster than “outside”. Therefore, during the flight, the crew and passengers had to be in cryogenic sleep, and after each flight the ships were to be serviced, for repair and replacement of worn out nodes. In addition, now the ship on which Ray was flying, performed a docking maneuver with the space station, and the gravity created by the engines, then disappeared, then appeared again. Ray was not nauseated just because his stomach was completely empty - he had to go on an empty stomach into cryogenic sleep in order to avoid unpleasant consequences.

Despite feeling unwell, Ray still reached the overview gallery to look at the star system where he had just arrived. Through the polarizing shutter, which darkened the bright light, one of the stars of the Porrima system looked out of the gallery window - Ray knew that Porrima or Gamma Deva is a double star, and each of its constituent stars is brighter than its native Sun. The only habitable planet in the Gamma Deva system was the satellite of the gas giant, which its inhabitants called Milela. Now, through a large glass window, Ray could see one of the stars of Gamma Deva, and the gas giant Osiris, which almost filled the whole sky, and Milela, who looked so much like his native Earth, and the Virginia orbital station, which the ship was now approaching.

Finally, the interstellar ship docked at the station, and via intercom they conveyed a message to the passengers to go with their belongings to the docking compartments for customs control. Here the newcomers were in for a surprise: in the docking compartment they were met by a black middle-aged man who looked like an Alchibian, as Ray had imagined them - he was not even sure whether this was a man or a woman. And he was not in decompression overalls, which are usually worn by inhabitants of space colonies, but in a military-style armored suit itself - Ray could not even remember when he last saw a man in such an armor suit, except in Golokino. The passengers stopped, no less than Ray, surprised by the sight of a military man meeting them, and he spoke in a loud voice:

- Welcome to the Porrima system, dear passengers! My name is Captain Raibo, and to prevent some possible ... excesses, I have to make a small announcement. Many of you have probably arrived here, attracted by rumors that Porrima has many beautiful women, and you can find a bride or wife among the Parrimanians. So: forget about it right now. Do not expect that local residents will hang on your neck simply because you are a man, and most likely, they simply will not understand you when you try to drive to them. It would be best to send back right now to those of you who flew here to take care of local residents, but this, ”the captain chuckled,“ is too expensive. ” Therefore, the administration of the station "Virginia" asks you to carry out the work for which you flew here, and not to provoke conflicts between earthlings and Perrimanians. I wish you fruitful work!

A quiet rumble of discontent and disappointment rolled through the crowd of passengers - it seemed to be, Ray said to himself that there were actually quite a few who flew to Porrim just for what the captain was talking about.The young man already knew that the proportion of men and women in people with Milela was approximately one man to twenty women or even less. Ray just grinned - he actually flew to Porrim to work, and not to care for the ririmanes ... but he took note of the captain's warning.

While Ray, having successfully passed through customs control, was trying to orient himself at a new place and was trying to understand where he needed to go, he looked at the station residents. There were ordinary men and women, and an androgynous-looking people — probably Alchibians — and sometimes tall, broad-shouldered women came across — obviously, they were indigenous Permrimanians. All of them were with dark skin, sunburnt under the two bright suns of Porrima - however, after a few months, gene therapy had to begin to act, and Ray's own skin also had to darken, adapting to the bright light of the double star. And several times, Ray noticed the military in his armor suits - it seemed as if there were more military here than in any other place where Ray had been before. Bright lighting was still unusual: the eyes of Porrima natives were accustomed to the bright light of their double sun and were poorly seen in the dark, and Ray had bright electric light in the internal compartments of Virginia seemed too harsh — but over time, gene therapy should have allowed him to adapt and these conditions.

Ray, a middle-aged man with a stern face, accepted the documents from the hands of a young man and ran through their eyes, mumbling out loud:

- Raymond Archer, well, well, place of birth, tram-pam-pam, Earth, graduated from Lunograd Cosmo-Engineering Academy with a degree in turum-turum, null-gravity engineer ... That, too, flew here to find himself a pretty girl from local? The senior engineer looked up at Ray and grinned wryly.

“No, sir,” the young man replied, not particularly offended. In fact, when a young guy arrives in the star system, where, according to rumors, it is full of young beautiful women, then at first glance they will be suspicious of him. - I just got the distribution to work here. Probably, all the worst female workers were scattered around other places, and they sent me here, ”he tried to joke (the engineer in reply grinned again). - And what, because of the guys who are trying to care for the Parisians, there are problems? - asked Ray interested in his question.

“Well, how to say ...” the senior engineer grumbled in response. “Porrimanians — they have very few men, they don’t even know how to handle them.” Well, yes, it happens that because of some womanizer you have to call a patrol ...

“So there are so many military men, huh?” - asked Ray the second question that interested him.

“Ah, it's really different here,” the engineer waved his hand. “Just there and then there are less than a hundred light years before Denebola, suddenly the local residents decide to come back for a visit,” Ray nodded: he knew that if there are a couple dozen women for Porrima, then Denebol or Beta Lev is the opposite - several dozen men for one woman. - The administration of the colony thinks that deneboltsy with porn women will either fight, or they will not understand each other and ... will also fight.

- What, really ... the chances of this are so great? - the young man was surprised.

- Well, who knows, but the administration decided to play it safe. You understand: if you call for help after the men and women pereuhrutsya, then when she gets to here, it will be too late. Yes, and the Parrimanians are not as technically developed as other races: they simply crush them without our help ... Well, okay, - the engineer carefully looked at the guy. - Let's check what you were taught in KIAL ... How did you manage to recover after the flight?

Ray was given a working spacesuit, tools, safety cable, senior partner and sent to the outer shell of the station - to perform a test task (the young man managed to recover from cryogenic sleep and eat after arriving at the station, so he did not have to work on an empty stomach).His job as a null-gravitational engineer was to repair and maintain the outer skins of space stations and ships in the conditions of space vacuum and weightlessness. For an untrained person, such work would be deadly: the Virginia rotated around its axis, creating artificial gravity on board, and centrifugal force could throw a careless engineer into space. Therefore, the engineer ...