Ethan of Athos

Plot summary

Dr. Ethan Urquhart, the head biologist at the Sevarin District Reproduction Centre on Athos, is alarmed when his off-world shipment of ovarian tissue cultures arrives as a useless jumble of dead cells and animal matter. Athos is a colony populated entirely by men, and its population depends on uterine replicators to have children, but the original cultures brought by the first settlers are wearing out after centuries of use. The Population Council sends a very unwilling Ethan to Jackson's Whole, where the shipment came from, to find new cultures and, if he can, get his money back from House Bharaputra, one of the criminal organizations that runs that planet. The job is even harder because it forces him to interact with women, whom Athosians are raised to consider demonic and frightening.

At Kline Station, Ethan meets his first woman, Commander Elli Quinn, a somewhat unconventional intelligence officer in the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet who works for Admiral Naismith. Although she is friendly and tries to help, Ethan remains suspicious. Cetagandan military agents soon kidnap and interrogate him, looking for a fugitive named Terrence Cee and some missing tissue cultures of their own. They do not believe Ethan is innocent. Elli saves him from being killed, and the two become uneasy partners. She reveals that House Bharaputra hired her to follow the Cetagandans and find out why they care about the cultures and a secret Cetagandan research effort.

Terrence Cee then approaches Ethan and asks for sanctuary. He explains that he is the only survivor of a Cetagandan project that tried to create telepaths. His telepathy works reliably but only over short distances and only for a brief time after he consumes a large amount of the amino acid tyramine. His female partner, Janine, died during their escape, but he kept her body and paid House Bharaputra to mix her genes into the ovarian cultures meant for Athos. Terrence had planned to go to Athos himself with those cultures, but he got held up on his way to Kline Station, and now he is horrified to learn the cultures have been stolen.