Worlds Apart by J. T. McIntosh

when we like. Finding a lake like this puts us in a good bargaining position."
    "Is it dangerous?" asked Toni, awed, looking at the gleaming water below.
    "Only if you fall in it. Come, let's go down."
    They moved slowly down the hill. Pertwee would never waste energy doing a thing in five minutes less time. Toni would; several times she scampered on ahead and then changed her mind, waiting for Pertwee again. Pertwee tried to picture the reaction to this lake of fifty of the young Mundans together. He failed; it would be completely new in their experience, and they might be wildly excited or find it only mildly interesting.
    They reached the waterside. Pertwee saw the bed of the lake was shingle, shelving gradually.
    "Let's stop here a day or two," he said, "and I'll teach you to swim."
    "SWim? What's that?"
    Pertwee only had to throw off his knapsack and kick off his shoes. "This," he said.
    3
    Never having had any opportunity to acquire fear of water, Toni swam after a fashion almost at once. Pertwee found it impossible to keep her in shallow water. She could see that swimming in deep water was no more difficult than in the shallo -- in fact, it was better in that it cut out the risk of stubbed toes and scraped knees. Every time he headed her back she would laugh and strike out with a crude dog paddle for the deep water again.
    He almost had to drag her from the water in the end, for she showed no sign of ever leaving. It was cool, but not cold enough to drive anyone of Toni's vitality from it. She protested when he made her take off her wet ket and wrapped her in a blanket.
    "This is Mundis, not your old frozen Earth," she told him, laughing.
    Pertwee had wrapped himself in a blanket too. They didn't have to worry about drying them afterwards; cloth was never damp for long in a climate like that.
    "If you could only see yourself . . . " Tony gurgled.
    "Well, I can't," said Pertwee phlegmatically. "I can only see you, and you look much better than in that cut-to-ribbons outfit of yours."
    "Do I?" asked Toni, surprised. "How's that?"
    The blanket was draped over one shoulder and fastened at the waist by a belt. It fell gracefully in soft folds, giving Toni a look of cool grace and repose she had never had in her life before.
    "Back on Earth," said Pertwee, "that was standard dress for women, all through the centuries. There were variations, certainly. But at almost anytime in history women wore something like that."
    "This?" asked Toni, holding up the skirt in distaste. It didn't seem right to her to have her legs wrapped up, as if to keep her from moving easily and quickly.
    "Yes. The space flight killed it. When we started, Mary and Jessie and Marjory were younger than you. They'd always worn skirts, except for running, swimming, and playing games. But skirts weren't exactly made for free fall."
    Toni grinned. "I guess not."
    "It was treated as a joke at first. We whistled whenever a girl's skirt went floating up to her shoulders. But it can be a nuisance when the hem of your skirt gets in your mouth or in front of your eyes. So the skirts became slacks or trunks or shorts."
    "Quite right, too," said Toni, who still didn't see anything attractive in the lines of a skirt. "I notice no one ever brought them back, once there was gravity again."
    "No, the habit of sixteen years was too strong. 0h, one or two of the women wore them again for a while in the early days of New Paris. But never enough of them -- the girls who did felt conspicuous. Personally, I'm rather sorry. I still think a pretty girl is prettier in a plain frock or a neat blouse and skirt than in any of these space-designs."
    "They're not space-designs. They're right for Mundis."
    Pertwee laughed. "Never argue on questions of history with a man who helped to make it, Toni," he said. "For this is history, after all. Do you really think blinkers are reasonable garments to wear in a planet's gravitational field? Curved flaps held up by starch and what must be will