"Fascinating . . . "

The sun was setting in the western sky, the bright orange orb
slipping behind Fuji-san. Sitting in the dining room of the rotunda
at Welcome House, Kaeru finished tapping information into his personal
data-computer. An opaque, three-dimensional image of an expanded
rotunda floated a foot in the air over the data-computer. As the
image shifted to project the subsystems needed to keep this habitation
liveable for his siblings, the engineer nodded. "Sufficient given the
technological levels this planet possesses."

Landing his cloaked ship on the back lawn, straddling the large
swimming pool, Kaeru had spent the last two local sub-day temporal
units called "hours" exploring his siblings' habitation to better
understand what sort of sentient beings they were. That had resulted
in the collecting of quite baffling data, especially from their life-
journals; "diaries" as they were called here. Still, the overall
picture forged from that collected data informed the Nagussan that his
relatives were decent sentient beings, worthy of close emotional
association. Certainly not of the sexual nature, Kaeru noted after
reading his twin's diary. That was seen as improper here on Earth.

During his explorations, Kaeru noted that his siblings' habitation
was in the midst of structural modifications meant to create an
increase in terms of overall living space. Rooms belonging to Ataru...