 Of the four main crew members, who are focused on the most in the story?
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. Of all his features, only his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long though narrower ribbons. "It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. "There are at least a hundred kinds of humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the ages before space travel— and yet each planetary race can interbreed with a minimum of ten others ! "Outside of your own world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human development. And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's a corresponding span of fertility. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was actually a manlike creature there. "But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. "Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are involved, and only the human race." Man was the most numerous though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were others—and humans were more than a little feared. Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be very useful.
 Halden and Meredith
 Kelburn and Halden  Meredith and Emmer  Halden and Meredith  Kelburn and Meredith