 What most attracts Halden to Meredith?
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a package. Of all his features, only his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long though narrower ribbons. "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 ! "That's because you're unique," said Halden. "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. Emmer just misses being able to breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may extend to Kelburn." 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. "And whereas there are humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate with those they were adjacent to two hundred thousand years ago !" And, of course, if it were a fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our exploration.
 Her long, slender legs and biologically superior appearance
 Her bold and outspoken communication among 'higher-level' species  Her shared desire to be associated with a 'higher-level' species  Her long, slender legs and biologically superior appearance  Her blatant disregard for rules that govern intermixing among species