In the workaday world of Steena, men and women seem to mingle as equals. There is no suggestion that her status as a free spacer is at all unusual for a woman. Indeed, she seems to naturally belong with the tough, hard living space farers, and she seems to be accepted as a matter of course.

The ending of "All Cats Are Gray" has a slight "she found her man" aspect to it, but it is primarily representative of Steena's breaking out of her self-imposed loneliness.

It shows that she has learned to accept herself as she is, symbolized by the colorful baubles that she wears when she is out with her husband and Bat. Before, she retreated into gray places and into the grayness of herself. Her adventure on the Empress of Mars, in which she put her disability to good use, seems to have...