Across it strides another cycle, irregular, millennial, and vast—that of the glaciers. Given its overall chilliness, its extensive cloud decks, and its reluctance to let water evaporate, Ramnu is always close to the brink of an ice age, or else over it. No more is necessary than the upthrust of a new highland in a high latitude. Accompanied as it is by massive vulcanism, which fills the upper atmosphere with dust that will be decades in settling, this makes snow fall; and given the pressure gradient, the snow line is low. The ice spreads outward and outward, sometimes through a single hemisphere, sometimes through both. Nothing stops it but the subtropical belts. Nothing makes it retreat but the sinking of the upland that formed it.
For the past billion years or more, Ramnu had alternated between glacial and interglacial periods. The former usually prevailed longer. Humans arrived when the ice was again on the march. Now it was advancing at terrible speed, kilometers each year. Whole ecologies withered before it. Native cultures fled or crumbled—as how many times before in unrecorded ages?
Banner sought help for them. A starfaring civilization could readily provide that. Intensive studies would be needed at first, of course, followed by research and development, but the answer was simple in principle. Orbit giant solar mirrors in the right sizes and numbers and paths, equipped with sensors, computers, and regulators so that they would continuously adjust their orientations to the optimum for a given set of conditions. Have them send down the right amounts of extra warmth to properly chosen regions. That was all. The glaciers would crawl back to the poles where they belonged, and never return.
Banner sought help. The Grand Duke of Hermes placed himself squarely in her way. Flandry could guess why.
Hooligan contained a miniature gymnasium. Her captain and passenger took to using it daily after work, together. Then they would return to their cabins, wash, dress well, and meet for cocktails before dinner.
In a certain watch, about mid-passage, they were playing handball. The sphere sprang between them, caromed off bulkheads, whizzed through space, smacked against palms, flew opponentward followed and met by laughter. Bare feet knew the springiness of deck covering, the jubilation of upward flight. Sweat ran down skin and across lips with arousing sting of salt. Lungs drew deep, hearts drummed, blood coursed.
She was ahead by a few points, but it hadn’t been easy and she was not a bit sure it would last. Seventeen years made amazingly little difference. He was nearly as fast and enduring as a youth.
And nearly as slim and supple, she saw. Above and below his shorts, under smooth brown skin, muscles went surging, not heavy but long, lively, greyhound and race horse muscles. Wetness made him gleam. He grinned at her, flash after white flash in those features that time had not blurred, simply whetted. She realized he was enjoying the sight of her in turn, more than he was the game. The knowledge tingled.
He took the ball, whirled on his heel, and sped it aside. Before it had rebounded, he was running to intercept. She was too. They collided. In a ridiculous tangle of limbs, they fell.
He raised himself to his knees. “Banner, are you all right?” As she regained her breath, she heard anxiety in his tone. Looking up, she saw it in his face.
“Yes,” she mumbled. “Just had the wind knocked out of me.”
“Are you sure? I’m bloody sorry. Both my left feet must’ve been screwed on backwards this morning.”
“Oh, not your fault, Dominic. Not any more than mine. I’m all right, really I am. Are you?” She sat up.
It brought them again in close contact, thighs, arms, a breast touching him. She felt his warmth and sweat through the halter. The clean man-smell enfolded her, entered her. Their lips were centimeters apart. I’d better rise, fast, she thought in a distant realm, but couldn’t. Their eyes were holding too hard. As if of themselves, hers closed partway, while her mouth barely opened.
The kiss lasted for minutes of sweetness and lightning.
When he reached below the halter, alarm shrilled her awake. She disengaged her face and pushed at his chest. “No, Dominic,” she heard herself say. It wavered. “No, please.”
If he insists, she knew, I won’t. And she did not know what she felt, or was supposed to feel, when he immediately let go.
He sprang to his feet and offered his assistance. They stood for a moment and looked. Finally he smiled in his wry fashion.
“I won’t say I’m sorry, because I don’t want to lie to you,” he told her. “It was delightful. But I do beg your pardon.”
She managed a shaken laugh. “I’m not sorry either, and no pardon is called for. We both did that.”
“Then—” He half reached for her, before his arm dropped. “Have no fears,” he said gently. “I can mind my manners. I’ve done it in the past … yes, right here.”
How many women has he traveled with? How few have denied him?
If only I can make him understand. If only I do myself.
She knotted her fists, swallowed twice, and forced out: “Dominic, listen. You’re a damned attractive man, and I’m no timid virgin. But I, I’m not wanton either.”
“No,” he said, with utmost gravity, “the daughter of Max and Marta wouldn’t be. I forgot myself. It won’t happen again.”
“I told you, I forgot too!” she cried. “Or—well, I w-wish we knew each other better.”
“I hope we will. As friends, whether or not you ever feel like more than that. Shake on it?”
Tears blurred the sight of him as they clasped hands. She blinked them off her lashes, vexedly. Too fast for her to stop it, her voice blurted, “Oh, hell, if I had a normal sex drive we’d be down on the deck yet!”
He cocked his head. “You mean you don’t? I decline to believe that.” In haste: “Not that it’d be any disgrace. Nobody is strong in every department, and no single department is at the core of life. But I think you’re mistaken. The cause is easy to see.”
She stared at her toes. “I’ve not had much to do … there … ever … nor missed it much.”
“Same cause. You’ve been too thoroughly directed toward the nonhuman.” He laid a hand on her shoulders. “That’s not wrong. In many ways, it’s wonderful. But it has given your emotions different expression from what’s customary, and I think that in turn has made you abit confused about them. Not to worry, dear.”
All at once her face was buried against him, and he was holding her around the waist and stroking her hair and murmuring.
Presently she could stand back. “Would you like to talk about it?” he asked. With a disarming chuckle: “I’ll bend a sympathetic ear, but it’ll also be a fascinated one. What is it like, to share the life of an alien … to be an alien?”
“Oh, no, you exaggerate,” she said. Relief billowed through her. Yes, I do want to talk about what matters to me. I can’t just go take a shower as if nothing had happened, I have to let out this fire. He’s shown me I needn’t be afraid to, because the talk needn’t be about us. “It’s basically nothing but a wide-band communication link, you know.”
(The collar that Yewwl wore was a piece of electronic sorcery. A television scanner saw in the same direction as her eyes. An audio pickup heard what she did. Thermocouples, vibrosensors, chemosensors analyzed their surroundings to get at least a clue to what she felt, smelled, tasted. The whole of the result became more than the sum of the parts, after it reached Banner.
(It did that by radio, at the highest frequencies to which Ramnu’s air was transparent. A well-shielded gram of radioisotope sufficed to power a signal that human-made comsats could detect and relay. A specialized computer in Wainwright Station received the signals and converted them back to sensory-like data. The ultimate translation, though, had to be by a human, brain and body alike, intellect, imagination, empathy developed through year after year. Seated beneath the helmet, before the video screen, hands flat on a pair of subtly vibrant plates, Banner could almost—almost—submerge herself in her oath-sister.