She nodded. "Even after ten days, I find I miss them."
Rationally Rafe knew that it was madness to sit here in the dark. If nothing else, birds or beasts of prey--perhaps the banshee-screamer from the heights they had heard last night--might be abroad in the dark. He said so, finally, and Camilla, like the breaking of a spell, started and said, "You're right. I must wake well before dawn."
Rafe was somehow reluctant to go into the stuffy darkness of the shelter-tent. He said, "In the old days it used to be believed it was dangerous to sleep in the moonlight--that's where the word lunatic came from. Would it be four times as dangerous to sleep under four moons, I wonder?"
"No, but it would be--lunatic," Camilla said, laughing gently. He stopped, took her shoulders in a gentle grip and for a moment the girl, biting back a tart remark, thought in a mixture of fear and anticipation that he would bend down and kiss her; but then he turned away and said, "Who wants to be sane? Good night, Camilla. See you an hour before sunrise," and strode away, leaving her to go before him into the shelter.
A clear night, over the planet of the four moons. Banshees prowled on the heights, freezing their warm blooded prey with their screams, blundering toward them by the heat of their blood, but never coming below the snow-line; on a snowless night, anything on rock or grass was safe. Above the valleys, great birds of prey swung; beasts still unknown to the Earthmen prowled in the depths of the deep forest, living and dying, and trees unheard crashed to the ground. Under the moonlight, in the unaccustomed heat and dryness of a warm wind blowing away from the glaciated ridges, flowers bloomed and opened, and shed their perfume and pollen. Night-blooming
and strange, with a deep and intoxicating scent... .
The red sun rose clear and cloudless, a brilliant sunrise with the sun like a giant ruby in a clear garnet sky. Rafe and Camilla, who had been at the telescope for two hours, sat and watched it with the pleasant fatigue of a light task safely over for some time.
"Shall we start down? This weather is too good to last," Camilla said, "and although I've gotten used to the mountain in the sun, I don't think I'd care to navigate it on ice."
"Right. Pack up the instruments--you know how they go--and I'll fix a bite of rations and strike the tent. We'll start down while the weather holds--not that it doesn't look like a gorgeous day. If it's still fine tonight we can stop on one of the hilltops and camp out, and you can take some more sightings," he said.
Within forty minutes they were going down. Rafe cast a wistful look back at the huge unknown range before turning his back on it. His own undiscovered range, and probably he would never see it again.
Don't be too sure, a voice remarked precisely in his mind, but he shrugged it off. He didn't believe in precognition.
He sniffed the light flower-scents, half enjoying them, half disturbed by their faintly acrid sweetness. The most noticeable were the tiny orange flowers Camilla had plucked the day before, but there was also a lovely white flower, star-shaped with a golden corolla, and a deep blue bell-like blossom with inner stalks covered with a shimmering gold-colored dust. Camilla bent over, inhaling the spicy fragrance. Rafe thought to warn her, after a moment;
"Remember Heather and Judy turning green? Serve you right if you Do!"
She looked up, laughing. Her face looked faintly gold from the flower-dust. "If it was going to hurt me it would have already--the air's full of the scent, or haven't you noticed? Oh, it's so beautiful, so beautiful, I feel like a flower myself, I feel as if I could get drunk on flowers--"
She stood rapt, gazing at the beautiful bell-shaped blossom and seeming to shimmer with the golden dust. Drunk, Rafe thought, drunk on flowers. He let his pack slip from his shoulder and roll away.
"You are a flower," he said hoarsely. He seized her and kissed her; she raised her lips to his, shyly at first, then with growing passion. They clung together in the field of waving flowers; she broke free first, and ran toward the stream which flowed down the slope, laughing, bending to toss her hands in the water.
Rafe thought in astonishment, what has happened to us, but the thought slid lightly over his mind and vanished. Camilla's slight body seemed to flicker, to go in and out of focus. She stripped off her climbing boots and thick socks, dabbling her feet in the water.
Rafe bent over her and pulled her down into the long grass.
In the camp on the lower heights, Heather Stuart woke slowly, feeling the hot sun through the orange silk of the tent. Marco Zabal still drowsed in his corner, his blanket drawn over his head; but as she looked at him he began to stir, and sniffed at her.
"So you sleep too, still?"
"I suppose the others are out in the clearing," Heather said, stirring. "Judy said she wanted to test some of the nuts on the trees for edible carbohydrates--I notice her test kits aren't here. How are you feeling, Marco?"
"Better," he said, stretching. "I think maybe I get up for a minute today. Something in this air and sun, it does me good."
"It's lovely," she agreed. She too was conscious of some extra sense of well-being and euphoria in the scented air. It must be the higher oxygen content.
She stepped into the bright air, stretching like a cat in the sunshine.
A clear picture came into her mind, bright and intrusive and strangely exciting; Rafe, drawing Camilla into his arms.....That's lovely," she said aloud, and breathed deeply, smelling the curious, somehow golden scent which seemed to fill the light warm wind.
"What's lovely? You are," said Ewen, coming around the tent and laughing. "Come on, let's walk in the forest--"
"Marco--"
"Marco's better. Do you realize that with all these people I've hardly spoken to you alone since before the crash?"
Hand in hand, they ran toward the trees; MacLeod, coming from the edge of the forest, his hands filled with ripe round clear greenish fruits, held out a handful.
His lips were dripping with their juice. "Here. They're marvelous"
Laughing, Heather bit into the round smooth globe. It was bursting with sweet, fragrant juice; she ate it all, greedily, and reached for another. Ewen tried to pull it away.
"Heather, you're mad, they haven't even been tested yet--"
"I tested them," MacLeod laughed, "I ate half a dozen for breakfast and I feel wonderful! Say I'm psychic, if you like. They won't hurt you and they're chock full of every vitamin we know on Earth and a couple we don't! I know, I tell you!"
He caught Ewen's eye, and the young doctor, a curious awareness growing in him, said slowly, "Yes. Yes, you do know, of course they're good. Just as those mushrooms--" he pointed to a greyish fungus growing on the tree, "are wholesome and full of protein, but those--" he pointed to an exquisitely-colored golden nut, "are deadly, two bites will give you a hell of a bellyache and half a cup will kill you--how the hell do I know all this?" He rubbed his forehead, feeling the odd itch through it all, and took a fruit from Heather.
"Here, we'll all be crazy together then. Marvelous! Better than rations any day... where's Judy?"
"She's all right," MacLeod said, laughing. I'm going off and look for some more fruits l"
Marco Zabal lay alone in the shelter-tent, eyes closed, half-dreaming through closed lids of the sun on the Basque hills of his childhood. Far away in the forest it seemed that he heard singing, singing which seemed to go on, and on, high and clear and sweet. He got to his feet, not stopping to draw any garment about him, disregarding the warning pounding of his heart. An incredible glow of well-being and beauty seemed to surge through him. The sunlight was brilliant on the sloping clearing, the trees seemed to hang darkly and protectively like a beckoning roof, the flowers seemed to sparkle and glitter with a brilliance that was like gold, orange, blue; colors he had never seen before danced and sparkled before his eyes.