Inside her tent she opened the field chest. Humming mosquitoes were finding her in vicious numbers. She located the little battery lamp by feel, and with its soft white civilized light found the small cylindrical fire-lighter. She needed only to twist the top off, thumb the slide, and… She gripped it harder but still the top wouldn’t turn; she gripped it as hard as she could, futilely. Using her handkerchief made no difference, and there were no pliers in the kit. “Damn damn damn,” she gritted, then almost cried, and finally sat on her bed of grass, listening to the humming, feeling the stings.
After a minute’s despondency she crawled outside again, walked slowly to Nils’s tent, and ducked into its ember-lit interior. He still sat as he had, as if waiting.
“I can’t light my fire,” she said in a low voice.
He nodded silently, got up, and left with her. Side by side they walked through the darkness and entered her tent. She lit the small lamp again and he did not comment on it.
“If you could open this… ”
He held the small cylinder in his palm, looking at it, and it occurred to Nikko that he had never seen a screw cap before. But he knew. Gripping the top, he turned it easily, handed it back, and watched silently while she made a small rough pile of birch bark and twigs. In a moment she had a fire burning. At that he left, and she knelt for a few minutes, feeding the rising flames, then piled on leafy twigs as she’d seen Nils do.
She felt a sense of relief as the smoke diffused through the tent, and lay down in her jump suit atop the sleeping bag. Dark humor sparked briefly in her mind: I wonder if he’d have jumped and run if I’d reached for him. But the humor died. I’m no different than I was yesterday, she told herself. I just know something about myself I didn’t know before. Now that I know, I won’t be taken by surprise again.
Had he known before it surfaced? Then why had he gone on talking? But what else should he have done? Told her to get out before she made a fool of herself?
How many naked souls had he seen? What understanding must he have?
With that she felt better, but her mind would not be still. What would have happened if he’d reached out, put his hands on her, drawn her down onto the bed of grass? The thought requickened her pulse, tightening her throat; that was her answer. But he hadn’t, and the sag of disappointment reinforced that answer. He could have but hadn’t. Maybe the fact that she was older… but she was still quite pretty. She liked to look at her face in the mirror, and at her small neat figure.
Or perhaps he’d sensed the guilt she’d feel if she had had sex with him.
Were his reasons either of those or was she simply talking to herself? What mattered was that nothing physical had happened. She pictured Matthew’s face then, and somehow the feeling that followed was of sober relief. Tension drained from her, and for a few minutes her thoughts were deliberately of years and dreams and tenderness shared, until she fell asleep with pungent smoke in her nostrils.
XI
Anne Marie zipped her jumper over her swim suit, then turned to the large window to look across city and prairie toward the sea.
“I wonder if there are sharks in the Black Sea?”
“Probably. It’s hooked up with the Mediterranean and the world ocean. You know, these Earth sharks are a lot like sharks back home, even to the cartilaginous skeletons.” Chandra looked at his watch. “No use making Matt wait,” he said, reaching to the small radio.
“Phaeacia, this is Chan. Phaeacia, this is Chan. Over.”
“Good morning, Chan. How’s everything down on Planet Earth?” The voice was Matthew but the false heartiness wasn’t.
Chandra raised an eyebrow at Anne Marie. “Just fine,” he answered. “We plan to spend the day swimming and beach-combing along the Black Sea.”
“Say, that sounds great! I should have given myself that job. Taking a picnic lunch too?”
There was an awkward lag before Chandra replied. “Matt, we’re wasting our time here, and we’ve had our fill of it. How about pulling us out?”
“I don’t think we want to do anything like that, Chan.” There was a pause. “I’ll tell you what I do want to do though. We’re having a conference tomorrow of the whole exploration team, and I need you two to be in on it. Have the orcs bring you out to the landing spot at ten hundred local time tomorrow and we’ll pick you up. That’s the same spot we landed at before. At ten hundred hours. We’ll have you back there twenty-four hours later.”
“Sounds great, all but the last part. For all the good we’re doing here, you’d have done better to leave us back on New Home.”
“Okay, that’s enough of that.” Matthew sounded distinctly annoyed. “We all agreed that Constanta would be Contact Prime. You’ll just have to stay with it down there until they trust you. You’ll feel different about it then. So no more argument, okay?”
Anne Marie looked perplexedly at Chandra.
“Okay, Matt, you’re the boss,” he said. “Tomorrow at ten hundred hours local time and back the next day.”
“Good.” Matthew sounded mollified. “And Chan, no need to pack. Just leave your stuff there. But bring your radio with you so one of the technicians can go over it. It fades a bit now and then.”
“Sure. Leave our personal gear and just bring the radio. Anything else, or should I sign off?”
“That’s all for now. And no use checking in again unless you have something special to report. We’ll see you tomorrow at ten hundred hours. And sorry I blew my top. Have a good time on the beach today, both of you.”
“Sure thing. Chan over and out.”
“Accepted. Phaeacia out.”
Chandra stood up. “Huh! What did you think of that?”
“I don’t know what to think of it. It was Malt’s voice, but he certainly didn’t sound like himself. He sounded-out of character. Do you suppose something’s wrong up there and he doesn’t want to tell us?”
Chandra pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at his nails. “I’ll tell you what, and I’ll bet ten credits I’m right. He doesn’t plan to bring us back here once he’s gotten us away, and he doesn’t want us to know it.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she objected. “Why wouldn’t he want us to know? He knows we’d be overjoyed to hear it.”
Chandra shrugged. “I’ve played cards with him; he’s the world’s most transparent faker. Think about it: The big hearty opening; that told me right away that he was going to withhold something from us. Then the big emphasis on coming back. His reaction when I suggested we shouldn’t. You know what I think? I think he’s decided these people are dangerous to us and he wants us out of here. And he thinks if we don’t know it we’ll act normal so the orcs won’t suspect anything.”
Anne Marie looked doubtful. “Well, I guess we’ll find out for sure tomorrow. He did sound strange, there’s no doubt about that.”
Draco clapped his palms and the slave moved smoothly to refill his cup. reacting with neither expression nor thought to his ill humor. The consul had resented having to make a critical decision on nothing more than suspicion and supposition. The star man supposed they wouldn’t return.
Well, he should know his commander.
And apparently Ahmed believed him. He’d proposed they not take the couple back to the sky chariot, but hold them hostage. They would threaten to torture them if a sky chariot, with weapons, wasn’t given to them. They would promise to return the hostages as soon as they had delivery and had been shown how to drive it and use its weapons.