"Good thing we did that," she tells Syl as she closes the pipe and puts it in the lock to be blown out. "Here goes the air. — And there goes the pipe! I hope the Base frequency reaches this far. …Yes, it does. Neat, how the little thing knows where to go. Bye-bye, you. …Funny, I'm getting a feeling like we're a long, long ways from anywhere. Being a space adventurer can be a trifle spooky." She noses the ship over into landing mode, thinking, "I'm going down to hike over a strange planet looking for two people who, face it, may be dead….
"Syllobene?"
"Yes?"
"I'm really glad I have you for a friend here. Hey, maybe there's another thing your people could do… I mean, for credits: Going with lonely space people on long trips!"
"Ah…."
"I was just joking… Or was I?"
Soon they are back on the planet, beside the abandoned DRS. Coati puts on planetary weather gear and tramping shoes. It's sunny but bleak outside. She packs a week's rations and some water, although the ground is spongy-wet. Then she clips the recorder to her shoulder and carefully loads it with a fresh cassette.
A long time later, after Coati has been officially declared missing, that same fresh cassette, its shine somewhat dimmed, is in the hands of the deputy to the exec of FedBase 900. It is about to be listened to by a group of people in the exec's conference room.
Weeks before, the message that Coati had lifted off-planet to send had arrived at FedBase. The staff has heard all about Syllobene and the Eea, and the Eeadron, and the Dron, and all the other features of Syllobene's planet Nolian, and her short trip with Boney and Ko; they have left Coati and her brain passenger about to go back down to the unnamed planet on which sits Boney and Ko's empty ship.
One of the group of listeners now is not of FedBase.
When that first message had come in, the exec had signaled the Cass family, and Coati's father is now in the room. He looks haggard; he has worn out his vocabulary of anger — particularly when he found that no rescue mission was being planned.
"Very convenient for you, Commander," he had sneered. "Letting a teenage girl do your dirty work. I say it's your responsibility to look for your own missing men, and to go get my daughter out of there and free her from that damn brain parasite. You should never have let her go way out there in the first place! If you think I'm not going to report this—"
"How do you suggest I could have stopped her, Myr Cass? She injected herself of her free will into an ongoing search, without consulting anyone. If anyone is to blame for her being out here, it's you. It was your responsibility to have some control over your daughter's travels in that ship you gave her. Meanwhile my responsibility is to my people, and I'm not justified in risking another ship pursuing a Federation citizen on her voluntary travels."
"But that cursed alien in her—"
"Yes. To be blunt about it, Myr Cass, your daughter is already infected, if that's the word, and she has given us evidence of the great mobility and potential for contagion of these small beings. We have probably already lost the men who first visited them. Now I suggest we quiet down and listen to what your daughter has to say. It may be that your concerns are baseless."
Grumblingly, Cass senior subsides.
"This message pipe has been heated, too," says the deputy. "The plastic shows it. From which we can infer that she was compos mentis and possibly in her own ship when she sent it."
The recording starts with a few miscellaneous bangs and squeaks.
"I've decided to take another look at B-K's ship before I start," Coati's voice says. "Maybe they left a message or something." The 'corder clicks off and on again.
"I've been hunting around in here," says Coati. "No message I can see. There's a holocam focused on the cabin, but it's been turned off. Hey, I bet the Feds like to keep an eye on things, for cases like this. I'll root around by the shell."
Clicks — off, on.
"I've spotted what I think is another holocam up in the bow; I heard it click. …How can I get at it? Oh, wait, maybe from outside." Off, on. "Yoho! I got it. It's in time-lapse mode; I think it caught the terrain around the ship. We'll just take it over to my ship and run it."
Click — off.
Exec shifts uneasily. "I believe she's discovered the planetary recorder. I'm not sure the two men knew it was there."
"That must be the additional small cassette in this pipe," the deputy says.
The recorder has come on. "It's really small," Coati is saying. "Hey, it's full of your seeds, Syllobene. Those things must like cassettes. I'm threading it — here we go. Oh, my, oh, my — Syllobene!"
"That is my home," says Coati in what they have come to recognize as the voice of the alien speaking through Coati's throat. "Oh, my beautiful home! …But what a marvel, how do you—"
"Later," Coati cuts herself off. "Later we'll look at it all you want. Right now we have to run it ahead to where it shows this planet and maybe the two men we're looking for."
"Yes— Oh, that was my mentor—"
"Oh, gods, I'd love to look. But I'm speeding up now." Sounds of fast clicking, incoherent small sounds from Coati's Syllobene voice.
"See, now they've taken off. It'll be stars for a long time, nothing but the starfield." Furious clicks. "Gods, I hope it doesn't run out."
"No fear," says the deputy. "These things are activated by rapid action in the field. When the action is as slow as a passing starfield, it reverts to its resting rate of about a frame an hour — maybe a frame a day; I forget. Only a passing rock or whatnot will speed them up briefly."
"Here we are," says Coati's voice, "I can see that great string of GO suns. …Yes, they seem to be heading in to the planet now; I'd need a scope to tell — ah! It's getting bigger. That's it, all right. …Closer, closer …they're going into orbit. But Syl, look at that frame wobble. I tell you, whoever's flying is not all right. …Oo-oops — that could be changing pilots, or maybe switching over to the rockets. Oh, dear… yes, they're coming in like a load of gravel; I'm glad I know they made it. …Smoke now, nothing but smoke. Their torches have hit. Down — I see flames. This must be action-activated; there'll be a pause now, but we can't tell how long. I know this doesn't mean much to you, Syl, but wait till the smoke clears — ah! Look, there's the landscape we saw around the ship, right?"
The alien voice makes a small murmur.
"Action again — that's the edge of the ramp. Here comes one of the men — now the other — which is which? I'll call the tall, thin one Boney. Oh, dear gods, they're staggering. See, they dropped those gloves. And look, the vegetation around the ship outside the burn is all untrampled. This is their first exit, of course — oh, the Boney one fell down! Could the cold-sleep have done that, have they come out too soon? I don't think so; I think they're sick.
Look, there's a funny place on Ko's face, over the nose; he keeps scratching. They're not stopping to look around or anything. This isn't good, Syl. …Now they're both down on their hands and knees, in the burn. Oh, I wish I could help them. Look, do you see the goldy cloud, like your spores, by the ramp?"
A pause, with small "ohs" and murmurs.
"They're up now; I hope they're not burned — why, they're running or trying to run! Away from the ship. Toward the trampled place we saw, only it isn't trampled now. Oh. Boney is — and Ko — they're stripping! What are they trying to do, take a bath? But there's no—, Oh! Oh, wait, what! Oh, no! Oh! Oh, dear gods, I don't like this much. I thought all spacers operated under the Code. I didn't know recon teams did sex!"
"They don't," growls Exec, startling everybody.