"I can only block off some of the inflamed channels, and help time do its work. I could abolish the pain, but if we use the throat, it would quickly grow much worse."
"You sound like a doctor already," Coati grumbles hoarsely. "Well, we'll just cut this off here— Oh, I wish I had one of those message pipes! Ouch… Then we'll have some refreshments — I got some honey, thank the gods — and take a nap. Cold-sleep doesn't rest us, you know. Could you take a sleep, too, Syllobene?"
"Excellent idea." That hurts.
"Look, couldn't you learn just to nod my head like this for 'yes' or like this for 'no'?"
Nothing happens for a moment, then Coati feels her head nod gently as if elfin fingers were brushing her chin and brow, yes.
"Fantastic," she rasps. "Ouch."
She clicks off the recorder, takes a last look through the scope at the blue-green-white planet — still far, far ahead— sets an alarm, and curls up comfortably in the pilot couch.
"Sleep well, Syllobene," she whispers painfully. The answer is breathed back, "You, too, dear Coati Cass."
Excitement wakes her before the alarm. The planet is just coming into good bare-eye view. But when she starts to speak to Syllobene, she finds she has no voice at all. She hunts up the med-kit and takes out some throat lozenges.
"Syllobene," she whispers. "Hello?"
"Wha — er, what? Hello?" Syllobene discovers whispering.
"We've lost our voice. That happens sometimes. It'll wear off. But if it's still like this when we get on the planet, you'll have to do something so we can record. You can, can't you?"
"Yes, I believe so. But you must understand it will make it worse later."
"Green."
"What?"
"Green …means 'I understand, too.' Listen, I'm sorry about your turn to ask questions. That'll be later. For now we'll just shut up."
"I wait."
"Go."
"What?"
"Oh, green, go — that means 'Understood, and we will proceed on that course.' " Coati can scarcely force out the words.
"Ah, informal speech …most difficult…"
"Syl, this is killing me. We shut up now, green?"
A painful giggle. "Go."
Some hot tea from the snack pack proves soothing. Meanwhile the enforced silence for the first time gives Coati a chance to think things over. She is, of course, entranced by the novelty of it all, and seriously stirred by the idea that Syllobene's race could provide the most astounding, hitherto inconceivable type of medical help to the others. If they want to. And if a terrible crowd-jam doesn't ensue. But that's for the big minds to wrestle out.
And, like the kid she is, Coati relishes the sensation she fancies her return will provoke — with a real live new alien carried in her head! But, gods, they won't be able to see Syllobene — suppose they jump to the obvious conclusion that Coati's gone nutters, and hustle her off to the hospital? She and Syl better talk that over before they get home; Syllobene has to be able to think of some way to prove she exists.
Funny how firmly she's thinking of Syllobene as "she," Coati muses. Is that just sheer projection? Or — after all, they're in pretty intimate contact — is this some deep instinctive perception, like one of Syl's "primitive tropisms"? Whatever, when they get it unscrambled, it'll be a bit of a shock if Syl's a young "he"… or gods forbid, an "it" or a "them." What was it that Boney had said about the Dron, that some of them had two sets of "private parts"? That'd be his modest term for sex organs; he must have meant they were like hermaphrodites. Whew. Well, that still doesn't necessarily mean anything about the Eea.
When they can talk, she must get things straightened out. And until then not get too romantically fixated on the idea that they're two girls together.
All this brings her to a sobering sense of how little she really knows about the entity she's letting stay in her head — in her very brain. If indeed Syl was serious about being able to leave. …With this sobriety comes — or rather, surfaces — a slight, undefined sense of trouble. She's had it all along, Coati realizes. A peculiar feeling that there's more. That all isn't quite being told her. Funny, she doesn't suspect Syl herself of some bad intent, of being secretly evil. No. Syllobene is good, as good as she can be; all Coati's radar and perceptions seem to assure her of that. But nevertheless this feeling persists — it's becoming clearer as she concentrates — that something was making the alien a little sad and wary now and then — that something troubling to Syl had been touched on but not explored.
The lords know, she and Syl had literally talked all they could; Syl had answered every question until their voice gave out. But Coati's sense of incompleteness lingers. Let's see, when had it been strongest? …Around that business of the seeds in the message pipe, for one. Maybe every time they touched on seeds. Well, seeds were being wasted. That meant dying. And a seed is a living thing; an encysted, complete beginning of a new life. Not just a gamete, like pollen, say. Maybe they're like embryos, or even living babies, to Syllobene. The thought of hundreds of doomed babies surely wouldn't be a very cheerful one for Coati herself.
Could that be it? That Syl didn't want to go into the sadness? Seems plausible. Or, wait — what about Syl herself? By any chance did she want to mate, and now she can't—or had she, and that's the mystery of where those seeds in the message pipe had come from? Whew! Is Syl old enough, is she sexually mature? Somehow Coati doesn't think so, but again, she knows so little — not even that Syl's a she.
As Coati ruminates, her eyes have been on the front view-ports, where the planet is rapidly growing bigger and bigger. She must put her wonderment aside, with the mental note to question Syl at the first opportunity. In a few minim it'll be time to kill the torches and go on antigrav for the maneuvers that will bring her into a close-orbit search pattern. She will have to fly a lot of extra orbits, doing the best she can by eye and with her narrow little civilian radarscope. It'll be tedious; not for the first time, she deplores the unsuitability of a little space-coupe for serious exploration work.
The planet still looks remarkably like holos of Terra. It has two big ice caps, but only three large landmasses set in blue ocean. It looks cold, too. Cloud cover is thin, wispy cirrus. And for many degrees south of the northern ice, the land is a flat gray-green, featureless except for an intricate, shallow lake system, which changes from silver to black as the angle of reflection changes. Like some exotic silken fabric, Coati thinks. The technical name for such a plain is tundra, or maybe muskeg.
No straight lines or curves, no dams, no signs of artificial works appear. The place seems devoid of intelligent life.
Hello, what's this ahead? A twinkling light is rounding the shadowed curve of the planet, far enough out to catch the sun. That's reflected light; the thing is tumbling slowly. Coati slows and turns to the scope. Big sausage tanks! Such tanks must belong to a DRS, a depot resupply ship. Boney and Ko must have left them in orbit before they landed. And they wouldn't fail to pick them up when they left; that means the men are here. Oh, good. That'll give her the enthusiasm to sit out a long, boring search.
She tunes up every sensor on CC-One and starts the pattern while she's still, really, too far out. This is going to be a long chore, unless some really wild luck strikes.
And luck does strike! On her second figure eight orbit, she sees an immense blackened swath just south of the northern ice cap. A burn. Can it have been caused by lightning, or volcanism? Or even a natural meterorite?