“Good. I don’t see you yet. Now shut up and let me work.”
Sarah’s voice came in panting gasps.
Irv picked up the video camera and kicked in the zoom lens. Damselfly seemed to leap toward him, though it was still well out over Jotun Canyon. No gusts, not now, he thought-as close to a prayer as a secular man would let himself come.
Beside him, he heard Pat saying, “Come on, dammit, come on,” over and over to herself. He nodded, which made the image he was taping jump. Somehow, the way Pat was pulling for Sarah made him easier about what had happened-and what had almost happened-the night before.
Then he could hear the prop’s whoosh and the rattle of the bicycle chain that fed the power of Sarah’s legs to the ultra-ultralight. She was above level ground now, on this side of the canyon. Irv switched off the camcorder and set it down so he could jump and yell.
“Damselfly has landed,” Sarah said, touching down only a few feet from where she had taken off. Her ribs were heaving with exhaustion; she sat slumped over the control stick.
She managed a tired wave for Irv as he set the wide stepladder beside Damselfly. He undid the latches to the canopy, flung it open, and leaned over to help her climb out.
“Thanks,” she said when she stood beside him. “All I can say is, the next time the Russians want my services, they can jolly well come see me.”
He sadly shook his head. “I knew it had to happen-all that exercise has made your brain atrophy.”
“Not to the point where I can’t feel cold.” She poked him in the ribs with an elbow. “Help me into my gear, will you?”
He did, saying, “I’m glad you’re back.”
“You and me both,” she agreed feelingly. “There were a few seconds on the way over when I doubted-but let’s not talk about that. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Neither do I. Why don’t you just relax and let Louise and me knock down Damselfly so we can take it back to Athena?”
“If I sit still too soon, I’ll stiffen up.” Sarah walked around while Irv and Louise attacked the ultra-ultralight with wrenches. Pat fell into step beside her. Irv felt a nervous twinge whenever they happened to look his way. Stupid, he told himself-nothing happened.
The only time Sarah said anything even remotely sexual on the way back, though, was just after she emerged from behind a boulder where she had gone to answer a call of nature. “I have stiffened up,” she grumbled, then she grinned wryly at Irv. “Better not ask me to get on top anytime in the next few days.”
“Damn, just when I was hoping to break out the trampoline,” he said, so innocently that she almost forgot to glare.
They got back to Athena a little before sunset. Emmett Bragg took the 8mm cassette from the video camera as if it were worth its weight in diamonds and handed it to his wife. “We transmit this first thing tomorrow,” he told her.
“Why?” she demanded. “It’ll tie up the link. Wouldn’t you rather send data than pretty pictures?”
“Most of the time, sure. With this, I’d sooner be on the network news. And we will, too-tape of the American doctor flying back after saving the Russians’ bacon? They’ll show that all over the world. When you think about what it’ll do for our program, the data can wait.”
They all looked at each other. No one argued with him.
Reatur had grown used to having humans around. He did not realize it-he would have indignantly denied it-until four of the six strange creatures went away on their traveling contraptions and the other two stayed close by the building that had fallen from the sky. Without their poking their stalkless eyes into every comer of his domain and throwing questions at him like snowballs, he found himself bored.
Now they were back, and Sarah, just as though he-she, curse it-had never been away, was pestering him about Lamra. He did not want to think about Lamra right now. To keep from having to do so, he changed the subject. “Why did the four of you leave so suddenly the other day?” “To help a hurt human.”
“Ah,” Reatur said. Then he brought himself up short. “Wait. Four of you went away. None of you was hurt, am I right?” At Sarah’s headwag, he went on, “The two who stayed were not hurt, either, true?” Again the human wagged her head. “That accounts for all the humans there are, doesn’t it?” he asked. “So where did the hurt one come from?”
“He from domain called Russia,” Sarah replied, which told Reatur nothing. “Not same domain as ours. He hurt on far side of Ervis Gorge.”
More humans? More domains of humans? The idea disconcerted Reatur as badly as it had Fralk. The domain master started to ask about it, then stopped. Something else Sarah had said was of more immediate concern to him. “You went across Ervis Gorge?” he asked, hoping he had misunderstood. But Sarah was moving her head up and down once more. “How?” Reatur asked faintly.
“In small machine that goes through air.” Sarah spread her single pair of arms to mimic wings and moved her two legs as she did when she was inside the contraption.
Reatur felt brief relief, then had another unsettling thought. “These other humans from the other domain”-he did not try to pronounce it-”do they also have one of these machines for moving through the air?.”
“No.” Sarah’s answer was quick and positive.
“Then they couldn’t give one to the Skarmer?” The idea of humans dropping out of the sky was quite bad enough. Thinking of armed westerners crossing Ervis Gorge through the air was simply horrifying.
But Sarah said “No” again. Reatur turned an eyestalk on himself. Good-he had not been alarmed enough to turn blue. Showing fear to any human would have been embarrassing; showing fear to a human mate did not bear thinking about. Mates had enough trouble in their poor short lives that they should never be burdened with a male’s concerns, as well. Intellectually, Reatur knew the three human mates were not like those of his kind. Emotionally, that still had not sunk in.
Sarah helped drive the point home, though. “About Lamra-“ she resumed, more stubborn than any of Reatur’s males would have been when the domain master was so plainly unwilling to discuss the matter.
“We will talk about Lamra another time, not now,” Reatur declared.
That should have settled the matter, but Sarah rudely refused to let it stay settled. “What you do now instead? What more important than Lamra? You not talk of Lamra, Lamra die. What more important than Lamra not dying?”
He had to think for a moment to come up with an answer, but at last he did. “I am going to check with the watchers I have placed at the edges of Ervis Gorge. If the Skarmer somehow manage to root themselves on this side, Lamra will not be the only one who dies.” He started to leave.
“You run from me,” Sarah said. Reatur watched himself start to go yellow. That it was partly true only made him angrier. The human went on. “How Skarmer-how anyone-cross Ervis Gorge?”
“How should I know?” Reatur yelled, so loud that Sarah stepped back a pace and a male stuck an eyestalk around a corner to make sure everything was all fight. The domain master was a person who, if poked by one fingerclaw, hit back with three. He kept fight on shouting. “Until you told me, Sarah, I didn’t think anyone could cross it through the air. For all I know, the sneaky westerners may come by way of water when the gorge fills up.” That was the most ridiculous thing he could think of, but he was cursed if he would admit it. “Since I don’t know what they’ll do, I have to point my eyestalks every which way at once, don’t I?”
“Yes,” the human mate conceded reluctantly. Reatur had not intimidated her, though, for she continued. “We talk of Lamra later, yes?”
“Later, yes. Not now.” This time, when the domain master walked past Sarah, she let him go.
But her voice pursued him. “Maybe Skarmer does-do-use water. Humans go by water sometimes.”