“How’s it handle?” Irv called when he saw his wife was having no trouble keeping the ultra-ultralight in the air.

“No problem,” Sarah answered. “If anything, it’s easier than flying it on Earth. The denser air’s giving me more lift, just like they thought it would back home.” Her voice confirmed her words; she did not sound as if she were straining.

The Minervans working in the fields had not paid Damselfly much attention while the humans brought its pieces out of Athena and put them together. The locals had no idea what it was for. The only flying thing they had ever seen was the spacecraft itself, and Damselfly, Irv thought, was about as much like Athena as a feather duster was like a hawk.

But when the Mylar and graphite-epoxy contraption got into the air, the Minervans stopped whatever they were doing. They let out piercing hoots of amazement and pointed with arms and eyestalks both. Several came rushing over to Irv and Louise, still pointing and shouting excited questions at the same time.

Louise turned to Irv in some alarm. “What are they saying?” she asked. She and Emmett spent more time on Athena and less with the Minervans than the other four Americans and had picked up less of the local language.

“I don’t quite know myself,” Irv said. Enough Minervans were clustered around him that much of what they were asking came through only as babble. He also saw that many more had come to him than to Louise. That made him give a mental sigh. Even exhilarated as they were, the locals remained nervous of a mature female.

As he listened, he finally began to catch on to what the Minervans were saying. About what he should have expected, he supposed: What is it? How does it work? Can I ride on it? Can I get one?

He had trouble staying polite as he answered the last question; his mental image of a Minervan on a bicycle seat pedaling like a madman made him want to giggle. But the natives kept after him. Athena and the capabilities it represented were beyond their comprehension, but Damselfly they could appreciate.

“Whew!” he said to Louise when the Minervans at last believed him when he insisted the ultra-ultralight could not carry passengers, was not made for their shape, and was the only one of its kind. “They never thought of flying, so of course it looks easy to them.”

“I wonder what they’d think if we told them we’ve been to the moon and back eight years before anybody flew a person-powered plane around a one mile course.” Louise was Sarah’s backup on Damselfly and knew more about what had gone into its design than Irv did.

In any case, the anthropologist was more interested in the effect the plane had on the Minervans than in its technology. “If the next ship here brought a dozen Damselflies adapted for the natives-assuming you could-they wouldn’t need any other trade goods like the ones we brought, and they’d come horns showing a profit.”

Louise let out a cynical snort that sounded very much like one of Emmett’s. “That’s as good a reason as any for NASA not to let ‘era do it, and better than most.”

“I suppose so.” Irv looked north and east. Damselfly, cruising at not much more than a man’s height off the ground, was almost right down on the horizon. Irv thumbed the radio switch. “How’s it going, darling?”

“Important discovery-it is possible to sweat on Minerva. Who would have thunk it?” Irv could hear the effort in her words, and the way she spaced them so they would not interfere with her breathing.

“How’s Damselfly going to do as a picture platform?” he asked.

Suddenly fatigue was not the only thing putting pauses between her words-exasperation was there, too. “I’m busier than hell in here, just trying to keep this beast flying-I haven’t had a lot of time for pictures.”

She had a point. By airliner standards, her controls were crude to the point of starkness: a stick, a radio switch, a prop control switch, a prop pitch gauge, an airspeed indicator, a battery charge gauge, and the camera button. But no airline pilot had to make his plane go by himself.

Still, Irv said, “On the return leg, why not see how much altitude you can gain without wearing yourself out too badly, and squeeze off a few shots. They’re pictures we can’t get any other way, you know-the main reason we brought Damselfly along.”

“You mean it’s not just a special exercise bike for me? Thanks for the news.” Irv felt his ears grow hot under the flaps of his cap. But despite her sarcasm, Sarah pedaled harder, until she got the ultra-ultralight a good thirty yards off the ground. “Even with the battery and the denser air, this is plenty,” she panted.

“All right,” Irv said mildly.

Sarah was not quite appeased. “It had better be. Most crashes with this beast I could walk away from, but I’m up high enough now to break my neck.” She clicked off. A few seconds later she came back on, sounding worn and sheepish at the same time. “The view from up here is spectacular. I can see all the way over to Jotun Canyon.”

“Just looking ought to be plenty as far as that’s concerned,” Louise said sharply. “I wouldn’t want to fly over it, not with the funny wind conditions it’s bound to have. Damselfly’s not exactly built to handle gusts, you know.”

“Seeing it and flying over it aren’t the same thing. I’m going to let my altitude go now. I’ve shot a whole roll-that ought to keep you happy, Irv.”

“So it should,” he agreed, unembarrassed. Aerial photography had taught anthropologists and archaeologists a lot of things they had never noticed when they were stuck on the ground. Irv would have killed to get a Piper Cub onto Athena. That being in the dream category, he would cheerfully settle for whatever Damselfly could show him.

The ultra-ultralight slowly approached. The prop fell silent as Sarah stopped pedaling. Damselfly touched down as lightly as one of its namesakes.

Sarah reached up and popped the catch on the canopy, then opened it so vigorously that Damselfly shook, Irv trotted up with the special stepladder. He climbed to the top to help his wife emerge. The sight of her flushed sweaty skin-and of so much of it-forcibly reminded him how little he had seen of her lately, both in the figurative and literal senses of the word. He thought unkind thoughts about Minerva’s climate.

Sarah had the weather on her mind, too, but in a different way. “For God’s sake, get me some clothes,” she said after much too brief an embrace. “If I let myself stiffen up, I’ll be hobbling around for days.” As if to underscore that, she started to shiver.

She jumped down from the ladder. Louise handed her the warm outerwear. She scrambled into it, while Irv wished the engineer had been a little less efficient. He could have done with another hug.

“And now, as medical officer, I wish I could prescribe a good hot shower for myself. Unfortunately, the closest I can come is to wipe myself down and bake under the heat lamp for a while. Have to do, I suppose.” She started for Athena.

Irv and Louise knocked down Damselfly by themselves-

Sarah, after all, had done plenty in flying it. They stored the pieces aboard Athena; neither of them even thought about leaving the fragile ultra-ultralight out were the elements could touch it. A hailstorm or even a windstorm would turn it to junk in a hurry.

As they were carrying the tail spar, to which Damselfly’s rudder and elevators were attached, Louise looked at her watch. “I think I’ll stay aboard when we’re done here. We ought to be getting today’s transmission from Houston in about another twenty minutes.”

“I guess I’ll stay, too.” Irv patted the pocket where he had the roll of film he had extracted from Damselfly’s camera. “I’ll wait for this to run through the developer so I can see just what we’ve got.”

Louise did not say anything, but before she turned away Irv saw her raise an eyebrow. He silently swore at the developer for being so slow that it made obvious his real reason for hanging around Athena: He had every intention of warming up Sarah a different way after she turned off the heat lamp.