As he talked, her eyes searched his face, and whether he told of death and burning or of the gradual gathering and regrowth of mankind, his expression and voice remained casual. Yet he didn’t seem uncaring, and his calm was due to more than remoteness of the events in time. It reflected something in him that she had never known before.

“Are others of your people like you?” she asked. “Or other telepaths? Who think like you and look at things the way you do?”

“No,” he said. “I do not know of any other who sees as I do, although Ilse is coming to.”

“When did you become like you are?”

“Somewhat, I have always been. Then I killed the troll and was almost killed by it. When I woke up afterward, I knew.”

“When you killed the troll?”

He nodded, and for a moment she was shaken, wondering if, after all, the difference in him was that he was insane. He laughed, she blushed, and he began to tell a story. It began with a boy, a sword apprentice in his eighteenth summer, who killed a man with a fist blow, was dubbed Ironhand, and exiled. A boy-man, naive, ignorant, but almost unmatched with the sword. At first things happened to him. Before long he happened to them. And there were trolls, which the chief of the Psi Alliance believed had been brought in ancient times from the stars.

She stared as he talked, her eyes growing full of him, exploring him, his smooth skin molded over muscles that were tiger-like in their power and grace, relaxed but explosive and possessed of more than human strength, ruddied by the settling fire. He turned his eyes to her, and suddenly her desire for him flashed into intense consciousness. She had shifted closer to him, unaware, and found herself leaning toward him. The realization jerked her upright, confused and frightened. Scrambling to her feet she scurried crouching through the low entrance into the night. She actually ran for a few meters, fought back the edge of panic and slowed to a walk, then stopped and looked around. It was dark and she could see no one. Her tent was over there, and she walked toward it, heart hammering. Had he hypnotized her? No. It had come from inside her, from within herself, an expression and surfacing of some deep inner response to him. She was still shaky, her pulse rapid from the shock and unexpectedness of it. She’d never imagined anything like that.

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.

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.”