“What’s wrong with lungs?” Sheena asked and made her point by breathing hard.

Vik considered, her brow furrowed. “Nothing. We do fine with them. But, like fish, life on Donovan has found a more efficient solution than either the vertebrate or arthropod versions of lungs.”

“What’s a arthro-what’s-its?” Felix asked, coming back into possession of his body. In an instant it was like the Voice had never been there. Felix could move his arms and legs again.

“Like spiders and scorpions. Being born on Ashanti, you’ve never seen one.”

The Voice made him ask, “Are humans better designed?”

“Not necessarily better,” Vik told him. “We’re just adapted to a different environment. The nervous system, our organs, and bones are made for walking and living on land. The tube is designed to live in the sea. Feel the bones in your arms, and then look at the tube. Notice how the bone structure is?” She prodded a line of hard structures that the gill jet was attached to. “It’s not the same as bones, but more like a plastic.”

Off to the side, Felicity had gone blank, her eyes unfocused. She kept humming the melody to “London Bridge Is Falling Down” under her breath. It was all he could do to keep from singing with her.

Felix felt it when the Voice took control of his eyes, seemed to be directing them to different parts of the splayed creature.

“This is how we know how things work,” he told the Voice.

“Yes. I see.”

55

Her first thought was that she was smothering, only to have a blast of air inflate her lungs. With a start, Talina jerked, coughed. Felt something shift her body, lowering it onto a painful surface as she gasped for air and coughed. And coughed. She grew aware of the powerful roar; it seemed to fill the world. In addition, Talina’s back ached. She shouldn’t be this cold. This uncomfortable.

A racking bout of coughing sent spasms through her body. Caused her to sit up on the hard gravel.

Gravel? Shit on a shoe, the stuff was eating into her backside and butt.

But, where the hell . . . ?

Talina tried to understand. The little angular stones under her butt were part of a lenticular gravel bar in the middle of a river. On either side, the water was bounded by the vertical walls of a high gorge. Bits of greenery—some of them with gorgeous blooms—clung to cracks and fissures in the black canyon’s sheer sides. Colorful four-winged flying creatures wheeled overhead in flight. Smaller than mobbers, these were apparently a cliff-dwelling species. To Talina’s instant relief, none seemed to pay her the least bit of attention. Maybe they didn’t have human on the menu.