“Hello, Mister Cathcart!” she cried. “I have to gather seaweed for flavor. Do you want to help me?”

“Sure,” I said.

She made a face. “I’m glad to be here. Father and Kuaya and a lot of the others, they’re asking Mister Lejeune about ma-the-matics. I’m not old enough to like functions. I’d like to hear Mister Haraszthy tell about Earth, but he’s talking alone in a house with his friends. Will you tell me about Earth? Can I go there someday?”

I mumbled something. She began to bundle leafy strands that had washed ashore. “I didn’t used to like this job,” she said. “I had to go back and forth so many times. They wouldn’t let me use my oontatherium because he gets buckety when his feet are wet. I told them I could make him shoes, but they said no. Now it’s fun anyway, with this, this, what do you call it?”

“A wagon. You haven’t had such a thing before?”

“No, never, just drags with runners. Pengwil told us about wheels. He saw the Earthfolk use them. Carpenter Huanna started putting wheels on the drags right away. We only have a few so far.”

I looked at the device, carved in wood and bone, a frieze of processional figures around the sides: The wheels weren’t simply attached to axles. With permission, I took the cover off one and saw a ring of hard-shelled spherical nuts. As far as I knew, nobody had explained ball bearings to Pengwil.

“I’ve been thinking and thinking,” Mierna said. “If we made a great big wagon, then an oontatherium could pull it couldn’t he? Only we have to have a good way for tying the oontatherium on, so he doesn’t get hurt and you can guide him. I’ve thinked…thought of a real nice way.” She stooped and drew lines in the sand. The harness ought to work.

With a full load, we went back among the houses. I lost myself in admiration of the carved pillars and panels. Sarato emerged from Lejeune’s discussion of group theory (the natives had already developed that, so the talk was a mere comparison of approaches) to show me his obsidian-edged tools. He said the coast dwellers traded inland for the material, and spoke of getting steel from us. Or might we be so incredibly kind as to explain how metal was taken from the earth?

The banquet, music, dances, pantomimes, conversation, all was as gorgeous as expected, or more so. I trust the happy-pills we humans took kept us from making too grim an impression. But we disappointed our hosts by declining an offer to spend the night. They guided us back by torch-glow, singing the whole distance, on a twelve-tone scale with some of the damnedest harmony I have ever come across. When we reached the boat they turned homeward again. Mierna was at the tail of the parade. She stood a long time in the coppery light of the single great moon, waving to us.