And there was his hand, huge in the field of view, gathering specimens. She wanted to kiss it. Patience, patience, the officer part of her reminded the bride. We’re here to work. We’ve discovered one more lost colony, the most wretched one so far; sunken back to utter primitivism. Our duty is to advise the Board, whether a civilizing mission is worthwhile, or whether the slender resources that the Allied Planets can spare had better be used elsewhere, leaving these people in their misery for another two or three hundred years. To make an honest report, we must study them, their cultures, their world. That’s why I’m in the barbarian highlands and he’s down in the jungle among out-and-out savages.

Please finish soon, darling.

* * *

She heard Donli speak in the lowland dialect. It was a debased form of Lokonese, which in turn was remotely descended from Anglic. The expedition’s linguists had unraveled the language in a few intensive weeks. Then all personnel took a brain-feed in it. Nonetheless, she admired how quickly her man had become fluent in the woodsrunners’ version, after mere days of conversation with them.

“Are we not coming to the place, Moru? You said the thing was close by our camp.”

“We are nearly arrived, man-from-the-clouds.”

A tiny alarm struck within Evalyth. What was going on? Donli hadn’t left his companions to strike off alone with a native had he? Rogar of Lokon had warned them to beware of treachery in those parts. But, to be sure, only yesterday the guides had rescued Haimie Fiell when he tumbled into a swift-running river…at some risk to themselves…

The view bobbed as the transmitter swung in Donli’s grasp. It made Evalyth a bit dizzy. From time to time, she got glimpses of the broader setting. Forest crowded about a game trail, rust-colored leafage, brown trunks and branches, shadows beyond, the occasional harsh call of something unseen. She could practically feel the heat and dank weight of the atmosphere, smell the unpleasant pungencies. This world—which no longer had a name, except World, because the dwellers upon it had forgotten what the stars really were—was ill suited to colonization. The life it had spawned was often poisonous, always nutritionally deficient. With the help of species they had brought along, men survived marginally. The original settlers doubtless meant to improve matters. But then the breakdown came—evidence was that their single town had been missiled out of existence, a majority of the people with it—and resources were lacking to rebuild; the miracle was that anything human remained except bones.

“Now here, man-from-the-clouds.”

The swaying scene grew steady. Silence hummed from jungle to cabin. “I do not see anything,” Donli said at length.

“Follow me. I show.”

Donli put his transmitter in the fork of a tree. It scanned him and Moru while they moved across a meadow. The guide looked childish beside the space traveler, barely up to his shoulder; an old child, though, near-naked body seamed with scars and lame in the right foot from some injury of the past, face wizened in a great black bush of hair and beard. He, who could not hunt but could only fish and trap to support his family, was even more impoverished than his fellows. He must have been happy indeed when the flitter landed near their village and the strangers offered fabulous trade goods for a week or two of being shown around the countryside. Donli had projected the image of Moru’s straw hut for Evalyth—the pitiful few possessions, the woman already worn out with toil, the surviving sons who, at ages said to be about seven or eight, which would equal twelve or thirteen standard years, were shriveled gnomes.