Though she had inspected this ship several times already, Graydal looked wide-eyed around her. The saloon was small but sybaritic. “You do yourself proud,” she said amidst the draperies, music, perfumes, and animations.

He guided her to a couch. “You don’t sound quite approving,” he said.

“Well—”

“There’s no virtue in suffering hardships.”

“But there is in the ability to endure them.” She sat too straight for the form-fitter cells to make her comfortable.

“Think I can’t?”

Embarrassed, she turned her gaze from him toward the viewscreen, on which flowed a color composition. Her lips tightened. “Why have you turned off the exterior scene?”

“You don’t seem to like it, I’ve noticed.” He sat down beside her. “What will you have? We’re fairly well stocked.”

“Turn it on.”

“What?”

“The outside view.” Her nostrils dilated. “It shall not best me.”

He spread his hands. The ship saw his rueful gesture and obliged. Space leaped into the screen, star-strewn except where the storm-cloud mass of the dark nebula reared ahead. He heard Graydal suck in a breath and said quickly, “Uh, since you aren’t familiar with our beverages, I suggest daiquiris. They’re tart, a little sweet—”

Her nod was jerky. Her eyes seemed locked to the screen. He leaned close, catching the slight warm odor of her, not quite identical with the odor of other women he had known, though the difference was too subtle for him to name. “Why does that sight bother you?” he asked.

“The strangeness. The aloneness. It is so absolutely alien to home. I feel forsaken and—” She filled her lungs, forced detachment on herself, and said in an analytical manner: “Possibly we are disturbed by a black sky because we have virtually none of what you call night vision.” A touch of trouble returned. “What else have we lost?”

“Night vision isn’t needed on Kirkasant, you tell me,” Laure consoled her. “And evolution there worked fast. But you must have gained as well as atrophied. I know you have more physical strength, for instance, than your ancestors could’ve had.” A tray with two glasses extended from the side. “Ah, here are the drinks.”

She sniffed at hers. “It smells pleasant,” she said. “But are you sure there isn’t something I might be allergic to?”

“I doubt that. You didn’t react to anything you tried on Serieve, did you?”

“No, except for finding it overly bland.”

“Don’t worry,” he grinned. “Before we left, your father took care to present me with one of your saltshakers. It’ll be on the dinner table.”

* * *

Jaccavrie had analyzed the contents. Besides sodium and potassium chloride—noticeably less abundant on Kirkasant than on the average planet, but not scarce enough to cause real trouble—the mixture included a number of other salts. The proportion of rare earths and especially arsenic was surprising. An ordinary human who ingested the latter element at that rate would lose quite a few years of life expectancy. Doubtless the first refugee generations had, too, when something else didn’t get them first. But by now their descendants were so well adapted that food didn’t taste right without a bit of arsenic trioxide.