“Maintain contact,” Laure told Jaccavrie.

“Not easy, in these gravitic fields,” the ship said.

Laure jumped to his feet, cracked fist in palm, and shouted, “Is everything trying to brew trouble for me? Bung her back or so help me, I’ll scrap you!”

He got a picture again, though it was blurred and wavery and the voice was streaked with buzzes and whines as if he called to Graydal. across light-years of swallowing starfog. She said—was it a little more kindly?—“We’re puzzled. I was deputed to inquire further, since I am most…familiar…with you. If our two craft can’t find Kirkasant by themselves, why are we going on?”

Laure understood her so well, after the watches when they talked, dined, drank, played music, laughed together, that he saw the misery behind her armor. For her people—for herself—this journey among mists was crueler than it would have been for him had he originated here. He belonged to a civilization of travelers; to him, no one planet could be the land of lost content. But in them would always stand a certain ridge purple against sunset, marsh at dawn, ice cloud walking over wind-gnawed desert crags, ancient castle, wingbeat in heaven…and always, always, the dear bright nights that no other place in man’s universe knew.

They were a warrior folk They would not settle down to be pitied; they would forge something powerful for themselves in their exile. But he was not helping them forget their uprootedness.

Thus he almost gave her his true reason. He halted in time and, instead, explained in more detail what he had told Captain Demring. His ship represented a considerable investment, to be amortized over her service life. Likewise, with his training, did he. The time he had spent coming hither was, therefore, equivalent to a large sum of money. And to date, he had nothing to show for that expense except confirmation of a fairly obvious guess about the nature of Kirkasant’s surroundings.

He had broad discretion—while he was in service. But he could be discharged. He would be, if his career, taken as a whole didn’t seem to be returning a profit. In this particular case, the profit would consist of detailed information about a unique environment. You could prorate that in such terms as: scientific knowledge, with its potentialities for technological progress; spacefaring experience; public relations—

Graydal regarded him in a kind of horror. “You cannot mean…we go on…merely to further your private ends,” she whispered. Interference gibed at them both.

“No!” Laure protested. “Look, only look, I want to help you. But you, too, have to justify yourselves economically. You’re the reason I came so far in the first place. If you’re to work with the Commonalty, and it’s to help you make a fresh start, you have to show that that’s worth the commonalty’s while. Here’s where we start providing it. By going on. Eventually, by bringing them a bookful of knowledge they didn’t have before.”

Her gaze upon him calmed but remained aloof. “Do you think that is right?”