Liquid was already materializing on Bonnie’s exposed skin. Bhadravati and several other friends crowded around her, testing the air.

“Very lush,” Bhadravati agreed. “But to us, very hot and terribly humid.”

“A mild second-season day,” Ryo noted. “I doubt the humidity is much more than 80 percent. With luck it will top a comfortable 90 by midday eve.”

“With luck,” Elvira Sanchez muttered gloomily as she leaned through the lock and gazed across the treetops. Her concern was for what might appear from the clouds.

“If we had been detected on approach,” a voice said from inside the ship, “search craft would be overflying this area by now.”

“I know. I’m just a natural worrier,” the captain called over a shoulder. Hands on hips, she turned to look past Ryo. “A good place to lose weight, anyway.”

Ryo made a gesture of puzzlement. “Why would you want to lose weight—and how?”

“Cosmetic reasons,” she replied. “When we move around in very hot weather, our bodies sweat water and we can lose weight.”

“Extraordinary.” Ryo shook his head to indicate amazement, a gesture he had picked up from the human physical vocabulary. “Being constrained by our exoskeletons we are considerably less flexible in such matters.”

“A world without obesity,” Bonnie murmured. “That would be enough to induce some humans to visit here.”

“But not enough of them.” Bhadravati squinted into the heat. “Hence our illegal visit”

Highly illegal. The Secretary had provided covert assistance and laundered funds, but had made it quite clear that if the project was discovered he would denounce it as vociferously as anyone else in the government. Only tremendous pressure from members of the scientific community, incited by Rijseen and Bhadravati, had enabled the expedition to literally get off the ground at all.

Clattering and shouts sounded from below the ramp, where humans and their machines were wrestling with the contents of the shuttle’s hold.

“We should have the first portion of the shelter set up by the time you return,” Bonnie told Ryo. “Of course, if you’re not back within the prescribed time period—”

“I know. You’ll disappear, leaving me with quite a lot of explaining to do. Assuming I am given time to explain.”

“I thought you said your people were highly civilized about such matters.”

“Fear of the unknown, while exaggerated among Homo sapiens, is not completely unknown among the Thranx,” he responded. “It is such attitudes we are battling to overcome.”

“I hope you’re back in time.” She reached out to touch one of his antennae. “Don’t get yourself blown apart. You’re important. It’s not the Thranx we’re friends with, yet. It’s you.”

“I will endeavor most strenuously to preserve myself,” he assured her as he started down the ramp. Bonnie and the others followed to the bottom. There they turned to aid in the unloading and setting up.