“He is surrounded by us, in strange place,” Zuminski said, looking at them all. “Fear is natural. Inevitable. Rational.”

“Still,” Stefano, the review panel head, said slowly, “this incident will cause an uproar Earthside.”

Rachel agreed. Research progress was slow on Mars, had been for decades, of interest only on the Insomniacs Channel—in part because they were very careful with the Marsmat. But the first-ever alien-human fistfight?! Bonanza! Got footage? Rachel was surprised afterward to find that she did. She had thumped on the vid as they ran, then forgot it.

Hassan had said nothing throughout the review, so far. He now sniffed, grimaced, and waved away the charges.

The room’s walls helped her—plashes of blues and yellows and comforting warm beige in an artistic swirl—to not look at Hassan. But now he spread his hands, gazed carefully around at each panel member in turn, and said strongly, “I was trying to get control of a situation none of us understood. I did not know if by reproducing, Fraq, intended to begin an alien colony here. I did not know to what purpose he might put this, ah, budded form of his species.”

“Let’s not go into motives,” Stefano said. “We are here to repair damage.”

“Apologize to Fraq, then,” Rachel said.

Stefano shook his head, and the other three members of the panel seemed, by eye contact, to agree. “He concealed important facts.”

Hassan said, “For reasons we do not yet know.”

“He’s here alone. Surrounded by aliens. On a mission we still don’t well understand. Give him some room!”

“Ridiculous,” Hassan said. He glowered and tried to throw her out of the discussion with the point of his chin. It didn’t work. She just stared at him until he looked away. She now regretted not getting in a punch or two in the fight.

Stefano looked around at the panel members, who still said nothing. A lot’s on the table, but nobody wants to talk about it, Rachel thought.

Stefano said carefully, diplomatically, “Fraq, speaking for our community here, we apologize for this man’s taking your… offspring. We are sorry. We shall instead give you a place to…”

Stefano stalled, and Rachel rushed in: “To rear it. Give it food. Bring it forth.”

The panel murmured. The translator, sitting at Fraq’s elbow, rendered this, and after a long pause Fraq rippled his feathers from the brown he had worn for days now, to amber and green. Nodded. “I accept. Thanks be to you.” But he did not look at the panel. He turned, and the strange eyes went to Rachel.

Slowly, through Xiaoling, since this was important, Fraq said, “We seem so different, but we are the same. Finite beings. I spoke, many long days ago, to your philosophers. We are united by our cause: life itself. This universe wants to kill us, every day. Our efforts to control and understand our universe—these are the things that lift our lives above the level of comedy, which both our species share, and give our workings some of the grace of tragedy.”