“Not at the same time,” Paul said quickly. “You displace too much water.”

“I’ll get out, then, and let Snowbird—”

“I’m not ready to be naked in front of all these people! I have to think about it.”

“It doesn’t bother us,” Carmen said. “It’s proper, for being in the water.”

“But the whole idea—‘being in the water’! You can’t even say it in our language. It’s like ‘breathing in outer space.’ It should not be possible.”

Carmen gestured toward me. “You’d better come up with a word for it. I don’t think Fly-in-Amber wants to come out.”

“In fact,” I said, “I’m not sure how I’m going to get out. I can’t jump high in this gravity.”

Namir had come up. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ll get a couple of planks.” He went off toward the storeroom. I wanted to tell him not to hurry.

“We’ll improvise a ramp,” Carmen said. She stepped out of her robe and slid into the water. Her body was strange, warmer than the water, and soft. “We should have made this bigger. We weren’t thinking about you guys.”

“We hadn’t thought of it either, Carmen. It’s such an odd idea.”

“Fly-in-Amber,” Snowbird said, “are you losing part of your skin?”

I had a moment of panic. There was an iridescent sheen on the water, evidently oil from my skin, and small floating particles, perhaps flakes of skin. Carmen was looking at the water with alarm.

“I’m sure it’s nothing.” I bent over and looked at it closely. “It’s just been two days since I scraped.”

“Of course,” she said, though her smile did not look normal. She of all people might have reason to fear, since she had been the first human to catch a disease from us, and, of course, no human had ever bathed with us.

“Humans do catch skin diseases from other humans,” Snowbird explained, “like athletes’ foot and herpes. But we have never had skin diseases.”

“That’s, um, reassuring.”

“There would have been no reason for us to be designed with skin disease,” I said. “The difference between intelligent design and random evolution, I’m afraid.”

“We ought to build a special pool for you two,” Paul said. “Deeper, so you have maximum buoyancy. Not as wide, since you probably won’t be swimming.”

“That would be most kind of you. Perhaps with colder water?”

“If we put it in your area, it will be plenty cold.”

“That’s wonderful. Carmen, you could come over anytime and enjoy the cold.”

“Thank you, Fly-in-Amber, but we really prefer the warmer water.” She was shivering a little. “In fact, I think I’ll go take a nice hot shower right now.”

Going from a swim to a shower seemed redundant. But nothing about them surprised me.