He nodded silently, thinking: Yes, love doesn’t have to understand. She knows this but she won’t let it into her life.

He recalled the words of an old earthside poem: “Love is not a consolation, it is a light.” The thought, the poem of life, that was consolation. He would talk to her of love sometime, he thought, but not this dayside.

Chapter 7

Why are you humans always so ready to carry the terrible burdens of your past?

—Kerro Panille, Questions from the Avata

SY MURDOCH did not like coming out this close to Colony perimeter, even when sheltered behind the crysteel barrier of Lab One’s private exit. Creatures of this planet had a way of penetrating the impenetrable, confounding the most careful defenses.

But someone Lewis trusted had to man this observation post when the hylighters congregated on the plain as they were doing this morning. It was their most mysterious form of behavior and lately Lewis had been demanding answers—no doubt jumping to commands from The Boss.

He sighed. When he looked out on the unprotected surface of Pandora, there was no denying its immediate dangers.

Absently, he scratched his left elbow. When he moved his head against the exterior light, he could see his own reflection in the Plaz: a blocky man with brown hair, blue eyes, a light complexion which he kept meticulously scrubbed.

The vantage point was not the best available, not as good as the exterior posts which were always manned by the fastest and the best the Colony could risk. But Murdoch knew he could argue his importance to the leadership team. He was not expendable and this place did serve Lewis’ purpose. The crysteel barrier, although it filtered out almost a fourth of the light, framed the area they needed to watch.

What was it those damned floating gasbags did out there?

Murdoch crouched behind a swivel-mounted scope-cum-vidicorder, and touched the controls with a short, stubby finger to focus on the ‘lighters. More than a hundred of them floated above the plain about six kilometers out.

There were some big orange monsters in this mob, and Murdoch singled out one of the biggest for special observation, reading what he saw into a small recorder at his throat. The big ‘lighter looked to be at least fifty meters in diameter, a truncated sphere somewhat flattened along the top which formed the muscular base for the tall, rippling sail membrane. Corded tendrils trailed down to the plain where it grasped a large rock which bumped and dragged along the surface, kicking up dust, scattering gravel.

The morning was cloudless, only one sun in the sky. It cast a harsh golden light on the plain, picking out every wrinkle and contraction of the ‘lighter’s bag. Murdoch could make out a cradle of smaller enfolding tentacles cupped beneath the ‘lighter, confining something which squirmed there . . . twisting, flailing. He could not quite identify what the ‘lighter carried, but it definitely was alive and trying to escape.