However, fairness compelled. She mustn’t lose her temper, her judgment, when she had Orichalc to save. The fact was that Freydis remained an abiding place of mysteries, and within some of them were deathtraps.
A whole planet, after all, she thought. (How often had she thought the same, here and elsewhere?) Not the global hell of jungle and swamp that most people imagined; no, as diverse as Asborg. But dear Asborg was well-nigh another Earth, renewed and again virginal. Humans soon made it theirs, and in its turn it claimed them for itself. Throughout the centuries that followed, few ever cared to set foot on Freydis, and none to make a home there. Occasional explorers: now and then a handful of scientists—until damned, destroying Venusberg Enterprises sprang up—scant wonder that most was still Mundus Incognitus, that [180] she herself was more familiar with several planets parsecs away.
“Hs-s-s, he descends!” Coppergold exclaimed. She laid her blunt-snouted head on Lissa’s shoulder, an oddly mothering gesture. Glancing about, the human looked into big eyes that were not really onyx, being so warm. “Take heart, honored one. Our waiting time has been less than it seemed; observe your chrono. Surely Orichalc lives and you will find him soon enough.”
Could any human have been quite that sympathetic, in quite that way? “May it be, may it be,” Lissa half prayed. “For your sakes too, and mainly.”
Coppergold withdrew a few centimeters. “His loss would indeed strike a blow deep into us.” The trans failed to convey a gravity at which Lissa could well guess. “He is more than a symbol, the hero who won our new home for us. He has become a leader, in ways that I fear we cannot fully explain to your kind. Yet we, like you, would grieve most over the passing of a friend.”
Side by side, surrounded now by the rest, they gazed back aloft. The teardrop shape had ceased to hover and was bound slowly down. Landing gear made contact. Through the silence that followed, the nearby screech of a leatherwing and the distant roar of a deimosauroid sounded as insolently loud as the wild blossoms were gaudy.
Lissa advanced to meet the pilot. He slid a hatch aside and sprang to the ground. For a moment they stood motionless.
He was big, muscular, coverall open halfway down the front. The head was round, rugged-faced, blue-eyed, the brown hair less thick on it than on the bare chest. Amazement paralyzed her.
He grinned and offered a hand. “Greeting, milady Windholm,” he said. “I’ve waited a spell for this.”
Her tongue unlocked. “You’re … Torben Hebo,” she whispered.
“Last time I looked, I was.”
“But, but we called Venusberg headquarters—asking for help—do you work for them? I had no idea.”
“Not for them,” he said. “I pretty much am Venusberg. I [181] haven’t publicized it, but