When the scoggers were served, and each of the guests from the spaceship had sampled them with enjoyment, Petoyne spoke up. “They’re bugs, you know,” she said, avoiding Murra’s quick, vexed look. “The soup was made out of their shells, now this is the meat.”
Horeger stopped with a fork almost at his lips. “Bugs?”
Blundy took over, explaining that Slowyear’s native fauna were seldom vertebrate, not counting the flying “pollies”, and never mammalian. The largest life forms the original settlers found were arthropods, vaguely like terrestrial insects, with an insectoid egg-pupa-winged life cycle. “You won’t see them now-they’re only out at night-but they’re around,” he told the visitors. “Then when the dry season starts they burrow into the ground and cocoon up. In hotfall they come out when the rains start. By then they’re big winged things the size of my fist; they fly, eat, mate, lay eggs and die. Then the eggs hatch and over the winter the pupae grow underground. We use dogs to dig them up in the winter, before they hatch come out by themselves; this time of year we can catch them on the surface, if we’re good at it.”
“These are fresh,” Murra said, proudly careful to refrain from displaying the pride she felt in the meal she had set before her guests-after all, not every hostess could provide out-of-season delicacies on short notice. “Hunters brought them back this morning.”
“They do taste good,” Horeger said, doubtful but game.
Mercy MacDonald said, “Oh, God, Hans, why shouldn’t they? After all, back on Earth we used to eat lobsters. We’d eat them on the ship, too, if we had any.”
Which led to talk about shiplife. That was the part that really fascinated the servers, consequently slowing the meal down. Murra sighed and resigned herself: at least that meant more time for conversation. Mercy MacDonald described the universal shipboard practice of making scrimshaw-“to sell, sure, but mostly to give us something to do. Otherwise we’d all go crazy.” Hans Horeger modestly explained the difficulties involved in guiding a starship across the long light-years between worlds. MacDonald pointed out how boring it was for everyone and how, no matter how careful they were in dealing with each other, sometimes some members of the crew simply could not stand some other member of the crew one second longer-she was, Murra thought with interest, talking more to her deputy captain than to her hosts. But Horeger didn’t appear to notice. He blithely began to explain that they would soon have to dislodge the ship’s fuel storage, converting it to a factory for more fuel and sending it close in to the star for solar energy to make the antimatter fuel. Murra said quickly, “Surely there’s no hurry. Aren’t we being good hosts for you here?”
“Well,” said Hans Horeger, turning toward her, “in some ways extremely good.”
“He means we don’t have any complaints at all,” Mercy MacDonald put in. “You’ve been so good about commercial dealings you’ve just about put me out of a job. I don’t have to bargain! You pay us so well that we can afford just about everything we ask for-machine parts, metal, supplies-”
“Some of us can still hope for more,” Horeger murmured in Murra’s ear.
“We’re getting plenty from you people in return, of course,” Blundy declared, paying no attention to what was going on at the other end of the table. “That’s what makes good business, a fair price both ways and everybody sat- Is that the phone, Murra?”
It was. She looked resignedly amused. “Excuse me, please,” she said, getting up. “It won’t take me more than a minute-”
In fact, it took less. She wasn’t out of the dining room before Grannis appeared from the kitchen, his flushed face looking sad. “Say, Murra,” he said, “this isn’t so good. It’s your sister. You know your nephew Porly? She says he’s in the hospital.”
While Murra was out of the room everybody, of course, had some sort of reassurance, or at least good wishes, to offer. But it was Horeger who said the thing that no one else said. He looked around the table, then turned to Blundy. “Is it this infant-mortality thing you people have?” he asked.
Vorian gave him a sharp look. “What infant-mortality thing is that?” he demanded.
Horeger looked surprised. “Oh, shouldn’t I have said anything? I mean, I wondered why you were so hot for all our medical data and so on, so I assumed that was it. All the babies that die, I mean.”
“Who told you about babies dying?” Vorian asked, but Blundy answered instead.
“What difference does it make who told him?” he asked reasonably. “That’s right, Horeger. We have a very high infant-mortality rate; it’s the worst thing about living here. And every time a ship comes by we hope they’ll have something we can use-but they never have so far.”
“I thought so,” Horeger said, sounding satisfied. “Believe me, Blundy, we want to help you any way we can-”
“Oh, Christ,” Mercy MacDonald interrupted him. “Why don’t you just shut up?”
Horeger turned a wrathful face on her. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?” His voice was strangled, as though he was striving against insuperable odds for self-control. “I’m simply making a humanitarian offer of aid to people in need.”
“Yes? What kind of aid is that? We don’t even have a real doctor on Nordvik.” She looked at Blundy. “I think,” she said, “the best thing we could do is mind our business.”
Vorian sighed. “We’d appreciate that,” he said softly. “And now I think it’s getting late for an old man to be out.”
When Murra came back they were all at the door, and unwilling to be cajoled into staying. “No, really,” Horeger said apologetically, pressing her hand. “We really must go. Especially you, Mercy.”
MacDonald gave him a surprised look. “Me?”
Horeger nodded blandly. “To catch the shuttle back to Nordvik,” he explained. “It’ll be taking off early in the morning and you’ll have to be on it.”
“I will?”
“It’s your job.” He was grinning at her, but quite determined. “You have to check out the rest of the cargo. Oh, you can come back down when that’s done, of course.”
MacDonald thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I’ll do that,” she said. “Good night, Murra.”
And then all the good nights were said. It was too bad in a way, Murra thought, that Verla’s call about little Porly had spoiled the party. On the other, one major part of the party’s purpose had been to allow Blundy the chance to compare his wife and the challenging new woman side by side. Murra was quite content with the results.
Blundy offered to show Horeger and MacDonald back to the quarters they had been given, with the rest of Nordvik’s landing party. Vorian went along. But when Petoyne started to leave with them, Murra touched her arm in a friendly way. “Stay a little, please?” she urged. “I sent the servers home, so could you help me straighten things up?”
Petoyne couldn’t refuse that, as Murra had intended she couldn’t; and when, sulkily, the child began to pick up glasses to take them to the housework room Murra stopped her. “The cleaner will be back tomorrow to take care of that,” she said sweetly. “Sit down, Petoyne. Help me finish that last bottle of wine-you’re old enough now, surely. Just sit with me a minute, please.”
Petoyne was unwilling, but she was also very young. She did as she was told by the older woman whose husband she had borrowed. She watched without speaking while Murra fetched clean glasses from the sideboard and poured, chatting idly about the soup, that awful “scrimshaw” thing, the guests.
“I’m sorry about your nephew,” Petoyne offered.
Murra looked surprised, then shrugged. “It’s a pity, of course, but what can you do?” She sipped her wine, looking at Petoyne over the top of her glass. “You know, you’ve been very brave,” she said.
Petoyne stiffened. “Me? Brave?”
“I don’t know what else to call it. I know this is difficult for you, dear,” Murra said, her tone sympathetic. It’s an unfortunate situation. Blundy is a wonderful man, but he simply can’t help being drawn to attractive women.”
Petoyne, with her untouched wine glass before her, said stiffly, “If you’re talking about Mercy MacDonald, I don’t have anything to be brave about. I happen to know Blundy and that woman aren’t lovers. Blundy would have told me.”
“No, I don’t suppose they are, now,” Murra agreed. “But they surely will be, dear, and you mustn’t let yourself be hurt.”
Petoyne looked at her for a moment without speaking. Then she stood up, proud if young. “I’ll be all right, Murra. I do want to go home now.”
“Of course,” Murra smiled, and would have kissed her cheek at the door if the girl had given her the chance. She gazed after her, quite content. They all had to learn, after all. These little peccadillos of Blundy’s were-well-sometimes hard to accept, as no one knew better than she. In the long run they didn’t matter, for what was certain was that such silly affairs were all temporary and in any case definitely did not threaten Blundy’s marriage to Murra. Sooner or later they always would end-this one with the woman from the interstellar ship sooner than most, of course.