“But so are the blemishes on Thilling’s leaves!” Awb burst out. “They happen right inside a light-tight pack, or inside the fixer!”
Once again there was a pause during which he had time to feel dismayed by his own boldness. Byra ended it by saying, “Phrallet, I can’t for the life of me understand why you think your budling is unworthy of you. I’d be proud if one of my young’uns had come up with a point like that.”
Set to grow angry again, Phrallet abruptly realized she was being indirectly complimented, and made no answer.
Drotninch, less tactfully, said, “Going back to where we were just now: you can very well have heat without fire, or at least without flame. Using a burning-glass is something else, because we assume the sun to be made of fire fiercer than what we can imitate down here. But if you rub something long and hard enough, it gets warm, and likewise air if you compress it with a bellower. Don’t you know about that sort of thing on Voosla, Phrallet?” She sounded genuinely curious.
“You should know better than to ask”—unexpectedly from Lesh. “The People of the Sea did study heat and even flame at one time, using substances that protected their junqs and briqs from feeling the effect. But it was hard to keep a fire alight at sea, and eventually they lost interest because they didn’t have any ore to melt, or sand for glass, and they could always trade for what they needed.”
“That’s right!” Phrallet agreed, and it was plain she was relaxing at long last.
Drotninch rattled her mandibles. “This gives me an idea. Do you think there’s enough burnable material around here to start up a—what do they call it?—a furnace?”
“What for?” Byra countered.
“Well, in olden times they used fire to separate metal from ore, didn’t they? Even if we can’t use a concentration-culture, we might get at this poison using heat.”
“Hmm! I’m inclined to doubt it,” Byra said. “We don’t yet know whether it’s a simple substance, for one thing.”
“If it weren’t, and a very rare one, surely we’d have encountered it before?”
“Maybe we have,” Lesh suggested. “Or at any rate its effects. I’ve never really believed that hot rock—let alone actual volcanoes—can be accounted for by saying that there’s a leak from the core of the planet. For one thing the core must be too hot; for another, the magma would have to rise for many padlonglaqs, and I can’t envisage channels for so much lava remaining open under the enormous pressures we know must exist down there.”
“What does this have to do with—?” Drotninch had begun to say, when there was a rustle of foliage and Thilling arrived to join them.
Parting the leaves revealed that the new moon was rising, a narrow crescent, just about to disappear again as it crossed the Arc of Heaven.
“I wish we’d had time to force some of those special luminants Voosla brought,” said the picturist as she settled in a vacant crotch. “Or that the moon were nearer full, or something. I spend too much of my working life in total darkness to be comfortable by mere starlight. It’s not so bad if your maw is full, but … Any of you manage to eat anything tonight?”
They all signed negative.
“Me neither. Never mind that, though. What annoys me most is that I can’t examine my images properly before dawn. But I’m sure they’re going to be full of smears and blurs again, and it isn’t my fault. Any explanations?”
Drotninch summarized the discussion so far.
“Awb hit on that idea, did he?” Thilling said with approval. “I agree: he’s a credit to his budder, and I’m glad I decided to take him on as my apprentice. Sorry I didn’t ask you to help out this time, by the way, young’un, but you realize I have to be score-per-score certain that any flaws in the images are due to me, or some outside force. All right?”
“Yes, of course,” Awb answered, trying not to swell with pride, and realizing this was just the kind of attitude he would have expected one of the true Jingfired to display.