Rigid as a rock but for the flexing of his mantle as he spoke, Karg said, “I’d have proved it. I didn’t insist on waiting until your huge new complex had been spun up to a rate that will mimic gravity. My chance was stolen from me!”
“Everybody knows that!”
“Everyone except you seems to have forgotten!”
And he erected and stormed out.
For a moment Albumarak thought of rushing after him, to offer consolation. She abandoned the idea. She had come to know him intimately since arriving at Slah, and when a mood like this overcame him there was small point in arguing. Besides, she had more urgent matters on her mind.
Calmly she activated the nervograp that connected her with Theng’s bower, and dictated to a recordimal: “Data at claw indicate that we cannot modify rockeater spores in sufficient quantities to demolish the wild planetoid prior to estimated encounter time.” She hesitated, then went on, “It is my opinion that far more effort should be directed towards ensuring that the conditions we are establishing for survival in orbit are actually survivable up to and including reproduction of the species! Because otherwise we’re done for … aren’t we?”
But the prospect of making an alliance with Fregwil was too good to miss. If the resources of Prutaj were put at Slah’s disposal, within a decade most of what the space-planners hoped for could be brought about. Fevered discussions ensued, in which Albumarak resolutely declined to take part, ostensibly on the grounds that she had been away from home too long, in fact because she still hated Quelf’s pith.
Obviously, a special demonstration had to be laid on to coincide with Quelf’s visit, and in a fit of the same kind of exasperation which had plagued her youth Albumarak suggested they might as well loft her into orbit. Both Theng and Yull vetoed that at once; they maintained she had too many useful skills to let her risk her life. Yet she garnered the impression that someone, at least, had taken her seriously.
She forced herself to continue her normal daily duties, wondering constantly whether she had been wrong to advise against the rockeater project, whether someone had miscalculated the wild planetoid’s orbital velocity, whether…
Her mind remained incessantly in turmoil. Talking to Omber, talking to Karg now that he was back from the latest of his trips around the world to recruit support—nothing helped, until the dark when Karg said acutely, “You would flee into space, wouldn’t you, if it meant escaping Quelf and the memory of shame you brought here?”
That made her laugh at herself, and she said as she embraced him fondly, “Had it not been for the wild planetoid, we would have paired by now. I’d like your bud!”
“I know!” A shadow fell across his words. “You were correct to say we don’t know whether we can survive as well as our creatures do in space. I wouldn’t curse a budling with deformity—yet evolution must compel it, no?”
“Our distant ancestors…”
“Exactly. They were very different from ourselves.”
She pondered that.
The floater from Prutaj that brought in Quelf and her party was larger and clawsomer than any other at Slah’s touchdown-ground. Albumarak had begged to be excused from the official welcome party, but she was unable to resist joining the crowd which gathered to witness this unprecedented visit. Polite applause greeted Quelf’s appearance—from those who had somehow missed hearing about what she had done to Karg, she thought sourly. But when she recognized the second person who descended from the floater, she could control herself no longer.
“Presthin!” she shouted, and rushed towards her.
“That same,” came the dry response. “I felt it was high time I said hello to Karg. We never met properly, remember?”
“I must introduce you at once! If he’s here, that is. I haven’t seen him, but then he has small reason to love Quelf.” Albumarak glanced around, but was abruptly reminded that there were formalities to get through; Quelf was fixing her with the same withering glare she had learned to know so well when she was still a lowly student at Fregwil.
“Later!” she whispered as Yull and Theng led Quelf towards the waiting loudeners … exactly at the moment when a chorus of execration thundered forth from half the crowd.