It was smaller than she was because Danalta was constrained by the limits of its own body mass and, although the detail in the eyes, ears, and fingernails was very good, the edges of her white swimsuit, hair, and eyebrows merged into the adjacent skin coloration like the uniform and features painted on a toy soldier. She gave an involuntary shudder.
Murchison had seen Danalta take some weird and often repulsive shapes with a minimum of inner distress, but for some reason this one was making her feel really uncomfortable.
Why don’t you go for a walk up to the hill?” Murchison said, more sharply that she had intended. “I’m safe enough here on the beach. No insects, no crabs, no fish or amphibians in the water to crawl out and attack me. You might find something more interesting to mimic inland.”
No danger large enough to see,” said the smaller Murchison, “but we’re on an alien planet, remember?”
Being reminded of the obvious had always irritated her, especially-y when, as now, she needed the reminder. Even so, it was very difficult to believe that this wonderful place was not on Earth ; She didn’t reply “So far we’ve seen only one species of animal,” said Danalta, unless the others are hiding from us, and that one is boring to mimic. But I sense your annoyance. I’m sorry. Pathologist, is this body configuration not to your liking?”
The half-sized Murchison, with the exception of its communications-and-translator pack, began to subside like melting wax into a pink, sluglike shape with a tiny mouth and a large single eye. The real Murchison concentrated on looking out to sea.
Apologetically, it went on. “If you would rather walk alone without distractions, I can take on an aquatic form and keep pace with you without holding conversation. Or if you would like to immerse yourself for a while, I can serve as a protective escort, should one be necessary, although there is no evidence of any threat here, from the land, sea, or air.”
“Thank you,” she said.
That was what she had most wanted to do since the beginning of today’s walk, although, perversely, she didn’t want to appear too eager. As she continued walking, her peripheral vision showed her Danalta entering the water and spreading out into a fiat, carpet shape resembling an Earthly stingray with the addition of a high, dorsal fin which had an eye at its tip to give both lateral stability and all-around visibility.
She laughed suddenly and thought, The people I have to work with!
Gradually her path curved until the waves were breaking over and cooling her feet, then her calves and around her knees. Her back was to the beach as she suddenly broke into a long, high-stepping, splashing run, dived in, and began to swim.
The water was cold, pleasantly so, and so clear that if there had been anything on the sandy bottom larger than her thumbnail she would have seen it. After a few minutes of fast swimming, most of it underwater, she rolled onto her back and floated with only her face above the surface, comfortable in the embrace of an alien ocean which, on this world as well as on Earth, had been the mother of all life. She was looking up at the deep-blue sky and thinking that the casualties were well enough to profit from therapeutic, closely supervised immersion, when she saw the There were two of them, not quite overhead and circling, dipping and banking slowly to take advantage of rising air currents They were so high, a few thousand feet at least, that they almost hidden by the glare from the sun, and at that altitude they could scarcely be considered a threat. Nevertheless, feeling guilty rather than anxious over the way she had been enjoying herself, Murchison raised an arm to wave at Danalta, pointed up at them and then towards the beach.
It was time they returned to their patients And even higher above the birds, in the orbiting Rhabwar, a similar thought was going through the mind of Prilicla regarding a different set of patients. There was very little that he could do for them until they had learned to trust not just their physician, himself, but the DBDGs and their portable equipment of which, for some reason, they were so afraid, because the specialized knowledge and experience of the Earth-humans were vital if the treatment that one of them so urgently needed was to have any hope of success.