Innocent Vauna! She was trying so hard to please me. She sat very close, whispering to me.
I listened, and smiled, and tried to take my thoughts away from the image of Campbell, his honor shattered by her recent words to him about the baby—a baby with eyelashes—a baby that resembled him.
If I remained silent, Vauna would tease me into talking with her. "Do my words displease you, Captain?"
"Your words please me very much."
"You do not look at me. You only look away. Do you want me to sit close beside you?"
I drew her in my arms and held her. In silence I thought a thousand thoughts that I had brought with me across millions of miles of space.
Later I said to her, "Your arms are warm. Why don't you take these fur things off your elbows, to be more comfortable?"
She smiled, and kissed me as I had taught her to kiss. "You want me to?" And she removed the furry white elbow ornaments. It was very strange.... While we hovered close, she whispered to me of the secrets of life on this planet, unlike any other world I had known. And there were curious legends of Kao-Wagwattl, things she had carried in her heart to tell me if such a time as this should ever come.
As she talked, the pressure of the scale walls around us increased. The great Kao-Wagwattl was evidently moving through a dip, so that its upper surfaces were compressed. There was no lack of air for breathing, but the darkness and the pressure added strangeness to the sensation. The tightness of Vauna's arms against my own caused my head to spin. Perhaps it was the fever returning from my recent illness. My arms felt the stinging sensation of being penetrated by needles. My thoughts flicked back to something Split Campbell had once told me....
Later, when the Kao curved over a summit, and the patches of sunlight dashed in, I suggested that Vauna go forward to see about her father. She answered me with a curious smile. I snuggled deeper into the shade of the scales and slept. Hours later, when I awakened, she was again beside me.