"The images you showed me—that quiet valley—that is ten light years away?"
"Yes. But that was my father talking to you, through me. He was grown when the journey began. He is two hundred and forty years old—our years, thirty-two days longer than each of yours."
Mainly I was conscious of a flood of relief. I had feared, on the basis of terrestrial biology that her explosively rapid growth after hatching must foretell a brief life. But it's all right—she can outlive me, and by a few hundred years at that.
"Your father is here now, on this planet? Shall I see him?"
She took her hands away—listening, I believe. The answer was: "No. He is sorry. He is ill and cannot live long. I am to see him in a few days, when I fly a little better. He taught me for twenty years after I was born."
"I don't understand. I thought that—"
"Later, friend. My father is grateful for your kindness to me."
I don't know what I thought about that. I felt no faintest trace of condescension in the message.
"And he was showing me things he had seen with his own eyes, ten light years away?"
"Yes." Then she wanted me to rest a while; I am sure she knows what a huge effort it is for my primitive brain to function in this way. But before she ended the conversation by humming down to her nest she gave me this, and I received it with such clarity that I cannot be mistaken: "He says that only fifty million years ago it was a jungle there, just as Terra is now."