Embarrassed, she looked once more toward the silent figure upon the couch. "You're very kind."
"Not kind," said the tech. "Wistful."
Behind them, a myriad banks of lights and switches flickered, shifted with electric monotony, slowly recording the details, down to the most minute sensory awareness, of the Contact between Jerry Norcriss and the alien....
III
There was at first the feeling of warm sunlight on his flesh, then a pungent scent of crushed foliage, green and heady, very strong and familiar.
As his mind took hold, a whisper of wind hummed into his consciousness and a shimmering golden brightness began to grow upon his closed eyelids. Abruptly, unity of sensation was achieved. Jerry Norcriss "was" in a sunlit part of the woods near the mines, feeling the alien's perceptions as though they were his own.
He crinkled his eyes against the glare, then slowly opened them.
