He was part engrossed in the technique of moving his mind, part awed by the variety and beauty of the Galaxy, and part lost in the beauty of the mind within him. She moved with deft, clear thought like the chime of crystals. The sensory images of Earth were gross and distorted projections of the way he saw her, but she was at once the beating rhythm beneath rock-and-roll and the abstracted clarity of Chopin, the summer wind and the warmth of a wine. He held her mind within his in a new union so complete that anything else was mere fumbling.
"Thank you," he heard her voice say gently, and they sank down toward the rings of small planets they had come to visit.
A colony from Earth implied an atmosphere, and several planets in the group indeed looked fuzzy. The two Divers skimmed rapidly from one to another in a general survey, selected the largest of those which might support man, and sank down through its belts of radiation.
The central mass of land lay beneath thin clouds, through which the local sun shone in drifting spotlights over the cultivated areas and irregular groups of cities.
"When we get closer," her voice said, "you'll see them walking about inside their minds, which to us will be cloudy colored eggs around them. They cannot see this, of course, any more than a non-Psi or we ourselves on Earth. If it isn't obvious what they are thinking, we'll have to go close enough to touch their minds with ours. But be very careful before you do that. If they are very empty-minded, there is a risk that their body magnetism will polarize your mind in temporarily. You can get out again, but it's messy and unpleasant while it lasts. And it's almost impossible to avoid being sucked into a medium's mind, so I hope they haven't got any."
They were now over the main city and headed toward a large domed building, apparently modeled on the Capitol.
"How did they get here?" he asked.
"We don't really know. The contacts so far have been by radio to a very early investigating fleet. Obviously they must have come out after the hyper-space drive was invented—we're over twenty thousand light-years from Earth, here, I'm told—but they don't seem to realize the difficulties of sending them the envoy they asked for. Assuming these are the people that wanted one."
"Look, an old landcar—down there on the street!" he exclaimed.