Kennon chuckled. Copper had been reading Old Doc’s romances again. He recognized the florid style.
* * *
Kennon landed the jeep in a mountain meadow halfway up the slope of the peacefully slumbering volcano. It was quiet and cool, and the light breeze was blowing Olympus’s smoky cap away from them to the west. Copper unpacked the lunch. She moved slowly. After all, there was plenty of time, and she wasn’t very hungry. Neither was Kennon.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Copper said. “The woods look cool—and maybe we can work up an appetite.”
“Good idea. I could use some exercise. That lunch looks big enough to choke a horse and I’d like to do it justice.”
They walked through the woods, skirting scant patches of underbrush, slowly moving higher on the mountain slopes. The trees, unlike those of Beta, did not end abruptly at a snow line, but pushed green fingers upward through passages between old lava flows, on whose black wrinkled surfaces nothing grew. The faint hum of insects and the piping calls of the birdlike mammals added to the impression of remoteness. It was hard to believe that scarcely twenty kilometers from this primitive microcosm was the border of the highly organized and productive farmlands of Outworld Enterprises.
“Do you think we can see the hospital if we go high enough?” Copper said. She panted a little, unaccustomed to the altitude.
“Possibly,” Kennon said. “It is a long distance away. But we should be able to see Alexandria,” he added. “That’s high enough and big enough.” He looked at her curiously. “How is it that you’re so breathless?” he asked. “We’re not that high. You’re getting fat with too much soft living.”
Copper smiled. “Perhaps I’m getting old.”
“Nonsense,” Kennon chuckled. “It’s just fat. Come to think of it you are plumper. Not that I mind, but if you’re going to keep that sylphlike figure you’d better go on a diet.”