Murgatroyd came down a tree with his cheek-pouches bulged with nuts. Calhoun inserted a finger, and Murgatroyd readily permitted him to remove and examine the results of his scramble aloft. Calhoun grunted. Murgatroyd did have other and more useful abilities in the service of public health, but right here and now his delicate digestion was extremely convenient. His stomach worked so much like a human's, that anything Murgatroyd ate was safe for Calhoun to an incredible degree of probability. And Murgatroyd ate nothing that disagreed with him.
"Instead of 'physician, heal thyself,'" Calhoun observed, "it's amounted to 'physician, feed thyself,' since we got past the frost-line, Murgatroyd. I am gratified."
"Chee!" said Murgatroyd complacently.
"I expected," said Calhoun, "only to benefit by the charm of your society in what I thought would be a routine check-trip to Merida Two. Instead, some unknown fumble-finger punched a wrong button and we wound up here. Not exactly here, but near enough. I brought you from the Med Ship because there was nobody to stay around and feed you, and now you feed us—at least by pointing out edible things we might otherwise miss."
"Chee!" said Murgatroyd. He strutted.
"I wish," protested Calhoun annoyedly, "that you wouldn't imitate that Pat character from Three City! As a brand-new husband he's entitled to strut a little, but I object to your imitating him! You haven't anybody acting like Nym!—gazing at you raptly as if you'd invented not only marriage but romance itself, impassioned falsehoods, and all other desirable things back to night and morning!"
Murgatroyd said, "Chee?" and turned to face away from Calhoun.
The two of them, just then, stood on a leaf-covered patch of ground which slanted down to the singularly smooth and reflective water of a tiny bay. Behind and above them reared gigantic mountains. There was snow in blinding-white sheets overhead, but the snowline itself was safely three thousand feet above them. Beyond the bay was a wide estuary, with more mountains behind it, with more snowfields on their flanks. A series of leaping cascades jumped downward from somewhere aloft where a glacier-foot melted in the sun's heat. And everywhere that snow was not, green stuff shone in the sunlight.
Nym's father, Hunt, came hurriedly toward the pair. He'd abandoned the thick felt cloak and heavy boots of Two City. Now he was dressed nearly like a civilized man, but he carried a sharpened stick in one hand and in the other a string of authentic fish. He wore an expression of astonishment. It was becoming habitual.