Molly fumbled with the mounting straps on one of the spacesuits and dragged it out of the way. She buckled herself in its place, wrapping the webbing across her chest and thighs while she fought back the waves of pain emanating from her useless arm. She wasn’t satisfied with her one-handed knots, but she couldn’t take any more.

She lay her head back on the wall, her helmet forming a cushion for her skull, and smiled, reflecting on how odd she must look strapped between two empty suits, her arm twisted like one of their folded sleeves.

Parsona shuddered, probably entering the green planet’s atmosphere. Molly gasped as the vibrations sent shivers of agony though her arm. It jounced into a new shape and blackness pressed in around her vision, a sensation she was beginning to recognize. Molly summoned the last of her energy, using it to scold herself for passing out in moments of crisis.

Just in time to do it once more.

17

Molly flinched, startled from a bad dream as something large blotted out the pale light filtering through her eyelids. She lifted her head and blinked in confusion as the form came into focus. The sight sent her head crashing back down onto the hard surface beneath her; a massive bear-like creature hovered close, its face a row of hungry teeth. Molly thrashed against the restraints across her body, the pain in her arm nearly knocking her out again.

The bear lurched out of her vision and made a growling noise. The ground shook as the creature moved. Molly’s brain struggled to make sense of where she was. She was tied to a rock ledge. Palan? No. What was the last thing she remembered? She’d taken a shower and gotten in bed—no, something past that. They’d made the jump, the potato moon, the Orbital Station. . .

Her arm crushing in the airlock.

Molly tried to move her right arm beneath the restraints, the pain confirming her hazy memories and driving back the grogginess with needles. They were on the green planet.

Her pulse quickened, her breath trapped in her throat. It was a Glemot that woke her. Had to be. She wondered if Cole and Walter were still alive and okay, then she realized: whatever happened to the UN volunteers was now happening to them. An alien race capable of running off the Navy had her strapped to some hard surface—and possessed the ability to control her ship!

Parsona. Had they crashed? How hard had it been? What would be left of her?

Molly felt a soft breeze and heard the whispering of fabric. She raised her head as far as she could to scan the room. The walls and ceiling were both made of cloth, some kind of tent. Basic first aid material lay scattered on one table: gauze, bowls of leaves, and some kind of paste.

She lowered her head back to the hard surface and tried to focus on her breathing exercises, calming her mind and body. She almost had her pulse back to normal when small tremors and padded thuds signaled the return of her captor. This time, two bear heads leaned into view. One of them opened its mouth—wide teeth flashed like a row of blades. From this angle, seen across the edge, they appeared sharp and menacing.

The Glemot threatened her in a deep growl. “Minimal movement should be attained,” it said, the words rumbling like distant thunder. Molly could barely hear the first half of “movement,” it was grumbled in such a low register. Its hands went to her chest and did something to her restraints.

Molly ignored the advice and lifted her head to scream for help, then saw that the large paws were untying her restraints. They came free and she tried to sit up, but couldn’t find the strength. Another paw, as wide as her back, helped her. The Glemot that had spoken produced a sling made of tightly-woven grasses.

It all felt like a waking dream. The fear receded; she wasn’t going to be eaten. Still leaning against the large, soft paw behind her, she studied the other Glemot. The wide teeth looked square and friendly viewed straight-on. The massive face, three times the size of a human’s, divided itself with a mammoth smile.

“My reference label is Watt,” the Glemot said. “Uttering that sound will guide my attention to the speaker.”

“Molly,” she muttered, watching the other Glemot secure the sling to her shoulder. Her arm was swollen and multi-colored. Two smooth sticks were tied alongside her lower bones, secured with braided straw-like threads. There was some kind of paste on her skin—she touched it with her other hand, expecting it to come away sticky, but the stuff was stiff and dry. She looked down her body at the long white robe, the same material as the tent, and the twined grass that secured it around her.

Cole.

“My friends—” she blurted out.

“A unit of your companions is ambulating within five hundred meters of your location. Do you desire for this range of proximity to decrease?”

Molly had to repeat the sentence in her head several times. She felt like a drunk being taught quantum mechanics. She shook her head to clear it, then realized this gesture may be taken for an answer.

“Yes,” she said. “Absolutely. Increase proximity, or decrease the range. I’m sorry, can I just see them? Does that make any sense?”

“Extreme accuracy, low precision. Come.”

The Glemot behind Molly helped her down from what she saw now to be a chiseled stone table in the center of the tent. This Glemot was smaller than the other.

“Whitney,” it said, holding its hand to its furry chest. Its voice wasn’t quite as low and Molly automatically thought of Whitney as a female, but she wouldn’t be surprised if it proved to be the other way around.

“Molly,” she repeated as she accepted the help down. It was a good two-meter drop. She looked back and found her head level with Whitney’s abdomen. Molly felt like a child. The surface of the stone table was higher than her head. The restraints hanging from the rock surface took on a positively humane aspect from this perspective, meant to keep her from falling.

Whitney moved to a slit in the fabric. She held back one side, creating a wedge of bright light, and waved Molly through. She complied and stepped, blinking, into a vista that made it difficult to breathe.

The tent stood on the crest of a gradual rise. Several varieties of green grasses covered the hill in a lush carpet sweeping down to the forest below. Molly could see a thin blue ribbon of water sparkling in the sunlight. It curved around the base of the hill and fed into a calm lake. She scanned its shore, thick with trees, all of the same species: tall, straight, and thrusting proudly into the blue sky.

Dotted across the green were little spots of color from wildflowers. Molly could see small creatures bobbing on the breeze, diving in and out of the grasses. The sunlight shimmered everywhere, reflecting off the lake in a plane of sparks—it even flashed off the waxy grass.

It was quite simply the most beautiful setting she’d ever seen. The haze in her head vanished, replaced with an overwhelming but pleasurable sensation. Every one of her senses popped from the overload. Fighting her awed lack of breath, Molly sucked in a huge lungful of fresh air, a gift from an atmosphere filtered thousands of times a day. The extra oxygen sent pinpricks of light dancing in her vision, filling her weary bones with a powerful energy.

On either side of her, similar tents spread out along the rise. Dozens of Glemots bounded about on powerful legs the size of small trees. Two smaller ones wrestled, rolling down the hill in a furry ball. Pots hung over cooking fires, the smoke wafting up into the cloudless blue. Molly, her cheeks sore from smiling so wide, turned to Whitney. The Glemot nodded back, seeming to understand what she was thinking. Somehow, these incredible beings were not completely inured to the gift that surrounded them daily.

Shielding his eyes with one paw, Watt peered up at them from further down the hill. He waved, beckoning them along. Whitney set off and Molly followed eagerly, all hints of danger dissolving. She had to skip and bound and let gravity suck her along to match the pace of the two casually-strolling giants. Nearly tripping on her white robe, she hitched it above her knees with her good arm and labored to keep up. She felt like a pixie from a children’s book, frolicking in a land where everything was too big.

Near the stream below, Molly saw a clump of Glemots huddled together. It took her a moment to spot Cole, lost as he was among their larger forms.

“Cole!”

He turned and smiled. She rushed down the hill as he leapt to his feet and ran up to meet her.

They were both out of breath as he swept her up in a tight embrace.

Molly leaned into him, her cheek on his chest as tears welled up in her eyes. She fought them back and squeezed him as hard as she could with her good arm, ignoring the pain in the other as it was pressed between their bodies.

Cole kissed the top of her head. She thought she could get used to this feeling. Broken arm and all.

When they pulled out of the hug, Cole grasped Molly’s shoulders and gave her a stern glare. “Now stop trying to impress me, doofus. Every time you do something brave you just end up passing out like a sissy.”

Molly slapped one of his arms away with her free hand as choice insults piled on top of questions. She longed to know what had happened, what she’d missed, but Whitney and Watt were continuing down to the stream, and Cole pulled her after them.

“We’re interrupting a Council meeting,” he whispered. “They’ve been letting me hang out and listen in.”

“Where’s Parsona?” Molly asked.

“There’s good news and bad news, I’m afraid. We’ll talk about it later. For now I want to hear what they’re going to do about the Leef Tribe.”

“The what?” But they were almost on top of the group now, and Molly had to file the question away for later.

One of the largest Glemots continued to talk as she settled herself on the grass. Parts of his brown fur were turning black in wide ridges along his arms and legs. The language was English, but the jargon was so technical and obtuse, she could hardly follow. It sounded like politics and planning, so her brain turned off and she soaked in her surroundings instead.

Beside her, Cole leaned forward and seemed to hang on every word. Molly rested on her good elbow, her hand idly stroking the long, wide blades of grass. Insects the size of her thumb flitted about in the lush carpet, an unseen world going about its day right beneath her.

The two wrestling youths tumbled down to the stream and splashed one another. At one point a Council member grunted something in their direction and they chased each other away. Molly thought one of them had been studying her and Cole with some degree of curiosity.

She looked around for signs of Walter, wondering where he and Parsona were. Not knowing was torturous, but she could tell from Cole’s posture that he couldn’t be interrupted. He was rapt. Molly tried listening in again and could only catch a few words here and there.

Then, something flashed in her peripheral, breaking the surface of the lake. Molly turned just in time to see a giant splash, a plume of white shooting up from the rippling water. She didn’t see what it was, but it must have been big.

She left her gaze on the sparkling water. Searching the shore, she could easily imagine building a little fort up in those straight trees with a long dock reaching out into the water. She and Cole would live and play here for the rest of their lives.

Molly laid back on the soft grass and looked up into the cloudless blue sky, dreaming.

••••

Her imaginings were interrupted by the quaking ground. The meeting was over. Molly sat up and saw worry on Cole’s face as he stared at the grass, dragging a stick through the blades as if tracing various possibilities.

The large Glemot with the black fur approached them; Molly scrambled to her feet, but it hardly made a difference. The friendly-looking creature sank to his knees in front of her, which helped.

“Fair union, Molly Fyde. My designation is Franklin.” Molly could feel the words in her sternum. This guy could give her a back massage just by talking about it.

“Greetings.” Molly felt pressure to watch her vocabulary around these guys. After hearing some of the Council-talk, she knew they were already dumbing it down for her. Unfortunately, the middle-ground with these guys was still a stretch.

“The Campton Tribe of the Glemots accepts you both. Integration complete. The mechanical advantage of your positioning will be determined, and you will facilitate the engineering of Campton Tribe as it incorporates all of Glemot via rapid expansion and population controls. We highly anticipate determining your optimal positioning as a cog, which will gain purchase for the whole.”

He looked solemnly at her wounded arm. “Unfortunate. It will decrease your worth significantly in the short run, but the Council will recalculate as operation of that limb approaches normalcy. The pleasure achieved from this communication has been extreme from the perspective of this speaker. Between mastications we will resume in three point two Earth hours. Joyous afternoon, Molly Fyde.”

Franklin rumbled off after the rest, his back almost completely covered with ebony fur that seemed shiny to the point of wetness. She looked at Cole, expecting to find him laughing at the ridiculousness of the setting and speech.

But he just looked extremely upset, his eyes locked on something beyond the horizon.

“What’s wrong with you? Isn’t this wonderful?” she asked.

Cole shook his head, his eyes focusing back on her face. “This is some crazy stuff, Molly.” He glanced at her sling. “It’s a damn good thing you didn’t break both your arms.”

“Well, no nebula! It’s even better that I didn’t break both of my legs and have my head lopped off. Thanks for putting things into a cheery perspective.”

Cole didn’t laugh.

Molly knew all of his looks just from the shape of his lips. She’d spent hundreds of hours with him in the simulator as they went through every set of emotional states humanly possible. But she’d never seen this one. The closest she could remember was when she’d looked at him during the start of the Tchung Affair and they both realized, with absolute certainty, that they were about to die.