* * *
On playing this cube back, I’m unhappy about the way I seem to be putting everybody down. After all, I haven’t really seen these people in action yet. I’m going by secondhand report, first impressions, and general cattiness. Maybe this is a top-level archaeological team, or will be when it gets into the field. We’ll see. I don’t know why I’m so sour tonight, unless I’m just getting shiny synapses from being penned up in this ship so long.
Three days more and the curtain goes up. I can’t wait.
Happy birthday again, Lorie. To you. To me. To us.
TWO
August 16, 2375
Higby V
We are here.
We did our flip-flop from ultradrive to ordinary drive right on schedule, but it wasn’t as interesting as the squirmy business of going in the other direction; and then we went into orbit around Higby V and made a ho-hum landing. And got out fast, and went a little chimpo with joy at emerging from captivity.
It was a wild scene. Higby V doesn’t have a real spaceport, just a big bleak empty stretch of land with some buildings at one end of it, and we came pouring out of the ship and went capering around without having to worry about port regulations. Mirrik ran up and down the field, bellowing and stamping his feet, and I did a crazy kind of dance with Jan Mortenson, and Steen Steen danced all by him/herself, and Dr. Horkkk forgot his dignity and climbed a tree, and so on. Even Kelly Watchman, who as an android doesn’t suffer from a wound-up nervous system, looked relieved to be off that ship. Meanwhile the crewmen stood around tapping their skulls at us and otherwise indicating their scorn for the cargo of chimpo vidjes that they had just finished hauling across ultraspace. I can’t blame them. We must have seemed pretty weird.