The Sparrow

who looked like a man who'd just gotten a reprieve. He was already back at work, looking for files on the fuel components.

'How long will the Wolverton tube operate without maintenance?' Anne asked George.

He looked up. 'It's set up to be self-sustaining, but we'll lose maybe twenty percent of the plants a year, rough estimate. Marc will know better. There's only seven of us now, so there'll be a smaller oxygen demand. If we can make enough fuel to get back up there even once, then Marc or I could go up and optimize things before the rest of you come aboard. And we might be able to use Rakhati plants as replacements, now that I think of it.' He felt better at that. They weren't necessarily doomed.

'And in the meantime,' Jimmy said, with modest cheer, 'we can still use the Stella Maris as a resource. We've got the onboard computer systems and radio relays.' He looked at Sandoz, who'd said virtually nothing during the discussion.

Emilio was preoccupied, but he'd followed most of the talk if not the calculations it was based on. He shivered suddenly but then seemed to come fully into focus. 'It seems to me that the mission is intact. We came here to learn and we can still send back data.' The equivocal face smiled but the eyes, for once, did not. 'As you say, everything we need and everyone we care for is right here.'

'The twigs aren't that bad,' Anne said resolutely. 'I could get to like the twigs.'

'And,' George said, 'I just might pull a rabbit out of this hat after all.'

Sofia Mendes awoke some twelve hours later, thoroughly disoriented. She had been dreaming, for some reason, of Puerto Rico, which she recognized more from the feel of the soft air than from any geographic clue. There was music in the dream and she asked, 'Won't someone get in trouble for singing?' But Alan Pace replied, 'Not if you bring flowers,' which made no sense to her, even inside the dream.

When she opened her eyes, it took several moments to figure out where she was, and then the misery from every joint and muscle reprised for her the story of the two days just past. She lay still, aching worse than she had the morning before in the forest, and began to work out why she'd dreamt of Puerto Rico. Someone was simmering a sofrito and she could detect the earthy smell of beans. The music was real, too, on remote from the Stella Maris library. The Runa were gone, she remembered, so they could play music again with impunity. She sat up with infinite care and was startled when Jimmy Quinn, sitting nearby, announced: 'Sleeping Beauty has awakened!'

D.W. was the first to duck into the apartment and stare at her, open-mouthed. 'I never thought I'd see the day but, Mendes, you look like fifteen miles of bad road. How do you feel?'

'Worse,' she said. 'How's Marc?'

'Bloodied but unbowed,' Marc called from the terrace. 'And too stiff to come inside and say good morning to you, mademoiselle.'

'God, child, I admire your bladder control.' Anne came in. 'Allow me to escort you to the nearest riverside. Can you walk or would you like me to call the Quinn taxi service to give you a lift?'

Sofia tentatively swung her legs over the side of her low camp bed and waited a few moments for her head to stop spinning. Jimmy stood and leaned down to offer an arm, which she used to pry herself partially out of her sitting position. 'I feel like I've been in a plane wreck,' she said, astonished by how entirely pulverized it was possible to feel without actually having broken anything. She took a few bent-over steps and moaned and laughed, but regretted it because her chest hurt so much. 'This is awful.'

George came in. A veteran of many spectacular lost arguments with steadfastly immovable objects like planets, he watched her hobble knowingly and informed her, 'The third day is always the worst.'

She stopped moving, bent as a crone, and regarded him narrowly. 'Does today count as the second or the third day?'

He laughed sympathetically. 'You'll find out tomorrow.'

She rolled her eyes, the only body part that wasn't sore, and moved slowly out to the terrace using Jimmy's arm as a crutch. Marc's eyes met hers, but he was otherwise completely immobile, his face too bruised even to smile comfortably. 'Robichaux, you look dreadful,' she said, truly horrified.

'Thank you. So do you.'

'George has a new business scheme,' Emilio said, straight-faced. 'We're going to build cathedrals. We've been able to obtain employment for you and Marc as gargoyles.' He held up the coffee pot. 'Look, Mendes: reason to live.'

'I'm not certain that's sufficient motivation.' She looked doubtfully at the long trail down to the river.

Jimmy, whose blue gaze had rested on her unwaveringly all this time, saw the glance. To have held her in his arms once in twenty-four hours was enough for him. Friendship, he told himself, was all he hoped for. 'I carried Marc down,' he said casually.

'This is true, Mendes,' Emilio assured her, his face smiling but his eyes unreadable.

She'd have shrugged but, in view of how she felt standing still, shrugging seemed rash. 'All right. You've got a customer, Mr. Quinn.' And he lifted her up with no more effort than if she were a child.

Over the next few days, they simply rested, each privately engaged in adjusting to the situation, learning to moderate the swings of hope and despond, trying to balance habitual optimism with sensible resignation. Beyond this, they needed to gather themselves for the next phase of their lives on Rakhat. The immensely difficult work they'd done during the past few years and relentless change had taken a toll; they were all closer to the edge of mental and emotional exhaustion than anyone except Emilio had realized. The others had all left their native lands and their native tongues at one time or another and had all coped with cultures other than their own, but they'd worked within the worldwide international culture of science and technology. Only Emilio had been dropped repeatedly into completely unfamiliar ways of life almost without resources beyond his own resilience and intelligence, and he knew how draining it was.

So he was glad of the respite and felt it a gift and thanked God for it. Marc and Sofia slept a great deal. D.W. did as well. Anne was concerned that Yarbrough had picked up some kind of gut parasite. There were cyclic bouts of diarrhea, a general weakness and a troubling lack of appetite. She now had access to broad-spectrum parasitotropics from the lander pharmacy and had begun dosing him, hoping something that killed worms at home would kill whatever was sapping his strength here. She watched the others for symptoms, but so far only D.W. seemed affected.

George was subdued. His anodyne was to work on representing the lander fuel formula graphically, in anticipation of finding someone who might be willing and able to help them once they made contact with the city people. He was feeling worse than he let on, but George had Anne, whose eyes were often on him although she did not fuss over him. George, Emilio thought, would be all right.

Jimmy, of all of them, seemed the most serene, and it was plain why this should be so. He was unobtrusively attentive, alert to Sofia's needs as she recovered but to Marc's as well, Emilio noted. There was an appealing off- handedness and good humor to his courtship, for that was clearly what it was becoming. What Jimmy had said and done since Sofia's return was so well controlled, so generous and full of respect, that Emilio was sure it would be recognized and valued. And the love that underpinned it all, he thought, might one day be returned.

It came to him then that there might be a child, human children on Rakhat. And that, Emilio thought, would be good. For Sofia and Jimmy. For all of them.

And so, in the quiet days that followed the crash, Emilio Sandoz turned inward for a time and probed the sense of mourning that had come over him, tried to understand why he felt so strongly that something inside him was dying.

Like all of them, he'd been badly rocked by the notion that they might never see Earth again. But as the shock wore off, so did the numbing sense of loss. Jimmy was right. Things could have been much worse; they had what they needed. They might yet get back to the Stella Maris, and if they didn't, there was still the real possibility of long-term survival here. Not just survival but a good life, full of learning, full of love, Emilio thought, and took a step closer to the death he felt inside himself.

He had, in the months since arriving on Rakhat, experienced a vast ocean of love and had been content to drift on it, not distinguishing degrees of intensity or relative depths of feeling. That he took pleasure in Sofia's company was undeniable, but it was hardly new. He had been, always, scrupulous in his behavior and even in his thoughts. He had concealed his own feelings and mastered them, and mastered them once more when he