“I’m coming. Be ready to pick up the pieces!” This was vocal language, through Barrar’s speaker and the woman’s translator, though originating in a device fully is artificial as Janice’s coder. The Samian had no more voice than he had arms, legs, or eyes; how his species had come to evolve intelligence was a favorite challenge to science from the mystics who still rejected evolution as well as among the biologists themselves.

Husband and wife watched tensely as the plastic-skeleton poled itself to the head of the ramp and paused for a moment while its driver presumably made a final evaluation of his problems. Both Erthumoi had time to wonder whether his feelings were normal enough, by their standards, for their own to qualify as sympathy. Then Barrar thrust himself forward and downward.

The mechanical body’s acceleration was rather greater than the woman’s; the framework must have set up more turbulence in the dense air but certainly had less total drag than her armored figure. Steering in the swirling air currents with the oarlike poles could have been a straightforward matter of logic, hut for a living nervous system reason takes significantly longer than reflexes. Janice and her husband had the reflexes — had acquired them, in fact, under some five times Habranha’s gravity; Ged Barrar did not.

The ramp was five meters wide, which was ordinarily plenty even in fairly high winds. By the time he was fifty meters down its slope, however, the Samian’s overcorrected turns were bringing him almost to the edge, first on one side and then on the other. Janice could do nothing from the low end of the run; Hugh was tempted to launch himself after the swerving figure in spite of the obvious fact that there was no way he could catch it in time to keep the plastic framework out of the bushes. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.