The people were either too friendly or seemed frightened of him. He longed for the shady, concealing jungle of home, with its familiar smell of wet and rotting vegetation, and the distant sweet scent of flowers. The ship reeked of humans, and under that the dry smell of metal, the waxy scent of plastic, and the sharp pungency of the substances used to clean the ship. He was finding it very hard not to show how uneasy the sterile environment of the ship made him feel.

Perhaps it would have been better for him to seek an honorable death. But his people needed to know more about these humans, and it was his duty as an enkar to learn everything he could.

Ukatonen looked up and saw Eerin watching him. Was that a look of concern on her face? Even after four years of observing her, he had trouble deciphering her alien features. It was even harder now that Eerin was among her own people. She seemed like a stranger, her body concealed by clothes, her skin the color of embarrassment, speaking the humans’ noisy sound speech. Even her name was different. The humans called her Juna, or Dr. Saari.

Eerin came over to them and put her arm’ around Moki’s shoulders. The bami looked up at her, his skin flaring blue with happiness at her touch.

“Are you all right?” Eerin asked.

Ukatonen’s ears twitched at the sound of her words. Human sound speech sounded like frogs in heat. It amazed him that intelligent creatures actually communicated like that. If only Eerin could still speak properly.

“Tiangi looks so small from here.” He spoke in the humans’ skin speech, which they called “writing.” The human words appearing on his chest were dark grey with sadness.

Eerin nodded. “Do you miss it much?”

“Everything’s so strange here. So bright and dry and empty.” He shook his head. “I’ll get used to it,” he reassured her. He would have to. The journey from Tiangi to the humans’ planet, Earth, would take more than four months.