"Oh, the tea!" Theo showed her packet. "This is the kind we drink at home."

"Is it, indeed? And you have so little Liaden?"

"Sleep learned, mostly," she confessed. "I know my accent's terrible. We speak Terran at home on Delgado, but the tea, I learned from my father."

His focus went distant a moment and the single hand signed a word she read as wifechoice. "Yes, of course. Delgado is quite cosmopolitan in its beverage choices, is it not, quite unlike . . . Melchiza."

She snorted, hands signing squashed fruitwater very nearly on their own, and he laughed.

"An excellent description, and their wines are not much better. Still, they do appreciate pilots . . . and I deduce, from rumor, that you must be Theo Waitley. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. You will be in my classes starting in two days. Enjoy your meal, and your tea!"

"Thank you, sir," she said, but he had already turned to the tea chest to make his own choice. She caught up a brew-cup and moved off to her table, now full except for her place, and felt her face heat again as she went over the encounter.

Squashed fruitwater, she thought, and sighed. There must be a better sign that that!

"Erkes!" the van driver called out. "All excellent exopilots exit energetically . . ."

Theo went down the ramp on the heels of the tall girl in the green jacket from the baggage claim. The two of them pulled their bags from the rack, Theo wordlessly helping the other girl move her ridiculous pile out of the path of vehicular traffic.

"Thank you," the girl said as the van pulled away. She looked down at Theo and nodded. "I am Asu diamon Dayez," she said, pronouncing it like she expected Theo to recognize it, which she didn't. "And you are?"