Fire Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

that I couldn’t get better and quicker from the navigator’s bible?’ Dejerine said. ‘Oh, yes,
sì, oui, da, ja,
also text, pictures, anecdotes. Not bad material for a tourist to study in advance, if anybody could afford to playtourist over such a distance. And I’ ve gone through the other stuff too, projected hours of 3V records, I know the shape of an Ishtarian–’ He had been riffling pages as he talked, and for no logical reason halted at such an illustration.
    A male and female were shown, plus a human who gave scale. The male was the larger of the pair, about the size of a small horse. ‘Centauroid’ was a very loose description. The burly two-armed torso merged smoothly with the four-legged barrel, taurine hump above the forequarters leading from the horizontal to the almost vertical sections of the back. The body looked leonine rather than equine, with its robust build, long tail, padded feet whose three toes (more prehensile in front than behind) bore purplish nails. The arms resembled, somewhat, those of a Terrestrial weight lifter; but the hands each had four digits, the first three not unlike man’s thumb and two of his fingers though spreading more widely, the last like a less-developed extra thumb with one more joint, all possessing nails too. The head was big and round, ears large and pointed (slightly movable), jaw showing a chin and near-anthropomorphous delicacy, teeth white and small except for a pair of upper fangs which barely protruded from the mouth. Instead of a nose, a short muzzle opened in a single broad nostril which curved downward and flared at the ends. Beneath, feline whiskers surrounded the upper lip. The eyes also suggested a cat’s, whiteless, his blue, hers golden.
    Face and arms were glabrous, the skin (in the race depicted, native to Beronnen) light brown. Most of the body bore a tawny-green mosslike pelt. The lion impression was heightened by a rufous mane which covered head, throat, and spine down to the hump: composed not of hair but of thickly leaved vines. A similar growth formed a shelf of eyebrow.
    Sexual dimorphism was considerable. The female stood fifteen centimeters shorter. She had a mere stub of tail. Her hump was large and softly rounded, unlike his blocky cluster of muscles; her rump was broad and her belly deep; two nipples on an udder which wasn’t large, and the external genitalia, were brilliant red. Accompanying text noted thather odor was sweet and his acrid, and that she commanded a wider range of frequencies in both speech and hearing.
    They were unclad aside from ornaments and a belt to support pouch and knife. He carried a spear and a stringed instrument slung across his shoulders; she, a longbow, quiver, and what might be a wooden flute.
    ‘–I know the biochemistry is basically like ours, we can eat a good deal of each other’s food though some essentials are lacking in either case – why, they get drunk on ethanol too.’ Dejerine snapped the volume shut. ‘Homelike, no? Except that men have spent a century on Ishtar, working hard to understand, and you can better tell than I how far off they are from their goal!’ He sent the book spinning over to his bed.
    ‘A long ways,’ his visitor admitted.
    ‘And those humans. True, true, more than half the population of Primavera is floating: researchers who come for a while to carry out specific projects, technies on time contract, archeologists basing themselves there till they can go on to … Tammuz, is that the dead planet’s name? Nevertheless, they must all have a special devotion to Ishtar. And the core of them are the long-term residents, the careerists, a fair percentage second- or third-generation Ishtarians who have scarcely an atom from Earth in their cells.’ Dejerine spread his palms. ‘Do you see how badly I need a, a briefing? I need more than that, of course, but can’t possibly get it. So … my friend, will you kindly finish your drink and take another? Loosen your tongue.