Once this afternoon I was saddened by the realization that old Judy can take little part in what goes on now. I can well remember Judy running like the wind. The angel must have heard this thought in me, for she stood a long time beside Judy's drowsy head, while Judy's tail thumped cheerfully on the warm grass.... * * * * * In the evening the angel made a heavy meal on two or three cake crumbs and another drop of sherry, and we had what was almost a sustained conversation. I will write it in that form this time, rather than grope for anything more exact. I asked her: "How far away is your home?" "My home is here." "I meant the place your people came from." "Ten light years." "The images you showed me--that quiet valley--that is ten light years away?" "Yes. But that was my father talking to you, through me. He was grown when the journey began. He is two hundred and forty years old--our years, thirty-two days longer than each of yours." Mainly I was conscious of a flood of relief. I had feared, on the basis of terrestrial biology that her explosively rapid growth after hatching must foretell a brief life. But it's all right--she can outlive me, and by a few hundred years at that. "Your father is here now, on this planet? Shall I see him?" She took her hands away--listening, I believe. The answer was: "No. He is sorry. He is ill and cannot live long. I am to see him in a few days, when I fly a little better. He taught me for twenty years after I was born." "I don't understand. I thought that--" "Later, friend. My father is grateful for your kindness to me." I don't know what I thought about that. I felt no faintest trace of condescension in the message. "And he was showing me things he had seen with his own eyes, ten light years away?" "Yes." Then she wanted me to rest a while; I am sure she knows what a huge effort it is for my primitive brain to function in this way. But before she ended the conversation by humming down to her nest she gave me this, and I received it with such clarity that I cannot be mistaken: "He says that only fifty million years ago it was a jungle there, just as Terra is now." * * * * * June 8 When I woke four days ago, the angel was having breakfast, and little Camilla was dead. The angel watched me rub sleep out of my eyes, watched me discover Camilla, and then flew to me. I received this: "Does it make you unhappy?" "I don't know exactly." You can get fond of a hen, especially a cantankerous and homely old one whose personality has a lot in common with your own. "She was old. She wanted a flock of chicks, and I couldn't stay with her. So I--" something obscure here; probably my mind was trying too hard to grasp it--"so I saved her life." I could make nothing else out of it. She said "saved."