"Then you can have it. I'm going to try keeping my eyes open and staying alive." There was no reply. His expression was tart and greasy despite all his light talk, and I knew mine was the same. I tested the security rope between our pressure suits. It was a taut and virile bass. We scaled a staccato of rocks, our suits grinding pepper against our hides. The musk summit rose before us, a minor-key horizon with a shifting treble for as far as I could smell. It was primitive beauty that made you feel shocking pink inside. The most beautiful vista I had ever tasted, it couldn't be dulled even by the sensation of beef broth under my skin. "Is this transphasia?" I asked in awe. "It always has been before," Quade remarked. "Ready to swallow your words about this being something an old hand wouldn't recognize, Captain?" "I'm swallowing no words until I find out precisely how they taste here." "Not a bad taste. They're pretty. Or haven't you noticed?" "Quade, you're right! About the colors anyway. This reminds me of an illiscope recording from a cybernetic translator." "It should. I don't suppose we could understand each other if it wasn't for our morphistudy courses in reading cross-sense translations of Centauri blushtalk and the like." It became difficult to understand him, difficult to try talking in the face of such splendor. You never really appreciate colors until you smell them for the first time. * * * * * Quade was as conversational as ever, though. "I can't see irregularities occurring in a gravitational field. We must have compensated for the transphasia while we still had a point of reference, the solid reality of the spaceship. But out here, where all we have to hang onto is each other, our concept of reality goes _bang_ and deflates to a tired joke." Before I could agree with one of his theories for once, a streak of spice shot past us. It bounced back tangily and made a bitter rip between the two of us. There was no time to judge its size, if it had size, or its decibel range, or its caloric count, before a small, sharp pain dug in and dwindled down to nothing in one long second. The new odor pattern in my head told me Quade was saying something I couldn't quite make out. Quade then pulled me in the direction of the nasty little pain. "Wait a minute, Spaceman!" I bellowed. "Where the devil do you think you're dragging me? Halt! That's a direct order." He stopped. "Don't you want to find out what that was? This _is_ an exploration party, you know, sir." "I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any further from the ship." "That's important, Captain?"