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Val was looking at him, he suddenly realized. "Hi," he said. The others were looking at him, too. Looking back and forth between him and Val. "What are we all voting on, whether I should grow a beard?"
"Voting on nothing," said Quara. "I'm just depressed. I mean, I knew what I was doing when I got on this ship, but damn, it's really hard to get enthusiastic about working on these people's language when I can count my life by the gauge on the oxygen tanks."
"I notice," said Ela dryly, "that you're already calling the descoladores 'people.'"
"Shouldn't I? Do we even know what they look like?" Quara seemed confused. "I mean, they have a language, they--"
"That's what we're here to decide, isn't it?" said Firequencher. "Whether the descoladores are raman or varelse. The translation problem is just a little step along that road."
"Big step," corrected Ela. "And we don't have time enough to do it."
"Since we don't know how long it's going to take," said Quara, "I don't see how you can be so sure of that."
"I can be dead sure," said Ela. "Because all we're doing is sitting around talking and watching Miro and Val make soulful faces at each other. It doesn't take a genius to know that at this rate, our progress before running out of oxygen will be exactly zero."
"In other words," said Quara, "we should stop wasting time." She turned back to the notes and printouts she was working on.
"But we're not wasting time," said Val softly.
"No?" asked Ela.
"I'm waiting for Miro to tell me how easily Jane could be brought back into communication with the real world. A body waiting to receive her. Starflight restored. His old and loyal friend, suddenly a real girl. I'm waiting for that."
Miro shook his head. "I don't want to lose you," he said.
"That's not helping," said Val.
"But it's true," said Miro. "The theory, that was easy. Thinking deep thoughts while riding on a hovercar back on Lusitania, sure, I could reason out that Jane in Val would be Jane and Val. But when you come right down to it, I can't say that--"
"Shut up," said Val.