tried a cigarette, choked over the
first few puffs, and decided that they didn't like smoking.

"Mom gave us a lot of information, as far as she could, on the crops
and animals. The big things, the size of rhinoceroses, are draft
animals and nothing else; they're not eaten," Dorver said. "I don't
know whether the meat isn't good, or is taboo, or they are too
valuable to eat. They eat all the other three species, and milk two
of them. I have an idea they grind their grain in big stone mortars
as needed."

That was right; he'd seen things like that.

"Willi, when you're over in the mountains, see if you can find
something we can make millstones out of. We can shape them with
sono-cutters; after they get the idea, they can do it themselves
by hand. One of those big animals could be used to turn the mill.
Did you get any words from her?"

Paul Meillard shook his head gloomily. "Nothing we can be sure of.
It was the same thing as in the village, yesterday. She'd say
something, I'd repeat it, and she'd tell us it was wrong and say
the same thing over again. Lillian took recordings; she got the
same results as last night. Ask her about it later."

"She has the same effect on Mom as on the others?"

"Yes. Mom was very polite and tried not to show it, but--"

Lillian took him aside, out of earshot of the two Svants, after
lunch. She was almost distracted.

"Mark, I don't know what I'm going to do. She's like the others.
Every time I open my mouth in front of her, she's simply horrified.
It's as though my voice does something loathsome to her. And I'm the
one who's supposed to learn to talk to them."

"Well, those who can do, and those who can't teach," he told her.
"You can study recordings, and tell us what the words are and
teach us how to recognize and pronounce them. You're the only
linguist we have."

That seemed to comfort her a little. He hoped it would work out that
way. If they could communicate with these people and did leave a
party here to prepare for the first colonization, he'd stay on, to
teach the natives Terran technologies and study theirs. He'd been
expecting that Lillian would stay, too. She was the linguist; she'd
have to stay. But now, if it turned out that she would be no help but
a liability, she'd go back with the _Hubert Penrose_. Paul wouldn't
keep a linguist who offended the natives' every sensibility with
every word she spoke. He didn't want that to happen. Lillian and he
had come to me