Sounds from outside. Voices. Not human voices, not speaking human words, but somehow, while I slept, they’d become voices all the same, the Arousians’ cricket-screeching welcome, as warming as the sunshine, making me feel like I was...Oh, hell. I don’t know. Like I was back home, walking into the breakroom at Stardock just before change of shift, getting ready to... go to work. I thought briefly about them all, about Garstang, about Phil Hendrickx and Zell Benson, Millie Ai-chang and Rua Mater... I got up, took a shower. Got dressed. Went outside.Under a brass-tinted blue sky, the Arousians were already well along in the task of breaking camp, tents taken down, folded, packed in ridiculously tiny containers, for the most part already stowed in the pickup truck’s side boxes. Other equipment... It looked like the Arousians would get it all in the boxes as well.Off to one side, Limbcracker and her... well. Not fellows. Not brethren. Not comrades, though that comes closer. No word in English for a band of sisters?
