Free Darkover: First Contact by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page A

not know a Cepheid variable from a constellation, so much of what she was trying to do was incomprehensible to him; but with a carefully shielded light—not to spoil the dark-adaptation of her eyes—he wrote down careful strings of figures and co-ordinates as she gave them. After what seemed hours of this, she sighed and stretched cramped muscles.
    “That’s all I can do for now; I can take more readings just before dawn. Still no sign of rain?”
    “None, thank goodness.”
    Around them the scent from the flowers on the lower slopes was sweet and intoxicating, as quick-blooming shrubs, vivified by two days of heat and dryness, burst and opened all around. The unfamiliar scents were a little dizzying. Over the mountain floated a great gleaming moon, with a pale iridescent glow; then, following it by only a few moments, another, this one with pale violet lustre.
    “Look at the moon,” she whispered.
    “Which moon?” Rafe smiled in the darkness. “Earthmen get used to saying, the moon; I suppose some day someone will give them names. . . .”
    They sat on the soft dry grass, watching the moons swing free of the mountains and rise. Rafe quoted softly, “If the stars shone only one night in a thousand years, how men would look and wonder and adore.”
    She nodded. “Even after ten days, I find I miss them.”
    Rationally Rafe knew that it was madness to sit here in the dark. If nothing else, birds or beasts of prey—perhaps the banshee-screamer from the heights they had heard last night—might be abroad in the dark. He said so, finally, and Camilla, like the breaking of a spell, started and said, “You’re right. I must wake well before dawn.”
    Rafe was somehow reluctant to go into the stuffy darkness of the shelter-tent. He said, “In the old days it used to be believed it was dangerous to sleep in the moonlight—that’s where the word lunatic came from. Would it be four times as dangerous to sleep under four moons, I wonder?”
    “No, but it would be—lunatic,” Camilla said, laughing gently. He stopped, took her shoulders in a gentle grip and for a moment the girl, biting back a tart remark, thought in a mixture of fear and anticipation that he would bend down and kiss her; but then he turned away and said, “Who wants to be sane? Good night, Camilla. See you an hour before sunrise,” and strode away, leaving her to go before him into the shelter.
     
    A clear night, over the planet of the four moons. Banshees prowled on the heights, freezing their warm-blooded prey with their screams, blundering toward them by the heat of their blood, but never coming below the snowline; on a snowless night, anything on rock or grass was safe. Above the valleys, great birds of prey swung, beasts still unknown to the Earthmen prowled in the depths of the deep forest, living and dying, and trees unheard crashed to the ground. Under the moonlight, in the unaccustomed heat and dryness of a warm wind blowing away from the glaciated ridges, flowers bloomed and opened, and shed their perfume and pollen. Night-blooming and strange, with a deep and intoxicating scent....
    The red sun rose clear and cloudless, a brilliant sunrise with the sun like a giant ruby in a clear garnet sky. Rafe and Camilla, who had been at the telescope for two hours, sat and watched it with the pleasant fatigue of a light task safely over for some time.
    “Shall we start down? This weather is too good to last,” Camilla said, “and although I’ve gotten used to the mountain in the sun, I don’t think I’d care to navigate it on ice.”
    “Right. Pack up the instruments—you know how they go—and I’ll fix a bite of rations and strike the tent. We’ll start down while the weather holds—not that it doesn’t look like a gorgeous day. If it’s still fine tonight we can stop on one of the hilltops and camp out, and you can take some more sightings,” he said.
    Within forty minutes they were going down. Rafe cast a wistful look back at the