Free Debt of Ages by Steve White Page B

planet whose rotation it had long ago halted.
    Tiraena zho'Daeriel DiFalco-Sarnac watched the Survey base come into view as the raft slid silently over the flatlands. It lay near the estuary of Naeruil II's greatest river, surrounded by native dwellings that had sprung up around it. The Naeruilhiv were at least the equal of their human discoverers in their appetite for novelty, and had little attachment to a particular place to deter them from moving close to where that appetite might best be satisfied. Maybe their disinclination to stay in one place long enough to form elaborately stratified societies had contributed to keeping them in the Bronze Age despite their high intelligence—it seemed to get higher every time the neural-scanner technicians recalibrated their equipment.
    Of course, it wasn't easy to measure the intelligence of a race that consisted of two symbiotic species, so that each "individual" was, in fact, a duality. By the same token, it gave them a natural gift for communication. . . .
    "Cleared for landing," the pilot broke into her thoughts. She nodded absently and the native settlements (Camps? Something else?) vanished behind structures that seemed to rise up as they settled like a falling feather onto the landing stage.
    "Very smooth, Nicky," she approved. Nicole Hunyadi grinned in response.
    "Hard to go wrong with these new models," the pilot admitted, slapping the console affectionately. "My dad—he used to pilot the old Solar Union drop shuttles during the war—keeps telling me that my generation's got it soft."
    "Well, you do," Tiraena stated firmly. Hunyadi's grin was unabated in its infectiousness, and it duly infected Tiraena. She found it easy to share the pilot's irreverence, having grown up with the kind of refined grav repulsion to which the peoples of the former Solar Union were still adjusting.
    Still, she thought, have a little respect! I'm more than old enough to be your mother. But, she assured herself as she swung herself out of the raft under Naeruil II's 1.18 G pull, she didn't feel it, nor look it. She had, from birth, had access to the best bioscience Raehaniv money could buy, and at fifty-four Terran years her hair was as darkly auburn and her body as lithe as ever. Though chronologically older than Bob, she was almost certain to outlive him. It was a dilemma that linked her with her great-grandmother Aelanni zho'Morma, and they had both made the same decision.
    She swung her satchel over her shoulder, waved goodbye to Nicky, and started toward the headquarters building with the cautious stride that was her natural gait's compromise with the local gravity. The sun seemed almost as stationary as the moon—this planet's sidereal day was longer than four of Earth's—but it was setting, and there was some relief from the heat that had, over the last few watches, made Tiraena thankful for her utility suit's ability to "breathe." Soon would come the long night when it would get as close to cold as Naeruil II ever got. The enormous moon kept this hemisphere's night from being very dark, but still it was good to get as much done as possible in daylight. Which , she told her conscience, is a perfectly valid reason for me to go out and pitch in with the field work, rather than spend my whole time back here doing my administrative chores like a good little station director. Plenty of time during the night to catch up on all that rhylieu shit.
    Rationalization completed, she grinned to herself as she checked in at her office and proceeded on to her quarters, thinking back over all the wonders she had seen in the hinterlands. The universe was full of planets with the right conditions for life, but most had not yet existed long enough to bring it forth. Earth's Sol and Raehan's Tareil were exceptionally old members of that exclusive club of F, G, and K type main-sequence stars which could sire living worlds. Prebiotic planets were everywhere, readily terraformable but as yet barren. And of