Sweet Starfire

announced. “And I see it’s getting close to a decent drinking hour. Come on, Cidra, the men are away. We might as well play.”
    It occurred to Cidra that she should spend the evening in the local Archives pursuing her research. But after two weeks in space with a short-tempered male and the unnerving demonstration of the local fauna, a drink sounded like an absolutely wonderful idea. For the first time she thought she understood the fundamental appeal of alcohol for Wolves.
    “I’ll change into my evening robe,” Cidra said.

Chapter Eight

    One hour and one large mug of Renaissance Rose ale later, Cidra realized that she was enjoying herself very much. She had discovered that one could become accustomed to the heavy, tart ale. Considering the fact that the tavern was crowded, noisy, and only inefficiently cooled, she was interested to find herself having a good time. There were other factors, too, that ought to have hindered her sense of pleasant relaxation. When she had first arrived with Desma, she had attracted a fair amount of covert interest. Initially it had made her uncomfortable.
    “We don’t get too many Harmonics here on Renaissance. And when they do come, they tend to keep to themselves.”
    “But I’m not a Harmonic,” Cidra had begun to explain with painful honesty.
    “You look like one at first glance. Don’t worry, they’ll lose interest after a while.” Desma dismissed the clutter of company uniforms, ship suits, and lab-tech outfits that sat, lounged, or slouched around the smoky room. Not only was the air-conditioning machinery having trouble with the heat, it wasn’t doing a particularly good job of filtering the air, either.
    Still, by the time she finished the first mug of ale, Cidra didn’t really care. When Desma came back from the drink dispenser with a fresh mug for herself, Cidra picked up the conversation where it had been left off.

    “There’s no doubt in your mind, then, that life on Renaissance shows the same evolutionary and genetic background as life on Lovelady?”

    “We’ve still got a long way to go to be certain, but so far we’ve found nothing to contradict Maltan’s Theory that species on Renaissance are evolved from the same genetic sources as species on Lovelady.”
    “Which means that the Ghosts must have evolved either here or on Lovelady and then colonized the neighboring planet, taking their flora and fauna with them.”
    “It makes sense,” Desma explained. “We know from the few records that survived the crash of the First Families’ colony ship that statistically life is an exceedingly rare event in the universe. The odds are certainly against two planets in one star system developing life independently. And the odds of them developing similar life forms is just astronomical.”
    “But the creatures you showed me in the lab look so different from the common life forms on Lovelady. Hard to believe they’re related. Everything here on Renaissance seems so much more violent by nature.”
    “Ain’t adaptation a wonderful thing?” Desma observed cheerfully. “And believe me, here on Renaissance it’s a case of adapt and conquer or die. There are winners and losers here but nothing in between.”
    Cidra glanced around at the boisterous crowd. “Where do humans fit in, I wonder.”
    “Right now we’re learning to adapt. In some small areas we’re even doing some exploiting and conquering. But that could change overnight. We could still run into something here on Renaissance that is capable of flicking us off the planet the way a torla flicks off a scatterbug. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”
    “It seems wrong to think in terms of exploitation and conquering,” Cidra said thoughtfully. “This is a lush, primeval world. It has its own intrinsic harmonies. It would seem that a more positive approach to exploration would be one that took a different philosophical basis. We should be looking for the underlying harmonic rules, trying to fit ourselves into them.”
    “Spoken like a true Harmonic.” Desma laughed. “The problem is that nature has no qualms about changing the rules on us without much warning. Nature isn’t static, and therefore I don’t think it’s possible to ever be completely in harmony with it. Remember the glitterbugs. No matter what we come up with, they blithely keep mutating—”
    “A perfect example of what I’m trying to say,” Cidra interrupted happily. She found nothing more entertaining than