Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SHARE OUR WORLD 43 Why so little evaporation from the land? Why—Well, problems . . . that’s what we’re here for.’” He looked up at Streloff. “How are things with the biochemical crew?” “Wonderful, wonderful,’’ was the immediate answer. “Very good! Al- most through with the secondary organic analysis of the soil—starting on some of the leaves in a few days. Our virus chains lasted out the trip rfectly.” Chang laughed. “A lot of analysis goes on down there. One virus reacts to your sample, another virus reacts to the change in that one, another virus passes the word to you, and you make an entry in a notebook.” Streloff hesitated. ‘““We encounter considerable difficulty with contami- nation and mutation,” he said. Balch asked quickly, “What are your results so far, Frank?” “Very good, very many results. I don’t have them all tabulated yet. We'll see, we'll see.” “Anything startling?” “Well, I don’t know, if you’d say that. Not exactly. Oh, it’s a fine day. Excuse me, I have to get back to my /... ef... assistants.” He disap- peared before they could say good-by. Balch spoke first. “* hard on Frank?” Chang started. “I’m sorry. What’s happened to him, anyway?” ““He’s been worried about his wife since before we arrived. Now that his work’s going better he’s burying him- self into it to get back his good cheer— or try to.” “Worried about Hilda?’ “Hilda and Chandra Melkote—” He held up two crossed fingers. “Is that true?” “Don’t think so, but that’s what he’s worried about.’’. “Indeed?” She smiled. “I’m sup- posed to be the psychologist in this party.” way up here watching them, Why are you so “Not this kind of psychology. This kind we all do. Keep what I said in mind, huh?’ “Yes. Thanks.” She leaned against the side of the air lock and watched the nibblies, still eating quietly, just inside the edge of the forest. All fourteen of them. “It makes me feel lonely to sit ” she said. “It must be cool down there.” She looked up timidly. Balch’s eyes met hers and he smiled lazily, then turned back to Four. Chang liked Tim Balch very much. And it was very pleasant to sit here, in this green, sunlit well in the deep forest, and listen to the humming of this world’s noon. “Even the air is good,” mused Chang, remembering how her eyes had smarted the first time she’d breathed it. Chang yawned happily, stretching out her legs to warm her calves in the direct sunlight. At the same time she felt a sharp sense of incongruity. It let her finish the yawn, but immediately afterwards she stood up with a sigh. “Back to work,” Balch stated. ““Yes.”> She looked around, torn between the fourteen nibblies down here and the one up in her lab. (He really must be lonely, she thought. How'can I expect him to make sense out of that flat, glassed-in little room?) “Say, Tim’’—she gestured toward the forest—“‘with the nibblies working so close to this clearing, we have essentially a cross-section picture of the trees they cut down. See what I mean? Maybe if we took movies from the ship they’d actually show the geometry of the trees; we could analyze the job mechanically and get some idea of what goes on in their collective minds.” “T get you. Might be worth trying. We’d need shots covering a good connicloooks.c© nA