On the trip home, Varlik was effectively a recluse. At first various ship's officers tried to strike up conversations, for he'd become more a celebrity than he'd realized, and they were eager to question him about the war. But Varlik's answers were brief and evasive, though by intrinsic courtesy he avoided rudeness. He took to finding an unoccupied table at meals, and after a few days only Mikal Brusin gave him any attention at all.
Brusin was an exception, of course—an old friend—and Varlik had accepted the mate's invitation to a drink and a visit the first day. But after half an hour of avoiding the enigmas that had trapped so much of his attention, it seemed to Varlik that he was repeating himself. Brusin was too perceptive to be offended when Varlik excused himself. He could see the man was troubled, and connected it with the death of so many friends. So he didn't push—merely repeated occasionally his offer of a drink, usually declined and never leading to much talk.
To pass the long trip, Varlik again borrowed a firefighter's suit, and worked out long and hard in the gym. It helped him sleep, which he did a lot of, although here too he was often beset by bad dreams. Unintentionally, it also added to his mystique as "the white T'swa."
On the first day he'd checked the computer for instructional material on the Orlanthan language, and found nothing. So he played and replayed the cube he'd made in the Bird camp, finding in Bird conversations many of the words they'd taught him the meanings of—these numbered more than forty. Then, with these to start with, he'd analyzed the possible meanings of words he'd recorded but hadn't been taught. In this way, and because the language was agglutinative, he increased his vocabulary to about sixty words whose meanings he felt fairly confident of, with about fifty more whose meanings he could reasonably guess at. Then, although he knew almost nothing of Orlanthan grammar, he used his small vocabulary—including words with guessed-at meanings—in every combination he could think of, giving him mastery of what he knew. Probably, he told himself, his skill with Bird resembled Curly's skill with Standard, though Curly's vocabulary was no doubt larger and more functional. But if he was ever again in Kettle's equatorial jungle, he'd have a basis for communicating.
Not that he ever expected or intended to be. His language studies and drills served briefly as a pastime—something to do besides work out, sleep, and sit reading in the ship's library.
Eventually, the day of landfall arrived. And conscious of his aloofness on the trip, Varlik made a point at breakfast of going around the officers' mess shaking the hand of every man there, thanking them for the voyage. The thank-you didn't make a great deal of sense, and had he delivered it coolly, might have been taken as hauteur. But it came across with a tinge of regret, almost as apology, which in a sense it was, and when they left the messroom, in almost every case it was with the opinion that the white T'swi was a good guy, if not very social.
At 07.77, ship's time, the Quaranth came out of warp, and Varlik went to the observation room to watch intently the brilliantly glinting point that was Iryala grow to a beautiful cobalt and white orb, then to a looming planetary ball that moved in on them until it blocked out the sky. Soon a planetscape formed beneath him and Landfall appeared, spreading to cover the view.
He could see the spaceport, watched it grow and spread until it was the ground. Service trucks stood or moved; workers watched upward or went about their work. The Quaranth settled, touched down almost imperceptibly. He was back on Iryala.