The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson

minor annoyance served as a poignant reminder of how alien her body had become.
    Spiral held out Oliver’s helmet and suit. Juna picked them up, remembering Oliver’s collapse, his breath wheezing in and out of his lungs. What had happened to him? Could he still be alive?
    Juna pointed from her suit to Oliver’s, turning a deep, questioning purple. The alien watched her, and shook its head. On its chest two figures in suits appeared. They were lying on the ground. Green aliens appeared; the suits faded away. One of the figures was pink, the other brown. Spiral pointed from Oliver’s suit to the pink figure on its own chest. As Juna watched, the pink figure turned pale silver, the color of death. The aliens carried the brown figure away, leaving Oliver behind. Spiral pointed to Oliver’s suit and shook its head again.
    Oliver was dead, Juna realized. Oliver had been the tough one, the survival expert, but she had outlived him. He had been so patient with ~jer. always giving her a word of encouragement when things were tough. She remembered his compassion when the botanist Hiro, their final surging crewmate, had died. Oliver had held him, talking gently, sooth-ngly, as Hire’s breathing grew more and more labored. Then, after they had laid Hiro out and covered his dead body with leaves, he had held her, je’.img her cry out her grief and fear. Remembering, Juna was unable to sop the stinging tears of grief and loneliness.
    A cool hand brushed her shoulder and she looked up. It was Spiral, :chre with concern.
    Juna felt suddenly angry. She didn’t want the alien’s concern. She •anted to be home again and safe. It didn’t understand; it couldn’t understand her. It was an alien.
    Then she remembered how Spiral had hissed at her during the funeral, when she had tried to offer sympathy to it. She smiled. Neither of them understood the other. At least they had that in common. She clasped the alien’s hand.
    “Thank you,” Juna said aloud. She tried to make her skin express her “Jnanks, but produced only garbled waves of color.
    The alien flushed dark green. It picked up Oliver’s suit, folded it, and neld it out to her. She smiled and took it. She would take the suit back with her, so that the Survey could give it to his family.
    Spiral rummaged through a pile of nets. It pulled out her pack and Driver’s. Juna opened them, taking out ordinary human artifacts, which were priceless treasures now. There were maps, her multipurpose knife, a first aid kit, a radio, sealed packages of rations, extra clothes, a canteen, a tent. Down at the bottom, folded into a compact oval, was her computer.
    Juna turned on the radio. There was nothing, not even static. She opened the case with the screwdriver on her knife.
    “Farraddbenge!”
she muttered in Amharic, when she had pried the case open. The radio was packed with fluffy black mold, the chips blackened and useless. She tried Oliver’s radio, but it didn’t work either. Spiral picked up the useless radio and examined it, ears wide with curiosity. Juna frowned; allowing the alien to examine the radio was a breach of Contact Protocols, but she could see no tactful way of stopping it.
    Juna unfolded the computer. It came alive with a polite chime as she activated it. Relief flared on her skin. At last she could record her observations. The computer would be a powerful tool to help her unravel the aliens’ language. Spiral’s ears lifted and it flushed pink in surprise. Juna smiled, then frowned as she realized a working radio would be more useful than a working computer. The Survey had tried for years to incorporate a radio into the nanocomps, but they needed too much power, especially on a planet like this, where radio reception was problematical at best. Even if the radio had worked, she probably couldn’t have reached the base. At least she had her computer.
    Juna brightened the screen and peered at the familiar menu of configuration options, a status report on the