He composed letters to his mother, and then, with too much time on his hands, he wrote to his uncles, and then cousins. He couldn’t send the letters until the mission was over, but writing made him feel that he’d given some effort to reaching out to his family.
One day, he searched for what information the ship records had on Pala Eydis, the woman they sought on the Well of Furies. The ship’s records were thin, and conveyed only that she was a human woman, Earth’s only expert on Ulltrian technological history, 36 years old. In the one available picture, she looked slight but athletic, with piercing blue eyes set far apart, thin lips inclined in a thoughtful frown, and thick blond hair cut short. The paper that had caught Preeajitala’s attention had been published in the Earth journal
