"...didn't mind being the sole human aboard besides her grandfather."
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 641.
She befriends winged Ythrians, watches their aerial dances and shows them ballet - including, no doubt, some movements from Swan Lake? When Captain Hirharouk orders that everyone be prepared for emergencies whether cosmic or military:
"A species whose ancestors had lived like eagles could take this more easily than men. Even so, tension had mounted till she could smell it." (pp. 641-642)
This sounds like a difficult situation to deal with. Ythrians look like large birds although they have mouths, not beaks. I am not sure whether this would make them look less threatening or like birds gone wrong. How would you cope if surrounded by nearly man-sized winged feathered talking carnivores?
Coya, astrophysicist and frequent space traveler, is at home in the universe, able to identify the brightest stars among the rest. The Dewfall has traveled at high speed for nearly a month from Quetlan towards the Deneb sector. Since Quetlan is 278 light years from Sol towards Lupus, they are now a hundred parsecs from Earth in unknown space. Coya knows this. To that extent, she is as at home there as a Londoner is in Hyde Park. The universe is our home and we ought to be one with it.
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