Bechimo
Among the Sweet Growing Things
In which a situation develops in the hydroponics bay.
I like the description of Kara tending to the plants: three paragraphs on the value of talking to plants, with, as an afterthought, one sentence acknowledging a possible more hard-headed take on the subject.
It seems, on the face of it, a rather simplistic plan for Stost to just up and ask whether the ship is Old Tech. If the ship is alive, and a threat, speaking the suspicion out loud would surely provoke a response. But perhaps that’s the plan: to see if there is a response, and if so what might be learned from it.
And, of course, in theory there’s always the possibility that the question might get a straight answer and the matter end there.
If I have the count straight, eight seed pods is one each for all the mammals on board: Theo, Clarence, Win Ton, Kara, Hevelin, Chernak, Stost, Grakow.
It occurs to me that the tree is another of the ship’s complement to whom the pathfinders have not yet been introduced.
PA: ask whether the ship is Old Tech.
You’ve left out an element of their question, which began in their minds with the idea that Joyita is the ship. Although I don’t suppose that affects the possible dangers of expressing their suspicions aloud, although I think it can be assumed that that is the reason they chose to send Stost to Kara while she was in hydroponics, where they’d never seen Joyita.