Nick listened to Petra giving lessons in alienese to the BigBall natives. He got Petra to show him what she was displaying for Kathy and the others. It looked a lot like many of Petra's early attempts to communicate with him. The natives were making progress quickly, apparently, unlike Nick.

  Eventually, though, Nick started yawning, and excused himself. This took some explaining of time units but he mostly left that to Petra, and turned in for the night/day/whatever. His sleep schedule had long since abandoned Earth time and BigBall time both.

  * *

  When Nick woke up, he showered, swam, dressed, and ate breakfast. Next, he checked on the production schedule. It would be another twenty-six hours before the food printer was ready. When he looked over the specs again, he realized that the printer would need some feed stock specifically meant for it. It looked like an ingot made up of a bunch of minor ingredients.

  Makes sense. Most of the food gets made out of carbon and water, but the secret ingredients that make an apple an apple or what have you, they would need those, but not nearly so much. It's like a spices stick. He checked how long it would take to make some of those feedstock ingots, sighed, and put those in the queue right after the printer itself.

  Only then did he go back to the communicator to check on the natives' progress. For a while he just listened in. Even though it was gobbledygook to him, the way they paused and repeated things gave him the impression that things were going well.

  Nick called up Petra's status, and rearranged it into something simpler and more readable.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Name: Petra

  Level: 8

  Class: Dungeon

  Rooms: 29

  Traps: 4

  Monsters: 231

  Inventory: 55549/1048576

  Languages: Galactic 100%, Foglupa 100%, English 38%, Kthufu, 10%

  Nice. I'm guessing Kathy and the others speak Kthufu. Ten percent is pretty good for ten hours or so!

  Nick realized that he could go prospecting in Rockhunter while waiting for the printing to finish. Petra could continue the language lessons just as well on the road.

  “Petra, show Kathy and the others the production schedule.” Petra actually understood all those words, or at least, she didn't protest.

  “Hello, Nick.”

  Nick frowned a moment, then realized what was going on. “Petra, make a small beep sound at the beginning and end of translations.”

  “Understood, Nick. (Beep.) Hello, Nick. (Beep.)”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “You're welcome, Nick.”

  “Hello. I am Nick.”

  “(Beep) kuk na on Ik!eh (beep).”

  Nick quickly tuned out the beeps as they did their job sorting out who was talking.

  “Hello, Nick. I am Geh!kin.”

  “I am going to go collect some element ninety.”

  “I don't understand, Nick,” Petra warned him.

  Nick sighed. “I go. I get element ninety. I go home. I get food. I go you dungeon.”

  Petra translated that. The natives had a million questions for him, but Nick suddenly felt very, very tired. Was dealing with people always this exhausting?

  “I go now. Petra, sound off here. Increase language percentage.” That was the expression that had gotten her to start learning Kthufu.

  Nick went to his room and glared at the little bowl of tiny medication pills. My stupid sleep is so messed up, I need to track better what time I take my meds. Right now, though, I can't bring myself to care. Probably means I should take a few of these. Nick took three tiny pills, giving him an extra fifteen milligrams of his medication. Whatever.

  Nick grabbed most of the lead ingots available and stuffed them in Rockhunter, then packed a couple of meals and water. “Let's go get some radioactive rocks, Petra.”