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"Hey, it's not so bad," said Gaila.
"What's not so bad?" asked Uhura.
"Whatever has you curled up on a bed and sighing every five minutes." Gaila turned around from her perch at the worktable. "Can I help?"
"You could curl up with me."
Gaila kicked off her shoes and willingly wrapped herself around Uhura's back. She considered taking off some clothes—humans were so hot, about five degrees centigrade higher than her—but she didn't really want to stop touching Uhura to do it. "Want to tell me about it?"
"No," said Uhura. Then she wriggled around to face Gaila. "I miss home. Which is silly. I grew up on this planet. I can take a weekend pass and go home."
"Emotional reactions are usually somatic, not logical. How are you feeling?'
"My eyes are tired. There's not enough color, and not enough sun, and I'm always cold. And everyone speaks Standard here. At home people speak…Swahili and Kikuyu, maybe a little Arabic or Hindi. There's even a little Tellartown in Nairobi. And the food tastes wrong."
Gaila didn't know what to do with this. She wasn't sure she'd ever heard Uhura complain about anything except unexpected naked people in the room before. "I could…." She couldn't think how to finish the sentence.
"Do Orions sing?" asked Uhura. She put her head on Gaila's shoulder, and somehow wriggled even closer.
"Of course."
"Sing me a song. Something old, and something simple. Something that makes you think of home."
Gaila thought for a moment, and then she started to sing the ship's roster for the ship on which she was born. That was home, as much as anything.