Arkady contemplates him for a second, then says: "One of our devices spotted him heading for the Zemoch border on a horse. More than that I am not knowing, and you have probably already guessed as much; but at least it is confirmation. He shrugs and adds: Good luck, then. And don't forget to say goodbye to Piper before you go; she's very fond of you in her way.

That gets Zalasbra's attention.

"You have a device that can see - can you maintain an image of him? How often can you do it? Can you tell if he is travelling alone, or who he is travelling with?"

Arkady shakes his head. "The device that found him only has a line of sight to that region every couple of hours from high overhead, and was lucky to find him at all; if conditions are bad or he knows it's looking then it won't. We can't maintain an image, no. But he was alone before the sun set last night." He shrugs. "That gadget is supposed to make maps and pass messages; finding people isn't normally what it does."

"The gadget?" asks Zalasbra. "The tablet. Of course. You wanted to know if he could use the link against you, because you had already worked out how to use the link against him. So you can use it to see him from overhead. What else can it do?"

Arkady shakes his head. "No, the tablet can't see someone from overhead. Another device that is actually overhead can do that. The tablet is how we knew that particular human on a horse is him; his tablet and the other device automatically talk to each other as part of how the messages get passed, even if all they say is 'hello, I'm here'."

"Would he not see the device overhead if he looked up?" asks Zalasbra.

Arkady shakes his head. "Not unless he has excellent eyes, and was already knowing what he was looking for and just when to look. It's much too high to see by accident.

Arkady grins. "I asked one of the Church Knights once if there was any way to do that with magic: he didn't know. Well, good luck; he could be a problem if he makes common cause with the Zemoch priests."

Arkady then takes Irina to the Terran agriculturist that speaks Elene but doesn't travel with them any more for lessons in the language. Hopefully that won't cause too many problems.

Samantha, having been been buried deep in the agricultural development of the settlement, greeted Arkady and Irina distractedly. “Been a while. You’re not interested in the smell of freshly fermented compost?”

Irina grins. "It is not the worst smell. But I am needing to learn Elene to speak to a forester, and Arkasha tells me you woke up knowing the language. So the smell is just...a bonus, if you can be finding the time to teach me."

“I believe I can facilitate this, and also act as a translator, if you wish. The various plantforms seem to be doing reasonably well and as you can probably smell, the compost no longer needs to be read improving literature to make sure it’ll grow up big and strong.” Sam shrugged. “Whatever works best for you.”

With the current state of the compost, Samantha probably could talk her way onto the mission to retrieve the Blue Rose, if she wanted.

The Elene foresters are expected to arrive any day now. Irina might need to use the Elene-English translation program on the tablets at first - which is workable if everyone agrees to forgive bad grammar.

Anyone else anyone wants to do before heading out?

Sam does one last check of the various and sundry flora and fauna, making sure that there are instructions if anything spontaneously goes horribly wrong, before taking a tablet with all the juicy data that had been generated from her focus on the settlement as something to read to pass the time.

Roger makes sure David has "do an inventory of Tablets" to make sure we're only down the one Blackwell took. Minus the ones the group is taking.

Oh I don't know if I mentioned, but basically Roger's default when there is down time at the ship is to work on the Translator. He specifically focuses on English -> Elene and doesn't care to much about the reverse case.