        She would have had to learn its language, of course.  That would have been fun.  She’d never learned a foreign language.  Then they could have all kinds of conversations about its culture, its community, its technology—oh, the possibilities were endless.  She’d always been envious of scientists who had discovered new chemicals, of anthropologists who studied different cultures, of archaeologists who found that which had been lost.  She had felt some of that adventure herself in the Crystal Empire, when she was looking for the Crystal Heart.