We didn't go straight back to the grass hut as I'd expected. Instead James lead me to a bunker of some sort, dug into the ground. 

It was hidden beneath layers of leaves much like our cloaks. When we entered I realized how much time it must have taken to build. The ceiling was slightly taller than James, and everything was lined with scrap metal. I guessed that it was built from his ship.

We walked into a room and James poured the water into a basin of some sort. It was very large, and by the amount of water I guessed that James had been adding water to it for a long time. The water was crystal clear, which didn't make any sense.

"How does it not grow algae?" I questioned. Even a chlorinated pool would not have looked that clean. 

"The fresh water here is not like ours. It does not grow organisms like algae, the only creatures living in it are big."

I paused at how he said 'ours'. I wondered what planet he even came from, if he was poor like me or if he had lived among the rich on a clean planet. 

"How can that even be possible?" I marveled.

"They must have evolved differently here," he sighed, "although it seems pretty impossible to me."

I nodded, trying and failing to refrain from asking the one question that was bothering me, "Where do you come from?"

He turned away suddenly. I felt bad for asking, but I had shared so much with him and he so little with me. I was too curious to think of manners.

"Earth," his voice cracked slightly. I nodded, even if he couldn't see the small action. He moved his hands slightly, and I could see the shadow on the wall. How did he get light? Another question for another time, I was finally getting somewhere with him.

He turned and stared at me as if expecting some reaction. I was glad he came from earth simply because this was he wouldn't look at me like an outcast, as many of the people at the flying academy had.  

"You don't seem surprised. Can you see it in how I act? See the mark of shame that I cannot evade even on the furthest of planets?"

"No, it's just that I come from there too," I sighed. I knew he wouldn't judge me, but I always expected it when I told people where I was raised.

"Really?" he almost laughed. "I'd had you pegged for an Utarian."

I scowled. "You really think that? Those people are just clean scum!" I'd met few people from Utaria, the planet almost fully covered in water. They were all hopelessly wealthy and lacked just about everything good.

He smiled and went back to looking at the water, the way it sparkled and lay perfectly still. 

"How did you make this place?" I wondered.

"There were lots of emergency supplies on the ship, my parents had imagined pretty much everything that could go wrong. I dug this out with a microconverter and stuck the aluminum of the ship's interior to the walls. I hat solar panels too, which I hooked up to infinity lamps." I nodded and realized how much work me must have done.

Microconverters were very expensive, they'd started out as a simple converter for computers and turned into a portable displacer. They could basically focus on anything  and move it from one place to another in the blink of an eye, that must have been how he cleared the dirt into an underground bunker.

As for the infinity lamps, they were pretty commun. I was sure that I had a few on my ship. They were lights that could pretty much last forever unless they were damaged. 

"Very interesting," I mumbled. And that was that. Our heart to heart was over, and James abruptly turned around and left without even gesturing for me to follow.

He wasn't too intent about sharing his thoughts with another, I guessed.