 Which of these best represents the tone of the recording
Illustrated by Schoenherr The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. The sun glinted on black rock glazed by ice, chasms and ridges and bridges of ice. It lit the snow slope to a frozen glare, penciled black shadow down the long furrow, and flashed at the furrow's end on a thing of metal and plastics, an artifact thrown down in the dead wilderness. This suit's got a built-in recorder, I might as well use it. We covered our whole survey assignment like that, smooth as a pint of old and mild which right now I could certainly use. Walking, talking natives on a blue sky planet with 1.1 g gravity and a twenty per cent oxygen atmosphere at fifteen p.s.i. We were able to show them our sun, in their telescopes. When I say they, I mean a ten-man team of them. "Two, they brew a near-beer that's a lot nearer than the canned stuff we had aboard the Whale . People who talk English, drink beer, like jokes and beat me at chess or table-tennis are people for my money, even if they look like tigers in trousers. It was more that we all seemed to make silly mistakes when we played them and that's fatal in chess. Of course it's a screwy situation, playing chess with something that grows its own fur coat, has yellow eyes an inch and a half long and long white whiskers.
 Fluctuating but informative
 Fluctuating but informative  Educational and entertaining  Straightforward but curious  Panicked and insistent