"Deskis always need special foods.

Bring in to Barevi.

I do not know what." And Zainal sighed. "Good guys, Deskis!' "S'more'n I can say for some," Mitford said in a low disgusted growl.

He went on in a more positive tone.

"Believe it or not but Aarens is the mechanical genius he said he was "So we heard."

"Well, he cobbled together some perimeter circuit warning devices in case some other individuals think they can raid Camp Rock - -, He grinned when he realized they'd heard the location had received a name.

"He and Spiller believe we can even get to adapt the panels to make water hot and maybe even internal lighting and heat. D'you remember anything in that report about the winters here, Zainal?" There was a hint of deep concern in Mitford's eyes. "Like snow or floods or what?" Zainal looked down at his big hands as if they might hold the answers. Then, with a sad sigh, he shook his head. "My people did not explore well. They did not see a lot we have now seen. But this planet has air to breathe and food for most to eat." His voice held a tacit apology for the shortcomings of that exploration team.

"The basic are here. Air, water, food needed to survive.

And we survive well now, thanks to youMitford nodded in acceptance at that approval.

"Well, then, since the farm machinery seems to be shutting down after harvesting everything, and the farmers among us say that those loo-cows of yours, Kris, haven't been rounded up in a wintering environment, looks like we all can expect to survive whatever the winter season brings."

"Say, Sarge, if the machines are all shut down, either by us or their programming, couldn't we move into the buildings?

We've found enough to accommodate all of us," Kris said.

"That's being considered as an alternative," Mitford said. "Some folks are scared of the possibility of more marauders and feel safer here in Camp Rock. They'd resist leaving. However, those barns would be equally as defensible. Now lemme talk to the Doyles, will ya, and you two get some rest.

The rain was still pelting down when Kris and Zainal stopped in the main cavern for the hot soup and the rather tasty form of soda bread that was available. It was so good that she didn't even spit out the hard bits.

No-one she knew was on duty there so she ate with Zainal. She tried not to, but she couldn't help notice the sideways looks directed at them: some quite speculative and unfriendly. Well, it didn't surprise her that there would still be animosity levelled at Zainal.

Maybe that was why Mitford kept sending them out of the camp on patrol. Out of sight, out of mind.

She sighed, a little sound but Zainal caught it and looked enquiringly at her. She smiled dismissively and broke off a piece of her bread to soak up the last of the thick, tasty soup out of the rather lopsided pottery bowl. Zainal followed her example, grinning back at her.

They washed out their utensils and returned them to the storage racks.

"I go see Coo," Zainal said.

"I'll come . . ." but when Zainal shook his head, she decided that a dip was the next order of business for her.

"Give him my regards.

"Regards?"

"Warm greetings."

"Oh! Not a "boy" saying.

"Nope!" She grinned at him.

"One day you explain the "boy" thing?"

"Any day now, m "friend," Kris said with a laugh. "Your English improves in leaps and bounds."

"Leaps and bounds?" He frowned as he tried to figure out the meaning of what she had said.

"I'll explain that, too. Me for a bath," she said in farewell.

The water in the underground lake was cold enough to curtail any lengthy wallowing. She was out and blotting herself dry beyond the main lights when she heard voices.

"Aarens had a point. How do we know that Cat isn't a spy? How do we know he doesn't have a comunit of some kind? How do we know he hasn't left messages with those machine-things in the garages?"

"Come off it, Barker," and Kris, hurriedly dressing, recognized Joe Lattore's thick voice. "What would the Cats need to spy on us for, for God's sake? And he's no ordinary Cat anyway. I saw enough of the upper-class dudes and he's one of them.

"Then why's he here with us?"

"That Bjornsen chick told me he'd killed a patrol leader and they caught him before the day was up."

"Yeah, and who goes everywhere with that Cat?

Huh?"

"You also heard the Doyle brothers same as I did, and they said there's nothing doing between "em."

"They was careful, is all.

"Oh, stow it. The Cat's risked his neck to save us and I'm going to be grateful to him until I find a damned good reason not to be. And Aarens isn't good enough. I know his type and I tell you what, was I hiring, I wouldn't hire Aarens noway nohow.

Kris stepped as far back in the shadows as she could, a frisson of fear for Zainal running up her back. Did Mitford have any idea that such feelings were running against the Catteni? Probably, and that's exactly why Zainal was sent out on constant reconnaissance - to reduce the possibility of reprisals against him.

"When's Mitford going to axe him then? Said he would when he found out all the bastard knows. Seems to me he'd've done that by now."

"Maybe that's why he keeps sending him out of the camp? Get something else to waste him?"

"Next time he might just not come back," a new voice said with a malicious chuckle. "We don't need no Cats here."

"Ah, you guys make me sick. He's one man, and he's been useful.

You don't have to like useful people but you can use them. That's what Mitford's doing." Conversation altered when the first man got in the water.

"Keeee-rist, but that's cold! Freeze m'balls off, it will."

"You have "em?" Kris grimaced and stopped listening as the comments became more personal and derogatory. Men were worse gossips than women. She hunkered down in the shadows, her back against the cold stone, and waited. Fortunately the group was not any more inclined to stay in the cold water than she had been and they were shortly out of it and dressing. She waited another long moment until she figured they had reached the upper corridors of the cave and then she left the lake.

She stopped by Mitford's office but he had a crowd, all talking and pushing diagrams at each other, so she went to her own cave. Sleep was the next order of her day.

During her latest trek someone had taken advantage of her absence and stolen some of the brush which formed her mattress, so she didn't have quite as comfortable a night's rest as she'd hoped for. Still, she woke rested before dawn. When she got to the main cavern, hunters were grabbing a cup of the hot herbal tea before setting off to check snares or to hunt. With her cup in hand she wandered, hoping to find Jay or Sandy. They'd level with her about Zainal. At this point in time Kris couldn't really see Mitford executing the Catteni for any reason.

And there was no way Zainal had been "planted' among the prisoners. He was here because other Catteni wanted to get even with him. Sandy was absent, as was anyone else with whom she had some acquaintance.

Finding an unoccupied rock near the front of the cavern, she seated herself and kept watch of those coming into the cavern for their breakfast, waiting for Zainal's appearence. She wondered how Coo was doing.

They really shouldn't have let him fuss with that flying thing: that fall had not been good for him, even with Lenny and Kris cushioning his landing.

She heard the rumble and the warning yell from the sentinels at the same instant and darting to the outside ledge, tried to see what was making the noise. Whatever it was, it was still some distance but it sounded awfully like the harvester vessel: big! Only everything had been harvested. Hadn't it?

"Where's Mitford?" was the cry and several of the hunters took off to locate him. Kris went for Zainal.

She met him head on, bouncing off his hard body and cracking her head against the rock on the rebound. His hand grabbed her upper arm to steady her.

"Another big ship, Zainal, she said, pointing outside.

Still holding her arm, the Catteni drew her along with him and the others who had been roused by the general furore.

Once again, this time in the dark, everyone who could clambered to the nearest height and peered in the direction of the oncoming airborne vessel.

"Think they've come on reprisals?" someone asked.

"With us messing up their mechanicals?"

"Zainal?" Mitford called.

"Here."

"Any ideas?" Kris could see that Zainal had cocked his head, listening intently to the sound.

"That is Catteni engine sound," he said. Then pointed, as a bulk, outlined by running lights, materialized out of the dawn gloom. Even Kris could see the basic difference in design between the first ginormous vessel and this one which was not as large, if the lights indicated its perimeter. Zainal watched a moment more and then pointed in the direction of the abattoir.

"That way.

"Jaysus what're they doing?"

"Any chance they're landing more prisoners, Zainal?" Mitford asked.

"Yes. Good chance." And he began to climb down.

"Who comes with me?"

"I didn't say you should go, buddy,- Mitford said in a tense voice.

"Only fast runners," Zainal said, ignoring Mitford.

"They must unload."

"Yeah, but you'd get there fast enough to take off with them, wouldn't you?" Mitford said in a hard tone, coming out of the darkness to grab Zainal by the arm.

Kris caught her breath. Maybe, after all, Mitford wouldn't object to a summary execution of the Catteni and Kris did not, definitely did not, want to see Zainal killed. She liked him too much!

"Don't do anything foolish, Sarge," she said. "I'll go with him."

"Of course you will," Mitford said cryptically. They had to pause now because the noise of the overflying craft drowned out any conversation.

Zainal kept his eyes on the vessel, then nodded.

"Transport. More people. We must tiy. It is night still," Zainal said and, pulling Kris by the hand, hauled her with him down from the height.

"Try what?" Mitford called out in the same breath that Kris echoed his question but Zainal was already sprinting down the ravine in the direction the long ship above them was headed, dragging Kris along with him.

She was aware of some conflicting and confused orders behind them as Zainal ran onwards. In the first few strides she wondered why he was so keen on having her along but then she had to concentrate on her footing to keep up with him. The fact that she could was a plus. She was sure fitter on this crazy planet than she'd ever been. She could hear others following, cursing at the dark and the bad footing but she concentrated on watching Zainal's movements and the track in front of them.

They were well ahead of those pursuing when Zainal allowed her to pause for a few moments. They were on the downside of the ridge, the lights of the vessel obscured by the lay of the land. She quickly recovered her breath enough to speak.

"Will they stop the same place they dropped us off?" she asked.

"That would be good," he said. "Nothing there." She took that to mean that the field would be empty and thus a good spot to dump more unconscious bodies.

She wondered how long it would take, or did the Catteni have some way of just rolling bodies out of the ship's hold that didn't require individual handling? Then she remembered, all too vividly, what happened to living creatures lying on fields on this fecking world. No wonder Zainal was in such a hurry. Dawn was still far away. Would they get there soon enough to prevent slaughter?

He started off again and she followed, all too aware that it had taken them two days to reach the caverns from that site. Even at the pace Zainal had set, would they make it to the field before the ship took off again?

Well, they had to try. Or maybe he was hoping to attract attention from one of the hill points overlooking the field?

They clambered up a slope now, and Zainal stopped so abruptly that she ran into him.

"Hey, warn me, will - . ." Her voice trailed off as she realized that the running lights were higher than they should be for a ship that might be landing. They hadn't seen its gradual ascent. Zainal cursed, whirled and looked back the way they had come, running his hand and arm along the line the ship had travelled as if trying to impress the direction in his mind. He started back up the slope they had just slid down, digging his toes in and slipping in the urgency of his passage.

Shaking her head, Kris followed him, pausing only briefly when the roar of engines told her that the ship was boosting out of planetary gravity. The flame of its propellant was as vivid as the launches she remembered from Cape Kennedy. She would have liked to watch but had to keep up with Zainal.

They met up with the others in moments, considering the pace that Zainal was setting.

"The ship's already dumped its load," she told them, clinging to someone as support as she gasped out an explanation. "Back that way.

We gotta get there before the scavengers murder "em all."

"Was that why the Cat was in such a flaming hurry?"

"Hell, he wanted to catch up with them and get off this bleeding planet," another man managed to gasp out.

"Think what you will, but are you going to help?" Kris cried, shouting the last of her challenge over her shoulder as she took off after Zainal.

They did gather more help as they went back through the ravine again. Dawn was brightening the sky, so it was easier to see where to put your feet. Where the track split, right down into the ravine, or left to continue on the upper ridge, Zainal signalled for Kris to report to Mitford who was standing in his office, fists on his belt as he saw them emerge on the height.

"Need Slav badly," Zainal added and then charged off again.

"What "n'ell's going on?" Kris stopped, hands on knees, catching enough breath to speak. "We need Slav. Ship took off. It's already dropped its load. We gotta get there or the scavengers will."

"Right on!" And Mitford snapped into action, yelling for Slav, Pess, Tesco, Su, and Dowdall as she took up her chase of Zainal.

She finally caught up with him when he stopped by one of the many streams to rinse out his mouth. The sun wasn't up yet and the air was cool, but she was hot from her exertions and wondering if she would last the distance.

"Mitford's organized more help. Is it far?" He shook his head.

"Ship climbing." He looked up at the lightening sky. "Lucky." She hoped so, but how long did those creatures scavenge? Would this half-light be sufficient to send them wherever they spent the daylight hours? She had her breath back and now dropped to her belly, burying her hot face in the cool water, intaking a mouthful to moisten her throat and letting only a little trickle down to her stomach. She was on her feet when he was.

And they ran on.

Actually this wasn't a bad pace, she thought, now she had her second wind. She tried to keep her mind off what scavengers could do to a field full of nice juicy warm live bodies. Now that wasn't a productive thought! At least it should now be clear to everyone at the camp that Zainal had been motivated to "save' people, not get himself off this planet. Though she wouldn't blame him if that had been his goal. Would he have taken her with him? That, too, was not a productive thought but she was beginning to appreciate how much the big man meant to her. She'd never found anyone else who treated her as a competent equal, who had never once tried to come on since the day she had floored him in the flitter. She knew from comments made back in the kitchens at Barevi that, while the Catteni were equipped, to put it discreetly, much the same way as human males were - only more so, as one woman had said drily - the two species were incompatible as far as procreation was concerned. No Catteni-Human offspring would be forthcoming. But, since the day she had clobbered him in the flyer back on Barevi, Zainal had never visibly lusted after her. And she was quite familiar with that sort of look. Zainal treated her not quite as he treated the male members of their patrols, but with a courtesy she found unusual and, maybe even, special to her - even when he knew that it was her fault he was stuck with this bunch of suspicious, unappreciative and sometimes intolerant mixed bag of humanoids. Oddly enough, though the Catteni were the subjugating race, the Deskis and Rugarians didn't seem to feel any animosity towards Zainal . . .

certainly not as much as the Terrans did.

This was not terrain she was familiar with and Kris was relieved to see the sun coming up and clearing away the shadows so there was less danger of her stumbling on the rough ground. That was the one thing she did fear - an injury that their meagre first-aid supplies could not remedy. Or unfamiliar infections that were life-threatening.

The Catteni antiseptic lotion was not a specific cure for everything that could happen to the unwary. But the anaesthetic from the darts could be a boon.

Zainal was bounding up the hill in front of them now, then switching to a zig zag on the steeper parts. He waited on the height for her and pointed. Two fields over she could see the cubes of Catteni supply crates and the fringes of space occupied by inert bodies. At this distance, she couldn't tell if they were being beset by scavengers yet.

Zainal cupped his mouth and hollered a weird cry.

It was answered, she thought, by one of the aliens following. He nodded satisfaction and began the descent.

This hillside was covered with some sort of thorny growth that clung to the fabric of their coveralls with a tenacity which made her glad it wasn't her flesh that was bared.

Zainal, caught on a thick limb, hauled out his hatchet and hewed the limb. Even separated from the mother bush, it still clung to him.

"Careful," Zainal said, holding up his free hand to warn her back.

"Chop first," he added, pointing to the bushes in her way.

"Can I help you?"

"Go down. Hurry," he said, gesturing emphatically to the field now out of sight behind the next rise.

"Stamp, yell." She hesitated a brief moment more but the flash of his eyes when he glanced up from disentangling the thicket branch from his coverall was enough to send her on her way. She used her hatchet to slash and bash a way in front of her and succeeded in reaching clear ground, covered by a stubble of harvested crops, with no further delays.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him finally free of the branch. So she ran on, across the field, neatly leaping the low hedge on the far side and down into the next. She thought she heard cries rising from the drop field. That made her run faster, shouting, giving the cowboy yells she had practised as a tomboy. She paused long enough at the separating hedge to pick up handfuls of stones. Then she leapt over that hedge and almost landed on someone's face. A human. In fact, every body near her was human.

Some had already been attacked by the scavengers.

First she threw her rocks in as wide an arc as she could, shouting as she did so. Then she stomped her way up the long side of the field, sometimes running and jumping down as hard as she could on landing, yelling and yodelling as she stamped until she reached the upper boundary. There were no signs of the scavengers in the centre of the field so she continued her progress around the outer edge, stamping, yelling, pausing only when she had to get her breath and try to moisten the dry tissues of her mouth. She'd completed two sides of the big field when she saw others arriving and yelled and gestured at them to square the field in the other direction.

Then she spotted several people rousing from their drugged sleep and went to assist them. Once again the Catteni had dropped people comfortably near water and she borrowed cups from belts to give people that much comfort in recovering from their ordeal.

Dowdall was opening the crates, going first for the first-aid kits and blankets while the others did what they could for those the scavengers had attacked. She was so busy that she didn't at first realize that Zainal was not among the rescuers.

"Tesco, where's Zainal?" she asked when she did notice his absence.

"Saw him back there," and Tesco pointed vaguely over his shoulder before kneeling to give water to a groggy woman.

Reassured, Kris moved to the next group who happened to be Deskis.

A glance around the field gave her the irritating information that none of the rescuers were doing doodly to help the aliens so she concentrated on them. Not that she found herself kindly disposed towards the Turs, who regarded the water with great suspicion until she took a sip herself and deposited the cup on the ground beside them.

They could do as they chose. Three Morphins had been badly chewed and before anyone could stop them, they suicided, evidently by swallowing their own tongues and suffocating. Their facial skin turned from a normal dark green to almost black. Other Morphins came to view the dead, then piled the bodies to one side under the hedges. Morphin "faces' did not register any expression, so Kris didn't know if they were upset or not but as quickly as she could, she doled out blankets and knives to them, and indicated the first-aid kits.

More people arrived from the camp, including Mitford.

She was surprised to see him away from his office but was glad of his presence. That's when she realized she still had not seen Zainal.

"Sarge, you seen Zainal?"

"No, I haven't," Mitford said, frowning as he looked about the field where more and more of the latest arrivals were regaining consciousness.

"Did you come down the thorny hill?"

"No, Su was there to warn us away from it. Why?" Kris didn't answer but, grabbing up a first-aid kit and a handful of blankets from the nearby crates, she started off at a fast trot, dodging around groups and leaping over still sleeping bodies. She flew across the intervening field, now entirely visible in the full morning light, hurdling the low hedge without losing her stride and pelted to the thornbushy hill. They weren't like Barevi thornbushes but where she was damned sure she had hacked her way through was now as solid a vegetation patch as if she hadn't cut it back. There was no sign of Zainal.

Scared now for him, because Zainal of all people should have been able to free himself unscathed, she looked anxiously around. Since he wasn't up at the field, he had to still be around here, somewhere.

And, if the thorns had been toxic enough to slow down a Catteni, he'd have sought water. The thornbushes were not tall enough to have hidden his big frame and anyway his browny-grey coverall would have made him visible even in the dense undergrowth. Water!

There was always water on these damned mechanically cultivated fields. While this field had been harvested, there had to be water near by. She listened hard. Her ears finally caught the unmistakable sound of running water. Downhill there was a small copse of some of the diamond-leaved bushes. Those seemed to grow near the streams.

She heard a low groan, the sort that would reluctantly escape tightly closed lips. With a new awareness that the bushes on Botany could be dangerous, she parted the branches of the diamond-leaf and saw Zainal half-in, half-out of a little brook which welled up from the rocks around which the diamond-leaves clustered. A boot had been cast aside and his right trouser leg was rolled up over his knee, exposing the injury.

"Oh, lord," she breathed, seeing the massive inflammation on the outside of his wide muscular calf. The thorns of Barevi had been dangerous in a nuisancy way, but this injury looked serious. Bending over him, she checked first for any signs of blood poisoning. Not that grey Catteni flesh might exhibit such a trauma. He had blood, as red as any human's, and it had clotted almost black where it had run down his leg. That was when she realized by the size of the wound that he had evidently carved the thorn out of his own flesh.

"Ouch!" she murmured, shuddering convulsively. She sorted through the first-aid supplies for the Catteni antiseptic. That was definitely in order. And it would sting like billy-be-damned when she poured it in that open wound but what other choice had she? She took a deep breath and emptied the entire vial of the solution into the crater he had made in his leg.

"Rorrrrrrgh!" Zainal shot to sitting position in protest at the treatment, his right hand cocked back to strike, his left arm up in guard.

Kris lurched backwards, away from him.

"It's Kris, Zainal. I'm trying to help!" His eyes focused on her face, wild in reaction to the pain and alarm, but, in that brief instant, he recognized her.

"You came," he said in a barely audible voice before he seemed to collapse inward and fell back on the ground.

His eyes rolled upwards, the lids fluttering as well as any southern belle flirt could have done under different circumstances, and then he passed out again.

"Did I do the right thing, Zainal?" She shook, or rather tried to shake, the massive shoulder to rouse him. She retrieved the first-aid bag which had fallen off her lap and tried to think what else she could do to help him.

Swollen tissue could respond to cold compresses. With all the antiseptic in the wound, there wouldn't be much in the water that could exacerbate the wound.

There were sheets of some sort of material in the kit, so she soaked those until they were cold and placed them on the wound. He moaned a little but didn't writhe in pain so she felt it was safe to continue with that treatment.

She made a pillow of one of the blankets she'd brought, brushing the leaves and pebbles off his surprisingly fine, soft grey hair and covered his big frame with another.

It was Mitford himself who came looking for her. She emerged from the brush in response to his calling. Beyond him she saw the lines of the newest immigrants starting the trek back to the camp. He hadn't lost any time deciding to take them in, even if another four or five hundred souls to tend must be the lowest option on his agenda.

"What's the matter, Kris?" he said, trotting up to her in an effortless lope. How he kept sofit with all the sedentary work he was now saddled with, she didn't know but he rose another notch in her estimation.

"Warn people off those thorubushes," she said first, pointing urgently to the slope. But the line seemed to be taking the less direct route, around the inhospitable looking incline. "Zainal's down, with a thorn wound. He carved the thorn out of his own leg but it was toxic enough to knock him out. We'll need to make a litter to carry him back." Mitford winced and scratched his head, half-turning in the direction of his new charges.

"I know, you gotta get them back first, but considering how much Zainal has done "and she was surprised at the bitterness in her voice.

"Now, now, easy does it, Bjornsen, I'm not about to abandon him.

He is too damned useful." In the sergeant's voice, she caught the nuance that Zainal might be useful, but not popular, and knew that some of the gossip about him was true. "We're all in the same boat or," and Mitford gave her a wry grin, "on the same planet, but this new dump isn't going to help!" He sighed deeply.

"Don't mean to add to your problems, Sarge, she said apologetically "Damnitall, Bjornsen," and now he was angry at her apology, "you're not a problem and I won't let him be.

Can you hang on until I see this bunch installed?" With one hand, he gripped Kris's right arm, emphasizing his intent while he hauled his blanket over his head and dropped it beside her. Then he handed over the other sack he carried.

"Food, firing and other stuff. Now, where is he?" She led him to where Zainal sprawled. When Mitford lifted off the temporary dressing, he curled his lip and recoiled slightly at the look of the puncture, then carefully replaced the bandage.

"Nasty, all right. Hope he got all the thorn out, but probably he did,' and there was approval in the sergeant's tone for the measure of the man he knew Zainal to be.

"Hell's bells, he can't be comfortable like that," Mitford added so the two of them pulled the big body out of the water. Then, when Kris had hurriedly cleared a space and spread two more blankets, they managed to roll him into a more level, comfortable position.

Mitford stood then, surveying the area, kicking at the roots of the bushes. "How'd they find enough soil to grow in?" he muttered.

"Rocky enough so those scavengers can't come at you - "They come out at night," Kris began and then realized that it might indeed be night time before help for a Catteni arrived.

"Firing's in there and some of those matches Cumber made. We found sulphur, y'know."

"No, I didn't," and she wondered if sulphur had any medicinal qualities.

"Look, I'll send a litter back for him as soon as possible. Get some more firing when you can." He surveyed the massive Catteni's prone body. "Hope he doesn't get delirious on you or something "I'll manage, Sarge,' she said, gritting her teeth.

"Luck, Bjornsen, but you're the kind who can handle things." As Kris watched him make his way out of the little copse, she was somewhat heartened by his confidence in her. Mitford didn't often praise and while that might be a bit back-handed, she appreciated being thought capable.

She went back to her patient, resigned to a long wait, knowing that Zainal's welfare would be low on the list of everyone else's priorities. She wet the compresses again, glad of the almost indestructible quality of Catteni materials, and then she moistened Zainal's lips.

You had to keep people from getting dehydrated if they'd been poisoned, didn't you? His lips parted as if the moisture was what he needed so she managed to dribble water down his throat and he swallowed eagerly. A good sign. His forehead and cheeks felt warm, but not hot-hot.

She couldn't remember from her previous contacts with him just what a normal body temperature for a Catteni would be. She also couldn't tell if his skin had altered as a human's would with fever.

While one part of her was glad that Catteni were not totally impervious to natural hazards, she was damned sorry Zainal was laid low by as silly a thing as a thorn.

Chapter Nine

Jay Greene, Slav, the Doyle brothers, a man she didn't recognize and, surprisingly, Coo, returned by second moonrise. By then Zainal was sweating copiously and she tried to cool him off with the compresses. There was such a lot of him to cool! He was restless but not so energetically that she'd had any trouble keeping him prone. But she was getting more and more worried. Faint slithers had caused her to fear that the scavengers might be bold enough to penetrate the rocky dell. She'd taken to periodic stampings about the small clearing, hoping to scare them away. It was only quiet victims they went after, cowardly as they were.

She nearly cried with relief, though, when she heard her name called. She heaped firing on the little campfire to show the way to them.

"This is Dr Dane, Kris," Jay said, urging the medical man through the thicket. "He's even treated Catteni back on Earth."

"Thank God!' Kris breathed, anxiously urging the doctor to his patient and whipping off the latest compress to show the ugly wound. It looked even worse in the flickering firelight.

"G'day," Dane said in an unmistakably Australian accent, giving her a keen look before he knelt by the patient. "Did a proper job on himself, didn't he?" With deft fingers he pressed the sides of the gaping wound mouth. "Got it all, I'd say. Tough bastards, these Catteni.

Pour the whole bottle in, did you?" and now he grinned at her.

"Fair do."

"It was all I had and it is Catteni issue," she said, noticing that she was wringing her hands.

"Did the right thing, all right." He felt Zainal's skin, placed a hand over the chest and then to the large neck vein. "Not so ragged after all. Right then, let's get him back. Hey, what?" He had straightened up after his examination and saw Coo coming to crouch in the firelight, something in his hand which he wanted to inspect.

The Deski's hand was trembling - with fatigue, Kris wondered, deeply grateful to the alien, in his own debilitated state, for wanting to help an injured Catteni.

—What Coo was examining was the lighter grey crown of a thornbush, the new growth, since vegetation even on this godforsaken planet seemed to follow certain botanical precedents. Then, before she could say anything, Coo had —popped it in his mouth and began masticating with every evidence of enthusiasm and relief. In the act of springing upright, the Deski also turned and, with more energy than he had shown in days, plunged towards the hillside.

"What was that all about?" the doctor asked, in surprise.

"I think Coo's located something to take care of his dietary deficiency," Kris said drolly.

"One man's meat's another's poison," the man replied philosophically. "Now let's get this poisoned boyo back to civilization. Quite a set-up Mitford's organized," he added with approval.

"Good ol' Yankee know-how," Jay said with a grin.

"What about Irish improvisation?" Lenny Doyle said, pretending offence as he unlashed the ties on the stretcher poles "Ya think this is strong enough to hold "im?" Ninety asked, measuring Zainal's bulk against the litter design.

"Those blankets are indestructible," Jay said.

It took all of them, with Kris holding up heavy Catteni feet to get the unconscious Zainal onto the litter. Strips of torn blanket secured him for the arduous journey back to camp.

Kris kicked out the fire, stored the remaining firing into the sack Mitford had given her and followed them.

In the bright light of the big rising moon, Coo was busily, and carefully, plucking the very tops of the thornbushes and stuffing them into the open blouse of his coverall.

"Is that what you need, Coo?" Kris called. "Can I pick, too?"

"Nooco, Coo said, shaking his head emphatically.

"Baaaad for oomans." With one hand he kept fanning the air to reinforce his warning for her to keep back while he kept nipping the crowns with the other.

She tried to recall how many of the newest immigrants were Deski but, suddenly, thinking was beyond her strained and tired mind. She fell in step behind the litter bearers, relieved that her long and ahxious watch had concluded.

When she took her turn as a litter bearer, for she insisted on that, Leon Dane gave her some interesting and oddly welcome news: Earth was fighting back against the Cattem invaders - an evidently unprecedented reaction.

The Catteni method of subduing planets by swooping down and carrying off whole cities of people generally cowed a species totally.

Not so with Terrans. Despite the invasion, resistance began almost as soon as the great Catteni transport ships began loading hostages.

Leon Dane had remained in Sydney, using his position as a physician to relay important information to a very active unit in the Blue Mountains. On orders, he had volunteered to treat Catteni for, despite thick hides, they broke bones and had accidents that would have killed humans.

"If you know your invader's weaknesses, you have a better chance of striking back." He turned a grin on Kris as they moved across the second field. "That was my job.

Unfortunately there isn't much that gets a Catteni down and they seem impervious to any of the Terran toxic materials I tried on "em.

To see the clinical reactions, of course. But, oh my word, but they can mess each other up on their little twenty-four hour vendettas!" He whistled appreciatively. "I spent a lot of time sewing "em up. They don't break easy but they sure do lacerate a treat.

"I guess I'm glad you were willing to help Zainal. He was a victim of one of those twenty-four hour vendettas."

"Was he? And they dumped him in with you lot?" Kris nodded, finding that talking and keeping up her corner of the heavily loaded litter was tiring.

"How'd you get caught?" she asked the doctor.

"Ha! We had orders to riot at a certain time and place and I was sent from my hospital to officiate. I got gassed along with everyone else. The Cats don't ever ask questions.

They're effective that way. But sending one of theirs to colonize " He shook his head in surprise. "Whaddid he do?"

"He'd killed a patrol leader," Kris said. "I watched the pursuit from where I was hiding. "You were hiding?" Kris grinned. "On Barevi."

"Barevi?" He shot her a quirky smile. "Sounds Aborigine."

"Does, doesn't it Catteni Aborigine, at least. Barevi's one of their big distribution and R&R planets. Only a couple of big cities and space ports.

Slave-trading's the biggest industry there. And resupply of Catteni ships.

I figured out, from watching the guy who owned me, how to drive one of those little flitters of theirs and appropriated it one evening." She grinned at Leon.

"Managed quite handily in the jungle there until he," and she jerked her head back at Zainal, "dropped in on me. I was taking him back to where he belongs when I got caught in a riot-gassing, too."

"Hmmm.

"He knew a bit about this planet, enough to save a lot of us from getting eaten by those scavengers, or caught by the avians.

"The Cats didn't leave much for us to go on with," he said in a gloomy tone.

"Zainal says that's how they've colonized a lot of places." She shot a look at him and wondered if she'd offend with her next comment.

"Sort of like you Aussies were. We voted to call the planet Botany." "Did you now?" And Leon Dane shot her a startled look but he grinned.

"Well, it fits. Australia - well, the Sydney area at least - was settled by convicts."

"Made a good job of it, too, didn't they?"

"I take the point, Kris Bjornsen. And they had as little as we have.

Maybe less. We at least have a lot of specialists."

"Many aliens?

Deskis, Turs, Morphins, Rugarians?" Leon shrugged. "I was working more on the human injuries. But I noticed some strange-looking creatures m the hospital cave. Stick thin, like the one that came with us to fetch you.

"The Deskis. They're not doing well here. Missing some essential ingredient in their diet."

"Is that why that bloke was picking the thornbushes?"

"Hope so." Then Lenny and Ninety declared they were rested enough to take over. Kris was quite willing to give up her end of the litter, guilty though it made her feel for the rest of the way back to the camp.

Lit by many torches, Mitford, Murph, Greene and Dowdall were still interviewing new arrivals when the rescuers arrived by third moonrise.

In spite of the late hour - or was it early? - there was a great deal of activity and the smell of freshly roasted meats Instead of going into the main cavern, however, the bearers swerved to one of the lesser caves.

"Hospital," Lenny said when Kris wanted to know.

"Quite a set-up now." But there was something about the way he wouldn't meet her eyes that bothered Kris.

"I'll stay with him," she said firmly. "He'll need . .

"You . . ." and Leon Dane prodded her chest with a firm finger, "need rest." In the better light of the torches, she realized that he was a good-looking man in his midthirties, spare as so many Australians seemed to be.

"I'll rest better with . . . my buddy," and she added that designation with defensive pride. Dane was looking at her now in a way that made her refer to him in that fashion.

"That way, is it?"

"NO! Not that way," she said, fiercely now.

"But I got him into this mess and I'll stand by him."

"Good on you, Sheila," Dane said, and squeezed her arm in approval. "But he'll be tended while you .

and he prodded her chest with one finger, " sleep." It was a small cave and anyone entering had to stoop or risk a crack on the skull.

Inside there was more headroom, sufficient even for Zainal when he recovered. She said "when' as positively as she could to herself, though he lay far too still to suit her when his litter was placed on the waiting mound of blanket-covered boughs. There was another bed on the other side of the den and she looked longingly at it. Then turned back to see Dane checking the wound again and Zainal's pulse.

"He'll do. Tough bastard," he said again. "You," and he pointed at Kris and then the bed, "get some rest. I'll check in during the night." He gave her a grin. "Haven't lost a Catteni patient yet." Then, when she did not immediately obey his injunction, he hauled her the step to the bed and pushed her down on the boughs, spreading the blanket over her. "Sleep.

She did, rousing once or twice when she heard movement but it was always caused by Dane, checking on his patient.

When she finally woke up, she stretched luxuriously, knowing that she had slept herself out. But a low moan brought her alert instantly and scrambling to Zainal's side.

His injured leg, bare of covering apart from the compress, was twice its normal size well up into the thigh. The flesh when she gingerly touched it was almost burning to the touch. The compress was dry and clung to the suppurating flesh when she tried to check the wound.

"Oh lordee," she murmured and then banged her forehead on leaving the den. "Ouch!"

"Gotcha, did it?" said Lenny sympathetically, rising from a stool by the entrance.

"What are you doing here?" she said, inhaling against the pain of her scraped forehead. Her hand came away with dots of blood.

"Being careful not to bang my skull open like you just did," he said, grinning. There was that in his quickly averted glance that told her he was there for another reason entirely.

"Was I supposed to leave him out there to die?" she demanded.

"Don't jump on me, Kris, I like the big guy," Lenny said.

"Mitford just doesn't need any trouble."

"Mutiny on Botany, huh?"

"Huh?" Lenny echoed, totally nonplussed by her cryptic remark. "Look," he added hurriedly, "Dane'll be around again soon. Go get some breakfast. I'll be here till you get back.

"It's ridiculous with all Zainal has done for the camp that he has to have a guard - - "Now, look, Kris, I'm not so much a guard as I am a sort of orderly," and Lenny looked embarrassed, "in case he needs help.

You know what I mean?"

"I'm paranoid, I guess," she said, relaxing a little. "Dane said anything about his chances?" Lenny shrugged.

"Didn't ask. I just volunteered. I'm on duty for them, too," he said and gestured to the opening obliquely across the tunnel. "We got a lot of patients. Oh, and that Missus Bollinger had a baby boy while we were gone. Fine big lad." Kris smiled through her sigh of relief.

"That kind of good news is very welcome.

"Don't worry. Mitford's got everyone organized already," and Lenny's grin was mischievous. Then he gave her a little push towards the tunnel entrance. "G'wan. Eat.

You're off duty today, anyway, with your buddy on the sick list." Kris didn't hear any nuance in his use of "buddy' so she relaxed. She could safely leave Zainal in Lenny's charge.

"G'wan," he said, smiling kindly, and gave her a half-turn towards the entrance. "Eat. Bread's getting better now the chemist lads've got a good yeast going." She took her time, peering in at the various units in this "hospital', noticing a lot of unfamiliar faces, some obviously in a good deal of discomfort, to judge by their expressions.

She saw Anna Bollinger, sitting up in her "bed', nursing her infant and would have passed by but Anna saw her and waved her in.

"How's the Catteni? I heard he was badly hurt," she said.

Then added in a hard voice and with a scowl. "How?" From the "doorway', Kris answered, wondering about the change in her voice.

Anna had good reason to be grateful to Zainal. In a neutral voice she said: "On his way to keep people from getting scavengered in the dark, he got a thorn in the calf of his leg and had to carve it out." Anna shuddered. "Ooo, nasty. Give him my regards," and she looked lovingly down at the swaddled mite in her arms. "I'd never have had my baby if he hadn't helped me get here." She sighed. "I'm just glad it was I mean - He'll be all right?"

"Yes, Anna, and thanks for your good wishes. I'll tell him. And thanks," Kris said and strode the rest of the way to the outer ledge feeling that perhaps, after all, she'd been imagining things.

The sundial indicated the time as near Botany's noon and, for a wonder, Mitford was absent from his office, though there were others, busily bending over the desk-stones at their tasks. There were other people, the newest arrivals since she didn't recognize any of the faces, evidently revived enough to take part in the business of the camp. There was also a handful just sitting in the sun, eyes closed: a mixed bag because she could spot some Asians as well as the dusky skin of the East Indians.

Above their heads, tacked to the south-facing wall of the ravine, was displayed a veritable mural of rock-squat hides, indicating the continued prowess of the camp's hunters. How much farther were the hunters having to go to catch enough to feed the multitude now here?

She shivered and not so much because the air felt cool to her despite the sunshine but because she worried about the tactical problems of supply. For instance, would there be enough hides to give everyone a warm coat this winter?

And, if a Botany day was twenty-eight hours long, how long were their months? Years? How long till spring?

How many more loads would the Catteni drop down on this unsuspecting planet? How would they cope with this influx, much less more? She was hungry and that always made her attitude negative.

Sandy hailed her as she came into the cook cavern.

"Hi there, gal, got something just out of the oven for the likes of you."

"The likes of me?" Kris said in a low voice as she hunkered down by Sandy. She'd glanced quickly about the cavern and saw welcoming grins on other faces: people she did recognize.

"Yeah, you're a heroine, didn't you know?" Sandy winked as she held up the pitcher, waiting until Kris hurriedly undid her cup from its belt loop. "Right up there with Mitford, charging down the ravine like a berserker." She put a pottery plate, almost a perfect circle, on the rock nearest Kris: it held a browned piece of rock-squat, a slice of nicely toasted bread, and some fried circles.

"Not quite potatoes but as near as never-mind," Sandy told her, passing over a gracefully carved fork.

Kris grinned, looking down at the utensil and turning it over in her hand.

"Chantilly silverware it isn't, but better than risking sharp knife points in your mouth." Sandy poured herself a fresh cup and settled close to Kris. "How's the Cat scuse me, Zainal, this morning?"

"I don't know. His leg is swollen awful big.

"The medics are trying a bread poultice. Penicillin it isn't but my grannie was big on a bread poultice for boils and things." Sandy patted Kris's knee encouragingly.

"They're tough, Catteni. Imagine him, cutting the thorn out of his own leg!" She clicked her tongue at such courage. "And we got quite a board of medical men now." She chuckled. "And other specialists. Most of "em seem to have been taken from Sydney. From Botany Bay to Botany," and she chuckled again "Hey, this is good," Kris said, having tried the fried tuber. It was not unlike a sweet potato in texture and taste. "Say, are those thornbush leaves doing the Deskis any good?" Sandy nodded. "Made a tea when Coo explained what he wanted and we've dosed even the sickest." Her expression altered. "We lost three, you know, while you were out on that last patrol."

"No, I didn't." Kris stopped chewing. "They look so frail . .

-"They are if they don't have the right food." Sandy remained grim. "Their bones break if you so much as touch them hard. You know who helped nurse "em?

Patti Sue!" That did surprise Kris.

"She's not much heavier than they are and has a light touch. She volunteered." Sandy grimaced. "She feels safe with the Deskis and even the Rugarians, you know."

"Jay Greene?" Now Sandy chuckled. "He's going slow but it was him who suggested she'd be good at tending the Deskis. She has been, but it damned near kills her to lose one."

"Look, they got the same rations we all did back on Barevi. I thought the ration bars were enough," Kris said.

"Ah, Coo says they were allowed "plursaw", too, and that's what they have to have in their diet to keep their bones from going soft. A kind of calcium additive, I guess. There isn't an equivalent here .

unless that thornbush junk fflls the gap. He looks better, I know, but he's a young one."

"I didn't know," and Kris was remorseful. "I never asked either."

"There now, Kris, don't take on about it. It isn't as if you've had time to be social, you know, in and out of camp as you are." Sandy reached over for a covered pot set to one side of her hearth. "Made this special for Zainal. It's sort of a broth and the nearest thing to chicken soup I can put together here. It is nourishing and it doesn't taste too bad. Maybe you can get some down him. Leon says injured Catteni sometimes have a problem with dehydration. "Bout the only thing that can debilitate them." Kris thanked Sandy, deeply touched and much reassured.

"Would you know Aarens?"

"Yeah," and there was no joy in Sandy's reply.

"Is he around?" Sandy gave a malicious chuckle. "Him! Boy, didn't he luck out. Seems there's some good to him after all. He's a genius with gadgets. Don't worry about him."

"I don't worry about him.

I worry about his mouth."

"Don't." Kris thanked Sandy again and then made her way back to the hospital. She paused briefly when she saw the line of laden hunters returning to camp. She grinned to see the loaves and fishes that were being supplied to the multitude. She should have asked Sandy how many had been on the latest drop. And her patrol had found yet another nest of empty barns.

Lenny was gone from his post and the small room was crowded by those attending Zainal: Leon among others she identified as medical personnel. She made herself small and inched in, carefully ducking under the lintel and looking for someplace safe to put the pot of broth which was hot. Leon rose to his feet just then.

"Certainly unsophisticated but the best we have to hand.

Ah, Kris," and she could see how tired he was though his hazel eyes were very much alive and keen in his saturnine face. "W're using a bread poultice to draw the infection, now that you lot have providentially rediscovered bread on this godforsaken planet." He grinned. "Great bunch of improvisers here. She's the one found that anaesthetic.

if we could only figure out how to dilute it without losing its effectiveness." His grin extended to his colleagues who acknowledged her appearance with smiles or nods. "Are you available to watch him?

Lenny's off duty."

"I am," she said. "Sandy gave me broth for him." "I'll be right with you," Leon said as the others moved out of the den, all being careful to duck on their way out. "Good-o on the broth.

When I was treating Catteni in Sydney for wounds, dehydration was the big danger.

See you get as much in him as he'll swallow, even if it's only water,' and he pointed to a condensation-beaded covered pitcher on the floor out of Zainal's immediate reach. "But he'll need the nourishment in the broth, too.

Catteni are big, strong and tough but they need to keep their internal economy turning over."

"I'll see to him."

"Good," and Leon glanced down at a slip of the bark paper. "Who's next?"

"That leg fracture," one of the men said, also consulting a slip.

They all left and Kris got a good look at Zainal's now poulticed leg. She could smell the yeast of the hot bread as she bent over him.

He was motionless, his breath slow and steady, but his skin, when she touched one broad flat cheek, was as hot as ever.

She rinsed out the fluff that was being used as a compress and cooled his face. Then, taking a spoon - the bowl of this utensil was deep enough to hold a respectable quantity of liquid and the rim smoothly polished - she dribbled water onto his lips. Automatically he licked and swallowed. She got maybe half a cup down him with patience and then bathed his hot face, moving down to his chest and arms. His coverall had been removed at some point and a decorous and swift peek of curiosity showed that he'd been given some sort of a modesty clout to cover his private parts, relieving her of embarrassment. He wasn't quite as heavily muscled as she'd thought with the bulky coverall disguising a body that, by any standards, was beautiful. She shook her head at that wayward thought. What the hell's wrong with admiring a beaut:ful bod on a guy? Nothing, unless you also don't think of that body next to your own! Whoops, girl. Down! She told herself sternly.

She allowed herself to stroke his skin, softer than its greyness looked. And exhaled, trying to shake off a sensation in her gut.

Lusting after a Cateeni, girl? You are the pits!

Nevertheless, the opportunity to touch him in more than a nurse-patient relationship was almost too much to resist. She smoothed back his silky grey hair, as fine as a baby's. In repose his features were even more patrician, when she compared him to some of the other Catteni she remembered. Yes, decidedly he was several castes above the average male mercenary. She was so accustomed to the look of him now that he didn't even seem alien any more. Hmmm. Well, that attitude was better than rampant xenophobia!

Between her sessions of watering him - she also got him to take some of the broth which had cooled enough to be dripped into his mouth - she rested on her bed, drowsing occasionally. She wondered if he knew they were trying their best to help him because he lay stolidly unmoving, even when the poultice was still hot. The only response he gave was to swallow when moisture was offered.

Time to water him again.

More noise outside, muted though it was, warned her of increased activity in the hospital. Lenny popped his head in.

"He may not be eating, but you should." Until he mentioned it, she hadn't realized how empty her stomach was.

"So, what's for din-dins?" she asked facetiously.

He grinned and brought a plate from behind his back, complete with pottery-domed lid.

"We're getting quite fawncy, this weather," he said.

Then he lifted the top.

"My God, it looks human," she said in pleased surprise.

For the meal consisted of more tubers, boiled by the look of them, a section of avian, to judge by the configuration of the wing, and two portions of greens.

"Just what the doctor ordered! Leave you to it! Oh," and he reappeared in the doorway, "mass meeting this evening at the sound of the gong!" "Gong?" she asked but he was out of earshot.

She ate with a good appetite and the food was delicious.

The ration bars and the travel meal had doubtless been nutritious but real food of differing texture, now that was civilized.

Leon came bustling in when she had finished and he was looking rested.

"Got some sleep, did you? Report?"

"He's been taking both water and broth whenever I offer them and I've cooled him down in between.

But he doesn't move much," she ended lamely, looking expectantly at Leon Dane.

"Hmmm. They don't. Real adherents of the grin-andbear brigade.

They suffer in silence. I suspect he's more conscious of what's going on than you realize. Zainal?" Leon leaned over the Catteni, hand on his brow and then on the main artery on the left of his neck. He proceeded downwards, checking the temperature of the skin and then palpating the thigh tissues. "Hmmmm."

"Your "hmmrns" are getting longer," Kris remarked sardonically "When in doubt a thoughtful "hmInm" is reassuring."

"To whom?"

"Whommmm does it as well, y' know," and Leon was now delicately prodding the wound area, having lifted the poultice.

It had turned an obnoxious shade of grey/orange/green. "Yes indeed.

I think that's doing it."

"You do?" and Kris leant over to see what he could possibly have taken as encouragement. The ghastly hole did look . . . "healthier" was the only word she could find. Nicely red instead of raw red, and the swelling had noticeably subsided so that the kneecap was once again visible. "I think I agree."

"Keep on with watering him. Ah, you're with us," Leon added suddenly when Zainal startled them both by opening his eyes.

"I need to lose water," Zainal said clearly.

Laughing, Leon collected a cleverly shaped pottery utensil at the end of the bough bed which Kris hadn't actually noticed before, and she beat a hasty retreat while Leon attended the patient.

He came out with the utensil in his hand, chuckling to himself.

"He'll do fine. Just fine. Don't forget the meeting tonight, will you?"

"How long have you been awake, Zainal?" Kris asked in a diffident tone of voice.

"Off and on," he said, his eyes closed but he held out his hand and when she took it, his eyes opened. They held a look which made her chest swell with some unidentifiable emotion, so strong that her eyes began to water. His grip was very delicate and his skin still more than warm. "I knew you were here. You were there, by the water, too.

Good of you, very good of you."

"Not at all," and she covered his hand with her free one. "You're . . . we're buddies. We look out for each other." His eyes flicked open. "Buddies?"

"For lack of a better tem, yes. I won't let you down."

"That I know." Then he released her hand and dropped his arm to his side, closing his eyes again. "Water?

I am no longer full." And his lips lengthened in a slight smile.

"The tasty water."

"We call it broth."

"Good." She fed him and felt good about it.

The meeting was very well attended though Kris missed some of Mitford's usual satellites, the Rugarians, as well as the Doyles. Even patients who could be moved out to the ledge in front of the hospital were present: Anna and her baby, the fracture cases - everyone except Zainal.

Kris was obliquely offended by that but talked herself out of indignation: plainly Zainal was too ill to be moved and she could report to him - and defend him if necessary. Now why was she feeling so defensive about the Catteni?

Jay Greene had Patti Sue on one side of him. She joined them, leaning against the rockface on Jay's left side.

"What's up?"

"Oh, a Mitford morale-building session and the latest news." Jay grinned.

"What latest news?" Kris demanded, knowing he was baiting her and giving him an ingenuous grin.

"The batch you and Zainal discovered weren't the only drops that night. Mitford sent off an exploratory patrol to see how many fields got seeded in what we believe is the typical Catteni drop pattern."

"More people?" Kris gave a frantic glance around the cave system, certainly overcrowded by the latest group of refugees. How were they going to cope? Then a rattle of the alarm triangle brought a wave of hush over the congregation. Mitford stood up, waiting until he had complete silence.

"OK, folks, listen up. There're more drop-ins . . -" He paused until the mutter - Kris thought she heard resentment as well as surprise and concern - had subsided.

"I take it as a good omen, considering what debriefing I've had." He chuckled. "The Catteni aren't finding it as easy to subdue good ol' Earth as they expected." A cheer went up.

"And they've just increased our specialist departinent by four doctors, eighteen nurses, nine computer specialists, fourteen engineers, some good ol' hunter types from Australia, and a bunch of other real useful individuals, including some professional cooks so we oughta be eating even better in the near future."

"Even with so many mouths to feed, Sarge?" a woman shouted.

He waved off that concern. "We got a whole planet to hunt and plenty of grain stored where we can get it."

"Winter's coming "So's Christmas and we'll have heating units from those solar panels long before. Now settle down. What we're going to do to relieve the housing shortage here is move into the buildings we know are empty, and already plumbed for our benefit."

"But all those machines "Have been decommissioned,' Mitford said, raising his voice to parade ground volume. "The Botany Hilton or Sheraton or whatever, are safe, sound and have . .

he paused, "space available. Our local home decorators have been busy designing alterations, so I think you'll be surprised at how comfortable you're going to be."

"I'm not so sure I wanna live near machines "Quietest neighbours you ever had, I'll betcha," Mitford said and got another ripple of laughter.

"Good chance of us having an intercom system, too, now we got more technicians. All that machinery's going to be recycled for our benefit!"

"Yeah, and what happens when their owners find out?" The man spoke with a slight accent but Kris couldn't locate the speaker.

"As I understand it, Dr Who always managed to evade the mechanicals and so can we," Mitford said with great good humour and got more laughs. "Seriously, though, folks, our population's growing and once again he paused, "everyone's welcome. This is an equal opportunity situation. Let me make that plain. D'you get me?" He waited for the response and, to Kris's relief, got a fairly hearty cheer. "For one thing, there's safety in numbers, especially when you can recruit a lot of specialists who can improve our conditions. And we do. Hell, sixteen days since we got dropped to Freedom on that field, we've even got decent spoons and forks, and better rations than we landed with. Furthermore, we've sorted out some basic problems our allies were having since Zainal and Kris Bjornsen found the nutrient plant that seems to be helping the Deskis. Even if Zainal found it. .

. the hard way' Applause and good-natured laughter acknowledged that announcement and Kris was well pleased by both elements: that Zainal was getting the credit and that the Deskis were stabilizing.

"We Yanks have a reputation for making something out of nothing, and now that the Aussies have joined us, we'll do even better.

There'll be duty and housing rosters up on the bulletin board - - -" and he pointed to the location on the main cave wall opposite him, "in the morning so be sure to check. We're going to try and make space here in the headquarters to process incomers and as general hospital.

Tesco's in charge of quarters, Dowdall'll take work assignments. You need to see me, check with Cumber. That's all for now, folks.

Dissss-MISSED!" There was good-natured laughter at his military salutation and he disappeared into the darkness beyond the main campfire.

"Hi, Patti Sue," and Kris leaned around Jay to speak to her.

"Heard you've been a real Nightingale to the Deskis." Patti Sue linked her arm through Jay's in such a proprietary fashion that the gesture indicated her improvement from terrified refugee to self-confident young woman.

"Do what I can," she said, her drawl more pronounced than ever.

"You've done marvels, and you know it," Jay said, stroking her hand.

"D'you know if you're moving from the Rock?" Kris asked Patti Sue and then looked at Jay.

He shrugged. "Dunno yet. COQ'll be up tomorrow morning. We'll all know then." In the middle of the night, Kris was roused by considerable noise in the corridor. Even Zainal was awakened, propping himself up on one elbow and trying to see out.

"Don't you dare put a foot on the ground," she said, pressing him back down. She felt his cheek and he was considerably cooler than he had been when she had last checked him. "You're better. Don't mess up.

I'll go see." She'd told him about the meeting and also that Mitford had given him credit for finding the remedy for the Deskis.

"Even if you had to do it the hardest way possible," she'd said with some acrimony. He'd only snorted. "At least they know one Catteni's a good guy." Maybe others wouldn't.

She didn't add that, but that sentiment naggingly lingered at the back of her mind.

She folded on her shoes, the only thing she took off before going to bed, and went out into the corridor.

"Good!" One of the new Aussie medics said, grabbing her by the arm. "We need all the help we can get." The newest arrivals had not had a Zainal or Kris to stamp the ground and despatch the scavengers and there were many with mangled arms and legs. Most of the victims spoke languages she didn't understand but which sounded Slavonic or Scandinavian. Only a few had some English.

When she was sent by Leon to get more supplies and rouse additional helpers, she saw that the ravine was crammed with bodies, draped wherever they had stopped, too tired to move another step. But the cook cavern was ablaze with lights. Sandy, Bart and half a dozen others were busy at their hearths and the "store' was busy with Jay and Patti Sue doling out supplies. Jay instantly filled the hospital order and she returned.

The third moon had set before she was released and when she got back into the tiny den she shared with Zainal, she had to step carefully over the three other bodies bunked in there during her absence. Fortunately they were fast asleep, though she thought she saw Zainal's eyes glimmer in the corridor light as he checked out her arrival.

So no-one was able to follow the carefully detailed rosters that were up on the camp's main bulletin board.

More parties were sent out to help stragglers, to hunt, to collect additional supplies of grain from that supply depot. Jay complained that folks had to search fairly far from Camp Rock to find firing and brush for bedding.

By high noon, all the new arrivals had been fed a decent meal and had some place to lay their blanket.

The Rugarians, led by Slav, finally returned, bearing the crates with the basic supplies that had been left with this new group. Class C was what Mitford decided to call them. All morning had to be spent extracting information from those who could speak English among the Russians, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Bulgarians, Rumanians and some Greeks who comprised this drop. The fact that so many different nationalities were resisting the Catteni on Earth gave the entire camp a morale boost.

"But why'd they have to dump "em here when they don't even speak English?" one man complained in a wail.

"Who asked?" a wit demanded. "We'll manage. Hell, I know five Deski phrases and nine in Rugs. I'll manage another few lingos. Well, at least until they learn English." By evening the population had increased by a thousand and fifty-two: far more than the camp could accommodate, even by crowding into all available cavern space.

Of Class C, those that could speak English and had not been injured or had suffered only minor hurts were sent off with Sandy, Joe Lattore and Tesco to orgamze quarters in the abattoir buildings.

"They don't know what happened there, and I don't plan to tell "em,' Sandy remarked to Kris when Kris came upon the woman packing her pots and utensils. "I'll organize the cooking there. Twenty barns, are there?" When Kris nodded, "Ah, we'll probably be able to accommodate a lot more than we're taking with us right now, but it'll sure ease the crush." There was no longer sitting room in the cook cavern and every single hearth was going full out all the time.

The smell fromunwashed bodies exuding fear as well as sweat quite masked the more appetizing odours of grilled meats and fresh bread.

When Sandy and her contingent had left, Kris couldn't see where space had been gained and went back to the hospital with the broth she'd gone to collect. Zainal was more eager for any news she had than the food she brought him, but he ate that hungrily enough. His leg was nearly back to its normal sturdy size and the wound was healing cleanly. But it was still crater sized and Leon had made it clear that Zainal was not to move about much.

Zainal did, though, helping with patients who had to be lifted when their dressings were changed or when they were being moved to new accommodations. He did more than he should, but she couldn't keep her eyes on him all the time and there was a lot to be done to make the injured as comfortable as possible without pain relief and no other anti-infection medication than the harsh Catteni fluid. The merest drop of the powerful anaesthetic tended to render a patient unconscious for a full day. Medically that was imprudent, however much relief it afforded the injured party.

"Whatever those critters are that scavenge, at least they bite clean,' Leon said later that day when Kris helped him bandage an arm wound. Flesh had been excised as cleanly as a scalpel would cut but the patient had lost muscle as well as flesh and, from the extent of the injury, Kris rather thought the man would lose the use of his arm entirely.

"They bite big, too," she murmured under her breath, after looking to be sure the victim was unconscious.

Leon only sighed and continued his repair. Kris was rather surprised at her ability to regard hideous tears of flesh and muscle with an objectivity she didn't know she possessed. She hadn't been nauseous once, though others on the temporary nursing staff were.

The dressing complete, both she and Leon finished the current round and walked towards the front of the "hospital'. A breeze was blowing in and freshening the air of the "emergency room' which, for the first time in several days, was empty of patients.

"You," and she took Leon by the arm, "need food and rest, not necessarily in that order but I can see to it that

you eat!" She took a deep sniff of the incoming breeze.

"Smells good, too." Hauling him by the arm, she marched him out and down the ledge to the cook cavern.

"I hate bossy females," Leon protested, but weakly, as she manoeuvred him past those busy with chores on the ledge.

Below, in his office, Mifford was still debriefing the able-bodied of the last batch though, from the expressions on his face and Esker's, he was making slow work of it with two blond Scandinavian types sitting there.

"Most Scandinavians speak English," Leon remarked.

"The ones you've met in Sydney, or the ones in Oslo, Bergen or Copenhagen?" Leon laughed wearily. "I always wanted to take a travel year.

"Well, guess what? You're on it. Already Kris missed the dour presence of Sandy at her hearth but Bart was present, and evidently in charge of the catering.

"Never been in a job that was so damned constant," Ban said when they presented themselves at his hearth.

He rolled his eyes and then mopped the sweat off his forehead with a pad of fluff which he then dropped into the fire. It hissed. "I'm cooking all the hours the good Lord put in this crazy day. What's your pleasure? We got soup for starters, soup and then, for the main course, soup. We even got crackers," and he offered a square of unleavened stuff, "cos we ran outa bread and the new baking hasn't risen yet." "Why, I think I'll have soup," Kris said, getting herself a clean bowl from the stack at the hearth.

"I'll have a taste adventure, then, and try the soup," Leon said and Bart grinned as he ladled out their portions.

"Don't ask what's in it, will ya," he said as a final caution when they moved out to the ledge to enjoy their meal.

"That's a promise," Kris said with a laugh.

The soup was tasty, with a tangy bite to it, as well as unidentifiable shreds of meat. The satisfying warmth in the stomach revived her. That was, until she saw Zainal carefully making his way down the steps to Mitford's office.

"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Dane demanded.

"Something other than lying in bed doing nothing," Kris answered Leon's complaint. She nervously shifted her feet, knowing she shouldn't follow the big man but wanting to be sure he didn't open that leg wound.

He very carefully negotiated his descent, so she made herself relax. The question was: what urgent business could Zainal have with Mitford that he'd risk opening that wound? Something he couldn't trust her to do for him? Down girl, she told herself firmly. She might be his keeper but she was not his conscience. Whatever he was saying to Mitford, the sergeant was listening very hard. Zainal was still there in the office when she and Leon had finished eating and had to go back on duty.

That evening Esker found her settling the other patients - none of whom had any English - in her den.

"Mitford needs to speak to you, Kris. And you, too, Zainal." He was gone before Kris could question him but, thinking over the tone in which the summons was delivered, she felt no apprehension. After all, Zainal had had that intense discussion with Mitford. Had the sergeant reached a decision? If one was needed?

Mitford was, as usual at this time of his long work day, sitting by the fire, the pottery pitcher of beverage by the side of his rock, the half-full cup in one hand. In the other, he had a stick and was prodding a billet to a better position in the fire.

"Zainal has some cockamamey notion of sending a mayday to his people next time they overfly us," Mitford said, narrowing his eyes as he looked up at Kris. "He feels we haven't had the last of these drops." Mitford gave a little sigh for the problems that yet another influx of people would provide. "Now, fer starters, I don't know as how I want to appeal to them for any help but it's the truth we need some sort of medical supplies, as well as the proper nutrients for the Deskis. That thornbush junk is not quite enough, not for the older Deskis though it's helping Coo. I just don't like to lose anyone, human or alien." He scowled as he delivered that remark.

"How could we possibly contact them?" Kris said, turning to Zainal.

"Make this message on field," Zainal said, and unfolded a slip of bark on which were written, or maybe "drawn' was the proper tem, four complex hieroglyphics Zainal had inscribed.

"How? We haven't rediscovered paint yet here." He gave her a brief smile. "Ground is dark under ." and he waggled his hand to try to find the appropriate word.

"Stubble? Grass?" she supplied.

"Whatever. Take off covering, leave ground bare." That was a good idea, only somehow Kris shared Mitford's obvious reluctance to make any contact with the Catteni.

"We put message many fields off," and Zainal gestured to the north. "They know we live. They bring more they don't want."

"They know we're here?" Kris asked, more disturbed by that than she liked though a quick look at Mitford showed him more sanguine.

Zainal nodded. "Heat sensors. Then he stretched his lip in a humorous grin. "That's why they fly over."

"Humph, thought that might be it,' Mitford said.

"Bastards!" Then Zainal's grin altered to one of amusement at the sergeant's acceptance and once again Kris was amazed at how that smile transformed his alien cast of countenance.

He looked almost human, except for the white of his teeth contrasting with the grey of his skin. "Know we live so send more."

"Yeah, but they still don't know about the existence of the Meco Makers! Zainal shook his head. "Sensors find warm bodies, not machinery.

"Hmmm," Mitford said, stirring the fire with his branch.

"Coo still weak but young. Older ones worse and get worser," Zainal said urgently in English, then, in his concern, resorted to Barevi. "Catteni take captives everywhere, but they take good care of them. Of Rugarians, Deskis, Turs and Morphins, and Terrans.

Healthy bodies work better. Asking for proper food is acceptable.

"Won't they find it strange that we ask in Catteni symbols?" Kris asked, pointing to his bark message.

Zainal grinned broadly again. "They know humans are smart," he said in English. "Too damned smart, so they drop them here. No trouble here. Coo and Pess good folks. Can't lose." Now he turned his earnest expression on Mitford. "I work with Deskis and Rugarians before.

Good folks. We save them?"

"You sure have learnt English quick, Zainal," Mitford said in a drawl, temporizing, Kris thought. Then he regarded Zainal for a long moment. "And the Deskis deserve saving.

Your guys'd just drop the supplies?" Zainal nodded. "They wouldn't come down to find out?" Zainal shook his head. "Why not?" Zainal now laughed. "You make trouble. They he paused and Kris could almost see him trying to sort through his head to find the right words, "play it safe. I play it safe, too."

"You mean, you wouldn't take the opportunity to get off Botany?" Mitford asked that in such a mild tone that Kris hoped Zainal would see he was being deftly interrogated.

"They don't take back what they put down," he said with a philosophical shrug.

Mitford grimaced. "So there's no chance we could commandeer one of their transports?" Zainal considered this and finally shook his head. "They be careful where they drop." He grinned. "Especially near you Terrans."

"How do you know that?" Zainal's teeth gleamed in the firelight when he smiled.

"Know it before, back on Barevi. Lots of talk. Hear it now from the new ones. Believe it, too. I see how you work."

"Thanks, buddy' Mitford replied sardonically but amused by Zainal's approval. "Why would they do us a favour then?"

"I tell you why." Now Zainal seemed to tense and Kris felt Mitford was pushing him too much, as if he didn't quite believe Zainal was on the level. "Keep healthy to improve this planet." Suddenly Zainal held out the slip of bark with its symbols and, with one thick fingertip, explained them.

"This says "drop"," and he pointed to the intricate hook in the centre of the first glyph. "This says "food"," and he ran his finger half round the next curlicue, "this "Deski creatures". This means ." and he moved to the next glyph, ""danger to the death" surrounded by urgent Fourth one says "medicines for infection". Four only.

Easy to make, easy to read from distance." His tone was cold and firm.

"OK, OK, man, I believe you," Mitford said. "Just had to ask."

"These my people, too, now, Zainal added, straightening his wide shoulders as if he, too, would assume some of that burden from Mitford.

"We are one people now, or by God, I'll know why!" Mitford said so fiercely that Kris almost recoiled. The sergeant saw her reaction and gave her a quick grin. "I could even get to like being in charge of this motley crew.

So, when will you be able to travel, Zainal?"

"Sunrise Kris started to protest but Mitford held up a hand to silence her. "If he thinks he can, he can. Those Deskis need the right food. And we can use the Deskis' abilities.

You go with him, Kris. How many will you need to carve the message, Zainal?" The Catteni waved his hand to indicate he'd go alone.

"Stuff it, buddy, man," Mitford said irritably. "You'll need help making those figures large enough to be seen from altitude. I know.

Had to do it in "Nam once. Even SOS takes time to make." He turned to Kris, an almost wistful expression on his face. "You don't happen to speak any Scandinavian language, do you?" And when she shook her head, he sighed. "New guys are all I have to send with you but you can break "em in to our new ways at the same time. And, I'll pick you one that speaks English and the rest'll be told what to do. Got it?"

"Got it, Sarge," and she rose, recognizing a dismissal when she heard it.

Zainal extended one hand to Mitford which the sergeant took readily enough and shook.

"You will not be sorry," Zainal said as he rose.

"1 sincerely hope not," Mitford replied. "Esker will have a patrol ready at first light."

Chapter Ten

Despite a broken night's sleep - since two of their room-mates were so restless any long period of sleep was impossible - Kris and Zainal were up well before the Botany dawn. They'd eaten - Bart was absent, asleep, one of the other cooks said, yawning - and were getting their travel rations when Esker came in with six people, five men and a woman who was nearly as tall as Kris.

She seemed relieved to see that Kris was in the party.

"I speak English," she announced. "I am named Astrid.

These are Ole, Jan, Oskar, Bjorn and Peter. We lived near Oslo.

Esker has told us we go with you to dig?"

"Yes, dig," Kris said, with a reassuring smile because she obviously thought it an odd job. She shook hands all round. "This is Zainal, our leader.

"You have Catteni as leader?" Astrid asked in a startled whisper.

"Good one, too, or you'd've all been eaten.

"Pardon?"

"The scavengers? The things that go bump in the night on this planet?" And Kris made a mouth of one hand and bit her other arm. Astrid reacted to that, jerking back and away from the demonstration.

"I do not always understand, Astrid said apologetically.

"We are still alive. We keep others alive?"

"Exactly! To help the Deskis keep alive we send a message."

"Someone will read?" Astrid was clearly amazed. One of the men shot her a quick sentence in the oddly liquid Norwegian language. She answered him as quickly and turned back to Kris. "I don't believe."

"Believe. We will carve the symbols on the ground to be seen in the air," and she mimed the actions.

"Oh," Astrid said and explained to her compatriots, who nodded in vigorous understanding.

"Kris?" and Kris recogni; one of the Australian nurses, hurrying into the cavern, waving a sack made from part of a blanket, the ubiquitous material used for anything from aprons to tents. "More fluff dressings for Zainal's leg." Then she shot an accusing look at the Catteni. "I knew you'd go off without them and that leg still needs support and dressings every day. I don't care if you are some kind of superman, you bleed red like the rest of us. Here!" And she jammed the sack into Zainal's hand and whirled about and ran out again.

With a half-grin, Zainal managed to look slightly embarrassed as he stowed the sack into the larger one he was carrying.

"Now we go," he said. Whether he had seen Mitford's gestures on their first trek or not, he raised his arm above his head and brought it down in the direction they were to travel.

Reassured by his manner, Kris motioned for the rest of the patrol to follow her and they left, as a good team, she thought.

But, as they left Camp Rock, Kris realized that last night both men - maybe unintentionally - had avoided discussing what would happen if the Meco Makers appeared first? Of course, with winter approaching - but it struck her as unrealistic to think that everything mechanical went down with the close of the growing season. Surely there was some sort of supervisor, or superintendant or overseer on the planet? Maybe on one of the other continents? Nevertheless, some thing must be in overall charge. When there was no response from the garages now that the solar panels were disconnected, some thing must register the lack of response. And check up.

And response was what they hoped to get. Or had Mitford's objectives changed now he was getting accustomed to being the top man here on Botany?

Well, as her grandmother used to say, why borrow trouble? It finds you soon enough.

While Zainal was not setting the pace he had on the first patrol Kris had done with him, he certainly didn't amble.

By the first rest stop, Kris knew that the Norwegians weren't going to slow them down.

Probably ski'd all winter in Norway. She kept her eyes on Zainal, though, to watch for any signs of an unconscious favouring of his inlured leg. Then she became aware that he was watching her watch him.

"You tell us names of things?" Astrid asked during the break.

"I don't know as we've named much, Astrid," Kris admitted, taking a swig of water from her pottery bottle.

Sandy's kiln worked and she'd found a glaze so the canteen, while still breakable, didn't leak. She even had a proper pouch for it, now attached to her belt.

"There're botanists going about checking plants to see if they're edible and stuff like that but I can't say as I've kept up with what they're doing."

"You are out on patrol?"

"Most of the time."

"What are these machineries?" She looked puzzled.

"Ah, yes, well," and Kris explained, pausing while Astrid made quick translations to her compatriots until Zainal gestured for them to take the road again.

"You have done most well," Astrid said when Kris finished her brief history of Botany. "We are glad we drop here."

"Got dropped here," Kris corrected automatically.

"Ooops, sorry, Zainal has me helping his English."

"Oh, help my English, too."

"You . . . teach . . . us?" one of the other men, Ole, Kris thought, asked her. She hadn't quite sorted the guys out yet.

"Might as well. English lessons on the march."

"We have no Deskis to hear flying danger," Astrid said, her eyes wide with apprehension now. "We were told that there is danger that flies," she added when Kris regarded her with astonishment at her knowledge.

"The nearby garages are all disabled, so I don't think we're in danger of any avians swooping down on us."

"Pardon?" Astrid's English was not up to Kris's comment.

"My pardon, and she rephrased the remark in better English.

"Explain "boy" now," Zainal suddenly said, dropping back so that he was abreast of the two girls.

"Oh, yes. Well," and Kris floundered briefly. "Boy can mean several things. No, I guess many. A boy," and she held up one finger, "is a young male person: too old to be a baby and too young to be considered a man yet. OK?"

""Boy"? Is only that?" Zainal twisted his face into a perplexed expression.

"We have what we call "slang", in English: patois, idiom, in other languages," Kris continued determinedly.

""Boy" used as slang is an expression of amazement, amusement, pleasure, and it's usually said as "oh, boy!"

or "0000 booooy!" or "0 boy!"' and she emphasized the different emotions with exaggerated gestures and tones.

"All "boy"?" asked Zainal. "I don't understand how a boy, a young male person, can be surprise, funny, good times."

"I think you do, Zainal,' Kris said, suddenly realizing that he was teasing her. "G'wan with ye now, m'boyo!" Astrid translated to the others, grinning and laughing and saying "oh, boy' in different tones of voice.

"Oh, boy and isn't this getting out of hand," Kris said, shaking her head at her predicament.

"0 boy, 0 boy, 0 boy," Zainal said and, to nonplus her further, he put one arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug.

"You've been talking to other people," she said, throwing off his arm and stalking ahead of him. Then she realized she was overreacting.

Why on earth, when she really wanted to get close to him, had she repudiated his friendly gesture?

Regretting her behaviour, she slowed down and caught his hand, holding it while they walked.

Mter the second rest stop, Zainal struck off in a northerly direction, pointing to broad fields of golden stubble that spread upwards to a rocky summit. If, as Zainal had suggested, the Catteni kept to the same line to make their drops, those fields would be visible if they were going to buzz Camp Rock again.

They reached their objective by midafternoon. Zainal sent Kris and two of the men off to hunt for rock-squats, sunning themselves.

Oskar and Bjorn were proficient with the bows and arrows they had been supplied with while both were congratulatory when Kris brought down four creatures with well-placed slingshots. Of course, she'd missed six so she didn't think that much of her accomplishment.

The men were obviously accustomed to good hunting practices because, as soon as they found the next stream, they skinned and dressed down the meat without directions from her. They washed all the carcasses and pelts well, before going back to Zainal's field. They were setting about to bury the entrails when she indicated they should leave them.

Kris spotted some nourishing types of greens in the hedgerows and harvested them. She kept her eyes out for the tubers which also grew wild at the edges of fields.

Fried, they'd be a good addition to the roast meat and the travel rations.

Zainal had had the others help him to outline with rocks the glyphs that they would have to hack out of the soil. He was pacing out the second huge pattern, putting down the bordering rocks while the others gathered more. Kris could also see, at the top of the field, a circle of stones with a nice fire burning in it, fuelled by the loo-cow droppings collected on the way. They'd be only a step away from the safety of the rocky height, which was just fine by Kris.

The scavengers foraged in crop fields as well as pastures and only the stomp-stomp of the loo-cows' six legs kept them from being fair game. Was that why the loo-cows had six legs? More to stomp with?

But the scavengers were no doubt the reason why, as Kris had noticed, the loo-cows seemed to sleep during the daylight hours.

Those loo-cows probably had to do an all-night stomp to stay alive.

The hunters displayed their spoils and Kris set about finding the right size of flat rock to cook them on.

She'd been warned to be careful about overheating her newly issued cooking pot, since it was, after all, only glazed clay, but she'd been assured by Jay Greene that it would bring water close to the boil - and that would mean she could cook the greens. She took them to the ubiquitous stream to wash and filled the pot, and very shortly the stones were hot enough to start cooking rock-squat.

By then, Zainal had outlined all four huge glyphs. After a good dinner, he suggested that they start hacking out the soil to bare the dark ground.

That was tougher work than they had anticipated, for the ground cover had deep, tough root systems and Kris found these had to be cut out: the roots wouldn't just pull away like any well-behaved Terran weed. Her arms and shoulders ached from her labours and she was quite glad to break off to heat water for the night-time beverage.

The medics had come to the decision that the herbaltype tea that had been concocted contained useful trace elements, so a bedtime cup was standard issue. A nice homey touch and no reason not to continue it out in the rocky wilds of Botany. With warmth in the belly, it was easier to sleep.

The turf-cutters made themselves as comfortable as they could on the rocks and those who had later watches had no trouble falling asleep.

It took them five days to complete the glyphs: five days of fingernail- and back-breaking, arm-bruising and blister-making toil, since the only tools they had were hatchets and knives. They'd been issued with spares of each tool and had needed them to complete their task, resharpening the dulled edges every night. Then, deterutined that his message would be seen, Zainal had them outline the cuts with the sparkling white stone that comprised this rock outcrop. The full sunlight that fell on the glyphs caused the mica in the rock to glint.

Almost as good as neon. Exhausted as she was, Kris had to admire the final result.

"Do all Catteni read?" she asked Zainal.

"Those on watch do," he assured her.

His leg was a bit swollen from his unremitting labours but the flesh was gradually filling in and he took a brook-shower night and morning. Cold as the water was, Kris liked the new type of ablution.

She and Astrid bathed upstream of the fellows, but the rivulet was deep enough for a person to lie down on the sands and let the water cascade over them in a horizontal shower. The sand was very fine and provided a rough but effective cleanser.

Besides, you were so cold you didn't feel the abrasions.

Or so Kris told herself.

The rocky height was home - or had been home - to a huge colony of rock-squats. The patrol took some time out each day to hunt and then to cut the excess meat into strips to dry on the hot rocks the next day. Kris was very pleased to be so productive - especially since there were so many more mouths to feed.

Each night, however, reminded them that a colder season was approaching and Kris did worry about how cold that would be.

Fortunately, the Catteni-issue thermal blankets were efficient in containing body heat inside them. The evening showers blessed them on schedule but those were no longer as violent as they had been: more like a gentle watering than torrential rains.

On the sixth day they started back to camp, hunting when they could, for additional protein was always welcome. Zainal set a faster pace this time to allow for interludes of hunting, and they reached the caverns to find them still crammed with people. Bart took their offerings with profuse thanks and then asked Kris if she'd take a hearth and cook what they'd brought in. As she certainly couldn't refuse the man when he looked so harried, and the cook cave was obviously pushed to the limit, she agreed. Astrid lingered, as much because she didn't know where to go as that Kris was a familiar face.

Until a messenger came for Kris to report to Mitford.

"I watch you. I now know to cook," Astrid said, taking the long-handled fork Kris had been using and pushing her on her way.

Zainal and Ole, who did have some English, were in Mitford's office. The pile of bark sheets was higher than the stone he used as a desk and was weighted down by what looked like a gold nugget, a lump of iron and a greeny mess that had to be copper.

"Gold in them thar hills?" Kris asked when he motioned her to a seat.

"That and more. We've been busy while you've been carving that mayday." "You're never not busy, Sarge."

"Patrol found the remnants of another drop and nine survivors. Eight Deski and a guy from Atlanta, Georgia, who had the sense to stick with the aliens. Damn it," and Mitford's face was suffused with anger, "I shoulda had you put a PS on that message: make the drops in daylight. I hate it when I lose people like that."

"But they weren't ours, yet, Sarge," Kris said, trying to be conciliatory. Mitford gave her a dirty look. Hey, she thought, he's really into this Leader bit. Well, it's not as if anyone else had volunteered for the responsibilities and the headaches. And look at all that Mitford has gone and done.

"They could've been. And another garage was found and deactivated. Twenty more barns to be made into domiciles."

"Now that's good. And the supplies?"

"We put them in the barns. Easier that way, but I'd rather have the people to go with them." Zainal had been constructing another glyph and now held it Off to inspect the result. He made a few more strokes as adjustments, then turned it to Mitford and Kris. "That should do it," he said.

Mitford reacted to that almost unaccented remark. "You learn quick, doncha?"

"I have to," Zainal replied. "Take two, three days there and back." He rose, glancing up at the sundial. "Have enough light the travel."

"How's your leg?" Mitford frowned at it, as he could see nothing past the bulky trouser leg. Then he caught Kris's surreptitious headshake. "No, better start fresh tomorrow. The others are only Terrans, not as tough as you Catteni." His little snort took the sting out of that remark as he looked up at Zainal towering above him.

"You think your guys'll listen?" Zainal nodded solemnly. "They don't know the dangers here. They don't know scavengers. They wish this planet coln-nized. We have survived," and he shrugged, "so they think all can."

"But even the report you saw said there were dangerous animals down here." Mitford's scowl deepened.

Zainal shrugged and grinned broadly. "We have survived. Water, air, animals, light gravity, better than Catten!" As if that answered the necessary criteria.

Mitford snorted, shuffling several pieces of scribbled bark about on his worktop. "As far as we know, they made three drops this time.

We were one of four. And three weeks between trips. That right?" Zainal cocked his head thoughtfully. "Could be. I was space, not colony." And he spread his hands in a very contemporary human gesture of ignorance. "You know the problem: one group does not know what other does."

"Yeah," and Mitford's drawl spoke of much experience with such inequities.

A woman, face red, hair messed, coverall opened halfway to her waist came stamping her way up the steps to Mitford's office.

"Mitford, either you cut his libido off at the root or I'll do it myself with a dull knife."

"Arnie?" and Mitford rose, gesturing authoritatively at two men lounging to one side, playing some sort of game involving pebbles. "No questions, no answers. Bring "im.

Put "im back in the stocks. And he'll stay there till he rots or we can think of something else to do with him."

"Tie him out in a field for scavengers and even that's too good," the woman said, closing the fastenings on her coverall and then smoothing her hair. "Horny pervert! I'll give you a full report of this latest trick of his when you're done here," she muttered as she politely took herself to one side so Mitford could finish with his current interview.

"At least the ratio between male and female evened up a little in "the last drop. But I don't need guys like Arnie," Mitford said when the woman had settled out of earshot.

"He's been in the stocks four times for peeping and twice for stealing." "Stealing what?"

"Food! Extra blankets, a sharper knife because he's too lazy to hone his own." Mitford made a noise of disgust. "I need him like a boil on my ass. Don't ever feel sorry, Kris, that he got force-whipped. He just got his in advance."

"Tie him out for the scavengers," Zainal said blandly.

"Good idea." Mitford grimaced, showing his teeth and expelling air through them. "Can't, but I may yet . . . You get food and rest, ya hear, Kris?" When she dutifully nodded, he added, "And make sure Dane sees his leg." Over Zainal's protests that's exactly what Kris did, roundly scolding the Catteni because he hadn't reported in to Leon Dane when they'd reached camp. He was at first amused by her tirade and then frowned as she grabbed him by the arm to lead him to the hospital end of the caverns, when he did not turn in that direction immediately.

"Now listen here, Lord Emassi Zainal," she said, "you were given an order by Mitford and, if you plan to go out tomorrow, you'll obey it or you won't go. And no-one will go with you to help dig that message." "Then no message." He shrugged as if it were all the same to him.

"Ohhh, you make me so mad . Kris tried to keep her voice down because she knew she sounded shrewish but he was being so unreasonable.

"Just because you're a Catteni doesn't mean you don't bleed like us frail Terrans and that you didn't damned near die from that thorn toxin, and I don't want to go through that again. You're too important to me to be stupid about your health." He grabbed her by the finger she was shaking at him, looking around because he had noticed just how much attention her accusation had focused on them.

"I go. I see Dane," he said far too docilely, and she watched to make sure he did.

Lordee, you'd think a man as old as Zainal would have the sense to take care of himself. And she didn't like it when he got all compliant. That wasn't Catteni of him.

retired to the next field to get an overall view of their labors.

"Man? Another "boy" thing?" Zainal asked, one eyebrow quirking upwards in amusement.

"Yeah, you can if you wish, substitute "man 0 man o man" for "boy 0 boy o boy". It's how you feel."

"Young or old? Small or large?" Zainal asked, his eyes twinkling down at her.

"I think," she said in a severe tone, "that you're kidding me."

"Ah, kid, a small goat," Astrid said with an unexpected display of humour. "Oh, in slang a "boy"!"

"Right!" Ole asked her a question and she replied, laughing when he grinned in comprehension, "Baby, kid, boy, man," he said with just a hint of the liquid Norwegian in his tone.

"Kidding? Can one having boying, too?" asked Zainal.

"Yes, actually," Kris said. "But it's spelt differently and means a floating object in the water to warn seamen off underwater dangers.

"See man?" Zainal asked, gathering his brows slightly which made him look quite ominous.

"We have a lot of words in English that sound the same but mean different things."

"How do you know then what each means?"

"Context how the word is used in the sentence. Hey, is this a language patrol?"

"Why not?" and Zainal grinned. "Work is done. Now we. . . play?"

"Ha! You wouldn't know how to play," Kris retorted.

"Wanna bet?" he replied.

"You've listened too much to the Doyle brothers," she said waggling a finger at him.

The fifth glyph took them most of the clear day but went more smoothly, since they all knew how to do it. They immediately started cutting sod at the top as Zainal laid out the design and they were well started when he finished.

They didn't even have to find more mica rocks since there was still a pile left over from their first job.

"Shropshire Man this isn't," Kris said when they He grabbed her finger and she tried to pull away which resulted in a tugging match, then turned into him chasing her, trying to recapture the finger while the Norwegians watched this juvenile display with unsmiling dignity.

Kris was quicker on her feet than the heavier Catteni, so she eluded him, ducking under his grasping arms and hands, and taunting him to catch her. When he did, he held her tightly against him. She could barely move but she scrunched her hands behind her back so he couldn't recapture the finger. It was all very silly, since inevitably his superior strength would win out but she found she enjoyed Zainal's surprising playful side. Inexorably, he recaptured the right hand, and with amazing gentleness, considering the strength he applied to the task, he drew her hand up and, recapturing the finger, kissed it. Then the palm of her hand.

A spurt of something ran through her at the touch of his lips on the softer, if blistered, skin of her hand. Startled, she caught his eyes. The twinkle was there for the success of his recapture, but some other emotion darkened his odd-coloured eyes and made her catch her breath.

"Happy now?" she asked with some asperity.

"Yes," he said simply and immediately let her go.

On the way back to camp, in between foraging, Astrid and her compatriots kept up quite a lively discussion until Kris finally asked them what was so interesting.

"The land," Astrid said with a sweeping hand. "It is beautiful country for growing and for aninla's who eat grass. Very well done, too. Oskar and Peter are raised on farms. They say very well done."

"It is, and wait till they see what the farmers are," Kris said.

"Pardon?" There was a brief delay in the conversation while rock-squats were added to the day's bag. Throughout the rest of the day, Kris heard about the ecologically - the word was the same in Norwegian but sounded different - sound fashion in which Botany's agriculture was done. Proper drainage, available water, copses of vegetation used as windbreaks where the land was not arable, even the hedging that separated the fields was approved. For what it was worth.

Kris did not want to be the one to tell them what farmed the land here. But she began to have more respect for the acumen of the absentee landlords: whatever they were besides omnivorous.

Great excitement buzzed about the camp when they returned and Kris didn't report to Mitford the observation they'd made on their way back.

The sergeant was sitting with what looked to Kris very much like a handheld phone. He was talking into it, so unless Chuck Mitford had flipped his wig, and she wouldn't have blamed him if he had, he was talking to another unit of the Botany Colonial Establishment.

"Great, huh?" Bart said when Kris, Bjorn and Oskar brought the results of their hunting into the cook cavern.

"We've got a phone?"

"Yeah, but more importantly, the technies know now what chips do what in the mechanicals' circuitry. Real breakthrough." Kris allowed that it must be, since everyone was so happy about it, and she supposed she should be as elated because it was one more step back towards sophisticated living. However, she was oddly disturbed by the breakthrough and certainly couldn't figure out why. She'd probably been enjoying this atavistic hunter-explorer life more than she should - considering it also involved lots of discomfort and uncertainty, as well as enough hazards to get the ol' adrenalin flowing freely most of the time. Camp Rock would really benefit from some modern conveniences. On the other hand, was instant communication really a benefit?

"Put another toggle on my belt," she muttered under her breath, "for the handheld!" Then she added, "Say, Bart, where do I find out where I'm buncing tonight?" Bart pointed to the irregular opening that led to most of the dorntitory facilities as well as the lake. "List right there." Her name had a big fat P beside it: so did Zainal's, and, as she looked down the list for the Norwegians, they were P's, too. P for Patrol?

"Bjornsen?" someone sang out at the front of the cave.

"Sarge wants you.

Muttering about being homeless, Kris made her way to the office.

There were three handsets on Mitford's "desk' "Latest in recycled mechanicals," Mitford said in great good humour. "We can keep in touch with our outposts and our scouts. You gotta get some height to boost the signal - -" and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the top of the cliff behind him where, of all things, an aerial now swayed in the evening breeze. "But don't seem to have any trouble with range.

Anyway, we'll know soonest when the Catteni make another drop. We've got a network of look-outs - and not just for the Catteni's next move." He rummaged briefly through the sheets on his worktop and flipped free a large one - no, it was quite a few sheets neatly glued(?) together.

Well, the loo-cows had hooves, so someone had remembered to boil "em up for glue. A map had been drawn on the big sheet - or, the beginnings of one, for only the centre showed contour lines, streams, fields, forestry. The map gave Kris a much better idea of the terrain in and around the main camp, and the siting of the various mechanical facilities.

"Neat," she said.

"We got a bona fide surveyor," Mitford said proudly, tapping the map. "Pretty good, huh? Even got relative distances.

"Nat. Geo. Soc. would be proud to claim it," she agreed, grinning at Mitford. "You don't waste time civilizing us, do you, Sarge?"

"Not much," he agreed amiably, "but then we got lots of Yankee know-how - and Aussie." He noticed her jaundiced expression and cocked eyebrow, so he cleared his throat as if he'd had to do that before continuing.

"Alien allies, too," he added. Then he surprised her by hefting one of the units and plonking it down in front of her, all business-like again. "I want your patrol to start examining this area," and his thick index finger wandered down to easterly uncharted areas. "I'll need to keep in touch with you in case we want Zainal."

"Sarge?"

"Yah?"

"Are you keeping Zainal out of camp for a reason?" Mitford regarded her steadily, his grey eyes not avoiding hers.

"You might, at that, think I am, and I am. He's too valuable a resource to be wasted "Then I haven't been wrong - there's feeling against him." "Can you honestly blame people for resenting him as Caneni?"

"Even if he was dumped down like everyone else?" Kris asked plaintively.

"Even then because he's still Catteni and no weapons but a knife, and alone.

"He's not alone," Kris said staunchly.

"I know, Bjornsen. But there's this thinking that there must have been a good reason he got dumped, other than killing another Cat. . .

Catteni," Mitford said and, when she started to protest, he held up a hand. "I've seen and heard all about Catteni one-day vendettas, Bjornsen, and if it was only for killing a patrol leader, he'd've been released from the slammer the next day. He sure the hell isn't like any other Catteni 1 ever met or heard about."

"What about the latest drop? If it hadn't been for Zainal..

"Kris!" Mitford's hand on her arm and sharp tone stopped her. He didn't look around to see who might be near enough to hear their discussion but there was something about his manner now that suggested to Kris that he didn't want her blowing her top right now. "There are a lot of folk who should be grateful to Zainal. But they aren't. And that's the long and short of it. I can't change human nature, you know." And he sounded sincerely regretful. "And I won't run him out of the camp." He blinked and then said softly, "He's too useful a resource.

Now, girl," and carefully he began to fold the map. He put it into a flat envelope made out of the ubiquitous blanket, complete with shoulder-strap. He laid that alongside the comunit, then added a thick carbon "pencil' and fidgeted until he had them alligned to his satisfaction. "I want you and Zainal to go walk-about with Astrid.

She's chosen Oskar to go with. Zainal says she's competent and can keep up. I've a pair of Australians who swore blind they could keep up with Aborigines so they oughta be able to keep up with you two. They were in the last drop and are grateful to Zainal. Though half the time they act like this was some great joke. Possibly it is." He paused, musing on that theory. "One of "em has medical training and did botany in the Outback downunder. With this handheld, you can keep in touch with me. Esker, Dowdall, and a new guy, ex-Anzac major by name of Worrell who did some military governing so he knows more than I do He waved off Kris's immediate disclaimer. "I'm glad to have him aboard.

They call him "Worry" and he does, so I don't have to any more. He'll be at the other end if I'm not. That clear?"

"In a way, yes," she replied as civilly as she could, for she was seething both with indignation that Zainal should be exiled and relief that she was going with him.

"Your friendly roving reporter!" She rose.

"Good girl, Bjornsen, I like your style," Mitford said, peering up at her. "I gotta defuse the situation, you understand."

"Yeah, I guess you do. Only why," and she nodded her head in the direction of the stocks where Arnie was constrained, "can he be tolerated and not Zainal?" Mitford snorted. "Takes all kinds and he's. . . supposedly - - human. One more complaint lodged against him, though, and we take punitive measures he won't like at all. Especially as we wouldn't use anaesthetic." Then he looked over towards the main cavern. "That's your patrol, Bjornsen. I told Zainal, too. Report in every day, will ya? So we know the equipment's still working.

The code here is 369," and he grinned.

"Sir!" she said, stamping her feet up and down, coming to attention and saluting him in the manner of a British soldier.

He waved her away and three people vied to take her place, ey'eing her map case and handset. She strode off, head high, looking neither to right nor left.

Zainal was leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest, watching her progress. The other four members of the patrol were talking quietly. She nodded to Astrid and Oskar, then looked at the two new folks. She held her hand out to the woman whom she liked on sight: almost spare in build but wiry, with a complexion that had been roughened by hot Australian summers and faded short curly hair to a ginger shade. But she exuded an air of competence, a characteristic of so many Aussies. At her feet, beside her travel gear, were a first-aid kit and a light bow with a sheaf of arrows.

"M' name's Sarah McDouall," she said, giving Kris's hand a firm hard shake before letting it go. "This here's Francis Marley. We made a good team in the resistance "fore we got caught. I'm your medic."

"Call me Joe. Anything's beller than Francis," he said, giving Sarah a mock glare for her introduction. He spoke in a slightly nasal tenor voice which seemed to have a lilt of quiet laughter to it. He was tall and lean, sun-creased eyes, an open face and smile, with dark hair growing grey at the temples. One hand kept going to his head as if to adjust a missing hat. The gesture developed into a scratch of his skull. "Stocknian, I know a bit about plants." He had a sling tucked in his belt, a blanket pouch that bulged with pebbles. He sort of leaned against the three light lances he was armed with. They had, Kris noticed, metal tips.

My, she thought, the arsenal was improving, too!

"Anyone know where we're bunked?" Kris asked.

"Zainal knows."

"I lead, you follow," Zainal said, pushing himself off the wall and moving off, past the hospital cave.

Kris wondered if he was annoyed that Mitford had given her the comunit. His expression did not give her any clues.

It was more a dug-out than a cave but it would shelter them from the evening shower and the colder winds that now blew during the night.

There was just room enough for six bodies but there were hooks for hanging and even a ledge.

"Rather snazzy," Kris said. "Did Zainal tell you our rnission?"

"More or less," Joe said with a grin.

"You don't mind a Catteni patrol leader?" Joe's eyebrows raised slightly and Sarah gave her a sharp look.

"Well, now "Zainal here leads," Kris said firmly. "I'm signals," and she tapped the comunit.

"Gotcha!"

"I need a bath," Kris added, carefully stowing the map case and the handheld on the ledge. She turned to Astrid.

"You coming?"

"Wash?"

"That's what we call it, Kris said with a grin, easier now she'd made her point, and turned to Sarah.

"Had one. I'll get our grub. Smells good. C'mon, Joe, Oskar.

Don't take too long," Sarah said to the bathers.

"You better believe it," Kris replied and then, with Astrid on her heels, retraced her steps to the cook cavern and then down to the lake.

Astrid had no problem with cold-water bathing but then, if she was accustomed to saunas in Norway, she wouldn't have. But the temperature did not encourage one to dawdle and they were washed, dried, dressed and on their way back to their quarters about the time their evening meal was ready.

"I do miss a beer," Joe said plaintively, sopping up the last of the gravy from his bowl with his bread.

"I miss a cigarette," Sarah said.

"I, too," Astrid said with a smile, and translated to Oskar. He raised both hands skywards in longing.

"You know plants?" Astrid asked Joe. "Find us one like tobacco."

"Now there's a right good idea," Joe replied. "Do my damnedest, I will."

Chapter Eleven

Each morning Kris checked in and usually spoke to Mitford, giving him an all clear. Each evening, around the fire, she got the others to help her map the terrain they had covered that day.

On the fourth day they came upon another mechanical garage and spent the day dismantling it. Kris added that detail to the map with a certain amount of pleasure.

Joe Marley pushed back his non-existent hat, scratched his scalp as he viewed his first mechanicals. Oskar, examining the first large harvester (Kris thought last out, last in), rattled off a long sentence to Astrid.

"He want to see it work," she said, eyeing the large mechanico dubiously.

"Maybe next year," Kris said airily, "if we decide to put "em all back in operation. If there're any with full parts by then." Zainal had already unfastened the solar panels on the top of the garage. Then he went after the flying dart-dispenser.

Leon had asked particularly for them to collect any they found, for the anaesthetic.

"Oskar asks how machine go with no wheels," Astrid said, peering under the skirt of the biggest farm machine to check on that lack.

"On an air cushion," and Kris mimicked the sound and the method.

Oskar nodded approvingly, still walking about the mechanical beast. He also examined the flying device, carefully, since Kris warned him about the darts peeking out from the leading edge. Oskar seemed to approve most of the harvester design. Then made a rollercoaster motion with one hand and said something to Astrid.

"His farm is on hill. This thing," and she kicked at its flange, "fall over," and Astrid demonstrated something losing its balance and tumbling downhill.

Joe had moved to the storage areas, hunting for something.

"They left no tools behind them. These things selfrepair?"

"We saw some working on others," Zainal said and stepped up to the face of the harvester to start removing its solar panels.

"Oh, my word, this planet's odd," Sarah said.

"You can say that again," Kris agreed. "They'll want panels and storage batteries back at the camp, or wherever. There's quite a herd of them here." She peered into the shadows of the garage to the indistinct forms parked there.

"Could we bed down here tonight?" Sarah asked with such a lack of expression that Kris almost grinned.

"I think so," she said. "I wouldn't mind being out of that wind for a night, myself."

"There're rock-squats back aways picking up her weapons.

"Kris, go with her," Zainal said when the woman started off on her own.

"I can handle myself," Sarah said indignantly.

"You go with," Zainal said. "This planet has dangers.

Kris knows dangers."

"Yeah, but I don't hear as well as Coo," Kris said, carefully setting down the comunit and the map case.

-" Sarah said, "Is he always like that?" Sarah asked Kris when they were out of earshot.

"Like what?"

"Don't bristle," Sarah said with a grin. "He's not half-bad for a Catteni. Not that I've met that many. But I heard ." and she let her tone rise up, a subtle prompting for Kris to expatiate.

"As Catteni go, he's pretty good," Kris said noffcommittally.

"And he's saved a lot of folks "Oh my word! You don't need to defend him to me. I came to on the outside of that bloody field and the guy next to me was being chewed up. I would have been next but for you stomping about like a brumby. Anyway, it's only good sense to go out with someone. Believe me, you do where I come from!" They came back with rock-squats and some of the tender-fleshed little avians, brushwood and a pile of droppings from the next field over. They had spotted only distant ffiers but Kris pointed them out and told Sarah how to avoid becoming a meal.

"Are they after one now?" Sarah asked, squinting at the aerial menaces.

"Who knows?" Kris didn't particularly want to find out. "Now, if you were back on Earth, you'd probably jump into your four-by-four and go investigate."

"Probably, but we're not on Earth now, are we?" and there was a world of regret in her tone.

"Sorry," Kris said in a rueful voice. She hauled her gaze away from the distant avians and they walked on in silence for a while.

Then they reached high ground where Sarah stopped to look out over the vista of neatly squared, hedged fields and sighed.

"Oh my word! My da would go spare. And no-one is in residence?" "Haven't found any one yet. And that's why we're dismantling the garages, to sort of give notice." Sarah's eyes bulged. "You mean you want to find out who made those - . - machines?"

"Did anyone tell you about the ship that collected the harvest?" Kris grinned down at the slighter woman, the braces of rock-squats swinging from the stick she carried over her shoulder.

"I heard something - a ship as big as a city?"

"Small city," Kris said with a laugh.

"You want to go on it?" Sarah's eyes went wide again but from respect.

"Not me, personally," Kris replied, though if Zainal was involved in the adventure, she'd probably be right there with him. And he probably would be in the boarding party. "It'd be interesting to see what species set up this planet, made it self-sufficient, self-repairing, yielding so much food "FOOD?" Sarah gulped and a brief panic almost made her drop her stick.

"That's what this planet does - makes food, and we don't know for whom. Or what. Except that they're probably omnivores like us." Sarah gulped again. "I hadn't thought about that aspect of it."

"Well, it's easier to concentrate on making out day by day at the moment," Kris agreed.

"Yeah, there's that all right," she said as they came around the bend of the smooth-domed rock that housed this garage.

The others had dismantled what could be taken back to the camp for recycling. Oskar had shown himself particularly adept with the disassembly and the others had started to defer to him. As he worked, he asked for English words for various items and cheerfully muttered them under his breath, committing them to memory. Joe was almost his equal but then, he said, from the time he was old enough to lift a screwdriver he'd been taught how to do repairs on his father's sheep station.

"You're looking at a heap of future handhelds and other useful gadgets,' Joe said, gesturing to the neatly stacked things, including wires, connectors, linkages and all kinds of curious gadgetry that had been inside the mechs. "A DIY treasure-trove."

"Would you know how to make something out of this?" Kris asked.

"Depends," Joe said cheerfully, "on what's needed." Zainal came up then, her comunit in his hand. "You are asked to call home."

"ET?" Kris asked with a grin but only Sarah and Joe caught the reference.

She shrugged and tapped out 369

and a strange voice answered.

"Worry here."

"Worry?"

"Ah, I'd be speaking to Kris?"

"You are, and you'd be Worrell."

"Since I landed here, it's been worry, miss, so "elp me.

Report?" She gave it to him and he expressed pleasure in the discovery of yet another garage and its reusables.

"Mitford's all right, isn't he?" she asked before she signed off.

"Never beuer," Worry said and even over the line his voice sounded sardonic. "A truly amazing man."

"No sign of any fly-bys?"

"You'd be recalled on the double if there were!

"I can believe that!" There was a laugh at the other end and then Worrell signed off with a reminder to register the approximate location of the new garage on the map. Zainal assisted her, as he was able to give her the relative distances from their previous camp and what he called a good guess as to the contours of the day's travel. Although Kris knew her legs could testify that they'd travelled far that day, her legs only knew they'd travelled, not how far up hill and down.

The next noon, they reached the top of a high ridge and saw the unmistakable shine of sun glinting off a body of water so large that a further shore was not discernible even from their vantage point. Then, to their right on the shore line, the obvious square outlines of an unnatural formation bulked large.

"A place for boats? They fish, too?" Astrid asked, shielding her eyes with one hand.

"Could be. They'd hardly let the wealth of a sea just sit there without harvesting it," Kris said.

"Too right," Sarah murmured, also peering ahead.

"Would it be a salt sea?"

"We'll find out," Joe said.

"Zainal?" Kris asked since the Catteni had said nothing but was staring hard at the building.

"We go careful. Fishing year long."

"True, but how could a machine fish? I mean, the sea doesn't follow any programme, does it?

Storms and stuff - - - unless they can control tides as well as the rain. Not that I wouldn't put it past them," Kris said, mildly bitter.

"They do not control us," Zainal surprised her by saying.

"Tell the others."

"About the flying darts and stuff?" She did and then turned back to Zainal. "However, if there are machines, surely they'd be specialized for use in the water. That building seems to be right on the edge. I don't think we have much to worry about them charging inland at us."

"Famous last words?" Joe said, nudging her with an elbow and grinning.

"I hope not. One trip to an abattoir is quite enough."

"Canning factory is what this'd be," Joe said, still teasing.

"Hmmm." Then Kris giggled. "Imagine him in a sardine can," and she tilted her head irreverently at their patrol leader, still looking intently at the building.

"We go slow. We do not approach until second moonrise "If you say so, boss," Kris said flippantly.

There were tides on this world, judging by the high-water marks and the flotsam deposited along the beach.

"With so many moons, tides would be complex," Joe remarked.

"Swim?" Astrid wistfully asked Kris, though she peered at Zainal for permission.

They approached the beach a kilometer or so from the building.

Hiking through the white sands had been hot work, for the shifting surface made the going difficult even where it was somewhat held in place by tufts of a sturdy grassoid and, in one place, a plantation of reeds. Joe took samples of each plant in case one or more of these supplied trace elements that would help the Deskis. The sea might be several days' journey from the main camp but it was not inaccessible.

Another stumpy-branched growth which reminded Kris of wind-stunted cedars bore a hard fruit of some sort. Joe stuffed the harvest from two bushes in his pack.

Zainal swung his glance right to the building, which now seenied to be hovering above the sandy ground, an optical illusion, Kris was sure. Then, for a long moment, he watched the sea itself and finally shrugged It'd be ironic, Kris thought, to have survived all the dangers the land was providing to get drowned by some sea creature, but she couldn't see any disturbance on the lightly rippled sea: certainly nothing that would indicate underwater denizens. Then Zainal strode down to the edge of the water, and scooped up a handful from the next incoming ripple. He smelt it, then stuck his tongue into the liquid.

"Salt. You swim first," and his finger pointed from Sarah to Astrid to Kris. "We watch."

"Us?" Sarah piped up impishly but she was already walking down to the water's edge, opening her coverall.

Kris had lost a great deal of her conditioned notions of modesty over the last few weeks, so she followed Sarah, Astrid trotting ahead of both of them, shedding her coverall with haste, and nearly tripping as she removed the right trouser leg. She threw the coverall away from her, where the sand was still dry, and then ran the rest of the way into the water.

"Don't go too far out," Joe called and then he, and Oskar, hunkered down on the sand. Zainal remained standing, scanning the sea constantly.

The sea wasn't as salty as Kris remembered the Atlantic on her eastern seaside vacation, though there was sufficient to make it quite buoyant, and she settled into a crawl. Sarah was whooping and splashing.

"Hey, I like this. A sea I can swim in without worrying about sharks." "Don't go so far out," Kris called, all too aware that Botany was quite likely to put up a few seaborne surprises.

She was a bit surprised that Zainal had let them swim at all.

"Let's keep close enough to shore to get there before anything out there "and she waved at the innocuous spread of water, "can get us."

"Good thinking, mate," Sarah said and paddled back towards her.

Astrid swam with studied economy of stroke, Kris noticed, while Sarah thrashed about with little expertise.

They didn't stay in long, out of deference to the men who were keeping watch and who probably wanted the refreshment of a swim as much as they did. But Kris felt better for the bathe and waved to the men that they were comang out now. Zainal was still watching, but not the three nude women emerging from the ocean. Joe and Oskar had politely averted their gaze as the girls emerged.

"OK, guys, Kris called when they were dressed again.

"Your turn." She went up to Zainal. "I'll keep watch." He shook his head. Then, with a wide sweep of his arm, gestured Joe and Oskar to go in without him.

"Don't you swim?" Kris asked, amused.

"Too quiet," he said cryptically and continued his scanning, not just the horizon but the beach on both sides of them.

"On Earth - Terra - fishermen usually go out at dawn, or on the tide,' she said conversationally. "So the machines, if there are some, would be quiet this time of day, I think."

"I have never been to sea before,' Zainal replied in the same tone.

"You look a bit like a lighthouse, though," and Kris giggled, "standing like that."

"Light house?" He frowned but didn't pause in his vigilant and careful scrutiny.

"Hey, I think this planet has clams, Sarah cried.

She went down to her knees and started digging with her hatchet.

The next little wave ripple flooded over her legs.

"Didn't know you had clams in Australia," Kris said as she strode down to Sarah.

"Biggest clam-beds ever outside of Sydney. And oysters.

Kris's one seaside vacation had included hunting for quahogs on a Cape Cod beach so she recognized the little holes left where molluscs had opened an air passage. She began to dig, too.

"What you do?" Astrid asked, joining them.

"Dig and. . . oh. . ." Sarah closed her fingers around something and hauled it out of the wet sand. "What on earth?" She rinsed the rest of the sandy mud off the shelled creature and showed it to the others. It was oblong with a shell obviously "built' around it, rough like an oyster, not smooth like a clam.

"Well, it's like both clam and oyster," Kris said. "And with no claws it's not a crab. Oysters are good for you and so, for that matter, are clams. Might even have the trace elements the Deskis need.

Sea stuff is full of minerals and junk."

"Yeah, I know," Sarah said, rolling her eyes. "I drank enough cod liver oil as a kid. Hey, Joe, c'mere a minute, will ya?" Joe, totally unselfconscious about his nudity, joined them and took the "clam' from Sarah.

"We will have to go the empiric route, I suppose," he said without real enthusiasm. "At least it won't eat us first." He took Sarah's hatchet, held out his hand for Kris's and, using one as a counter, hit the shell with the other.

"Oops, hit it too hard," he said, looking down at the mashed stuff that oozed off the side of the blade. "Get me another one." After the capture and dissection of three more molluscs, Joe decided the "flesh' might indeed be edible. He dressed, and they all went to find something burnable. No-one quite had the courage to try the mollusc raw, though they all thought it smelt as seafood should. Joe was game enough to be the guinea pig when the first one they cooked turned brown and a prod with the knife point went easily into the meat.

"A bit chewy but rather tasty, chums. Rather y' Sampling another morsel, Oskar agreed and immediately went out to gather more shells.

Zainal only smiled and, although he put a piece in his mouth, did not swallow it, shaking his head.

"You don't have things like this on Catten?" Kris asked him, teasing.

He shook his head. "Eat land animals only."

"Fish has better protein content and less fat," Kris said, enjoying his reaction.

Zainal went back to watching.

Making a camp in the dunes, out of sight of the building, and shielded from the light breeze that had sprung up, they ate a meal that began with clams broiled on the half shell and then cold rock-squat.

Joe suggested that they wait and see if any of them had a reaction to the molluscs before they went on a hinge of them. Oddly enough, they all wanted to eat more.

"Probably they contain some trace elements our present diet is not supplying," Joe suggested. "Sometimes our

bodies know better than our heads what is required. But let's give it the overnight test. If no-one's had diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea or dies on us, the clams should be fairly safe to eat."

"Fresh," Kris added.

"By the seaside, by the beautiful sea," Joe warbled.

Then the talk shifted to the point of whether or not scavengers lived in the sand dunes.

"Maybe something even worse," Sarah suggested, shuddering.

"I'd kinda looked forward to making a sandy bed," Kris said wistfully. "At least you can get it to conform to your bumps and lumps which rock won't." Joe whistled. "Yeah, great contours!" and he made a show of leering at her. Sarah pinched his thigh, calling him to order.

"I do miss mattresses, Kris said, sighing. "I honestly don't miss much else. Most of the time, that is. But I'd really, truly, deeply give my eye-teeth for even a pneumatic camping mattress," she said, hugging her knees to her. She caught Zainal's amused glance where he sat opposite her, his eyes twinkling in the firelight.

"Eye-teeth?" he asked.

She bared her lips and showed him.

"What good are your eye-teeth to anyone else?"

"They aren't. It's just a saying." The remainder of the evening was spent in language lessons. Oskar was picking up more and more English and Astrid's was becoming more fluent. She was also picking up some of Kris's pet phrases though such flattery made Kris just a little uncomfortable.

When fatigue made longer and longer pauses between conversations, Zainal announced the watch roster. He suggested that the sentinel stomp, and that was the word he used with a grin at Kris, around the perimeter from time to time, just in case the sand did harbour a species of underground scavenger. The others were to bed down in the sand around the fire which the sentry would keep going.

"In between stompings?" asked Sarah irrepressibly.

"As you say," Zainal agreed, nodding.

The long night passed with no alarrns and Kris, comfortably positioned on the sand, slept deeply and well. As usual, everyone roused well before the Botany dawn. Since no-one had suffered any alimentary reaction to the clams, a beach party was organized. In the dim predawn light, they dug clams and when they decided they had enough for a good feed, they took a quick dip in the sea to wash off the clinging shore mud.

Rather a festive breakfast ensued. Then Zainal suggested they use the last of the night to approach the building and scout it out.

No-one had yet figured out how long a day's charge of solar power lasted in the collectors since the mechs were usually inactive during darkness.

The building was bigger than they'd originally thought and seemed to expand as they approached it. Zainal, whose night vision was superior to the rest of the patrol's, discerned some curious superstructures on the front of the building, and a railed runway leading down into the water.

"A launch site?" Joe suggested.

"On Terra, fishing is done in the old ways, Astrid said. Joe and Sarah agreed.

"Do they have an automated boat, then?" Kris asked.

"Maybe they whistle the fish into their nets," Joe murmured.

"Haven't heard a mechanical make any noise apart from "clank-whir",' Kris said facetiously.

Machinery did not need windows, either, and the building had none.

It looked as if the entire front of the building opened to permit the exit of whatever machiner was stored inside. The largest solar panels they had yet seen occupied the roof, held up by a heavy stem which implied the panels altered direction to accumulate as much of the sun's rays as possible. That was a new wrinkle in the mechanicals' technology.

Zainal could find no exterior slit or lock or anything that would give them access within. He even had Joe up on his shoulders, searching the seaward walls as high as he could reach.

So they waited at a discreet distance to see if the building would open itself up once daylight had arrived.

They waited until the sun was at its zenith, and occupied themselves by trying to fish, using the thinnest possible strips of blanket attached to a pole, and a piece of thin wire bent into a hook with a portion of clam attached as bait. When they caught nothing from the shore, they waded out as far as they could without losing their balance and finally caught some flat fishes. These they grilled for lunch, taking cautious bites.

"What I'd give for a testing kit!" Joe sighed wistfully.

"You miss mattresses, Kris, I'd give my eye-teeth for just a magnifying glass." He paused. "And a few odd chemicals to test for toxicity. I'll not even dream of having a microscope "Don't!" Sarah said.

"Look, why not put such tools past our panel of talented DIYs," Kris said, "considering what they've managed to produce so far," and she tapped the comunit.

At high noon, when no activity emanated from the building, Zainal said they would take measurements of this, the biggest facility they'd yet seen.

"Maybe it only goes after certain types of fish that aren't running right now," Joe suggested.

"Or maybe there's a satellite up there," and Sarah pointed skywards, "that tells it when to go fishing." Zainal shook his head.

"No satellite or Catteni do not explore."

"Are you aware then," Kris asked, startled by the concept, "that there are other sentient space-travelling species?" Zainal gave her a slightly patronizing look.

"Space is very big. Many planets can be settled," and he added with one of his engagingly broad grins, "Not always this way." Then he added, "It is a mark of honour, not unhonour "Dishonour," Kris interposed.

"To be transported."

"I could have done without the honour," Sarah said drolly, then added quickly, giving Zainal's arm the briefest touch, "But then I wouldn't have met you, or learnt that we Terrans are pretty damned good!"

"You are!" Zainal gave his head one of his quick aftirmative nods. "Honour to me to be here."

"Well," Joe remarked, obviously gratified.

"Now we go search more," he said, and raising his arm over his head, gave the "move-out' signal.

Kris was gratified, too, by that little exchange. She was even pleased that Sarah had touched Zainal: up until that gesture of conciliation, no-one had made any physical contact with Zainal - except herself. And Leon, medically, but not socially. Touch him, he's real live flesh and bleeds red blood, she thought sourly as they moved out, matching his easy jog pace: a disciplined squad, fit and able to cope with anything Botany had so far meted out.

Joe paused a couple of times to collect samples of berries or hard-shelled tree and shrub fruits. The soft ones he sampled or had someone else sample; judiciously, of course. S6me of the soft berries were so bitter the merest morsel caused the mouth to pucker. A good rinse with water helped dissipate the effect. One, a dark green, was sweet enough to encourage the taster to try more. The green fruit was gathered but not eaten until the samplings proved there would be no ill effects.

They spent the rest of the day on the shoreline, noticing the flotsam pushed up by high tides, mainly seaweeds.

These Joe thought might have nutritional value, so he gathered specimens. They also noted the abundance of molluscs along the coast by the frequency of the blow holes. Towards evening, they dug out a quantity and, along with a plump rock-squat, tuber roots and greens that grew in abundance, made an appetizing stew, to which the seawater was added to provide the salt they were all beginning to crave.

They found another sandy camping spot, on a height above the shore which stretched out in both directions as far as anyone could see.

Just visible in the dim light were the lavender blobs of a spattering of islands which made them wonder, around the evening campfire, if this was an inland sea and there might be a distant shore.

They considered continuing along the coast as far as they could go.

"We come again. Mitford will evaluate the situation first," Zainal said.

"Hey, now listen to him," Sarah said, grinning.

"Evaluate", huh? That's a fifty-dollar word, mate."

"I listen, I learn," Zainal said, grinning back at her.

* * * Mitford himself got in touch with the patrol the next morning to call them in.

"Getting too close to the time the Catteni might come back," he said. "Swing wide but start back now." Zainal had them strike obliquely back to camp and they came across two more agricultural garages and an abattoir, empty and waiting. They disabled everything, stacking the various useful parts for later pickup. Scratching his head, Joe regarded the piles.

"I wonder has anyone re-invented the wheel yet," he said. "Sure save packing that stuff out on our backs."

"If you have air cushions which hop over obstacles, a wheel is a backward step," Kris said.

"Hence no need for roads - - - a waste of good arable land, if you ask me."

"Too right, mate." Oskar nodded approval. He was having to rely less and less on Astrid for translation.

"Just so long as I'm not around to carry the can when the bosses discover what we've done to all their facilities," Joe said, washing his hands and flicking his responsibility away "What if it's only more machines?" Kris asked, for she had considered that possibility. "At least machines don't get angry' "Machines also don't eat meat or make bread," Sarah said staunchly. "The bosses have to be humanoid or why all of this?"

"Yeah, but I'll bet they use machines for all their dirty, boring chores," Joe replied thoughtfully. "I mean, the technology level that went into the design and manufacture of these mechs is phenomenal. We don't have anything its equal. Not even you Yanks with those great combine harvesters you have in your midwest.

"But machines have to be designed by - - something else. They might be able to repair themselves, but design?" She shook her head.

"There are intelligent sentient beings somewhere at the end of the line of machines.

Sarah and Joe snorted in chorus. Joe, with a grin, added, "So long as they're friendly."

"They are earth friendly," Astrid said, speaking brightly.

"Are they human friendly? That's the big question," Joe said.

"I like this planet," Oskar said. "Now we run it, not machines.

Not bureaux or men who do not understand the land."

"Anything different in this lot?" Zainal asked Oskar as he added a coil of wire and a handful of connectors to the pile in front of the young Norwegian.

He shook his head but looked at Joe for confirmation.

Joe shook his head.

"Nope, Zainal. Nothing that can't wait, as far as I can see. And I've got the anaesthetic darts wrapped up in my pack."

"Good!" They settled down for the night in one of the barns.

"So Kris can cushion her bones on straw," Zainal said with a grin.

"Too right," she said, having picked up that Australian phrase from Sarah.

First the girls retired to the second barn for the privacy of their evening baths in watering troughs. When they returned, straw was piled in outrageously high beds.

"Deep enough for you, Kris?" Zainal asked, sweeping a sort of bow towards her accommodation.

She made a big show of spreading her blanket and then hesitated, not sure how she would get on to it.

Zainal picked her up and, with a deftly controlled throw, deposited her, squealing in surprise, in the exact center of her "mattress' "Ohhhh,' and she drawled the exclamation as she wiggled her shoulders and hips deep into the soft mass.

"Heavenly."

"And I do not ask for your eye-teeth," Zainal said, stepping back to take a brief run to launch himself onto his bedpile.

"I wonder," Kris said as she settled down to sleep, "what the mechos will say when they find six piles of battered fodder in these barns.

"Probably check the programming of their mechs," Sarah said sleepily. She was the last to speak that night.

They made it back to Camp Rock late the next afternoon.

Kris and Zainal made their report to Worrell, who said Mitford was out inspecting the latest gadget to be put together from "all those spare parts you blokes keep finding'. Worrell was a balding chunky man, more barrel than leg, with a flushed complexion and many small red veins on his cheeks and chin. He had a habit of hitching his coverall, and the leather belt of worked rock-squat hide that circled it, as if he was afraid it would slip around his hips. Kris wondered if he had once had a beer belly, though he was thin enough now: an effect of being long aboard a Catteni transport ship.

"Anyone with any claim to mechanical skills has been drafted," he said, grinning and then, losing his grin, pointed to the empty stocks.

"That Aarens fellow's organized quite a production line at Slaughterhouse Five." Worry blinked at their exclamations. "Publicly we're calling it Camp Narrow for the narrow escape I hear some of your blokes had from a processing plant.

So," and Worry gave another hitch to his trousers before he motioned her and, just as politely, Zainal to take a stone seat.

These had been improved by a reed-woven cushion, probably filled with fluff seed: much more comfortable than plain stone. My, but I've become soft, Kris thought, wanting mattresses and cushions to put my sit-upon upon.

Although Worrell looked first at Kris, it was Zainal who gave the report in an English that was almost as unaccented as Kris's. He even managed the tinge of a drawl she was in the habit of using. She drew out her map and showed Worrell the distance they'd covered which drew an appreciative whistle from him - and the new garage locations.

He was particularly interested in the shoreline building.

"Think Mitford'll want that inspected and entered."

"Anything else exciting happen around here?" Kris asked, noting that the main camp did not seem as crowded as it had been when they left.

"Well, we've set up two more camps besides Camp Rock," and he grinned broadly at Kris who chuckled.

"Camp Shutdown's one of the garages you lot found on your last walkabout and Camp BellaVista's the other side which Cumber's patrol found," and he waved his hand to the east. "The miners've got living quarters in their adit, Ironclad."

"How many patrols have gone out?" Kris asked.

"At the moment, four others." Worry pulled a sheet from under a pretty agate used as a paperweight, checked that it was the one he wanted, before he showed Kris the small-scale map with its lines indicating patrol directions. "We'll know this place as well as the mechos do. "Is something burning?" Kris asked, aware of an acrid metallic stink in the breeze that was blowing across them in the office.

"Ah, yes, we got us a forge here, too. There's another one at Ironclad. Found us a real top-grade of iron ore, plus copper, zinc, tin, gold and bauxite." He winked at Kris with a grin on his face.

"You'll note how far down the list gold is. Any road, mines are over thataway," and he waved a hand northwards and then northeasterly.

"Got us two farriers, a wrought-iron fabricator and nine Fwelders.

We've screwdrivers, now, and screws, all kinds of other tools, nails and hooks; soon maybe even needles and pins and I dunno what all else.

Skillets, kettles and pots are being turned out of the sandpit daily.

Pretty good stuff considering we're back to re-inventing essential equipment." Kris grinned back at him, amused. "The mechs didn't mine any metals on the planet?"

"Nary a nugget, as far as we can see, and some of the ore was just lying around like they couldn't be bothered shovelling it up."

"So they bring in all their equipment," Zainal said thoughtfully, fingering his lower lip.

"Looks like. Leastwise we haven't found any garage or building or mine adit or anything suggesting the alloys they use in the mechos were indigenous. And oh my word, some of our engineers would give their eye-teeth (Zainal shot Kris a quick amused look) to know the composition of the alloys used for the chassis of those mechos." Worry whistled again.

Kris was wondering if this was an Antipodean habit - whistling for emphasis. Joe Marley was prone to whistle, too. Well, it made a nice change from swearing.

"And the computer guys are right beside "em wanting used in the motherboards

0m.

"So no-one re-invents the wheel here?" Zainal asked, astounding Worrell again.

"I thought you didn't speak much English, Zainal," he said, giving Kris a suspicious glance.

"I learn languages easily," Zainal said. "I learn -" and he paused briefly, touching his fingers in his counting, "fifteen with English.

"Some people got a real talent for it, that's the truth. I still have trouble with the Queen's English." Then Worry gave a big grin.

"You mentioned the wheel, well, I want to tell you, we have passed out the need for something as primitive as a mere wheel."

"We did?" Kris asked.

"One of the engineer blokes got one of the air cushion mechos working. Only now they gotta reprogramm it to work when thy want it to."

"Boy, o boy, boy," Zainal startled Worrell into an On-mouthe stare, "then we don't have to carry all those parts back here."

"You bet!" Worry's smile was proud as he shuffled to find another sheet of paper. "Ah, here we are. Your patrol's bunked in Mitchelstown. You got tomorrow off and I think they'll want you hanging about here a bit."

"Mitchelstown?" Kris asked.

"Yeah, we started naming the caves. Makes it more homey. So the main cook cavern's now Cheddar. We even got nameplates so you'll know when you get to the right one. Mitchelstown's quite roomy. Second turn on the left past Cheddar. Near the jacks, too."

"How is the Deski, Coo?" Zainal asked and Kris was annoyed with herself that she hadn't thought to ask after their comrade.

Worry looked his nickname. "Not good. Leon says he's holding his own but the thorn greens are not enough Sometoohinn, but not enough.

Sure that message gets read g, hope "We found a lot of stuff on our patrol - maybe edibles that might be good for the Deskis," Kris said.

"Clams, berries, nuts."

"Clams? No oysters?" Kris shook her head.