Johnny raised his eyebrows, hoping for a little off-the-record advice, but Whittaker's expression suggested that he tend to his current orders.

Contrary to Whittaker's expectations, he received neither call nor visit from Matthew Luzon, nor was there a complaint officially logged in against Captain John Greene. Nor, during that day, was there any message from his son or a whisper concerning his where abouts. Only the matter of a concussed guard found at one of the side access gates to SpaceBase.

Torkel Fiske was angry enough, but Satok was livid with rage, kicking at the crates, splintering half a dozen, and paying no attention to the rocks that bounced down on his boots, as if he welcomed the pain. Torkel also listened to the invective Satok cast on the head of that slatternly Luka and what he intended to do to her when he found her again. From the brief glimpses he'd had of the girl, Torkel could not quite believe that she had had the intelligence, much less the strength, to remove all the genuine ore samples, which Torkel had himself handled and seen, in the time they'd been absent from the shuttle.

Without proof of the find, however, the commission would pay scant attention to Satok and might reach their decision before the man could gather more samples. There were other ways to assert company control of this planet, of course—the company—built and maintained roads, power plants, hospitals, and schools Torkel suggested to Marmion. All in the name of taking care of the colonists, of course. If they were better treated, more civilized, they'd be more cooperative. Especially when the planet was over run with corps troops—not originally from Petaybee: he'd make sure of that this time—doing the building and maintaining. Especially if company doctors also made sure that the physiological aberrations peculiar to Petaybeans were studied and eliminated, and if birth control was strictly monitored so that the Petaybeans at no time grew too numerous to control. Company teachers would slant their curriculum to insure the loyalty of their students, and company communications systems would insure that inhabitants, both original and new to the planet, accepted the company agenda and kept the company side of any dispute foremost in their minds at all times. And if they didn't, troops could travel by company roads to make sure people remembered their manners.

And the planet? The living planet? Within himself, Torkel didn't sneer at the idea. Petaybee was sentient. He knew it. He had felt it, seen it, heard it himself. But that didn't mean he liked it. That Satok had stolen ores from the body of the beast itself impressed Torkel no end—but only if the man could show the lodes. All they had in the shuttle were common rocks and dust. The ore was no better than the fairy gold of Grandmother Fiske's bedtime stories.

He would have preferred to play with his coin collection or dissect a roundworm before bedtime, but Grandmother Fiske, who, he supposed, was responsible for the weird streak in his father, was a great believer in the twentieth century philosopher Joseph Campbell. She thought that children needed myths and fairy tales to inform their lives. She had never understood him, Grandma Fiske. Torkel was an explorer, a womanizer and a developer precisely because he loathed mysteries. He liked everything well explained.

And now he and Satok both would have some explaining to do if they were going to convince the company commission that Petaybee contained secrets valuable enough for them to make the necessary investments to civilize and control the planet. At the moment, all he had to show was one green hunk of copper-bearing rock and one small gold nugget that had rolled out of the crates into a dark corner.

"That was a good trick," he told the still—fuming Satok. "I don't know how you treated these rocks to make them appear to be the ores I thought they were, but in this state they'll never convince the commission." He knew as well as Satok that the ores had been replaced by Luka and those Kilcoole women, if not by a conspiracy of the whole village of Shannonmouth, but he wanted to force Satok to reveal more. As long as the man kept his secrets to himself, they were of no use to Torkel or the company. "There's more where those came from!" Satok growled.

"And where, exactly, is that? McGee's Pass?" The man had said he was shanachie there, so Torkel's guess wasn't that wild. Space probes had shown some ores in that general area.

But Satok shook his head. "Nah, that vein's played out for now. But I got other sources. Only thing is, and the reason I decided to cut the company in, I need supplies. For my method."

"Like what?"

Satok grinned for the first time since they'd discovered Luka's treachery. "That's right, Cap'n. When I tell you what I use, you think you're gonna have some ideas about my method. And you will have. Only thing is, it's somethin' you've been using all along. What I need the most is Petraseal. You get some of these boys to load up the shuttle with Petraseal, and I'll get you some more ore samples within a couple of days."

"I go with you and you show me," Torkel said, negotiating, "and I'll get you all the Petraseal you want."

But the hairy bastard had the gall to shake his head. "No way. Not till I have a contract with the company patenting my methods and with full claim to my sites."

"You can't get that without proof," Torkel said.

"Well, without my help, man, you can't get samples of ores you need for proof the planet's worth something to Intergal, so I guess if you don't get me my supplies, we're both out of luck."

"All right," Torkel said on a long exasperated sigh. "I'll release you the Petraseal. But go get those samples ASAP, okay? I'm not sure how long the commission is going to take to come to their conclusions."

"Then have your boys start loadin' my shuttle. Oh, and fill 'er up while you're at it, will you?"

Torkel agreed, still seeming reluctant for the sake of verisimilitude. Actually, he would go along whether Satok agreed or not. He could easily plant a bug and track the man to his mine. He could even invite the commission along to see the results of the new mining operation first-hand, and learn something of Satok's secret process while they were at it.

Birds—songbirds, ravens, ducks, geese, hawks, and herons—brought them, as did relays of rabbits, foxes, wolves, feral cats, tame cats, track-cats, bears, and squirrels. Each bird, each animal, carried in its mouth a cutting, a root, a shoot, of coo-berry bramble. The birds flew directly to the farthest points, to Dead Horse, Savoy, Wellington, Portage, Mirror Lake, Harrison's Fjord, and McGee's Pass. Following the cats' directions, they dropped the shoots near the planet's portals, the places where humankind could commune with Petaybee. The largest deliveries went to the places where the planet was at its most open and vulnerable, and could be most easily looted. All of these places were caves, and around the entrance of each cave and on the ground above the entrance, and all along the length of the cave, the shoots and roots and cuttings were dropped by birds and buried by the other animals, the badgers, the squirrels, the rabbits, and the foxes. Every quarter of an hour or so for two days, fresh bits of coo-berry bush arrived, supplied by the tireless efforts of Clodagh, Whittaker Fiske, and assistants from the town and the surrounding forests and tundra's of Kilcoole.

In most places, the increased and highly specialized activity of the animals was little more than a curiosity. In some places, no one even noticed what was going on. At McGee's Pass, Krisuk Connelly and his family, who had been keeping watch on Satok's old house, noted the odd influx of animals and, between deliveries, sneaked in to see what they could possibly be doing.

The coo-berry plant was one of the planet's great puzzlement's. Most things on Petaybee were good for many things: medicine, food, shelter, warmth. Coo-berries had never been much good for anything. They were poisonous if you ate more than a handful, and the ailment that might have been devised by the planet to cure it had yet to be discovered. The thorns were sharp and stingy, the leaves were sticky, and the blossoms were as small, and rare, as the coo-berry itself. Once they got a start on any little dab of dirt, the damned bushes were almost impossible to kill. Worse, they grew so fast you could watch them grow, which was what Krisuk spent two days doing: watching the infestation of coo-berry. While the birds were still ferrying shoots in daily, bushes sprang up from the first plantings and grew waist high overnight, their roots spreading out to cover the field between the town and Satok's house and climbing up the house's stone exterior and covering the out-buildings.

When that happened, Krisuk called the whole village to come and see. His mother's mouth was set in a bitter line and her dry eyes watched the incursion despairingly. "Now," she said, "now Petaybee is punishing us. For ever listening to Satok. For letting him harm it."

Matthew Luzon resisted the urge to hold his nose. Really! The things he did for the company in the name of humanity. To say the least, Brother Howling smelled extremely gamy. Even Braddock was tempted to open the helicopter's door to escape the stench and showed signs of wanting to divest himself of his most recent meal over the ice-speckled sea.

At least the headphones in this helicopter worked properly, and Matthew could occupy himself by listening to the pilot's transmissions and the messages received from SpaceBase and MoonBase.

As they approached land again at Harrison's Fjord, a crackling message came in from MoonBase.

"Captain Torkel Fiske requests that all council members get in touch with him immediately. He is currently tracking the activities of the shanachie of McGee's Pass."

Matthew needed to hear no more. McGee's Pass was on the way back to SpaceBase from Harrison's Fjord, and a break from his present company would be most welcome.

"Take us directly to McGee's Pass, pilot," he ordered, and the man gave him a thumbs-up signal and headed up the coast.

As they approached the pass. Matthew saw that the village was built on an incline, gradually scaling the foothills leading up to the pass itself.

"Well, for frag's sake!" The pilot cursed as he flew beyond the village over a field heavily over grown with vines stretching from the houses all the way to a stone farmstead about half a mile distant. "What the frag have they done to the fragging helipad?"

"Set it down anywhere, man!" Matthew commanded. "The plants'll cushion the skids."

The pilot sounded doubtful as he said, "Well, okay. You're the boss, Dr. Luzon."

Finally, someone who did as he was told, Matthew thought with relief.

The pilot landed, crushing a good half meter into the surrounding vegetation. When he made no move to leave the aircraft, Matthew impatiently tore open the door and leaped out, and instantly regretted it.

His legs caught fire all the way to his crotch, and thousands of tiny needles stung through his pants, boots, and undergarments to tear at his flesh with each tiny movement.

In fact, he didn't even have to move. The wind from the copter rotors drove the plants all around him. Involuntarily, he screamed. Braddock jumped down to help him, and he, too, began to scream.

The Shepherd Howling stood in the doorway, one hand uplifted, his mouth moving and his other hand pointing.

"What?" Luzon managed to ask as the chopper engines stopped.

"The Great Monster has thee in its grasp!" Shepherd Howling cried. "Beware!"

"For pity's sake, man, it's no great monster, just some sort of vine!'' Matthew screeched. "Help!—"

A young man sitting atop a rock that was a virtual island in the sea of stinging brambles called out, "Can I help you, sir?"

"Get us out of here!" Matthew demanded.

"Ah. Your aircraft will be the safest place for that, sir. I suggest you get back in it before the vines overgrow it."

"What? No plant can grow that fast!" Braddock replied, doubting his own words as he unsuccessfully tried to disentangle the vines from his legs.

'The Great Monster is devious and wily and tireless in clutching for the souls and bodies of virtuous men!" Shepherd Howling declaimed.

"Indeed!" Matthew snapped at him. He turned to the boy. "If I wished to return to the helicopter I would never have landed here, young man. Please assist us out of these weeds and take us to your shanachie and Captain Fiske at once."

"Never heard of no Captain Fiske," the boy called back lazily, obviously enjoying their situation, "and we run the shanachie off."

"Did you?" Matthew stood among the stinging brambles and digested that.

"You heard him, sir. Let's get out of here," Braddock whined.

But any inclination Matthew might have had to do just that had vanished with the boy's words. "Now why did you do that, son?"

"He was a wicked man, sir. Tryin' to make us think the planet wanted one thing when it wanted the other."

"I'd very much like to talk to you about that, son. Please get us out of here." Matthew, despite the stings, turned on the force of his not inconsiderable charisma.

The boy shrugged and disappeared. Matthew and Braddock shoved Shepherd Howling back and sat in the copter while a crew of villagers arrived with various stones and pieces of board to make a path for them. Matthew was somewhat surprised that they hadn't brought machetes or sickles to hack the weeds down. Before he could ask about that, the boy ran across the stones and grabbed him by the arm.

"You'd best hurry, sir, or the coo-brambles will be a-growin' over these, too, like."

"You will be rewarded by the company, my son," Shepherd Howling said, pushing Matthew aside to sprint over the stones with the agility of a mountain goat. The speed with which he took advantage of the temporary path and his nimbleness in avoiding questing bramble tendrils caused Matthew to re-evaluate the man's degree of insanity.

Matthew followed quickly, Braddock somewhat more reluctantly. The pilot opted to remain with his ship.

With the boy leading them, Shepherd Howling on his heels, and Matthew followed more slowly by Braddock, they reached the nearest of the hovels. There they were joined by a man and woman and a pack of whooping children. The rest of the village crowded in after them.

Shepherd Howling slowed to hover noisomely by Matthew. "This is possibly a wholesome place, Brother Luzon. None of the orange minions of the underworld one sees in many of the heathen towns are visible. And nowhere did I see the monster's yawning maw waiting to be fed by the ignorance of the unenlightened."

"That is good news," Matthew said tersely, and turned to their adolescent guide. He was far more interested in what the villagers had to say.

"Now, my boy, you must explain something to me, for I am a bit confused. I was supposed to meet Captain Fiske and the shanachie of this village here. Now you tell me you've banished the shanachie. Being a stranger to this planet, but one very interested in your customs, have I indeed been brought to McGee's Pass?"

"That's where you are, sir," said the woman of the house, undoubtedly the boy's mother, pushing herself to the front. "And the best way to explain, sir, is by singing you the song we made."

Groaning inwardly at the prospect of another of the Petaybean songs, Matthew arranged his features in an engaging and interested smile.

"We sing it together," explained the man who seemed to be the woman's husband and the boy's father. "Because it happened to us all."

"We were all duped, he means," the boy said.

A 1ittle girl said, "All but Krisuk. He wasn't fooled."

"Please sing," Matthew said, trying to cut to the performance if he had to hear it to learn what they were talking about.

"You start, Krisuk," the mother said.

The boy stood stock-still, arms at his sides, not a foot from Matthew, and began to chant in an eerie singsong style:

"One day the roof of the world fell

It killed our friends, our cousins

It killed the heir to its wisdom

For days we dug, too numb to cry.

Our world had ended.

Aijija!"

The other villagers joined in, some crying loudly, some mumbling, all reciting the nonsense words at the end of the verses as if they were expletives.

"A stranger came among us to dig

He came among us, he said, to teach

Sure he was.

Strong he was.

He knew what to do.

He knew where to dig.

The world still spoke to him,

He said.

Aijija!

He said if we followed him we could win back the world.

He said if my sister lay with him she would be one with

creation

She went with him

He said if we gave him the best pups of the litter

His team would carry the spirit of our village to the world's

corners

And it would know us once more

We gave him the pups

He said that the planet's orange feet carried tales against

us to other villages

He said if we were to heal, the feet must be killed.

This, to our shame, we allowed. "

And here, quite alarmingly, people began to tear their hair. All of the villagers sang the next verse loudly and lamentingly.

"To our shame we didn't hide them

To our shame we didn't feed them

To our shame we heard his blows

To our shame we heard their cries

To our shame we did nothing

Until only Shush

Shush the silent and swift

Survived. Shush who led us back into the world

Shush who brought our neighbors to us

Shush who left us at last

Footless in a world

Whose voice had been strangled

Whose tongue had been blown away

By the one we called

Satok shanachie.

Where is our sister now?

Gone to a bad man in a distant village.

Where are our best pups?

Starved and broken in spirit.

Where are our cats, the world's orange feet?

No longer walking, bones except for Shush

And when our world speaks to us again as we have

Hoped and dreamed?

It screams.

Aijija."

"Oh, dear," Matthew said when they had finished. "And all this because of your shanachie, eh?"

"Yes, sir," the boy said. "He took all of our best for himself and betrayed everyone."

Matthew could scarcely keep from rubbing his hands together with glee. "Oh, that's terrible. Terrible indeed. Right, Brother Howling?"

Howling's lips twitched with a smile. "That's what comes of trafficking with monsters."

"You can say that again, mister," the woman said. "Can you stay and eat, sir?" she asked Matthew, but he waved a negative.

"I'm sorry, dear lady, but your story distresses me so much that I really think our best course is to resume our journey and seek to bring justice to you and people like you who are taken in by those who would mislead you. I hope I can count on you to repeat your song before the council when I call on you!" he added, addressing the boy, who had sung every word in a voice unexpectedly good, loud, and clear.

"I'd be honored, sir," the boy said, although he sounded puzzled and wary.

The villagers had to throw fresh stepping-stones and logs over the brambles for Matthew's party to return to the helicopter. Even then, the pilot had to climb out and hack at the vines with a machete before he could free the copter's skids. The vines were tight against the belly of the ship, strands attempting to encircle the narrow stern. Matthew thought that such fast-growing vegetation would also bear scrutiny. George, he rather thought, had some botanical knowledge. He'd send him to get a sample—if one could be contained long enough.

Satok landed the shuttle, loaded with barrels of Petraseal, at Savoy. His three assistant "shanachies" were still there, drinking and talking.

"Where's Luka?" Reilly asked.

"Ran off," Satok replied. "Don't worry. I'll get her back, and when I do, I'll make her sorry she was ever born. The fraggin' bitch stole the ore samples and put rocks in their place."

"So you didn't get to make a deal with the company?"

"Course I did! Guy named Fiske saw them first before Luka switched 'em, but he wants to have genuine samples to show off."

"It was hard enough getting together what we did without you letting it get snitched," Reilly complained. He liked easier work than mining.

"Hold it! All we gotta prove is that there is genuine ore available. We'll use the one here, and who's to know if we don't tell 'em, huh? Fiske gave me some more Petraseal, so Reilly and I will mine the earlier veins while you two paint us a path back."

"Shit! I hate doing that," Soyuk grumbled. "Damn caves give me the creeps."

"Stop bellyachin'," Satok told him. "If we make this deal with the company, you'll have enough money to go off-planet permanently."

They climbed onto the Petraseal-laden shuttle and flew to the cave mouth, which was inconveniently distant from the village. In Satok's absence, the location had grown even more inconvenient.

"Where the hell did these weeds come from?" he demanded, astounded by the sea of tangling vines choking the cave mouth and cloaking the cliff and mountain meadow where they usually landed.

Reilly shrugged. "I dunno. They weren't here a coupla weeks back, but the season's gone nuts. We can torch 'em?"

"Not enough time. The fraggin' cave would fill with smoke and we'd never get at the ore."

"We could try the site back at my place," Soyuk suggested.

"No, hell, we'll hack 'em back and splash 'em with Petraseal as we go. We only need to get inside the cave."

The stalks were amazingly tough and the stinging vines clung to the men with fierce tenacity, but they hacked and splashed until they reached the entrance of the cave.

"Just hack this crap away from the front here, and it'll all be clear back where the Petraseal is, boys," Satok directed.

The way was not as clear as he had hoped. They had to make several trips to lug the vats of Petraseal into the cave. Left on his own while the others pumped the Petraseal in, Satok wondered how the weeds had managed to penetrate right through the ceiling of the cave. Had the latest tremors shaken a hole in the roof? Roots and tendrils of vines drooped from the ceiling.

When Soyuk, Clancy, and Reilly returned, he sent the first two on ahead to paint where they could excavate, and told Reilly to start patching farther back in the cave. In order to listen for Fiske's copter, Satok took the area nearest the entrance—he wanted to make sure the captain didn't see too much of the operation.

He hacked and daubed and hacked and daubed. The interior of the cave, now insulated by the cover of vines, seemed hotter than it ever had before. The light grew dimmer and greener as he worked, almost as if he were working underwater.

He thought at one point he heard some scuffling, and the others seemed noisier than they had been for a while, hollering and swearing as they worked. Getting stung, no doubt, he thought with a grin, but that noise was soon masked by the steady chop and daub of his own work. The beat of his own heart, the rasp of his own breath, was all he heard.

In this new rhythmic silence, he worked and sweated, the faint drip of his perspiration landing on the cavern floor the only other sound he heard as he strained to listen for the engines of Fiske's copter.

He didn't notice when he first heard the slithering sound, a soft rustle followed by a dry whispering crackling noise, as if paper had fallen—or leaves.

Then it came to him, just as he felt something slide across the toe of his boot and curl to brush his pant leg, that he had heard nothing from the others for some time. The thought crossed his mind just before the thorns bit into his leg as the vine tendril tightened.

"Reilly!" he hollered. "Soyuk!"

For an answer, another rustle, another slither. It was darker now, and as he turned toward the doorway, he saw that a thick net of greenery had replaced what they had hacked away a bare hour before. More alarmingly, some of the greenery bore splashes of white. He tried to kick off the vines clinging to him, but succeeded only in embedding the thorns deeper into his ankles. Feeling an edge of panic, he switched on the flashlight he'd brought along.

It seemed to attract the plants, as if they couldn't tell the difference between the light and sun. First roots, then more tendrils dropped from the roof, opening leaves as they slid.

This shouldn't be happening, Satok thought. This couldn't be happening! The Petraseal should have impeded any new growth, reduced it to dust. Where he had painted so industriously, he now realized that the Petraseal was marbled with cracks, fine in places, broadening in others to allow the plants to burgeon forth. Even the swath he had just painted had opened to emit tendrils.

And all of them seemed to be sliding toward him. From its sheath on his belt, he took his machete and hacked himself free, running to the rear of the cave as fast as he could without tripping over the vines.

He found Reilly first, hanging upside down by his ankles, which were pinned to the upper part of the wall. The vines twined down his legs and wrapped his arms tightly to his sides. His machete lay useless on the floor. The end of the vine—or maybe the first part to catch him—had wrapped around his neck five or six times, very tightly. Tender green shoots grew out of his mouth, nose, and ears.

Satok wasted no more time looking for Soyuk or Clancy. He didn't even worry about why the Petraseal hadn't worked. He jumped, hopped, and ran for the entrance, hacking and slicing.

He went at such a speed that he dropped his flashlight. That's why he didn't see the root looping down from the ceiling, to lash itself around his throat while another knocked him to the floor.

He didn't scream for long as the stinging, snatching vines overwhelmed him. As the sound died in his throat, he seemed to hear from the cave a low grumbling hum. As oxygen was cut off from his brain and optic nerve and his sight failed, the light from the setting sun pierced the leaves, lighting the greenery in the cave's entrance like the watchful eyes of a thousand gloating cats.

Marmion and her entourage had returned to Kilcoole, bringing with them Luka and an injured cat for the attention of Kilcoole's fat witch doctor, leaving Rick O'Shay's bird available to fly Torkel to Savoy to meet Satok.

Torkel was not actually rubbing his hands together with glee, but he felt like it. O'Shay had received a radio message that Matthew Luzon, his assistant, and an unspecified passenger had just cleared the coast at Harrison's Fjord. Torkel considered Luzon his staunchest ally, and he quickly sent a message asking Matthew to meet him and the McGee's Pass shanachie at Savoy.

''Hope they got that clear, Captain,' O'Shay said, shaking his head. "Terrible amount of static lately."

When they circled the Savoy settlement, Torkel thought nothing of the brambles growing some distance outside the town until he saw the gleam of metal beneath them. Even then he thought it was some piece of cast-off machinery a local had allowed the vines to overgrow.

When he inquired in the village for the shanachie, he was told that the man had been conferring with his fellow shanachies for days and yesterday had made a visit to the cave and had not yet returned.

"Important gentlemen such as yourself should be sittin' and restin' and havin' a cuppa, and not go worryin' after the shanachies. Sure they was all together and they'll be after makin' powerful decisions and discussions and such like out to the cave. I shouldn't like to be the one to interrupt them." This advice came from a middle-aged woman in raggedy clothes.

Why did Torkel get the feeling that there was something spurious about her rustic humility? Perhaps it was because he had lately had occasion to hear many Petaybeans speak. They seemed to use that broad colorful accent only when addressing company officials.

So he was uncharacteristically curt with her as he said, 'Take me to this cave at once. Shanachie Satok's business is with me and I've come to meet him."

"Ah, well, sir, I'm too old a woman to take you on that sort of a hike, sure I am. But my son now, he'd be after takin' ya on his way up to the fields with the sheep like."

"Then let him take us, but let's go," Torkel snapped.

A boy appeared abruptly, a human island in a white woolly sea. He shook his head when Torkel wanted to use the copter to get them there. "Coo-berries'll take that, too. C'mon!"

It irritated Torkel no end that Rick O'Shay had the time to relax, drink tea, and exchange gossip with the woman while he traipsed after the boy. About a mile from the end of the vil1age, the boy started swinging in a wide arc around the lake of weeds.

"Just where is this cave, son?" Torkel asked him, panting slightly at the uphill climb. He'd have to get back into working out again at the station.

"Over there, sir, but you won't want to go there, sir. Only shanachies go there."

"Are all you people nuts? I already told your mother I have business with the shanachies. Now then, how do we get through this shrubbery and into the cave?"

"Ah, sure and I couldn't be doin' that, sir. Coo-berries is dead poison to sheep, and they've not sense enough to keep from eatin' them. Worse, I'd never get the stickers and thorns out of the wool."

"Then don't take the sheep, son. Did that ever occur to you?"

"But like, what would I do with 'em then, sir?"

Torkel was about to make a suggestion when he heard the engine of another copter. Seeing it over fly their position and head for the village, he abandoned the boy and sprinted back down the hill to intercept it.

He arrived winded, back where he'd started from, in time to see the pilot shut down the copter and jump down, followed by the imposing figure of Vice-Chairman Matthew Luzon; one of his entourage, who looked a bit pale; and an individual dressed in ragged leather and fur. As Torkel approached, his nose twitched at the rancid stench that exuded from the creature.

"Dr. Luzon, thank you for coming. I'm afraid there's been a bit of a delay, however."

Luzon smiled knowingly. "Ah, yes, the vines. I encountered the same problem when I serendipitously ended up at McGee's Pass on my way to meet you. It's a small problem, but a bit tricky, Captain. You simply enlist the aid of the villagers to throw boards and stones on top of the weeds to form a path. We found that worked fine when we landed in the middle of a patch ourselves."

'You went to the cave at McGee's Pass?"

"Cave? Ah, was that what the locals were singing about? No, we didn't examine the cave. When we discovered that you were, in fact, here, we came as soon as that . . . ah . . . song was over. I did, however, make a quite satisfying discovery during our brief stay which I'll discuss with you later. Now then, where's this fellow we were supposed to meet?"

"He's in the cave," Torkel said. "Beyond the weeds. Though I'm damned if I know how he got through."

"Easy enough if you think about it," Matthew said superciliously. He turned to the villagers who had gathered to watch the company men confer. "I want a work party to gather boards, stones, sheets of plasglas, anything that can be thrown across the weeds for a path. Now, step quickly, will you! We must reach the cave."

"Sure, carryin' enough things to get back there, that's a week's work you're talkin' about, sir," said a local man with the broad weathered face of an Eskirish cross, scratching his head at the prospect.

"We've used all that sort of stuff we had building bridges across the streams when they flooded," the woman said. "There's not a scrap left hereabouts."

"Then we'll send back to SpaceBase," Torkel said with a curt nod to O'Shay. "You radio for a team."

O'Shay got on the radio, and in a moment he emerged and said, "None of the other copters are at SpaceBase, sir, or even available later today."

"Then one of you fly back and pick up help and material," Torkel said, vastly annoyed at all of the delays and rather surprised that Satok, who'd had twenty-four or more hours to work ore, had not been on hand to guide them.

"It will have to be your pilot, Captain Fiske," Luzon said. "I require the full time services of my own."

Torkel nodded to O'Shay, who climbed back aboard and restarted his engine. By now it was well into the afternoon.

"Why do you suppose we haven't heard from your shanachie?" Torkel demanded of the woman as the noise of the copter faded in the distance.

"Cave's a powerful ways back, sir."

"How did he and the others get there, then?" Torkel demanded. "We could try the same thing."

"Ah, sure, sir, shanachies has their ways as wouldn't be known to others."

Matthew Luzon nodded to Braddock, who hastily made a note of that remark.

"Yet more misguided souls in league with the Great Monster," wailed the unwashed man.

"Ah, Captain Fiske, this is a particularly valuable . . . acquaintance. From the southern continent. Brother Howling, meet Captain Torkel Fiske, who has spearheaded the effort to have this planet fully investigated. Captain Fiske, the Shepherd Howling, a major spiritual leader from the Vale of Tears. A most influential man."

Torkel gave the scruffy man an impatient look and limited his response to a mumbled "Delighted."

While they accepted the dubious hospitality of the village, Torkel gave the commissioner the details of his meeting with Satok and the ore samples he had himself handled and identified. To his relief, Luzon did not appear at all skeptical about the authenticity of the ores. He knew the planet was ore-rich: every space probe had verified that, even pin pointing the exact sites from space. Finding the precise locations on the surface had proved to be impossible.

Howling had apparently been listening carefully and now he nodded wisely. "The monster is treacherous. Perfectly capable of transforming gold into stone, winter into summer, harmless plants into murderous serpentine weapons. Time and again I have warned my flock they must rise up and subdue the monster with no hint of capitulation, but they were weak and faltering."

Torkel glanced at Luzon, appreciating what merit the lunatic could provide in discrediting the Kilcoole interpretation of the planet's behavior. He smiled at Luzon. "We need a few more new . . . acquaintances like this good and wise Brother Howling, don't we?"

Matthew wore a smug expression while Brother Howling said gravely, "Thank you, my son."

Matthew mentioned to Torkel, in an amused tone, what the villagers had sung of Satok at McGee's Pass.

"We've constantly been given the impression here that shanachies are universally respected and their views reflect those of their communities. At McGee's Pass, this was not so."

"I see. Discrediting what we have been told of the whole system. Yes, definitely, Dr. Luzon, we will need to have testimony from McGee's Pass at the hearing. And Brother Howling here, too, will represent a unique viewpoint at odds with the Kilcoole party line."

"My thoughts, exactly. Although Brother Howling also falls into the error of believing this planet to be sentient, his view is that the planet, far from being a benefactor and friend, is in fact a great monster. He believes that the colonists were brought here by the company as banishment for misbehavior elsewhere and that one day, if they do well and obey his teachings, the company will redeem them."

"Verily, have I said it thusly, my brethren," Shepherd Howling said. "I have done the company's work on this forsaken rock, Brother Matthew, that I and my family may be delivered from the monster and into the grace of the company once more. I will commune with the planet here, if you will excuse me."

His absence was welcome on several counts: the obviously fresher air, and the chance for Torkel and Luzon to make plans based on their respective discoveries. Torkel listened intently to Luzon as the man talked of similar investigations he had conducted into the folkways of various planets and systems and how he had corrected mistaken concepts and behaviors. The dialogue was briefly interrupted when a bewildered and bruised Shepherd Howling was herded back at the end of their hostess's broom.

"With all respect, gentlemen, you keep this maniac away from my little girl or I'll geld him!" the woman said and stomped away.

"Sit in the sun, Brother Howling," Luzon suggested, pointing to a half-broken bench against the outside wall—downwind of them.

All the while, Torkel kept expecting Satok to arrive to guide them to the rich ore faces as he'd promised. But several hours went by with no sign of the man. Finally the sound of helicopter engines once more routed the four men from their chairs.

Two helicopters approached the village. Torkel figured one would have men and one equipment to rid the area of the bushes, but when the passengers disembarked, he was annoyed to see that there were no figures in fatigues emerging, except the pilots, O'Shay and Greene. No one useful at all, in fact. Marmion and her entourage had come, along with George and Ivan from Luzon's group. And to his further irritation, he watched as Clodagh Senungatuk was courteously helped to descend by O'Shay from his copter.

"You're on report, O Shay, for disobeying orders," he told the pilot.

"Oh, please don't punish the dear boy, Captain Fiske," said Marmion, with a flourish of fashionable fabric scarf and a charming move. "It's all my fault really. Captain Greene returned from the southern continent with Yana Maddock, Dr. Shongili, and those sweet youngsters, plus another little girl Dr. Shongili says is the sister of his other niece—"

"Goat-dung!" Shepherd Howling said. "She is mine. She is to be my wife."

"Oh. surely not," Marmion said, smiling brightly at him. "The girl's less than twelve years old. But, at any rate, our teams were in need of one of Clodagh's hearty meals and we sat listening to Yana and Sean tell us the most fantastic adventures—ah, but I needn't tell you, need I, Matthew? You were present for some of them."

Luzon inclined his head, his eyes half-hooded and dangerous.

"Well, Johnny Greene heard Captain O'Shay's message about the weeds here, and then Clodagh said that a work party wouldn't do much good and might even be in danger. But that she knew something that would work." Marmion paused, as if expecting approval, her eyes all wide and innocent. "Et viola! We have come to offer assistance."

Before anyone could say anything else she added ingenuously, "Also, Matthew, your young friends were absolutely pining for you, and I simply had to help reunite you, isn't that so, boys?"

Luzon's muscular assistants nodded—rather miserably, Torkel thought.

While everyone was standing around thinking of a response to Marmion's gabble, Clodagh Senungatuk started walking out of the village.

"Where the devil do you think you're going?" Torkel demanded.

"To make a path to the cave,' she said simply, and kept walking.

By the time she had gone five more steps, Torkel recovered from his surprise enough to tell her that she wouldn't be able to penetrate such a hedge of weed, and where were the boards and other spanning materials he had sent for? She gave no answer, plodding up the track toward the cave. The other new arrivals followed, plus half the village, which seemed to consider this expedition fine entertainment.

At the edge of the vast jungle of waist-high vines, which seemed even more impenetrable since Torkel's first look at them, Clodagh paused. She bent down and gently touched the center of one of the leaves.

So what are you doing? Asking it nicely? Torkel demanded.

"Lookin' at this white stuff. Wondering why somebody tried to paint the bushes. This is the only thing that works." She drew out a large clear flask filled with a greenish liquid, uncorked it carefully, and then inserted a sprinkler head of home manufacture. She shook the bottle a bit in front and to each side of her.

Instantly the vines retracted as if they had been mowed with a scythe, and as she moved forward, Marmion fell in step behind her, followed by Sally Point-Jefferson, who had had the good sense to put on heavy boots.

Marmion turned around and said, "Quickly, boys. I don't know how long the effect lasts. Clodagh's very mysterious about it.

They followed with alacrity. Torkel felt like a fool, trailing behind the big woman as she doused her concochon to the right, the center, and the left, like some ancient prelate dispensing holy water or preparing a pontiff's path with incense.

When they reached a wall of greenery where the vines from the meadow above the cave spilled down over into the field, she increased the area and parabola of her casting, widening the path. The vines drew back like curtains, and Torkel saw the entrance to a largish cave.

"Better use lights," Clodagh said, though she imperturbably stepped into the dimness, Marmion behind her.

"Oh!" Marmion said. "What ever has happened here?"

"Somebody tried to kill this place," Clodagh said. "But Petaybee fights back." She indicated the streamers of vines and roots extending from the ceiling.

She proceeded until, farther inside the cave, she stepped cautiously around what looked like a green hillock.

"Ah! Here. Captain," she said to Torkel, sprinkling the hillock so that the vines gradually shrank away to show the body they had encased. "Is this yer man here that you were looking for?"

The popped eyes, protruding tongue, and cyanosed face were nevertheless identifiable as those of the former shanachie. The bloodied grooves tightly scored about his neck gave ample proof of the agency that had killed him.

"He said he had a sure fire mining method," Torkel said. "Something to do with Petraseal."

Faber knocked on a piece of the roof that had remained vineless thus far. "This is Petraseal all right, but this on the cracks—" He ran his fingers over it and shone his flashlight beam on the result and on what had covered the ends of the withered vines. "Look. It's not even white. It's pale lime green and it's not Petraseal, Captain Fiske. This is exterior wall paint, and not a real high quality at that."

Shepherd Howling, visibly shaking, suddenly sprang at Matthew Luzon as if attacking him. "Get me out of here! I must escape the Great Monster before it devours us all as it devoured that man."

"Uh, Dr. Luzon," one of the assistants called nervously. "Can you come back here?" He had followed Clodagh, who was continuing to sprinkle, undeterred by her grisly discovery, farther into the cave. "We've got three more corpses."

"I demand that this woman be held for questioning and that the bottle containing her weed-killing solution be seized and analyzed," Matthew Luzon said.

Marmion Algemeine, still unhappily abstracted by the grotesque deaths of the four men, regarded Matthew with stupefaction.

"Held for questioning? Whatever for?" she demanded.

"Clodagh helped ! Without her we'd never have found those poor men."

Matthew didn't exactly say "aha!" but a malicious light did glitter in his eye as he said, in a quiet voice, "And how exactly did she know that these particular vines would need her particular remedy? And how did she just happen to have it available?"

"And I," Torkel said sternly, "only requested materials and manpower to reach the cave."

Marmion was not to be confounded. "Why, I would suppose that plants as aggressive as these might be a fairly common nuisance. Is that how you knew, Clodagh?"

Clodagh shrugged but didn't defend herself.

A woman from Savoy spoke up quickly. "And how wouldn't she know that? Sure, coo-berries has never been this bad before. It's that hard to root them out wherever they grow, but they never strangled anybody before this. Still, it's been an uncommon early spring, and everything is growin' the like of which I've never seen before in all my life."

"So you would say, would you, madam," Matthew said "that the weather was unusual and the plants are unusual? Tell me, if what Ms. Senungatuk used on the coo-berries was an ordinary remedy for their sting, why didn't the rest of you use them?"

"Sure, why should we?" she asked. "Coo-berries wasn't botherin' us any, were they? And only 'cos you come, did we know they was up at the cave. And another thing," she went on, winding up to unburden all her complaints, "back before Shanachie Reilly arrived, people used to come here for latchkays and have a chat with the planet, like. Only then Reilly gave us to understand that a lot of our problems, the floods, the avalanche, the quakes, were on accounta we were too pig-ignorant to understand properly what it was the planet was sayin' to us. After the time lightnin' struck the meeting hall and burned up all them people, just before Reilly came to us, we let him do the talkin' and I would say things have been pretty peaceful since." She paused and said, "But for all that many folk thought Reilly knew best, he never did learn the remedies like Kilcoole's Clodagh. Our old healer died two winters back and we've been wanting to get someone new trained up, 'cos I've known about her since we was both younglings. Village even had a promising girl child ready to go 'prentice' herself to Clodagh, iffen Clodagh Senungatuk'd have her, but Reilly wouldn't allow it."

"Thank you, madam, for the testimonial." Matthew said. "We'll let you know if you'll be needed to repeat your statement at the hearing. Meanwhile, I must insist Ms. Senungatuk be placed into company custody and her flask seized for analysis, along with the contents of the barrels the deceased had with them in the cave. Autopsies must be performed on the bodies and the entire area sealed."

'No worries on that score, sir," Ivan told him. They were standing just outside the field of coo-berries, and Ivan's nod indicated the place where Clodagh's path had been. It was once more covered with twining brambles.

Two weeks later, the investigation was finished and all the data collected had been entered by Luzon's overworked computer men and hard copies made for presentation.

First, however, at Shepherd Howling's insistence, he was sent off-planet on the same shuttle that carried the bodies. He couldn't have been on the MoonBase for more than an hour before angry messages arrived from first MoonBase command, then the hospital facility on Bethany Station, which indicated that the Shepherd was urgently proselytizing on a broad scale for converts to his just cause of trying to raise an army to fight the monster, which must be over come before the planet could be truly holy. He had a real knack for spouting his cant to the already disaffected, the misfits, and those in the lower ranks who were more easily swayed by his rhetoric. Within the first three days, he came close to single-handedly instigating a mutiny.

Such complaints made Matthew thankful that the man was out of the way so that he would not be part of the group greeting the remaining commissioners. They were soon to arrive on the planet's somewhat seismic-shaken surface to read and evaluate the information prior to the final hearing. He wished there had been someplace he could have immured Marmion Algemeine and her assistants, but her absence would have caused embarrassing questions even if he had thought of a way to rid her, however temporarily, of her three constant attendants.

Torkel Fiske was invaluable in helping Matthew and his committee. It was he who suggested that they should also interview newly arrived colonists in the most recently formed villages far from the influence of such people as Shongili and the Senungatuk woman, or even families such as the brood that had entertained Matthew in the south.

The new people, it was hoped, would be more objective and scientific in their outlook. When Matthew noted that the influx had come from the Mariana Islands and the Scottish highlands, where large deposits of deutronium and molybdenum had recently been located, and some resettled from the disastrous colonies of Bremer, he was equally ready to cancel that idea if the initial interviews proved negative. He resolved to read each of the collected reports before permitting them to be admitted as evidence. Meanwhile, his assistants and Marmion's vied with each other to be the first to record the testimonies of people from the villages of the four murdered shanachies.

Matthew himself had made a special, personal effort to reach Goat-dung and persuade her to tell the truth about her part in the sudden disappearance of "the monster" who had been injured by members of Howling's community—an injury rather too similar to the one from which Shongili was recovering. Matthew also had placed a strong letter of reprimand in the file of Captain John Greene, who had certainly exceeded his authority by removing the girl from Matthew's custody at a critical time.

Now no one seemed to know where either the girl or Shongili was. Shongili's mannish sister and her girlfriend were also nowhere to be found. Through Marmion's influence, Clodagh Senungatuk, much to Matthew's dismay, remained in her own home, under nominal "house arrest," and still ran the village. And the whole planet, as far as he knew—including Whittaker Fiske, who actually seemed to have the poor taste to be besotted with the fat cow—paused to gossip to her through her windows. Unstoppably, of course, those damned cats went in and out as they pleased. Discreet efforts to capture any of them—either by the lure of choice cuts of meat or by chasing them with otherwise savage canines—had met with abysmal failure. They had spurned the food and terrified any dog set on their spoors.

He had tried to insist that Shongili and Clodagh both be sent off-planet in detention cells pending the hearing. Whittaker Fiske and Marmion Algemeine had immediately blocked that, just as they'd quashed the off world reassignments he tried to engineer for captains Greene and O'Shay.

He let himself be consoled by the fact that it was only a matter of time for all their little petty tricks to come tumbling down about their ears. Once he presented his evidence at the hearing and it was seen how these two-bit shamanistic charlatans were preying on the people's fears and hopes to influence them against the company, Shongili and Clodagh and all their helpers would be evicted from their cushy company homes and Maddock, Greene, and O'Shay would be busted back to KP duty.

The workload was overwhelming. While he seemed able to gain momentum in his search for truth, his assistants, who had previously seemed so promising, had grown unaccountably bumbling and incompetent. Their reports did not have bottom-line conclusions that satisfied his requirements. And then the computers kept developing break downs and suffering from sporadic erasures.

The locals, including company troops, were hostile; the working conditions were appallingly primitive, and the weather—how he loathed wild weather—was unspeakable. Lashing rains and electrical storms alternated with spitting snow and heat far above the comfort zone. The SpaceBase facility was constantly quaking with unexpected convulsions on land that had originally been tested as geological

stable. Matthew longed for the sane and sanitary shipboard ambiance, one engineered for human comfort by rational minds such as his own. No mold grew there, as it did on the walls of his lavatory despite the repeated scrubbings of some low-ranking corpsman. No thunderclaps disrupted his concentration, and despite the fact that one was always moving in space, one never experienced sensations of bobbing like bubbles in a test tube as buildings bounced.

To make matters worse, another volcano erupted, ten klicks to the northwest, sending ash into every crack and crevice. This emergence occurred in a meadow, near nothing else, and didn't even cause copters to falter over flying it. However, a seaquake of 9.3 on the Richter scale had a mid-ocean epicenter that caused tsunamis in every direction and quite devastated the small facility at Bogota.

The company would simply have to face facts. This planet was not working out. The terraforming was faulty, the terrain had not fully stabilized, the whole place should be evacuated, scraped clean, and either abandoned or reformed with more modern techniques. It would put an end to all this talk of sentience and settlements.

Chapter 14

Yana couldn't shake a sense of foreboding, something she would not give voice to, even to Sean. At least his wound was closing with extraordinary rapidity, thanks to a poultice and Clodagh's expert attention. That bit of doctoring had happened before Matthew Luzon's asinine notion of putting Clodagh under "house arrest." That wasn't as bad as Luzon's original orders to send both off-planet. Sean had been immediately hidden in Bunny's snocle, which had been decommissioned for the "summer" and stored in Adak O'Connor's garage. Clodagh had shrugged off the threat and maintained it wouldn't come to that. Which it hadn't, with the forceful help of Marmion and Whittaker Fiske. Only someone totally ignorant of the situation on Petaybee, as most of the company brass were, or someone so hostile as to be beyond reason, as Luzon was, would think that putting Clodagh and Sean in any sort of detention made sense.

Yana couldn't quite believe, or hope, that Luzon had failed to realize the function of the cats in Clodagh's and the planet's—communications network. Torkel knew. She wondered why he didn't try to round up the cats and put them under house arrest as well. It would have been just about as ridiculous.

When they knew the order was for house arrest rather than transfer off-planet, Sean, with his customary imperturbability, emerged from hiding like a bear from hibernation and smilingly chose Yana's as the "house to be arrested in." She was glad to have him near for several reasons. Although the wound was healing so well, the arrow had torn muscles and almost severed one tendon. She could keep an eye on it and him better if she didn't have to worry about concealment. She knew it was unrealistic to think she could single-handedly protect him from the company if they tried to take him, but she would do what she could. And now that she was well again, she could do quite a bit. With her years of training and experience, she was not without resources. And quite aside from that, it just helped having him there. He calmed her. Here his world was on trial and he was able, with a look. a smile, or a joke, to soothe her fears.

She needed that. Even with the "off-planet threat dissolved, tension vibrated in the air like off-key music whether it was in sympathy with Clodagh, or apprehension of what the Powers That Be would try to do to them next.

Not that everything in Kilcoole came to a stand still: everyone carried on, gardening and planting all hours of the lengthening days. But the smart ones were frightened, as they should be, with Matthew Luzon coming on so strong. At least that loony, Howling, had been shipped out, which gave the planet one score against the Powers That Be, as the locals called the company in all its omniscience. She wondered if the MoonBase had smelled him coming. She'd had the first laugh in days when Adak reported that Howling had the base command howling complaints.

Adak said he had ears the size of flapjacks from listening in on his radio, trying to make sense of orders misheard through the static. He usually brought a summary of what he had heard to Yana so that she could convey the information to Clodagh. Like everybody else, she just went to the windows and chatted. If the guard was new, and didn't know her—as the guards often were, since Torkel was obviously afraid Clodagh would bewitch her jailers as he seemed to feel she had his father—Yana cleverly disguised herself as what she had been, a major in the company corps, collected a smart salute from the trooper on duty, and walked into the house. This worked only if the guard hadn't already been posted on her house to guard Sean, but she slipped past all of them an amazing number of times just by putting her hair up in a fatigue cap when she wanted to be a ranking officer, and throwing one of Aisling's hand woven blanket jackets over her uniform and letting her hair down when she didn't. Nevertheless, she had to keep a fairly low profile when she did this, lest Torkel or one of the other brass who knew her catch on and prohibit her specifically from visiting Clodagh. They hadn't thought of it yet, which was not an oversight that Yana would have permitted had the mission been under her command, but fortunately, it wasn't. Whittaker Fiske visited Clodagh often, openly and casually. The first time Yana had walked into the house to see him sitting at Clodagh's table having tea, she had been wary, until his wink reassured her. "We would appreciate a knock next time though, Major," he said, squeezing Clodagh's hand. Clodagh had surprised Yana by responding with an actual blush and a mischievous bawdy chuckle.

But Yana was at home, in multi with her hair streaming, talking to Sean, when Adak, who was also still officially a company corps employee, knocked briefly and entered without waiting for permission. Sean, who had been slowly walking around the room to supple up his abused leg muscles, stopped just short of the abruptly opened door. Yana had been listing the issues and arguments concerning them that were likely to come up at the hearing, and practicing succinct answers. That always impressed committees: this witness had all facts in order and did not hesitate in answering.

"Sean, oops, sorry, Yana, the static's getting worse but the committee's ship has landed. That Luzon fella was transmitting orders to the crew for the last couple of hours about how the committee was supposed to be taken to his board room for a private briefing first, but somehow"—Adak gave a good imitation of an ingenuous shrug for a fifty-five-year-old man—"Dr. Fiske and Dama Algemeine found out and beat him to the landing pad."

"Sure, now, and wasn't that lucky for us?" Sean mused, slyly deepening the faint trace of Irish lilt in his voice and lifting his left eyebrow in an amused, quizzical way. "Did these same mysterious circumstances that alerted Whit and Marmion also warn Clodagh?"

"Didn't need to," Adak said. 'The cats were already on the job. Least wise, that clouded one padded by me on my way here and leapt right in the window neat as you please, and that black and white fella, who lies on the roof and snarls at the guards when they get too close, slithered in after her." Adak grinned maliciously.

"Well, then, since the cursor's up on Matthew's screen, let's hope all this waiting's over," Sean said, and gave a convulsive shrug of his shoulders, one of the few manifestations of his own anxiety Yana had observed. He shot a wry grin in her direction. "So the waiting's over now. Love, and the dance begins. Ready?"

She nodded solemnly and held up the coffee pot. "Have time for a cup, Adak?"

"Sure do, Yana," Adak said, closing the door behind him.

He strode over to the table, which had been enlarged from a small square to a large circle, with one section covered by Yana's notes and pad and a long-handled wooden spoon that Sean was whittling. Sean had needed some occupation while he was recuperating: Yana now had four chairs instead of one. She'd helped, but she'd done more watching of his clever hands than working.

Yana put three cups and some of the sweet biscuits Sean had made on the table. Sean joined them; as usual, turning his chair round so he could lean his arms across the back of it. That chair he had made to his own specifications.

"There was also some report," Adak went on, "came in for that fella with all funny words . . ."

"Ah, the analysis," Yana said, leaning forward hopefully. "Can you remember any of the words?"

"Of course I can. Who do you think teaches the youngsters the corps glory songs and the company manual songs to keep them from harm when they're first spaced? My memory's good as Clodagh's." He gazed roof ward, eyes almost turned completely up, mouth open, and then recited: "Plant juices of an unknown alkalinity of unusual strength and a small amount of an unidentifiable animal protein. The combination is unusual and most likely derived from indigenous elements not yet included in botanical or biological records, which are unusually brief for Planet Terraform B. On the subject of the so-called coo-berry bramble thorn plant, the vegetation showed virulent growth even under controlled laboratory conditions. It secretes acid from leaf surface, thorn, and stem of such potency that it permeated Petraseal, as suspected, and etched deeply into every metal sample presented. Coo-berry sample destroyed before its mass imploded the triple plasglas container. Antidote is still under going testing. Could be useful against other alien plant-forms of similar toxicity and rapid growth. Request quantity and availability of ingredients." Adak dropped his head, and his eyes returned to a normal position in their sockets.

"Well done, Adak," Sean said with a laugh, and gave the old radio operator a friendly clout on his arm.

"And they want to set up a school so's we can learn reading and writing," Adak muttered scornfully. "What's wrong with training a memory to remember what it's heard 'steada having to look it up in books all a time?" He took a long swig of the coffee, smacking his lips. "Mind you, more of this on a regular basis wouldn't be hard to take."

"You have to be careful what you accept from the company," Yana said urgently, extending her hand across the table toward Adak. "Teaching the people to read and write again is essential if we're to keep the buzzards off this planet indefinitely, but we have to choose our own material."

"Don't need to tell me that, Yana. It's the younger kids need the caution."

Yes, that was the problem, Yana thought. It was the kids who would only see the advantages of the perks Torkel was so eager to load on them. Krisuk, who had never had much and wanted to make something of himself. And those like Luca, who had been abused all her life. She gave a wry grin. Not Bunny, she thought, nor even 'Cita, who still thinks three meals a day is sinful.

They had sent the girl with Bunny, who wouldn't let her sister out of her sight, and Aisling and Sinead to Sinead's old cabin, deep in the woods. Diego sneaked out at night, Dinah limping along in escort, to bring supplies and news. 'Cita seemed to go into shock when she was told that Shepherd Howling had left the planet. Diego had reported that the day after she seemed to relax for the first time and had spontaneous questions for him: Was Coaxtl all right? And was Sean healing, and what was happening to all those left at the Vale of Tears without leadership? Diego said he'd have to find out. Which reminded Yana to ask Adak.

"Well, I got the odd word or two from Loncie that when they'd gone out to collect Scobie's snocle, some woman—Ash-sen-see-on," he said, stumbling over the name, "was more or less in charge. But she was gettin' a lot of argument from folks who said the Shepherd didn't like women bosses."

"Out of the deep freeze and into the permafrost," Sean groaned.

"That was before the tsunami, a' course," Adak added. "Some of the people left of the Bogota group might resettle in the Vale. I hear it's freezing up proper again now."

Then all three fell silent, each wondering privately if there would be resettling along the lines that had worked so well for Petaybee so far.

"Any more surveys on that equatorial island chain that's emerging?" Sean asked, the light of mischief dancing in his silver-gray eyes.

Yana wondered briefly if he'd known that would happen.

"Ah, yes," Adak drawled, grinning to show all his even strong white teeth. "There's copters up, and Johnny and Rick and that other bozo flitting down, doing runs. Right smart-sized islands blossomin' like fireweed, and where it's warm, too. Don't 'spect that was in anybody's plans, now was it?" Adak looked sharply into Sean's face, which wore a bland expression, except for the twinkle in his eyes.

"Well, with volcanoes emerging here in the north, it's possible that there'd be a reaction elsewhere. Though speaking scientifically, the odds are low of so much crystal activity occurring."

"But Petaybee is an unusual planet," Yana said equably, her expression matching Sean's, "so we can expect just about anything!"

"Shouldn't wonder. Won't, either," Adak said, and drained the last of the coffee. Rising, he gave a quaint little bow in Yana's direction, grinned at Sean, and then paused at the door. "What should I be listenin' for now, Shongili?"

"The names of our latest visitors."

In point of fact, it wasn't Adak who brought Yana and Sean that news but Marmion Algemeine, her poise shaken, and Whittaker Fiske, looking glum.

"It couldn't have been a worse selection, really, it couldn't," Marmion said, making for one of the chairs at Yana's table as if her legs would support her no further. With an agitated flourish of one hand, she went on. "I've got my aides checking every man jack of them. And it is every man, too. I was so hoping Metuska Karianovic of KCCE would elect to come, but she's off having some sort of rejuv treatment. Wouldn't you just know!"

"Who did come?" Yana asked as she poured coffee all around.

"Mostly Matthew's palsies," Marmion said with a raising of her arched eyebrows. She pouted her lips. "Though Chas came: Charles Thraves-Tung. He's always reasonable, I'll say that for him. And he does think. He'll appreciate a reasoned argument, which is more than I can say for Bal Emir Jostique." She gave a little shudder of revulsion. "Greasy old man. He'd enjoy having prepubescent girls as wives: as many as he could get."

"He has 'em already, doesn't he?" Whittaker said, regarding her with mild surprise.

"He'll never have enough, but even he has to wait until they're fourteen!" She gave another little spasm of her elegant shoulders, clad today in a soft, dull brown leather. She raised her hand to tick off names. "So we've you, me Chas Tung against Matthew, Bal, that old bag of bones Nexim Roberts Shi-Tu, with Farringer Ball on the monitor acting as chair again."

Whittaker raised his eyebrows. "Do you know that Chas is with us?"

"How could l? You saw how Matthew scrambled his broad young men between us and the new arrivals so we didn't have a chance to say more than 'hello, safe trip' before Matthew whisked them away on his 'survey tour'? Nor was there room for one of us to go or send someone."

Whittaker gave a bark of laughter. "I wouldn't have wanted to go on that trip! And I don't think Matthew won any points by insisting on flying them over the equator. Turbulence was fierce, and neither Nexie nor Bal like their innards disturbed any more than the indigestion their fancy foods give them. Speaking of which, did you notice what was being unloaded from the shuttle for their delectation?"

Marmion made a grimace, which then became a hopeful grin. "Yes, and the chefs who'd know what to do with such provender. Take no offense, Sean, Yana, because I have enjoyed the unusual tastes and texture that only Petaybee can provide, but I'm likely to be the only one, bar Whit here, who would. Terribly spoiled the others are as far as their palates are concerned." Then she frowned again. "Did you notice, too, Whit, that all Matthew's boys look absolutely pooped? He's had them running around night and day. Poor Braddock Makem looks transparent. Does he never let people have time off?"

"Where're yours, Marmie? Whit asked, cocking an eye-brow at her.

She winked. "I don't work them half as hard, but they find out twice as much. And," she said on a sigh, "we'll need every smitch of help we can find with Farringer the tie breaker." Adak burst through the door.

"He's dead!"

"Who's dead," everyone demanded simultaneously.

"That smelly Shanachie Howler!"

"Of what?" Sean asked.

"Smelling himself in a MoonBase cubicle, probably!" Yana quipped.

"Nah! Not a bit of it." Adak shook his head and waved his hands in his excitement. "Get this! He was done in by the same thing as killed Lavelle!"

Yana locked eyes with Sean.

"There's more, too!" Adak was almost spitting in his effort to get the second message out. "Satok had . . ." He turned his eyes to the roof again and recited, "An atrophied node in the cerebellum, only four hundred twenty-three grams of brown fat, and all his vitals was poisoned. Soyuk Ishunt, Clancy Nyangatuk, and Reilly also had atrophied nodes and poisoned organs."

"Was the node in Howling's case mentioned?" Sean asked.

Adak looked down, wrinkling his leathery brown face in deep thought. "Hmmmm . . . think it was, but it wasn't atrophied none." He took another breath. "And they're sending some special medical equipment down. CAT scanner."

Yana couldn't help inhaling at that news and glanced at Sean for reassurance. He cocked an eyebrow in response, but his unworried attitude and relaxed posture still did not relieve her fears that his shape-changing abilities would somehow be revealed by scanning.

On the other hand, Marmion burst out laughing. "One thing sure," she managed to gasp out, "there isn't one built to accommodate Clodagh Senungatuk!"

That observation did provoke chuckles, and the tension in the room went down a few notches.

"But that's probably the only good thought I can express," Marmion went on, "as Nexie's a biochemist and has"—she paused, her expression darkening—" 'other methods' more intrusive and certainly unpleasant."

"We'll see about that," Whittaker said, his eyes narrowing. "Neither Clodagh Senungatuk nor Sean Shongili have committed any crimes against Intergal regulations. Even this house arrest is farcical. Integal cannot subvert CIS civil rights except in circumstances of armed conflict, and Clodagh's squirt bottle doesn't appear on any list of weaponry I've ever seen modern or ancient. Adak, you still got the secured channel?"

"Ah, hmm, well . . ." Adak looked wildly around the room at everyone except Sean, but somehow saw the brief nod.

"C'mon then," Whittaker said, urging Adak to the door and laying an arm across the man's shoulders as they departed. "Be back in a nano."

Marmion looked considerably more cheerful. "Let's hope he can get a message through all the static to the proper authorities. At first, I thought the pilots were just saying that to be obstructive. But it's real now. Do you know what's causing so much interference, Sean?"

"Sure," he replied good-naturedly. "Atmospheric anomalies and the stratospheric turbulences caused by the crustal activity with some vigorous sunspots." Then he paused and creased his brows a little. "Coaxtl told Nanook that the 'home was changing.' According to Bunny, Coaxtl also told that to 'Cita when she was in her charge. But none of the track-cats, nor Clodagh's, for that matter, are the least bit worried."

"They never are," Marmion said wryly.

"Oh, they have been," Sean replied in mild reproof.

Marmion leaned forward, resting one hand lightly on his forearm. "How does she?"

She broke off at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Whittaker and Adak returned, neither looking very pleased. Whittaker almost slammed the door.

"Could barely get the call letters out clear enough to be recognized,'' Whittaker said, frowning with frustration.

"Message was short and maybe too sweet for the kind of action we might need to have available. Got hold of Johnny, too, and asked him to send next time he's above turbulence. Damned planet's messing us all up, and we're the ones trying to help!" He turned on Sean, who seemed unaffected by the communications failure. "Boy, how long can you live on a space station with no immunity?"

"Four, five days."

Yana felt her heart skip a beat and surreptitiously placed one hand over her still-flat belly. How could he announce his life expectancy so calmly?

"Clodagh?"

"Same, but it won't come to that, Whit. Believe me."

Dr. Whittaker Fiske cocked his head toward his right shoulder, planted both fists on the belt that circled his thin waist, and demanded, "If I could believe you, Dr. Shongili, I'd sleep a lot easier, and so would all your friends."

"Believe me, and that's bankable!"

"It is?' Marmion perked up, her fiscal senses alerted.

"Look." Sean splayed one hand, folding a finger down for each point he made. We've got to prove the planet is sentient? We can and we will! We've got to prove that it's in the company's interest to let the settlements remain because they can prove economically profitable, too, ugh not necessarily as predicted from the original surveys. We've got to prove that our ways"—and he gestured to Adak, Yana, who managed a little smile at the compliment, and out the window toward Clodagh's house—"protect an environmental entity from abuse and misuse in the best interests of itself and the company which awakened it." He nodded at Whittaker. "We also have to prove that the charges of malfeasance, misconduct, insubordination, and fraud, which Matthew Luzon's about to level against some of us and/or the entire population, are as ludicrous as Shepherd Howling."

"And smell just as bad," Adak added with a sharp nod of his head.

"Sacre bleu!" Marmion exclaimed. "We're not asking for much, are we?" Then, sighing, she shook her head slowly from side to side. "We got a lot of heavy metal men against us in that crew Matthew's brought down."

"But they're on our turf," Sean said with one of his most charismatic and enigmatic smiles.

"And Matthew's doing his best to predispose them against Marmie and me because we've been so obviously 'taken in'"—Whittaker made the bracket signs with his hands—"by the natives."

"Indigenous personnel, Whit, please," Marmion said in mock petulant correction. "However, I can prove readily enough that I haven't lost my wits or been mesmerized by local sharmans." She rose. "I shall demonstrate it this evening." She gave a little chuckle. "I happen to know that Bal and Nexie lost a few trillions on an enterprise which —and she placed one hand with elegant grace on her chest—"had the good sense to forgo. So we'll leave you." She linked arms with Whittaker and led him out of the house. Just at the door she paused and looked back over her shoulder at Sean, her lovely eyes anxious. "You're positive, Sean, that neither you nor Clodagh are in danger of being removed from this planet!"

He nodded, smiling. "Positive!"

When the door closed on the two, Yana and Adak turned on Sean.

"Positive!

"Positive!" he said, but his mouth had a particularly grim set as he said it.

Chapter 15

To her amazement, Marmion de Revers Algemeine found that her taste had altered during her weeks on Petaybee. The elaborate and extensive array of courses set before the committee members at dinner that evening—an evening fortunately free of tremors, shudders, or shakes—did not suit her palate, much less her mood. She really did prefer the simpler, sharper tastes of Petaybean foods: a rabbit stew would have been far more satisfying than the overly subtle coulis, sauces, and dressings that accompanied each dish. She saw Whittaker making as slow a progress through the banquet as herself, but at least she could cry off on the grounds of watching her diet.

Matthew and Torkel cleared every plate, bowl and platter set before them, but Marmion slyly noticed that like her own three aides, some of Matthew's pretty boys were less than enthusiastic about the rich food. Chas. Bal, and Nexim had no problems, though twice Bal called the head steward over to make muttered complaints and reject a dish after one bite. Maybe his new stomach was developing the same ulcers the old ones had, Marmion thought to herself. A body could have certain dispositions no matter how many parts of it were replaced with functional substitutes.

She did have a chance to obsequiously inquire of Nexie's latest investment projects. That gave her a chance to make a passing reference to the Omnicora Steel Venture, which she had decided was not properly based to make any sort of a profit back on the original investment. She had raised her voice just enough for Matthew to over hear her comments. That would remind him, too, that she had lost none of her acumen. She discussed with Bal the possibility of investing in one of his schemes, which she had recently investigated, though she pointed out one or two organizational problems that should be addressed before she could consider the project. By the fleeting expression on Bal Emir Jostique's face, she had hit the very weak points he must have discovered. That should take care of that, then, if Matthew chose to call her gullible.

She was exhausted with smiling and waxing charming by the time she and Sally could leave the "gentlemen" to whatever it was gentlemen insisted on doing without female company in this stratum of interplanetary society.

"Any luck, dear?" she asked Sally as they both made for their quarters in the wing of the livid yellow building.

"We may need more than luck," Dama," Sally said with a sigh. "Dr. Luzon has got some twists that a Spican contortionist would envy."

"Ah, but we knew he would."

"My report's on your desk, but I really think, ma'am, you need a good night's sleep more. Bad news keeps."

"Thank you, dear. I'll take your advice only if you'll take it yourself."

Sally sighed, for the first time since the start of the tedious dinner party allowing her own fatigue to show, and nodded. "I think I'd best if I'm to be sharp up to the mark tomorrow for you. At least, we have all our facts in hard copy and not innuendoes."

"Sleep well, then."

Others did not. And, later, both Faber and Millard, who had stayed on as courtesy required, admitted that they had not seen the discreet accord that must have been reached during that interval by Matthew, Torkel Fiske, Bal Emir, and Nexim Shi-Tu. They knew that the four must have made a deal during that time, because not even Luzon would have dared to take the draconian measures that followed without the support of Fiske and the other two board members. Marmion blamed herself for having taunted Bal, but she had been pursuing another course of action entirely.

At midnight, the several shuttles that had brought the other commissioners from their separate capitals silently lifted from SpaceBase on their assigned missions. None of the crew or troopers had ever heard of Petaybee before, though what they'd seen of it hadn't impressed them at all. They'd had no rest or more than a hasty meal of hard rations while they erected the detention cells that had been sent along at Luzon's request.

As soon as the soundproofed, windowless two-by-one-meter cells had been erected in one of the empty storage facilities, the shuttles took off for their destinations. Squads had trank guns and orders to use them if any of the detainees resisted arrest. They were also ordered to secure local felines, with a bonus for each one caught.

"Whaddaya think they want cats for? muttered one enlisted man, only to be sharply reprimanded by his troop leader "If they want cats, they get 'em."

The shuttles separated to pick up their passengers at the Vale of Tears. Ascencion was collected, and Lonciana and her husband were dragged out of their beds and barely given a chance to clothe themselves. Loncie protested as loudly and vehemently against such an unwarranted intrusion as only a former chief petty officer could, demanding to see the detention order, while Pablo gave quick and decisive household instructions to Carmelita. At Kabul, Shanachie Chau Xing was collected; at Portage, one of the newer settlements, an irate McDouall swore eloquently that, if this was the sort of cooperation Intergal wanted on Petaybee, they'd had the last of his! At Savoy, they made three pickups: Luka, the out spoken woman, and the man, identified as Eamon Shishmareff, who had been so uncooperative in helping Luzon and Torkel Fiske get across the coo-berry forestation. Fingaard and Ardis Sounik were collected from Harrison's Fjord. It was there that a trooper got a lucky shot into an orange cat and, throwing the stunned carcass over his shoulder, grinned at the thought of the bonus he'd get.

"You shot Shush?" The Harrison's Fjord woman was too indignant to be cowed by the huge trooper.

"Jeez, lady, I just tranked him," the trooper said, backing a step away from the woman, who was nearly as tall as he. But he didn't interfere when she removed the limp cat from his shoulder; she cuddled it in her arms on the way back to SpaceBase and glared at him the entire trip.

Another shuttle picked up the Connellys—father, mother, and Krisuk—at McGee's Pass; Liam Maloney, still visiting at Deadhorse Pass; and then the shanachies of Little Dublin, New Barrow, and Mirror Lake. The third started at Tanana Bay, went on to Shannonmouth, where they collected Aigur and Sheydil, and got to Kilcoole before the fastest cat had had a chance to get halfway there.

Since Adak was among the first taken and the cats had scattered when pursued, Clodagh, Aisling, Sinead, 'Cita, Yana, and Sean were caught unprepared.

"Major Maddock, to you, Lieutenant," Yana had protested furiously, wrapping the bed quilt around her while Sean swung his feet over the side of the bed and unconcernedly pulled on his pants and boots. "Now get out of here while we dress."

"Orders, ma'am, not to let you out of my sight."

"About face, Lieutenant, and I'm not kidding!"

"Neither am I," he said, shifting his weapon threateningly. But to avoid her scathing glance, he stared straight forward, as if at attention.

"Okay then, fine, have it your way, you prurient bastard," Yana said. She stood up and dropped the quilt, straight and proud in her nakedness and inordinately relieved that she was now accustomed enough to the Petaybean temperatures that her flesh did not rise up in embarrassing bumps. Sean moved between her and the offending soldier, but she was not mollified.

''We'll meet again, Lieutenant, under other circumstances," she said softly, and had the pleasure of seeing him flush.

Sean did nothing but stand, leaning slightly in favor of his good leg, between her and the guard, but only when she had pulled on the dress uniform she had folded so carefully in the back of the small clothespress did he drop back beside her to clasp her hand. Then, silently, they were escorted outside.

Outside, the predawn morning was brooding, fog sifting on the sun to keep it from rising to brighten the sky. Suddenly, from the edges of the buildings visible, a black and white bolt flew past.

"No, Nanook!" Sean shouted, and as the troopers, all eager to claim the cat bonus, turned to find their target, they were rewarded with a snarl of such malice that, hardened though this squad was by encounters on many strange planets with many strange beasts, they looked anxious.

The lieutenant recovered first and detailed half his squad to fan out and see if they couldn't get a shot at the creature. Out of the corner of her eye, Yana saw the slight smile on Sean's face. No one was likely to catch Nanook. Coaxtl? She would have been at Sinead's, guarding her person, 'Cita. Yana fretted over that as they passively followed their guards to the shuttle. She could also sense that everyone in the village was awake and watching. That was all they could do with such a superior force.

When Yana saw the range of her fellow captives, her heart sank. Clodagh was as composed as usual, even though she was surrounded by nets of her potions and salves and medications. Hadn't witch-hunts gone out three centuries ago? Yana wondered numbly. Sinead looked furious, lips tightly compressed, while tears ran down Aisling's face, making her oddly more appealing than ridiculous. 'Cita was terrified and clung to Bunny, who had taken her cue from Clodagh and was holding her head proud. Adak looked frightened, as frightened as probably everyone else felt. He had always been the one in the know, the community's link with the base, as well as being a responsible company employee. Now he was just another ip, an "inconvenient person," as Bunny called herself and her fellow Petaybeans. Poor Adak seemed to shrink in on himself when he saw first Yana and then Sean pushed into the shuttle. Then he seemed to gather himself and twitched his shoulders to sit more erect on the hard metal seat.

As Yana was pushed down, she wondered if Diego, Frank, and Whittaker—naw, they wouldn't dare remand a company director, would they?—were missing from the roll of those Matthew considered dangerous dissidents. Then a large male body crowded in between herself and Sean. Looking around, she saw that every Petaybean was separated from another by a trooper—a big, heavily armed trooper.

She grinned broadly. What a back handed compliment.

"Wipe that grin off your face," the nameless lieutenant ordered.

"Son, I outrank you and I've five times as many first-drop bars as you do," Yana said, sounding quietly amused but putting commander-steel in her voice and narrowing her eyes at him. "You can barge into my private quarters and arrest me without due process, but by all that's holy, don't you dare try to deny me the right to react to this whole ridiculous operation!"

The lieutenant, all too aware that she had outfaced him once before and determined not to let her get under his skin again, laughed. "Nothing's ridiculous about this operation and you'd better start believing it now . . . Major!"

"You mean, it isn't ridiculous that it took two squads of heavily armed non-Petaybean troopers transferred from Omnicron Three, Plexus-Four, and Space Station One-Thirty-One to arrest unarmed citizens of a backward, low-tech world."

With a snarl, the lieutenant had gone as far as drawing his hand back when a voice from the cockpit abruptly ordered him forward.

Yana was proud that she had not so much as tensed to take the immininent blow and that her smile had stayed in place. No one spoke, of course, neither Petaybean nor alien trooper, but 'Cita and Aisling stopped weeping, and Clodagh's lips turned up just that little bit.

The moment the shuttle took off, Yana's courage seemed to leak out of her and fear pressed against her guts. She noticed that Clodagh's smile vanished and her lips were set. Bunny, too, looked more apprehensive. It wasn't until the shuttle landed a familiarly short distance away, where the heavy fog was pierced by a great quantity of bright lights of the kind employed only at SpaceBase, that her courage returned. Ah, but she was once more in touch with the planet. Somehow, some way, as yet inexplicable, the planet was aware: and Yana saw that Clodagh's smile had returned.

Yana's apprehensions returned, doubled, the moment they were marched out of the shuttle, which had landed right by an anonymous block of temporary housing. Though it was hard to see more than a few feet beyond her, Yana could tell from the only glance she had time for that they were at the far end of SpaceBase. It wasn't that large a facility by company standards, but being at the far end would place them at an awkwardly long distance from the administrative area and any help from Marmion Algemeine or Whittaker Fiske, if he was still at large.

Inside the building, bare corridors were brightly lit, and lined with doors, depressingly close together. That made this, she thought glumly, a temporary detention center: small cells, no amenities, and no communication between the reluctant residents.

A sergeant with a clipboard merely pointed a stylus to the right and they were led that way. Yana was thrust in the second room, and the door closed behind her with the odd thunk of a noise-proofed construction. A single strip of bright lighting, a blanket, a toilet, and a washbasin completed the furnishings. The temperature would have been chilly to those accustomed to space stations, but Yana was comfortable in it. Score one! She used the toilet, washed her face with her hands, and dried herself on one edge of her blanket. She took off her boots, tunic, and pants and laid them neatly on the rough carpet, then rolled up in the blanket and told herself to go back to sleep.

Chapter 16

"It's a cat, common domestic Terran-type feline, female weighing just above a kilo, which makes it somewhat larger." the veterinary surgeon said after doing every test he could think of on the limp orange-striped body that had been brought in. "Scanner shows no unusual organs, average brain size, average everything, except a dense fur of several layers, probably a requirement to survive in the temperatures you say exist in winter on this planet. It does have large ears, with more fur growing across—doubtless to prevent snow getting in—and a phenomenal length of whiskers. It does have heavily callused paw pads, with hair growing between the toes, and a long-haired tail, but I've never seen a healthier animal. And I can't find anything out of the ordinary about it, given its environment. For instance, the hair between the paws would make it easier to travel over snow."

"You have the report?" Ivan asked. The vet tapped one key of his handheld pad, and a narrow, long sheet inched its way out of the paper slot. He handed it to Ivan. 'Thank you."

"What do I do with that cat?"

Ivan hesitated. He knew what Matthew had ordered, but what had the cat done to him? "Keep it under observation. Maybe awake, it will show some deviations."

The vet shrugged and gave a small snort. "Cats are deviant, and devious, by nature. Exactly What sort of aberrant behavior is this one supposed to exhibit when conscious? I mean, give me a clue to know what to watch out for."

"Maybe one isn't enough," Ivan muttered under his breath, then added louder, "No other squad caught one?"

"No other's been brought in to me." The vet stifled a yawn.

Another was brought in two hours later, only it wasn't a cat: it was a crossbreed feline that the vet couldn't find mention of in his files. It was nearly the size of the lions that had once roved Africa, had a thick coat of dense fur with a clouded-spot design, had the fangs and retractable claws of a tiger, and had to be tranked again before the vet and the four troopers struggling with the half-aware creature could put it under the scan.

Awed by its size, beauty, and uniqueness, the vet, when Matthew Luzon himself came for his report, could only verify that this was an unusual breed of feline.

"In what way?" Matthew asked with an edge to his voice that put the vet on the alert.

"Size, color, density of fur, condition, in that most feral animals are less well nourished," he answered, shrugging.

"No unusual organs? The size of the brain?"

"Normal for the size of the skull certainly." Suddenly the vet decided not to mention that that was the one particular in which the animal varied from any other specimen in the genus: its skull was larger, to accommodate the larger brain.

"Destroy it," Matthew said. "And do an autopsy. I'm looking for a scientific explanation of the so-called communication link these creatures have with the humans here. Implants, maybe."

"Sir, for that sort of information wouldn't behavioral observation be more—"

"Destroy it! Do I have to give orders twice?"

"No, sir." The vet wheeled around and made a show of filling a syringe and plunging the sterile water into the back of the neck. There were certain orders he would not obey, not with the oath he had taken as a young idealist who planned to catalog marvelous new alien life-forms. "Takes about twenty minutes, sir, with an animal this size."

But Matthew Luzon had already left the surgery and the vet wondered where the hell he could safely dispose of a sleeping animal this size without being noticed. He was still running through alternatives a half hour later when a major with two soldiers, one a massive man and the other a mere slip of a lad, appeared at the door, saying they had orders to collect a dead animal. Reluctantly, he showed them the unconscious beast and desperately hoped that the second trank would wear off soon enough that the creature could escape being buried alive. Sometimes the favors one tried to do could boomerang.

He was very unhappy with what had seemed like a routine mission. None of the animals that had passed through his facility that day had been unusual except for their obvious adaptations to the climatic conditions of this peculiar place—although the purpose of that extra bony layer on the nose of the curly-coated stallion still puzzled him. The interior nasal flap was listed as a characteristic of the breed and kept icy winds from penetrating to their lungs. And now Luzon was intimating that the creatures might be—well, psychic! He never willingly destroyed an animal wantonly. and certainly not a psychic one!

Utterly depressed, he went to the cubicle allotted to him and tried to sleep. He woke up, even more depressed, for his dream had been about a clouded leopard running across a snowy waste, its effortless stride as graceful as it was powerful.

Awake. Coaxtl found, one had a dreadful thirst. One's body was slightly sore with pricks, scrapings, and bruisings, and one's senses were dull. Rolling over, one ducked one's head because of the low bushes under which one lay. A sniff brought no useful information as to one's location. The pursuers, men who rattled as they ran and shouted, were gone, though Coaxtl seemed to remember them being close enough to pounce. No mind. Now they were gone,

Unfortunately, the youngling was gone as well, still, and if Coaxtl had escaped the men, they had triumphed in preventing Coaxtl from finding the youngling.

Coaxtl had seen the little female forced into a huge bird machine, bigger than the terrible creature that had carried Coaxtl, the youngling, the seal-man, and his mate to this land where the youngling was to live with her kin. Where the black-and-white Nanook had been interested in one as a mate. Nanook had had much to tell Coaxtl, who had listened with growing wonder. More than "Home" was changing, it would seem. "Home" had indeed altered, if one could be so robbed of sense and then dumped unceremoniously under a thicket.

There was, however, some snow still left in the center of the shrubbery, and Coaxtl licked at it. The cool silvery water relieved the nasty, stinging taste and dryness in one's mouth, while the cold snow and the water seeping into one's fur revived one further.

Food would be a good thing. One lifted one's head and sniffed, sneezed. Too many humans, too many bad smells. Nothing appetizing nearby. Through the wind and the distant man—made noises came the rush of water. Water always held fish, and fish were edible. Yes, one could quite easily snag many fish on clever, swift claws and relieve one's hunger. Then one could plan what to do next. Finding Nanook would be best. This was his territory. He would know where to seek the youngling.

As dawn broke over the low hills and the new volcano, Coaxtl scooped the fourth large fish from the icy river waters, then continued standing, motionless until more unsuspecting aquatic shapes passed nearby. Coaxtl had eaten well by the time the sun was up.

Marmion did sleep well, but more because of Sean's infallible confidence than Sally's reassurance about demonstrable facts. When she woke the next morning, she was more than ready for the battle about to ensue.

She was not ready for Sally bursting into her room, her eyes wide with fright.

"They did it. Gathered up every one of the people Luzon calls 'renegades and traitors,' using the commissioners' shuttles and troops we didn't even suspect were on board them," she said in a spurt. "They've got them in detention cells on the far side of the field."

"Whittaker? Marmion experienced an unusual pang of fear. Had she outsmarted herself last night? Whittaker would never have gone along with that sort of a ploy.

"No, he's free, and so are Frank and Diego Metaxos, and I told Faber to stay with them. Millard's dogging Whittaker, who is furious!"

Marmion bit her lower lip, ranging through alternative plans. Who, exactly, did they seize in such a highly irregular procedure?"

"Only half the damned planet, including the wildlife," Sally said. By the time she had completed the list, Marmion found herself grinding her teeth.

She launched herself out of her bed toward the bathroom. "Get me my usual, and buckets of coffee, and what channel are we using this morning on our personal units?"

Sally gave her the frequency. "And I'm making your breakfast with my own hands," she said as she departed.

That made Marmion pause at the threshold of her bath. Surely Matthew . . . No, he wouldn't, but Bal wouldn't be beyond it. The ploy of detaining the persons the commission would call before them was a matter she could—and would—protest, since none of them could be proven guilty of any action against Intergal, unless a passive resistance was now considered a crime. All the active resistance had come from the planet. And Intergal doubted that this world had a mind of its own! She allowed herself a rather ruthless smile, one that had many times alarmed business colleagues who opposed her, as the hot shower water completed the process of waking her up. She was already clothed and discreetly made up by the time Sally arrived with a laden tray.

"Place is in an uproar, Dama," Sally reported, her usually cheery demeanor rather forced today. "All of Matthew's lovelies running about with streamers of hard copy, all of which seems to upset them for some reason. I saw Braddock Makem taking one of the others to task for coming up with results that were the opposite of what Luzon had ordered. Couldn't find out much more. The place is as well guarded as a first-touchdown camp, and more troops were shuttled in from, I think, the CISS Prometheus."

Marmion paused in the act of pouring her first, badly needed cup of coffee. She stared at Sally, aghast. "They've called in a CISS cruiser? But they're not authorized to call in CIS until this matter has gone through committee and up the chain of command. Otherwise, of course, I'd have preempted them and already called in CIS myself."

"You might remember, Dama, that the captain of the Prometheus is a nephew of Vice-Chairman Luzon."

"Scuttled, are we?" Challenge only made Marmion sharper. "We'll just see about this!"

"I must also inform you, Dama—" Sally's face was sad and angry. "I heard that a large clouded feline was seen being wheeled into the veterinary surgery early this morning."

"Ah, not Coaxtl!" Marmion took a deep breath and, eyes glittering, added fiercely, "It's bad enough that the humans of this world have to be mauled and pushed around like pawns, but when the beautiful animals are . . . Well, there's a thing or two Patrick Matthew Olingarch-Luzon will not want to hear as public gossip back at Space Station One-Thirty-One!" She downed the coffee in one gulp, poured another cup, and then went to the work desk and her terminal.

Chapter 17

Yana was roughly aroused by an imperative hard shaking and looked up to see two of the Omnicron troopers, truncheons in their hands. One of them gestured for her to get up. When she went toward her clothes, they each caught an elbow. She shrugged, as much as she could in their grip, and did her best to match their long strides down the hall to the end and an open door, through which she was pushed with sufficient strength to propel her several meters into the room. The smell and the appurtenances told her it was medical. A male orderly swung through the open door on the right, a paper shift in his hands. He gave it to her and gestured to the screen.

She took it with a flicker of a smile. The silent treatment continued as she stepped out from behind the screen and was marched, strong fingers gripping her elbow, through the open door.

CAT scan, she thought as she saw the huge cylinder, and she nearly burst out laughing, remembering Marmion's observation that Clodagh would never fit in that, though the circumference of the equipment was wide enough for most human bodies.

She endured the prodding and probing, took the jars and produced the specimens, and had rather a lot of blood samples taken. She was crowned with the metal band of one of the more sophisticated brain-function devices she'd ever seen and sat through that while her reflexes were tested and she was pricked with more needles and had patches slapped on and pulled off. The doctor who performed the gynecological examination did a double take when he realized she was pregnant—at her age!—but murmured automatic reassurances that the fetus seemed to be in good shape. She was put up on a treadmill; and as it moved, she had to run faster and faster to keep from falling. When they stopped that test, she was barely puffing—and rather pleased that she was so fit. She waited passively, while the various medics had a huddle. The oldest of them, and he couldn't be more than her own age, finally gestured to the orderly and she was taken back to collect her underwear and then marched back to her cell.

She reckoned the examination had taken approximately an hour. As she put her underwear back on, she grinned, thinking of the CAT scan and the treadmill, which wouldn't accommodate either Clodagh or Aisling. She put the medical gown on again, rolled up in the blanket, and tried to get more sleep. She hoped the others, no doubt undergoing the same procedures, weren't unnerved by the silent treatment, which was supposed to demoralize the recipient. She wondered who else had been grabbed in the midnight snatches and finally fell asleep listing them in her head.

An earsplitting siren hooted her awake and she dressed quickly, not wishing to be caught again. A ration bar and a plastic cup of water were delivered by a silent guard while another watched, idly tapping his left hand with the truncheon. She said nothing as she accepted the food. She did, however, sniff the water before taking a sip to roll around in her mouth; but it was good Petaybee water, and the ration bar was standard Intergal in its original wrapping, complete with bar-coding. To her practiced eye, she read an expired date, but that oddly reassured her that nothing had been "treated."

She was sitting cross-legged, doing some relaxation exercises, when she felt the rumble under her buttocks: faint but definitely a seismic tremor.

"Good ol' Petaybee, you're not letting them get away with this, are you!"

"No talking!" The command was issued from a hidden speaker.

Yana reprimanded herself for not thinking to look for a bug, but of course they'd be listening in on all their prisoners, testing the efficacy of the silent treatment on the various personalities.

"Whatever!" she murmured, just to be contrary.

Commissioner Matthew Luzon had been awakened at two o'clock by Braddock as the first of the medical reports was presented. They proceeded to spew out of the remote printer in his office at regular intervals. He noted that Major Yanaba Maddock was two months pregnant and wondered just how he could use that fact to best advantage. He ignored the fact that she was in excellent physical health, no sign of the lung-tissue damage that had discharged her from active service. That was a harder issue to make viable to his needs.

Sean Shongili, too, was in excellent physical shape. The scan showed the largest of the cerebral nodes yet noticed, also, the largest brown fat concentration and an enlarged pancreas. His toes and fingers were abnormally long but could not be considered either an adaptation or a mutation; the slight increase in digital webbing was odd, but not entirely exceptional. They had been unable to get clear readings of his internal organs—the medic claimed that slight earth tremors prevented him from being able to calibrate the machine properly the whole time Shongili was being tested—but these were evidently functioning normally according to other forms of testing.

Matthew, who knew what he had seen at the Vale of Tears, had his suspicions about the internal organs, but realized he might have to win his case before he could take Shongili off-planet where sufficiently extensive invasive tests could be performed. He knew the man was not normal, but none of the tests he could legally conduct here provided enough data. Just little things: a slight anomaly in configuration noted that Shongili's torso was inappropriately longer than his legs. If his leg bones had grown in proportion to his body, he would have been several inches taller. This was not considered unduly important, but his unusual lung capacity was, along with a high metabolic rate while his blood pressure was on the low side of normal.

They had been unable to scan the woman, Clodagh Senungatuk, and had barely managed to fit her sister, Aisling, in the device. While obese in medical terms, the women were also in excellent health and, since Aisling Senungatuk had a well-developed node and five hundred grams of brown fat, it could be concluded that her unscanable elder sister was similarly endowed.

Analysis was continuing on the various liquids and powders found in Clodagh Senungatuk's house, but so far they tested as herbal, with some minerals, mineral salts, and occasional animal-protein additives. Nothing toxic or poisonous had yet been found. When questioned on the usage of various items, the subject had answered willingly and at some length, describing preparation when asked and the places where she obtained the ingredients. The biochemists in charge of this aspect of the investigation were clearly impressed by the almost sophisticated pharmaceuticals available in such a primitive society. In the course of questioning her, it was learned that Senungatuk's great-grandparents had been the resident biochemists during the initial seeding of flora and fauna on Terraform B, working with the elder Dr. Shongili. Senungatuk had an exceptional memory and, although she reeled off by rote long passages of biochemical procedures, she obviously understood the material she recited.

Matthew Luzon excised that section from the report. In fact, if the medical procedures hadn't also been intended to demoralize the renegades, he would have stopped the examinations as a waste of time. The "splendid physical health" was not at issue and was not to last long in the conditions to which he intended to send them all—if what Maddock had told Torkel was true: and Shepherd Howling's unexpected demise upheld his theory. He was rubbing his hands together in pleasure when he felt the rumbling under his feet. That gave him a moment's pause. But only a moment. Seismic activity was no proof of sentience, as Whittaker and some others claimed. It only proved that the Terraform B program had developed unforeseen problems. On the other hand, he now had plenty of proof of subversion and sabotage among the inhabitants and a premeditated homicide in the deaths of the four shanachies. He also had proof that the belief in the sentience of this rock was not at all universal.

"Braddock," he called. The young man appeared immediately. "Find out how widespread this seismic activity is and how long it will last. I don't want it affecting the conference time slot."

Braddock gave him a startled look, then said an obedient "Yes, sir" and ducked away.

Matthew then turned to some of the other reports his minions had been organizing. The demographics were not what he had anticipated. The first settlers had been from mixed Eskimo-Irish, Scandinavians, Sherpans, Andean Indians, Slavs, Somalis, Afghans, and a handful or two of other inconvenient people who had had to be removed. Most of those he considered "renegades" were Eskirish, a really absurd combination in terms of melding violence and resourcefulness. Whatever had the original Intergal committee been thinking of to allow such interbreeding!

The most recent colonists, whom he had hoped would be untouched by the local superstitions, so resented their resettlement that they had been remarkably uncooperative. They would prove hostile witnesses even if they hadn't fallen under the mass hallucination that the planet was self-aware. They were not interested in working in mines, even at the wages Matthew, in the name of Intergal, had offered: they were interested in either getting off Petaybee or, failing that, in surviving the next year. He must find out why George, Ivan, and Hans had completely ignored the possibilities in that wish. Not like them to miss an opportunity. If he'd had a little more time, he might have used the wedge to his advantage. He did have a Scotsman on hand, antagonistic or not, and Ascencion—now that she had been thoroughly bathed and properly clothed—as witnesses that not all settlements believed as the people of Kilcoole did. But the time spent gathering most of these reports had been wasted. He tossed them aside and picked up the files dealing with the four recently deceased shanachies.

This was more like it. Each of them, Satok, Reilly, Soyuk, Clancy, and Shepherd Howling, had been leaders of their communities and actively trying to find the ores that Intergal knew lay below the surface of the planet. Torkel could verify that Satok had showed him rich samples. Satok had also found an ingenious way to neutralize the "mesmeritic" effect of the caves by the use of Petraseal, before his work had been sabotaged by what Matthew suspected was the deliberate planting of coo-brambles, which had not only broken through the Petraseal, but had murdered Satok as well. Clearly an attempt to discredit the technique, as well as silence its innovator.

Not that that murder had worked! Matthew grinned. That woman would be punished. And it had only proved that the metals were there, in these so-called "communion" caves. Of course, it was entirely typical of primitive peoples, or regressed ones, to designate valuable areas as somehow "taboo" to scientific study and use. But such thinking was backward and counter productive on a company facility such as this planet. Part of Matthew's mission was to expose such cultural backwardness' for what they were and suggest reform programs to re-educate the natives while helping the company make maximum use of the resources.

Usually he felt no personal involvement whatsoever, merely a sense of satisfaction at a mission well done. But Petaybee—Terraform B—irritated him. If he had any influence at all, and he did have—a nephew captaining the CISS Prometheus specifically—no matter what any one of these primitives said or did or claimed that the planet said or did, it would be mined of every ounce worth even a half credit.

He'd sent Torkel Fiske to find at least one vein of ore—anything would do, copper, iron, manganese, silver, gold, platinum, germanium—in the underground passages to prove that the indigenous people had deliberately kept Intergal scientists and engineers from locating the ores; that there had been a long-standing passive resistance and discreet sabotage to prevent Intergal from reaping the financial rewards of its investment in the terraforming process. He had also sent a team to Shannonmouth with metal detectors to find where the traitors had hidden the ores they had clandestinely taken from Satok's shuttle. He would heavily emphasize how long these Petaybeans had been bilking Intergal of its rightful gains.

That sort of accusation would strike a punitive chord in the minds of men like Bal Jostique and Nexim Shi-Tu, and quite likely affect Chas's known soft heartedness. Marmie's little supercilious smirk last night over their bad investment had not endeared her to Bal and Nexim.

His nephew was standing by in the CISS Prometheus. All the troops on SpaceBase now were strangers to this planet and incorruptible, and the Petaybee-born troops that Torkel had unwittingly ordered in before had been rounded up and confined to barracks. The two arrogant copter pilots were incarcerated as well for their obstructionism and would face a court-martial for their crafty dodges. The only drawback to his revenge on O'Shay and Greene was that they wouldn't suffer from immune deficiencies as much as the other Petaybeans soon to be removed from their "beloved" planet.

Marmion, too, felt the rumbling through the thick carpet and smiled. Just what could the planet do to impress the unimpressable, who had seen it all, done it all? Only they hadn't, had they? She gave a light laugh, although she could not ignore the cramping of her stomach muscles as the time for the meeting approached.

Chapter 18

The committee convened at 10:00 promptly. Matthew had had even smaller, padded detention cells set up in an annex by the temporary boardroom. All prisoners were present and accounted for, although the sergeant in charge had reported that the medics had insisted that the child, Goat-dung, be placed with her sister or they wouldn't take responsibility for her sanity when it came time for her to be questioned. Matthew shrugged that off. An eleven-year-old was not necessary, not really. The testimony of Shepherd Howling's senior wife, Ascencion, would be more than sufficient.

He looked about for Torkel, who had had time enough to locate at least one viable ore site. Not seeing the captain among those in the anteroom, he told Ivan to locate the man and have him come, with or without samples. As a well-respected officer of Intergal, Fiske's word would be sufficient.

As he entered the committee room, Chas, Bal, and Nexim were standing by the windows, watching the thick mist left over from the night rolling across the cracked concrete landing field of SpaceBase. Matthew frowned. The met report had been that the fog would burn off and that they would have clear weather and temperatures slightly above normal for Petaybee this time of year—still too bloody cold, in Luzon's opinion, for civilized people—but nothing had been said about ground fog continuing right into the day. With an unusual burst of imaginativeness, he realized that he considered this fog to be unnatural, sneaking and insidious in the way it moved, stifling in the way it muffled sound and prevented a clear field of vision.

Shaking off such thoughts, he grabbed Braddock, walking a pace behind him, arms full of notes and documentation, and told him in a low voice to close the blinds. He didn't want any distractions during the proceedings.

Marmion arrived at the dot of the appointed hour, smiling charmingly to everyone, with just that tall bitch of hers in attendance. She looked pleased about something. Well, that would change! And swiftly, Matthew thought with great satisfaction. As chair person of this commission, her ladyship grandly invited all to be seated.

The blankness of the main screen altered swiftly to an image of the secretary-general of Intergal, Farringer Ball, seated at his desk, tapping the end of a stylus on the finely grained wood surface.

"Well, let's not dally. I've other matters to attend this morning." A spray of "snow" across the screen coincided with a rumbling that all could feel, judging by their reactions, as Matthew did, through the soles of their feet and the vibration of their chairs. "What the—I'm losing reception. Get your technicians to stabilize it!"

Matthew signaled for George to do so. "Local interference, Farringer, nothing to worry about. This is, as you know, a very primitive planet and the equipment all but obsolete. Generally adequate enough for the purpose, especially considering the time and investment already expended on this wretched place."

"Let's cut to the bone: Can this planet be made profitable?"

"Yes, actually it can," Marmion said, pouncing in ahead of Matthew. "As chair person of this committee, in case you'd forgotten, I have no doubts about that, Farrie." She gave him her saccharine smile.

"You've found the ores then?" secretary-general Ball asked hopefully.

"Petaybee is more important to Interga1 for a heretofore unexplored source of renewable wealth," Marmion said firmly, "that will require no further capital expenditure while it offers gainful employment to permit the indigenous a decent standard of living as well as a profit for Intergal, and will attract no retaliation from the sentient being who is the planet."

"Oh, come now, Marmion, you can't prove that," Matthew said scornfully, "and you know you can't."

"The pharmaceutical wealth of Petaybee?" She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Why, the reports from your own team of biochemists are quite clear on that point, Matthew. This planet is a treasure trove of diverse and easily harvested medical components."

Seething, Matthew managed a weak smile. How had Marmion Algemeine got hold of those reports? He had told the head of the team to release information to no one but himself. But then, his team had seriously let him down, their performance declining ever since he had left them alone while he flew to the southern continent. Usually they and their computers were masterful at manipulating statistics to show the results he desired. Since his return, almost every report he looked at reflected data supporting conclusions the opposite of those he wished drawn. More than Petaybean heads would roll when this conference was over.

And where the hell was Torkel Fiske?

"Pharmaceuticals? What pharmaceuticals?" Farringer Ball demanded, looking decidedly interested.

Matthew inwardly writhed. Everyone knew that the secretary-general experimented in consciousness stimulation's and was still searching for longer-lasting mood adjusters with no side effects.

"Yes, Farrie, some really marvelous concoctions and remedies, guaranteed pure and free of toxic additives and remarkably no discernible side effects," Marmion went on. "Preparations which, if merchandised properly—that Nova Bene Drug Company you've an interest in," she added, hesitating only briefly over that allusion, —could promote them in an interplanetary campaign—will substantially reduce the debt incurred by the earlier, and unacceptable, purpose of Intergal on this planet. Indeed, we have every reason to believe the planet will assist us in this venture, provided harvesting is carried out in a responsible and prudent manner."

"As it assisted the murders of four shanachies who had discovered the vast metal and mineral wealth of this rockball?" Matthew asked.

"Murders? What murders?" Farringer looked from one to the other.

"Five, in fact," Matthew said challengingly, "since the shanachie of the Vale of Tears was so convinced that he would be the next victim that I naturally afforded him asylum on MoonBase."

"Five? Four? He's dead, too? Of what?" Farringer Ball was again confused.

"He unfortunately succumbed to a virulent respiratory infection three days ago," Matthew said quickly, and then pointed behind him, in the direction of the detention cells, "but his death, as well as the murders of the four shanachies, is directly attributable to the concerted program of sabotage, misdirection, and treason perpetrated by the leaders of this conspiracy against Intergal."

"Who?" the secretary-general asked, more confused by Matthew's rhetoric than ever.

"By the woman, Clodagh Senungatuk—"

"The Kilcoole biochemist and healer of considerable expertise," Whittaker Fiske interposed amiably.

"Who, before witnesses, admitted to knowing the toxic quality of the plant which was instrumental in the deaths of the four shanachies!" Matthew snapped back, trying to keep his growing frustration under control. "And the so-called doctor Sean Shongili, the reputed genetic scientist who has in fact, aided and abetted Senungatuk in her program of sabotage, subversion, and the estrangement of the population from their natural protectors, Intergal!—

"What a load of cod's wallop!" Whittaker said, shaking his head and raising his eyes skyward at Matthew's accusations.

"Not only that!" Matthew went on, "I find that Captain Torkel Fiske's request for a court-martial of Major Yanaba Maddock, formerly an agent of Intergal, has adequate grounds on charges of treason and counter espionage. She's in league with Senungatuk and Shongili and, further more, two months pregnant by someone or other!" He said the last four words scathingly.

"I thought Major Maddock was discharged to this planet in a terminally disabled physical condition," Chas Tung said as he peered at his own note pad. "She's certainly well over the customary age to conceive a child." He looked around for an explanation.

"Which is more proof that the healing powers of this planet's pharmaceutical wealth are most unusual," Whittaker Fiske said, chortling, "and worth a packet to Intergal."

"Rubbish! Ridiculous!" Matthew replied. "The true value of this planet is, after evacuating the immigrant population, the minerals and resources Intergal has invested in during its development and has every right to ship from it, until it is nothing but the core of ice and rock it was when the company first set eyes on it. Once we have extracted what is rightfully ours, we can leave it all by itself again."

"Ha!" Whittaker jabbed a finger at Matthew. "You said it yourself. You believe it's sentient, too. "Leave it all by itself!" See, Luzon admits sentience."

"I admit nothing of the sort! Rock can't have sentience! That can't be proved."

Everything on the table began to rattle; on the screen, Fallinger Ball's livid, baffled countenance dissolved and reformed several times.

"It just was proved by that tremor, Luzon," Whittaker Fiske said.

"The esteemed doctor has lost his esteemed mind, sir, you see?" Matthew crowed over Fiske's softer voice. "He now interprets every perfectly natural phenomenon as some sort of statement by the ground he walks upon."

Fiske didn't even change expressions as he continued, when Matthew ran out of breath. "Furthermore"—Fiske pointed to a thin mist oozing through the seams of the building, floor, walls, and ceiling—"you may be about to partake of the 'mass hallucination,' as my dear son called it, as proof positive of our claims of sentience."

"What's hap'ing . . . there?" the secretary-general demanded, the ' snow" and static interfering on both sides. "How . . . I possibly un . . stand what's going on when I . . . even . . . clearly. Luz . . . what's . . . matter?"

Matthew was irritated not only by the poor reception but also by the mist seeping in under the doors and the supposedly tightly sealed window fittings. He was further distracted by the note handed him by Braddock that told him that Torkel was unable to locate SpaceBase in the thick mist and his pilot, one of the Prometheus's flight lieutenants, would not risk his craft and his passengers when he couldn't see where to land.

The secretary-general banged a gavel fiercely. "Fix that . . . screen. Stop . . . fusing issues. Marm . . . on, can you clar . . . matters?"

"I have, Farrie. And we're working on the reception here. The technician should have things cleared up in a moment. Please raise your hand if you can't hear me. The planet's worth more as a pharmaceutical source, renewable in perpetuity, than as another strip-mining operation," she said. "I have had cooperation from all sides and professions on this planet. The indigenous population are hardy, industrious, resourceful people—they have to be to survive in what is a harsh environment. But for four generations they have coped and provided Intergal with strong, healthy recruits who have been a credit to the service and their planet. They have sabotaged nothing, even though the company has given them precious little assistance. This planet, however, registered a complaint which Whittaker Fiske and Torkel—if he'd admit it, have heard, and this committee is in response to that complaint. Petaybee, the planet, has refused to be exploited in a brutal and ecologically senseless fashion. Its complaint is not only valid but points us in the more feasible and useful direction of considering alternative sources of profit. Why ruin a world for crass metal when its wealth in renewable products is by far greater and longer lasting? I have myself experienced the total communication with it that Whittaker here and most of the population have enjoyed, and hallucination it is not, as Whittaker has already testified."

At that point, the door opened, admitting an Omnicron officer who, despite Matthew's scowl, presented him with a large green rock, veined deeply in orange, and a note.

"Aha!" Matthew sprang to his feet, flourishing the rock toward the screen. "The ore samples that were removed from Satok's craft have been found by metal detector in the woods at Shannonmouth, where they were illegally removed from his vessel and hidden: yet another example of the sabotage that is almost planetwide. This is high-grade copper, according to this quick assay."

"Copper? Is that the best you can do, Matthew? Copper?" Nexim Shi-Tu demanded. "Not gold, or platinum . . ."

"Lieutenant, did you see any gold or platinum among the samples? Matthew asked, his eyes gimleting the Omnicron man.

"Sir, I wouldn't know either in the raw state. I was told to bring this to you because it's the purest of the lot we found."

"Pure copper is not to be sneezed at," Marmion said without a trace of sarcasm, "but hardly in the same category as a respiratory remedy that cures damaged lung tissue, now is it?" A technician bent and spoke to her and she said to the screen, which was still fuzzy but not so noisy "Is that better now, Farrie?"

"Yes, I believe it is. Continue."

"D'you have something for immaculate conceptions, too?" Bal asked slyly.

"By whom is Major Yanaba Maddock pregnant, Marmion?"

She shrugged. "Let's not digress from the purpose of this commission, gentlemen. Major Maddock's personal life is not at issue in this hearing and should not be at issue in any other hearing as long as she has obeyed her orders."

"Aha!" And Matthew once more jumped to his feet. "That's just it. She hasn't obeyed orders."

"But she did," Marmion replied firmly. "As she was instructed by Colonel Giancarlo, she became a part of the society of Kilcoole and set about learning as much as she could about Petaybee. She learned a great deal, although it was not, perhaps, what her superiors had expected her to discover."

"Where is she?" Barringer Ball asked, looking around the room. "She was the uniformed one from our first conference, wasn't she?"

"I believe she has been detained on Vice-Chairman Luzon's orders," Marmion said, turning to Matthew with a suddenly implacable expression on her composed, elegant face, "another breach of the civil rights of Intergal officers." And that's for the record, Farringer," she added sternly. "Even an Intergal commissioner cannot go about denying officers their civil rights."

"Of course I had her detained," Matthew almost shouted back, "as an unrepentant renegade ally of the Kilcoole Group. As a matter of course, I had medical tests run on all the renegades—"

"Why?" Whittaker cracked that one word out. "What right had you to impose a restriction on any one of the citizens of this world? I've told you once and I'll keep on telling you: They are not sabotaging Intergal. Intergal is sabotaging itself on Petaybee."

"Oh, come now!" Matthew said, his voice dripping with scorn and the indignation that, rather to his surprise, he found he was actually shaking with. Or was that indignation causing him to shake? It seemed to be shaking everyone else, too, and the table, as well.

Fiske was continuing, heedlessly. "By denying the demonstrable proof that the pharmaceutical wealth will be a long-term and highly profitable use of Petaybee. So what did your needless medical tests prove?" Typical of the man, he had no sooner asked the question than he answered it himself. "Not a damn thing except they're the healthiest bunch of people your tame medical staff has seen in a hunk of years. So they've a few spare parts that help them adapt to Petaybee's climate. So what? Nothing mysterious."

"Vice-Chairman Luzon has been so busy he hasn't seen the obvious, Farrie," Marmion said with a hint of sympathy for the misguided Luzon. "I'm sure we can come to some arrangement to extract some ores when they don't involve disturbing invasions of Petaybee's integrity. Open-pit mining is as disfiguring as deep-pit mining is—is—"

"You're saying the damned planet feels mining operations?" Farminger Ball demanded, staring with round eyes at Marmion.

"Just as much as you'd feel a bone drill for a marrow sample: an archaic example, but then most mining methods verge on the archaic, as well as the destructive," Marmion remarked. "Certainly it's like peeling skin from an appendage, or suffering first-degree burns, and even you can appreciate how painful that would be."

"Marmion de Revers Algemeine," Farringer Ball began at his most pompous, "do you actually subscribe to the theory that this planet is sentient?"

"I most certainly do. And so do Sally Point-Jefferson, Millard Ephiasos, and Faber Nike, and you know very well, Farrie, that none of them are the least susceptible to 'illusions' or 'hallucinations,' not with the reports they have submitted to you on various occasions which I need not specifically mention."

Matthew interrupted with a contemptuous gesture and his silkiest tone. "Madame Algemeine is a beautiful, intelligent woman, quite talented at making money, well adapted to survive under civilized circumstances, but she is used to dealing with people of the same sensibility. Here, I fear that she has fallen under the influence of the same primitive passions that claimed the major's good sense and caused her to cast disrepute on her previously outstanding military record. A lady of such refinement as our chairperson . . ." Matthew shrugged, but was gratified by the rising color flooding across the delicate flesh on Marmion's aristocratic cheekbones and slender neck. "In the best interest of Intergal, I'm requesting—no, demanding—a purge of all residents on this colony planet due to their almost unanimous obstructive behavior, the deliberate sabotage of Intergal expeditions, and subversions too numerous to list. And I charge Major Yanaba Maddock with treasonable activities; captains O'Shay and Greene for deliberate acts of sabotage and treason to this investigation; Dr. Sean Shongili for willful acts, including homicide, against the best interests of Intergal, whom he has contracted to serve; Clodagh Senungatuk for—" He paused to look down at his list.

"Oh, great stars in the sky, Matthew," Marmion said, with a laugh, "how many people did you steal away from their homes in the middle of the night to remand on such ridiculous, trumped-up charges?"

"Don't laugh too soon, Marmion," Matthew said severely. "Not when community leaders have been slain to prevent them from disclosing local lodes to Intergal officials."

Unfortunately, his long list had given Marmion time to recover her composure and her rather deplorable sense of humor. "And please remember to indict whoever it was you allege seduced me to primitive passions, Matthew." She winked at him in a childish way, then added disparagingly, "Do be sensible, Matthew, and face the facts you've helped gather. The autopsy reports clearly state death by misadventure—"

"A highly toxic plant was purposefully allowed to infest the ore locations—"

"To spring up overnight? That's quite a green thumb, Matthew!" Marmion snapped back. "How can anyone, other than by actual planting and nourishing over a considerable period of time, tell a plant where to grow? Besides which, you've been so busy quizzing innocent folk about all kinds of misdemeanors that you never took a look at the records of four of those 'murdered' men. James Satok, James Unidak Reilly, Clancy Nyungaruk, and Soyuk Ishunt were dishonorably discharged from Intergal for fraud and black-market activities involving Intergal supplies."

"No such report reached my desk," Matthew said, turning to Braddock. The younger man shrugged, but his startled face expressed guilt and chagrin. "Moreover, I have proof positive that that highly toxic coo-berry bramble thorn was deliberately placed in the caves at four or more different settlements to prevent entry and discovery of rich ore-bearing seams!"

"Wait a minute!" Farringer Ball said, banging a fist on the table. "All this is beside the point, Matthew. Especially if Marmion says we can harvest pharmaceuticals and get at least some ores . . . which ones, Marmion?"

"That is to be decided," Marmion replied, "but drills, excessive use of explosives—"

"secretary-general Ball!" Matthew all but roared. "You cannot believe the aberrant notion put forth by Chairperson Algemeine that this planet is sentient?"

"No, I believe in cutting losses and getting what we can out of a place that's causing far more fuss than it's worth," Farringer replied.

"It's a ball of rock, an inanimate object . . ." Matthew was pounding the table with one fist and almost bouncing on his feet in his protest.

Suddenly he was catapulted onto the table, face down, his nose spurting blood, as seismic activity produced a havoc that had everyone in the room either grabbing their chairs to stay in them or being bounced about the committee room. Grinding sounds were so loud that people clapped hands to their ears, as the building shook and more mist poured in from the cracked seams of floor, walls, and ceilings.

"Under the table!" Whittaker Fiske shouted, practically dragging Marmion after him as the two of them, closely followed by the other committee members, hogged the most sturdily built piece of furniture in the room. Before Matthew could join them, they were joined by Marmion's over qualified secretary, and there was literally no room for another body to squeeze in. Or so he thought, until he spied one far corner unoccupied and dove for it, only to be knocked away by Braddock Makem, the sniveling coward.

"Get out of there at once, Braddock!" Matthew commanded, or he meant to sound commanding. He was appalled at how his normally controlled decibels elevated into panicky—sounding squeals. "Where's your sense of priorities? I'm the commissioner here."

The guards stationed in the room and others—he wasn't sure who—seemed to be trying to beat in the door, or break out a window, permitting the mist to flow more freely through the shambles of a committee room A loud crash suggested that the main screen had fallen victim to the earthquake.

Matthew heard someone screeching for help and to his chagrin realized the voice was his own. Never mind. This was an emergency and he had been deserted by his colleagues. No time for niceties. "Help!" he screamed again.

"Try apologizing to the planet, Matthew!" Marmion bellowed over the crashings, splinterings, bangings, and other sounds of rending wood, plastic, and plaster. Ha! Easy enough for her to taunt him when she was protected by the table.

"Tell it you believe, Matthew!" Whittaker Fiske hollered as well. It was the last thing Matthew heard as the entire building convulsed; he felt wetness warm the crotch of his trousers and slide down his leg, and, as the sound of the tumult was drowned out by a roar that came from within his own head and the snow from the comm screen seemed to be affecting his eyesight, he followed his own urine onto the floor.

Whittaker Fiske nearly choked because he had been trying to yell to Luzon and laugh at the same time. The floor abruptly canted to the far end of the committee room. The table and those it sheltered were willy-nilly propelled downhill. Whittaker, one arm crooked around the table leg nearest him, managed to grab hold of Marmion, who caught Sally by the shoulder. Bal, Chas. and Nexim helplessly slid downward. Losing his footing, Luzon was rolled lengthwise against the table's sturdy legs and caught there. A tangle of uniformed limbs pressed him even harder against the table legs, and he began shouting warnings and dire imprecations against those who had him unwillingly pinned against the furniture.

The grinding noises increased, drowning out all other sounds, and then, with a mighty swooshing sound, the walls and roof of the commissioners' room collapsed over the table, which stolidly bore the extra weight, though some of the surface veneer audibly cracked.

The ensuing silence, as the swirling mist settled on everyone, was almost worse than the horrific bombardment of noise had been. Then a breeze, most peculiarly scented with floral aromas, wafted through the damaged room, settling the dust caused by the building's collapse and dispersing the mist.

"Marmion?" Whittaker asked, shaking his head to clear it from both the tumbling he had endured and the residue of the mist.

"I'm fine, shaken, but not bruised, thanks to your quick grab." she said, though her skirt was ripped and her blouse torn. ''Sally?"

"Okay, I think!"

Whittaker completed the roll call; the names he called out were answered by either groans or curses.

"Matthew?" Whittaker asked with some anxiety. It would be awfully awkward if the planet had inadvertently caused the death of Vice-Chairman Matthew Luzon. That could be considered vengeful, not that he didn't deserve it with his notion of removing all the Petaybeans and cutting the planet into bits.

"He's alive, sir, but unconscious," a deep male voice said. "I think it's all over and—oh, my God!"

"What? What's the matter?" Marmion asked, duly concerned by the awe and respect in that slowly enunciated epithet. She looked about her for a way out from under the table, but the walls and roof seemed to have collapsed to cover everything except for the spot kept open by Matthew's unconscious body.

She moved that way, gesturing for Whittaker and Sally to follow her. There was just enough room for them to crawl under the table top and over the limp Matthew, whose aroma was decidedly not floral, where he had been caught, chest and thighs, by the two table legs. Hands helped them to stand in a relatively free space, crowded though it was by uniformed bodies and the splintered remnants of the original door into the room. Oddly enough, that wall was standing.

Then Marmion turned in the direction the officer was staring.

"My word!" Her jaw dropped as she gazed out at the massive rock structure that had been punched through the surface that had once been the landing field of SpaceBase. "No, it's not quite a ziggurat," she murmured to herself, trying to remember where she had seen a very similar formation, like building blocks, or stepping-stones in some unfathomable pattern, rising high above them. Yet even as her amazed eyes took in the scope of the elevated area, she could see how one could fairly easily climb to the top, if one were daring. Once the last of the mists had cleared, what a splendid view one would have, too, to see what Petaybee had done to prove Matthew's assumption wrong.

People were emerging from upended and broken buildings all around this extrusion, dust-covered, quite likely amazed to have escaped with their lives.

"Is anyone hurt down here?" a familiar voice called from the corridor.

"Yana! Yanaba Maddock, is Clodagh with you? I think Matthew may be hurt," Marmion called back.

"Luzon?" There was a definite edge to Yana's tone, but then Marmion scarcely blamed her. "Is anyone else hurt?"

"I—I don't think so," Marmion said, twisting around to see Chas Tung, Bal Jostique, and Nexim Shi-Tu getting to their feet and dusting themselves off. Then they, too, caught sight of what had been elevated on the landing field and just stared at it.

Do them good, Marmion thought, for doubting!

"Are you all right? And everyone with you?" Marmion called.

Then Yana poked her head through the door while Sean carefully broke off the splintered wood of the door frame before it could do any harm.

"Clodagh's still counting noses, but we had the benefit of padded cells during the rough bit," Yana said with an irrepressible grin, "and the door locks released when the power went off." She gave a snort at the inadequacy of the security as she clambered over the door and knelt beside Matthew, feeling the pulse at his throat. "Well, he's alive—but you're bleeding, soldier. And Sergeant, that looks like a broken arm to me. Sit down here, against the wall. If it hasn't fallen before, it won't come down now. Ah, Bunny, find some water and see if you can find a medic running around loose."

"The usual medical facility is just down that corridor and to your right," Whittaker said. "I'll show you." He stepped over the remaining door frame to lead Bunny—and also to add his authority to any request she'd make of dazed or possibly reluctant personnel to assist her.

Chapter 19

It took the rest of that day to assess damages, but these were actually rather limited, despite the wreckage of the, conference wing and its temporary detention cells. The ones, on the far end of the field had also been demolished, but there had been no loss of life and only a few minor broken limbs, lacerations, and bruises. There were plenty of outraged dignities and addled wits. Some of the Omnicron and the other imported soldiers spoke of hearing a voice in the mist, though they hadn't a clue what it was saying, other than somehow reassuring them.

Halfway through Johnny Greene's and Rick O'Shay's attempts to re-establish communications with the MoonBase, a disheveled and enraged Torkel Fiske arrived on foot with the copter pilot, both of them lugging jury-rigged back-packs full of ore samples. He insisted on seeing Matthew Luzon, and "don't give me any excuses," so he was duly shown the bandaged but still unconscious commissioner.

"Massive bruising on the chest," the almost apologetic medic told him, "and he's got two broken legs."

"Who did that? I don't see any of you wearing bandages," Torkel said, belligerently glaring around at those who were working in the temporary incident room set up in one of the half-empty warehouses on the perimeter of SpaceBase.

"I told Matthew to get under the table," Whittaker cheerfully lied, "but he never did pay a blind bit of attention to sensible suggestions. Ask Captain Urambu! over there! He was one of the bunch that rammed into Matthew."

Torkel's accusatory stare relaxed slightly when he took in the huge frame of the Omnicron captain and the others in his group. They did, at least, have some noticeable face and hand cuts, and probably some bruises they would ignore. The captain was speaking into a hand held, evidently repeating everything he said, for he wore a resigned look of strained patience.

"At what point in the meeting did the earthquake happen, Dad?" Torkel asked, his manner and tone far less belligerent.

"About the time Matthew was banging the table and insisting the planet couldn't be sentient." Marmion said. "Oh, by the way, Whit, Coaxtl was released from durance vile by Frank Metaxos, Diego, and Faber, dressed up in uniforms and looking very officious. The poor vet turned Coaxtl over without a word, and she was last seen by Liam Maloney swiping fish out of the river at dawn."

"Thank God for that!"

"Coaxtl?" Torkel looked from one to another in puzzlement.

"Yes, of course, Coaxtl was one of the plotters Matthew wished to indict," Marmion said in the tone one used when speaking to someone of deficient intelligence. "Along with a little bitty skinny pregnant orange kitty cat. Quite subversive for felines, or so Matthew was going to try to prove."

"Dr. Fiske?" Braddock Makem said with considerably more vibrancy in his voice than he had ever used in addressing his employer. "That earthquake was local, the epicenter the exact center of the landing field. Only those three small aftershocks, and no more expected."

"Thank you, Makem," Whittaker said, smiling. "Now, Torkel, where did you find the samples you brought back with you?"

"In one of the passages of the cavern we were all rescued from after your shuttle came down," he said, and a look of disgust passed over his face. He made a fist. "We were right there, not more than ten meters from one of the biggest veins of pure gold I have ever seen, and these Petaybeans—"

"I've had enough of that from you, Torkel, to last the rest of our mutual existence," Whittaker said, abandoning his homespun manner and straightening up so abruptly that Torkel backed off a step in surprise at his father's sudden authoritative manner. "Company policy has shifted from exploitation of the mineral wealth of this planet to its pharmaceutical—"

"And renewable," Marmion interposed, touching Whittaker's arm in reminder.

"And renewable pharmaceutical wealth."

"Its what?"

Torkel glared at his father, who stared him down, and then glanced about the room to spot any Petaybean on whom he could vent his frustrated anger.

"Colonel Yanaba Maddock and Dr. Sean Shongili," his father began, noticing his discomfort, "will share a joint governorship of the planet Petaybee, under the auspices of Intergal and Nova Bene Drugs to develop a local industry of fine Petaybean pharmaceuticals—"

"—Ah, just a moment if you please," said a light baritone voice.

Everyone turned to see the man who had discreetly appeared amidst them in the temporary incident room. He was wearing the distinctive gray and silver-trimmed uniform of a high-ranking official of the Collective Interplanetary Societies.

"I've just managed to land here, via the Prometheus, on a matter of gravest urgency," he began. "Oh," he added, smiling apologetically, "my name is Phon Tho Anaciliact. I seem to have come at a bad moment. I understand there has been a hearing under way today to determine the findings of an investigative committee. Who is the chairman of that committee?"

"I am." Marmion creased her brows slightly in surprise.

"Madame, excuse me if I seem to over rule your authority, but I have taken it upon myself to investigate circumstances here. I have been hospitalized at the Intergal Infirmary Station for a virus I contracted on my last assignment in the Fuegan Galaxy. While at the hospital, I could not help but overhear a denizen of this planet, supposedly a witness for this committee, I learned upon inquiry, demand his conjugal rites with someone he referred to as an "ungrateful child." He claimed that she had been seduced away from him and his family of other wives by some monstrous sentient life-form that apparently lives within this world. As you can imagine, much of what he had to say deeply disturbed me, and so I prevailed upon the captain of the Prometheus, who was bound for orbit here, to transport me, as well. I'm sure Intergal is aware that while they may govern humanoid life in accordance with CIS regulations—which this witness apparently was not following-on their incorporated worlds, new life-forms are specifically the concern of the CIS. They are, in fact, specifically the concern of my department and myself."

Torkel looked about to explode, Whittaker's face was wreathed in smiles, and Braddock Makem almost fainted.

"Not a monstrous sentient life-form", Messer Anaciliact, but most certainly a sentient being." Marmion corrected him with a smile, hardly daring to believe the good luck that had brought not only CIS, but Phon Tho in particular, to them at this time. And they had Matthew and his nephew to thank for the man's prompt arrival! It was a mercy to Matthew that he wasn't here. The knowledge would probably seriously impede his recovery. She continued, "The sentience is not a monstrous one. That was a perception entertained only by the witness and the people he forcibly influenced. He was the monster."

"I shouldn't doubt that a bit," Anaciliact said, remembering vividly his distaste for the witness in question. "I stand corrected."

"You also stand on this supposed sentient being," Torkel snapped, jabbing his index finger at the floor.

The dark arching eyebrows in Anaciliact's dusky-complected face rose high in his forehead. "Do I take it you mean the planet is sentient?"

"It most certainly is," Whittaker and Marmion said in firm chorus. Then Marmion, seeing Yana and Sean close by, gestured urgently for them to come to her.

"And this is the finding of the committee?"

"Most decidedly," Bal Jostique said, with a nervous glance at the piled stone skyscrapers looming where Intergal's runway and the streets and buildings of SpaceBase had been.

"We were interrupted before formal adjournment, messer," Chas amended, "but I think if you check with Farringer Ball you will find that Intergal has decided to . . ."

Anaciliact held up his hand, his expression counseling silence. "Intergal has overstepped its bounds in deciding anything without consultation with CIS. And your statement, Dr. Fiske, that two persons have been appointed governors of this . . . living body . . . is totally out of order. No sentient creature may be coerced, only negotiated with."

"That's been my argument all along," Yana said, having been close enough to hear the last statement.

"The problem has been trying to get Intergal to accept that this planet is sentient," Sean Shongili said, standing close enough to Yana to hold one of her hands discreetly behind him. "Now that we have re-established contact with the secretary-general of Intergal, Farringer Ball, he seems to be willing to believe the proof." He gestured in the direction of the singularly elevated field.

"That is as well, I suppose," Anaciliact said suavely, "for the . . . ab . . . extrusion seems to have limited itself in a most unusual fashion and in the most clear terms that it wishes this facility evacuated. So that I may commune with the sentience, I will also require the removal of even the indigenous personnel—"

He was interrupted by a rumbling that seemed to make the solid floor underfoot ripple from one end to the other.

"Messer Anaciliact," Marmion said, waggling a finger at him, "I believe the planet just said 'No.' It likes the people who live here; it protects them in ways that cause them to die very quickly when removed from its custody."

The CIS representative's expression had altered as he staggered to keep his balance. "It cannot so quickly perceive—'

Another rumble, quicker, so that it appeared to be more emphatic.

"We weren't supposed to get any aftershocks," Braddock Makem murmured, thoroughly dismayed.

"Messer Anaciliact," Sean began, smiling and with a little conciliatory bow, "I think it would be best if we took you to one of those special places where the planet communicates with us in its unique fashion. I believe it is quite ready to discuss the terms of its . . . use as a habitation and the uses to which its gifts may be put."

"Don't, I beseech you, Messer Anaciliact," Torkel said, on the point of grabbing the hands of the CIS representative, who deftly avoided him, "go into one of those misty caves! It's all hallucinogenic. You'll believe anything."

"Captain . . ."

"Fiske, Torkel Fiske." The man's handsome features were contorted with the urgency of his entreaty. "You'll end up like them!" He gestured toward his father, Yana, Marmion, and Sean.

"My dear Captain Fiske, I am conditioned to reject any hallucinogenics and drugs, and trained to perceive illusions or spells of any nature," Anaciliact replied with imperturbable and gentle reassurance. "I assure you I am well able to probe the substance of sentience in all forms of creatures to the exact degree of self-awareness and percipience. Now, if we may just proceed to wherever it is I may start my investigations?"

"This way," Sean said, gesturing toward the door through which the CIS investigator had recently entered. "It's a short distance from here but I believe—ah, Johnny, did your copter survive?"

"It did, Sean." Johnny eyed Sean's companion. "And it's even fueled and ready to go."

"Yana, where's Clodagh? Sean asked, looking around the busy incident room. Then he noticed orange cats prowling discreetly or observing from the tops of piled cartons. "Never mind. She'll be there."

When they reached the outskirts of Kilcoole and Johnny circled the copter to land it close to the warm springs, Coaxtl and Nanook bounded out of the forest to await their descent.

They sat back on their haunches when they saw Phon Tho Anaciliact step down. He turned, slightly startled, then bowed with a touch of reverence in the motion.

"You are messengers?" he asked.

Occasionally that is our function, Nanook said. But we do as we please.

"As your breed always has," Phon Tho said with another respectful bow.

You may follow us. The way has been cleared.

"Sean, the coo-berry . . ." Yana said as she saw Phon Tho following the track-cats toward the warm springs.

"Why did you think Clodagh, Sinead, Bunny, and Diego skived out of SpaceBase as fast as they could?" he asked her, taking her hand as he landed lightly on his feet beside her. "Coming, Johnny?"

"Sure am!" Johnny had helped Marmion, Whittaker, and Sally descend from the other side of the packed copter and now they all followed the leaders.

Dried stalks lined the path, but not a single live coo-berry tendril remained. Some might have been killed by Clodagh's antidote, Yana thought, but the rest seemed to have simply . . . been swallowed up by the planet's crust.

Oh well. Anywhere else that would have been incredible, but as always, Petaybee played by its own rules.

The track-cats deftly trotted across the stepping-stones to enter the gap between cliff side and cascade, the CIS arbitrator not a step behind them as they disappeared into the Kilcoole access area.

Mist was already forming by the time all had gathered, for Clodagh, Sinead, Aisling, Bunny, and Diego were waiting in the cave, having cleared the way. Clodagh smiled and gestured for Phon Tho to seat himself nearby, and he immediately assumed the very difficult lotus meditation position, back erect, hands with thumbs and index fingers meeting. Marmion settled herself with Sally and Whittaker. Sean and Yana seated themselves so that they faced Phon Tho.

That gentleman had a good long look at the wondrous colors and forms that were shortly obscured by the thickening mist, A slight smile curved his finely molded lips, and then he closed his eyes.

Sean and Yana, shoulders and thighs touching, experienced an overwhelming sensation of relief and total relaxation, of reassurance and goodwill: a sense of great achievement, although relief was the dominant feeling.

When the mist dissolved at last, leaving the ambient glow of the rocks in their splendidly delicate coloration's visible, the relief still remained. Then all the participants turned their attention to Phon Tho Anaciliact.

He rose from his lotus position with the special gracefulness of someone well accustomed to such a maneuver and smiled at them.

"This planet is self-aware in a manner I have never before encountered. It is an entity, a being with consciousness, and as such deserves the protection which is my prerogative. While it insists that it is no longer indentured to Intergal, it honors the obligation of life and will redeem itself in due course." Then he turned to Clodagh. "You are named as one minister to its needs, and you, Sean Shongili, are another." Then he looked curiously around, first at Sinead, then Bunny, until his glance settled on Yana. "Ah yes, it is you, Colonel Yanaba Maddock, whom I take with me to the headquarters of CIS to verify certain particulars in my report. As soon as communications are repaired, I shall give an interim report to my superiors, but in the meantime, I am authorized to evict the incumbent authority as inimical to the Subject Sentience. You who have lived long on Petaybee are requested to remain. I fear there may be some hardships yet for you to undergo until a proper authority can be framed to deal with such an unusual Sentience and the needs of its inhabitants." His lips curved with wry humor. "But you are welcome, it would seem," he said, smiling at Clodagh, Sinead, Aisling, Whittaker, Johnny, and Sean, "For without you, the Sentience would never have become truly aware of its potential."

"And just what is that potential, Messer Anaciliact?" Marmion asked with one of her more radiant smiles.

He gave a shrug, opening his hands. "It is—boundless, it is—unchartable, it is—unfathomable, it is—"

Yana's pent-up nerves of the last few weeks released in a short guffaw. "I think what Messer Anaciliact is trying to say is, 'whatever'!"

The Sentience gave a tremor that might have been a laugh but certainly concluded the current interview.

"What songs we'll make of this, huh, Bunny?" Diego whispered as people turned to file reverently from the cavern. Bunny smiled in agreement, just as a peculiar echo rang through the cavern. It repeated not the last words of Diego's sentence, nor the first word, but the middle ones. As they turned to listen, the cavern played rainbows on its reflective surfaces and the echo sang back to them. in a voice neither Diego's nor Bunny's nor that of any human being they knew, "Songs we'll make, songs we'll make."

The End