"Bringan," Lunzie asked again, tentatively, "what's Zebara like?"

"Do you mean, is he your usual prototype heavyworlder chauvinist? No. He's a good leader, and good friend. I've known him for thirty years. You'll appreciate his fair treatment, but watch out for the grin. That means trouble."

Lunzie cocked an eyebrow at Bringan. "You mean the shark-face he puts on? I've already seen it."

"Ho, ho! I hope it wasn't meant for you!" The doctor bunched himself onto his feet. "There, you're in good shape. Come with me, and we'll see about a bunk for you. You need to rest and let those injuries start to heal."

"When do we cast off the ARCT-10?" Lunzie asked. She followed Bringan, not too wobbly on her strengthless legs. Had the Ryxi received help before her lungs collapsed?

"As soon as Zebara is back on board."

On the way to that bunk, Lunzie got the briefest of introductions to the rest of the scout crew. Besides Flor, the Ship-born communications tech who doubled as historian, and Bringan, the xenobiologist, there were seven more. Dondara and Pollili, a mated pair, were heavyworlders from Diplo. Pollili was the telemetry officer, and Dondara was a geologist. Unlike most of their number who served for a few missions and then retired to their cold, bleak homeworlds, Pollili and Dondara had served with Zebara's Explorers Team for eight years, and had every intention of continuing in that posting. They spent one to two months a year in intensive exercise in the heavyworld environment aboard the ARCT-10 to maintain their muscle tone. The other five EX Team members were human. Scarran, tan-skinned and nearsighted, was a systems technologist. Vir, offshoot of a golden-complected breed with heavily lidded eyes, was an environmental specialist who shared security duties with Dondara. Elessa, charming but not strictly pretty, held the double duties of synthesiser tech and botanist. Timmins was a chemist. Wendell, the pilot, had gone over to the ARCT-10 with Zebara.

Everyone's specialties overlapped somewhat so the necessarily small crew of the scout had a measure of redundancy of talent in case of emergency. The little ship was compactly built but amazingly not cramped in its design. Hydroponic racks of edible plants were arrayed anywhere there was space, and the extra light made the rooms seem more cheerful and inviting. Bringan explained the ship was capable of running on its own power indefinitely in sublight, or making a single warp jump between short sprints before recharging.

Ambrosia was a long jump out toward the edge of explored space. The scout could never be certain of finding edible food on any planet it explored and its crew needed to be able to provide their own carbohydrates for the synthesisers.

Lunzie's bunk was in the same alcove as Elessa's. She lay on the padding with her arm strapped across her chest, staring at the bunkshelf above her. Bringan had ordered her to rest but she couldn't close her eyes. She was grateful to be safe but somehow it rankled her that her rescuer should prove to be a heavyworlder. Zebara seemed all right. She couldn't repress the suspicion that he might just be waiting until they got into deep space to toss her out the airlock. That didn't compute - not with a mixed - species crew all of whom were impressively loyal to him.

Abruptly the last adrenaline that had been buttressing her drained away. "Well, I ought to be truly grateful," she chided herself. "And he's got a very good press from his crew. That Quinada! I was getting used to heavyworlders when I had to run into someone like her! I suppose there's a bad chip in every board."

Still vaguely uneasy, Lunzie let herself drift off to sleep.

She awoke with a start to see Zebara staring down at her. It took her a moment to remember where she was.

"We're under way," he announced without preamble. "I've had you made an official member of my crew. No one else tried to pressure the little bosses to get on this cruise, so either your attackers have given up the job or... there are nasty plans for all of us."

"You're so comforting," Lunzie remarked drolly, determined to modify her attitude, at least toward a heavyworlder named Zebara. "How long have I been asleep?"

The heavyworld captain turned his palms upward. "How'd I know? We've been under way about five hours. Bringan told me to let you rest and I have, but now I need to talk to you. Do you feel strong enough?"

Lunzie tested her muscles and drew herself into a sitting position. Her arm was sore but she could move her fingers now. Bringan's cast held it immobile without putting pressure on the bruised muscles of her forearm. The rest of her body felt battered, but she already felt better for having had some rest.

"Talk? Yes, I'm up to talking."

"Come to my quarters. We can speak privately there."

"I was half expecting to be approached on the ARCT-10," Zebara said, pouring two glasses of Sverulan brandy. His quarters were close to spacious; that is to say, the room was eight paces wide by ten, instead of four. Zebara had a computer desk equipped with a device Lunzie recognized as a private memory storage. His records would not be accessible to anyone else on the ship or on the ship's communication network. "The exact location of Ambrosia is known only to myself and my crew and, regrettably, the administrators aboard the ARCT." He showed his teeth. "I trust my crew. I suspect there's an unpluggable leak aboard the ARCT."

"A leak leading right to the EEC Administration?" Lunzie was beginning to see the pieces of the minor puzzle which involved her coming together. The whole was part of a much larger puzzle.

"That's a gamble I have to take. If the pirates beat us back to Ambrosia, that means the information on Ambrosia's exact location is being transmitted to them right now. I want Fleet protection, yes, but I'm also interested in luring the pirates out into the open. They might just catch the spy within the Administration chambers this time." Zebara wrinkled his nose.

"The spy might be too high up in the echelons to find, impossible to trace - above suspicion." As the Seti of Fomalhaut would assuredly be. Hastily Lunzie took a sip of her drink and felt the warmth of the liquor in her belly. Zebara had splendid taste in intoxicants. She said slowly, "In the past the heavyworlders appear to have been the chief beneficiaries of this sort of piracy. Is it at all possible that the FSP will believe that YOU let them know where to find the planet?" Now the feral grin was aimed at her. Lunzie felt a chill trace the line of her spine. "Mind you," she added hastily, "I'm acting devil's advocate but if I can suspect collusion, others might certainly do so, if only to divert suspicion."

"A possible interpretation, I grant you. Let me say in my own defense I dislike the idea that my people are beholden in any way to mass murderers." He drained his glass and poured each of them a second tot deep enough to bathe in, Lunzie thought. He must have a truly spectacular tolerance. Nevertheless she took a deep draught of the brandy, to thaw her spine, of course.

"I feel obliged to explain that I thought for quite a few years that I had lost my daughter to pirates during the Phoenix incident," she said. "The first thing anyone knew, the legitimate colony was gone and heavyworlders had moved in. I harboured a very deep resentment that they were living on that bright and shiny new planet while I grieved for my daughter. It's affected my good judgment somewhat ever since." Lunzie swallowed. "I apologise for indulging myself with such a shockingly biased generalisation. It's the pirates I should hate, and I do."

Zebara smiled wryly. "I appreciate your candour and your explanation. Biased generalisations are not confined to your subgroup. I resent lightweights as a group for constantly putting my people in subordinate and inferior positions, where we're assigned the worst of the picking, or have to work under light-weights in a mixed group. In my view, there has been no true equality in the distribution of colonisable planets. Many of us, especially groups from Diplo, felt that Phoenix should have been assigned to us in the first place. One of our unassailable skills is mine engineering and production. The gen in my community was that the heavy people who landed on Phoenix had paid significant bribes to a merchant broker who assured them that the planet was virgin and vacant. They were cheated," Zebara added heatedly. "They were promised transuranics, but the planet had been stripped before they got there. It was no more than a place to live, with little a struggling colony could use as barter in the galactic community."

"Then somebody made double profits out of Phoenix. Triple, if you count the goods and machinery that the original settlers brought with them." The brandy had relaxed Lunzie sufficiently so that she had no compunction about refilling her glass. "Do you know the Parchandri?"

Zebara waved a dismissive hand. "Profiteers, every last blinking one of them, and they've a wide family. Weaklings, most of the Parchandri, even by lightweight standards, but they're far too spineless to kill with the ferocity the pirates exhibit."

The Seti could be ruthless but Lunzie couldn't quite cast them in the role which, unfortunately, did fit heavyworlders. "Then who are they? Human renegades? Captain Aelock felt that they were based out of Alpha Centauri."

"Aelock's a canny man but I'd be surprised if the Centauris were actively involved. They've acquired too much veneer, too civilised, too cautious by half." An opinion with which Lunzie privately concurred. "Centauris think only of profit. Every person, every machine, is a cog in the credit machine."

Lunzie took a sip of the warm brown liquor and stared at her reflection in the depths of the glass. "A point well taken. My daughter's descendants all live on that world. I have never met such a pitiful load of stick-in-the-mud, bigoted, shortsighted mules in my life. I was appalled because my daughter herself had plenty of motivation. She's a real achiever. Not afraid to take chances..."

"Like her mother," Zebara added. Lunzie looked up at the heavyworld captain in surprise. He was looking at her kindly, without a trace of sarcasm or condescension.

"Why, thank you. Captain. Only I fret that none of her children, bar one, are unhappy living in a technological slum, polluted and hemmed in by mediocrity and duplication."

"Complacency and ignorance," Zebara suggested, pouring more brandy. "A very good way to keep a large population so tractable the society lacks rebellion."

"But they've no space, mental or physical, to grow in and they don't realise what they're missing. It even grieves me that they're so happy in their ignorance. But I got out of Alpha Centauri as fast as I could, and not just because my life was at risk. Trouble with moving around like that, I keep losing the people I love, one by one." Lunzie halted, appalled by her maundering. "I am sorry. It's this brandy. Or is it sodium pentothal? I certainly didn't intend to download my personal problems on you."

The captain shook his head. "It sounds to me as though you'd had no one to talk to for a long time. Mind you," he went on, musing aloud, "such unquestioning cogs can turn a huge and complex wheel. The pirates are not just one ship, nor even just a full squadron. The vessels have to be ordered, provisioned, staffed with specially trained personnel" - he ignored Lunzie's involuntary shudder at what would constitute training - "and that means considerable administrative ability, not just privileged information."

Lunzie regarded him thoughtfully. He sounded as paranoid as she was, mistrusting everyone and everything. "It all gets so unsortably sordidly convoluted!" Her consonants were suffering from the brandy. "I'm not sure I can cope with all this."

Zebara chuckled. "I think you've been coping extremely well. Citizen Doctor Mespil. You're still alive!"

"A hundred and nine and a half years alive!" Oh, she was feeling the brandy. "But I'm learning. I'm learning. I'm especially learning," and she waggled an admonishing finger at him, "I'm gradually learning to accept each person as an individual, and not as just a representative of their subgroup or species. Each one is individual to his, her, itself and can't be lumped in with his, her or its peer group. My Discipline Master would be proud of me now, I think. I've learned the lesson he was doing his damnedest to impart to me." She took the last swallow of Sverulan brandy and fixed her eyes on his impassive face. "So, Captain, we're on our way to Ambrosia. What do you think we'll find there?"

"All we may find is the kittisnakes chasing each other up trees. We will be ready for any surprises." The captain stood up and extended an arm to Lunzie as she struggled her way out of the deep armchair. "Can you get back to your bunk all right?"

"Captain Zebara, Mespils have been known for centuries to hold their liquor. Dam' fine brandy. Thank you. Captain, for that and the listening ear."

CHAPTER Thirteen

The scout ship slowed to sublight speed and came out of its warp at the edge of the disk of a star system. Lunzie was strapped in the fourth seat on the bridge, watching as the stars spread out from a single point before them and filled the sky. Only a single yellow-white star hung directly ahead of the ship.

"There she is, Captain," Pilot Wendell said with deep satisfaction. "Ambrosia's star."

Zebara nodded solemnly and made a few notes in the electronic log. "Any energy traces in range?" the heavyworlder asked.

"No, sir."

"Is Ambrosia itself visible from this position?" Lunzie asked eagerly.

"No, Doctor, not yet. According to system calculations, she's around behind the sun. We'll drop below the plane of the ecliptic and come up on her. There's an asteroid belt we don't like to pass through if we can help it."

"Why do you call Ambrosia 'she'?"

Wendell smiled over his shoulder at her. "Because she's beautiful as a goddess. You'll see."

"Any traces?" Zebara asked again, as they began the upward sweep into the ecliptic toward a blue-white disk. "No, sir," Wendell repeated.

"Once we drop into atmosphere, we're vulnerable," Zebara reminded him. "Our sensors won't read as clearly. The pirates could get the drop on us."

"I know. Captain." The pilot looked nervous, but he turned up a helpless palm. "I don't have any readings that shouldn't be out there."

"Sir, why are we returning without military backup if you expect pirates to attack?" Lunzie asked, gently, hoping that the question wasn't out of line. "This scout has no defensive armament."

Zebara scowled. "I don't want anyone intruding on Ambrosia. It's our province," he said, waving an arm through the air to indicate the crew. "If we aren't here to back up our claim, someone else - someone who didn't spend years searching - Krims," Zebara said, banging a palm on the console. He passed a hand across his forehead, wiping away imaginary moisture. "I should be enjoying this ride. I suppose I'm too protective of our discovery. See, Lunzie, there's the source of all our pain and pleasure. Ambrosia."

The blue-white disk took on more definition as it swam toward them. Lunzie held her breath. Ambrosia did indeed look like the holos she had seen on Earth. Patterns of water-vapour clouds scudded across the surface. She could pick out four of the six small continents, hazy gray-green in the midst of the shimmering blue seas. A rakishly tilted icecap decorated the south pole of the planet. A swift-moving body separated itself from the cloud layer and disappeared around the planet's edge. The smallest moon, one of three. "The big satellite is behind the planet," Wendell explained. "It's a full moon on nightside this day. Look, there's the second little one, appearing on the left." A tiny jewel, ablaze with the star's light, peeked around Ambrosia's side.

"She is beautiful," Lunzie breathed, taking it all in. "Prepare for orbit and descent," Zebara ordered. "We'll set down. A ship this small is a sitting target in orbit. Planetside, we'll have a chance to run a few more experiments while we wait for backup."

"Aye, sir."

"Just after midday local time," Wendell had assured them as he set the scout down on a low plateau covered with thick, furry-leaved vegetation. EEC regulations required that an Evaluation Team locate at least five potential landing sites on a planet intended for colonisation. The astrogation chart showed no fewer than ten, one in the chief island of a major archipelago in the southern sea, one on each small continent and more on the larger ones.

As the hatchway opened, Lunzie could hear the scuttling and scurrying of tiny animals fleeing the noisy intrusion. A breeze of fresh, sweet air curled inside invitingly. With force-shield-belts on, Dondara and Vir did the perimeter search so that no indigenous life would be shut inside the protective shield when it was switched on. They gave the go-ahead, and Pollili activated the controls. A loud, shrill humming arose, and dropped almost immediately into a range inaudible to human ears.

If the view from space was lovely, the surface of Ambrosia looked like an artist's rendition of the perfect planet. The air was crisp and fresh, with just a tantalising scent of exotic flora in the distance. The colours ranged from vivid primaries to delicate pastels and they all looked clean.

Lunzie stepped out of the shuttle into the rich sunlight of dayside. The sky was a pale blue and the cumulus clouds were a pure, soft white. From the hilltop, the scout commanded a panoramic view of an ancient deciduous forest. The treetops were every shade of green imaginable, interspersed every so often with one whose foliage was a brilliant rose pink. Smaller saplings grew on the edge of the plateau, clinging at an absurd angle as if fearful to make the plunge.

Off to the left, an egg-shaped lake glistened in the sun. Lunzie could just pick out the silver ribbons of the two rivers which fed it. One wound down across the breast of the very hill she stood on. Lunzie rested in the sun close to the ship as the other crew members spread out nearby on the slope of the hill and took readings. Under her feet was a thick blue-green grassoid whose stems had a circular cross section.

"More like reeds than grass, but it's the dominant cover plant," Elessa explained. "It doesn't grow to more than six inches in height, which is decent of it. We don't have to slog through thickets of the stuff, unlike other planets I could name. You have to push it over to sit on it or it sticks you full of holes. See that tree with the pink leaves? The fruit is edible, really succulent, but eat only the ones whose rinds have turned entirely brown. We got the tip from the local avians who wait in hordes for the fruit to ripen. The unripe ones give you a fierce bellyache. Oh, look. I don't have a sample of that flower." Carefully, she uprooted a tiny star-shaped flower with a forked tool from among the grassoids and transferred it to a plastic vial. "They have a single deep taproot instead of a spread of small roots, which makes them easy to harvest. It's the stiff stem that keeps them upright, like the grassoid. You could denude this whole hillside with a tweezers."

A hovering oval shadow suddenly covered Lunzie and the botanist where they knelt.

"You ought to see more than a single meadow, Doctor," Dondara scolded her from above, appearing from the rear of the ship in a two-man sled. "You're enjoying a rare privilege. Not twelve intelligent life-forms have seen this landscape before. Come on," he beckoned her into the sled. "I've got some readings to take. You can come with me."

Reminding herself of her drink-taken vow to trust individuals of any subgroup, Lunzie levered herself to her feet and climbed in after him. Elessa looked up as she went by and seemed about to say something to her, but changed her mind. Lunzie looked questioningly at the botanist but the girl shot her a "What can I tell you?" expression. Lunzie had confided her distrust to the botanist during the long flight here and Elessa only reiterated the statement that Zebara and those on the scout were truly in a class all their own.

The medic wondered as she and Dondara passed through the force-shield and flew over the meadow. The terrain was dramatically different less than half a mile from the grassy landing site. Beyond the breast of the knobby hill which bounded the lake on its other side, the land began to change. The foliage was thinner here, reduced from lush forestry to a thin cover of marsh plants. Water flowed over worn shelves of rock, stained with red-brown iron oxide and tumbled into teeming pools. Nodules of pyrite in the rock faces glittered under the midday sun. Lunzie caught the occasional gleam of a marine creature in the shallow pools near a broad sweep of rapids that swept and foamed around massive boulders. In the distance, more forest covered the bases of rough, bare mountain peaks.

"Quite a division here; this could be another world entirely," Lunzie announced, delighted, twisting around in her seat to get the best view.

Dondara activated his force-belt and signalled to her to do the same as he set the sled down.

"This is a different continental plate from the landing site," Dondara explained, splashing through a pool.

Lunzie skirted it to follow him. He pointed out geological features which supported his theory, including an upthrust face of sedimentary rock that was a rust-streaked gray which contrasted with the sparkling granite of the hilly expanse of the continent. With unexpected courtesy, he helped her up onto a well-worn boulder peeked with small pools.

"This was once a piece with the landmass across the ocean northeast of here, got slid over a spreading centre over a few million years. This plate is more brittle. But it's got its own interesting life-forms. Come here." He gestured her over to a tubular hollow in the rock.

Lunzie peered at the hole. It was so smooth that it could have been drilled by a laser. "What's down there?"

"A very shy sort of warm-water crustacean. It'll only come out when the sky is overcast. If you stand over the hole, it'll think it is cloudy." Curious, Lunzie leaned down. "Look closely and be patient."

Dondara moved back and sat down on a dry shelf nearby. "You've got to turn off your force-belt, or it won't come out. The frequency annoys them."

As soon as she had deactivated the belt, she could see movement deep in the hollow. Lunzie knelt closer and spread her shadow over the opening. She heard a soft clattering noise, a distant but distinct rattle of porcelain. Suddenly, she was hit in the face by a fountaining stream of warm water. Lunzie jumped back, sputtering. The water played down the front of her tunic and then ceased.

"What on Earth was that?" she demanded, wiping her face.

Dondara roared with laughter, making the stones ring. He rolled back and forth on his stone perch, banging a hand against the rock in his merriment.

"Just a shy Ambrosian stone crab!" he chortled, enjoying the look on her face. "They do that every time something blocks their lair. Ambrosia has baptised you! You're one of us now, Lunzie!" Once she recovered from the surprise, Lunzie realised that she had fallen for one of the oldest jokes in the database. She joined in Dondara's laughter.

"How many of the others did you sting with your 'shy rock crustacean'?" she asked suspiciously.

The heavyworlder was pleased. "Everyone but Zebara. He smelled vermin, and refused to come close enough." Dondara grinned. "You're not mad?"

"Why? But you can be sure I won't get caught a second time. Here on Ambrosia or anywhere else," Lunzie promised him. She was also obscurely pleased that she had been set up. She'd passed a subtle test. She was also soaking and the air was chilly, weak lightweight that she was. She flicked some of the excess off her hands and shirt.

"You really got a dose. Must have roused the granddaddy. If I don't offend your lightweight sensibilities, you better get yourself back to the scout. Take the sled." She was beginning to feel that such solicitude was only to be expected from one of Zebara's crew. "I've got to take some temperature readings in the hot springs upstream. The exercise will do me good. I've got my communicator." With a hearty wave, the big humanoid waded off upstream.

Lunzie activated the sled's power pack to fly back up the hill to the ship. Just about halfway there, she began to assimilate the full implications of that little encounter. Dondara had treated her to the "baptism" as he had probably done everyone else on the scout... enjoying his little joke. She had taken no umbrage and begged no quarter. But he had been considerate without being patronising, recognising certain lightweight problems rarely encountered by heavyworlders - like a propensity for catching chills.

"Will such minor wonders never cease?" she said to herself, ruffling her slowly drying hair.

"What happened to you?" Vir called as she came into view. "Dondara had me baptised Ambrosian style," Lunzie shouted back, holding out the front of her clammy wet tunic with her good hand.

As she came upon Elessa, she saw that the botanist was grinning. "You knew he was going to do that."

"I'm sorry," the girl giggled. "I almost stopped you; he's such an awful practical joker. To make amends, I found you a kittisnake to examine. Aren't they adorable? And so friendly." She held up a small handful of black fur.

"Hang on to it for me," Lunzie called.

She set the sled down behind the scout. Elessa met her halfway and wound the length of animal around her hands.

"This is one of the most plentiful life-forms on Ambrosia," the botanist explained, "oddly enough omnivorous. They're really Bringan's province but they so love the attention that they're irresistible."

The kittisnake had a small round face, with a round nose and round ears which peered out of its sleek, back-combed fur. It had no limbs, but it was apparent where the thicker body joined the more slender tail. Two bright green eyes with round black pupils opened suddenly and regarded Lunzie expressionlessly. It opened its mouth, revealing two rows of needles, and aspirated a breathy hiss.

"It likes you," Elessa declared, interpreting a response which Lunzie had misjudged. "Pet it. It won't bite you."

It certainly seemed to enjoy the caress, twisting itself into pretzel knots as Lunzie ran her hands down its length. She grinned up at the botanist.

"Responsive, aren't they? Good ambassadors for a flourishing tourist trade on Ambrosia."

While Lunzie was making friends with the kittisnake, a light breeze sprang up. She suddenly decided she needed a warmer tunic over her injured arm. Though the bones had already been knit together by Bringan, the swollen tissue had yet to subside. Lunzie felt her flesh was starting to creep.

"Excuse me, will you?" she asked the botanist.

She squeezed past Zebara, poised in the open hatchway of the scout. He greeted the doctor, raising an eyebrow at her wet hair and clothes.

"Dondara took you to see the snark, huh?"

"A granddaddy snark to judge by the volume of baptismal waters." She grinned up at the heavyworlder.

"Haven't you raised Fleet yet, Flor?" the captain asked, turning back from the hatchway toward the semicircular pilot's compartment. The communications station occupied another quarter arc of the circle facing the rear of the ship between the telemetry station and the corridor.

"Aye, aye, sir," called the communications tech. "I'm just stripping the message from the beacon now. They acknowledge your request and have despatched the Zaid-Dayan."

"The who? That's a new designation on me," Zebara growled. Lunzie caught the note of suspicion in his voice.

"Be glad, sir. Brand-new commission, on its maiden voyage," Flor said apologetically. "Heavy cruiser, ZD-43, the Registry says, with lots of new hardware and armament."

"What? I don't want to have to wet-nurse an unintegrated lot of lightweight lubbers..." Zebara sighed, pushing back into the communications booth and looking over Flor's shoulder.

Lunzie slipped in behind him. "Isn't telemetry showing a trace?" she said, noticing the blip on the current sweep of the unit.

"Is that the ZD-43 arriving now? Wait, there's an echo. I see two blips." Zebara eased her aside with one huge hand and inserted himself into the telemetry officer's chair. "Oh-oh! Pollili!" he roared. His voice echoed out onto the hillside. The broad-faced blond woman appeared on the breast of the slope below the shuttle and hurried up it at double time. "Interpret this trace for me," Zebara ordered. "Is this an FSP vessel of any kind? Specifically a new cruiser?"

Pollili took the seat next to Flor as her captain moved aside. She peered at the controls and toggled a computer analysis. "No way. It's not FSP. Irregular engine trace, overpowered for its size. I'd say it's an intruder."

"A pirate?" Lunzie heard herself ask.

"Two, to be precise." Zebara's expression was ferocious. "They must have been hanging in the asteroid belt or dodging us around the sun. How close are they to making orbit?"

"An hour, maybe more. I get traces of big energy weapons, too," Pollili said, pointing to a readout on her screen. "One of 'em is leaking so much it's as much a danger to the ship carrying it as it is to us. An academic point, to be sure, since we're unarmed."

"Will they land?" Lunzie asked, alarmed.

"I doubt it. If we can see them, they can see us. They know someone is down here, but they don't know who or what," Zebara said.

"Forgive me for pointing out a minor difficulty, sir," Flor said in a remarkably level, even droll tone, "but they can dispose of us from space. The ZD-43 is at least three days behind us," she added, her healthy colour beginning to pale. "Once they realise we're alone here, they'll kill us. Is there nothing we can do?"

Zebara smiled, showing all of his teeth.

What was it Bringan had said? When he grins like a shark, watch out?

"We bluff. Flor, send another message to the Zaid-Dayan. Tell them that we've got two pirates circling Ambrosia. Tell them to take any shortcuts they can. Force multiple jumps. If they don't hurry, we'll be just a scorch mark and crater on the landscape. We're going to stall the inevitable just as long as we can."

"How?" Lunzie demanded, wishing she felt as confident as Zebara sounded.

"That, Doctor, is what we must figure out. Flor, have you sent that? Good. Now get on the general communicator channel and get the crew back here for a conference.

"I want your most positive thinking on how we can keep those pirates off planet," Zebara began once the crew had assembled in the messroom.

"Those blips couldn't possibly be anything else, could they?" Bringan asked after clearing his throat.

Zebara gave a short bark of laughter. "They haven't answered hails and their profile doesn't match anything in our records. And it's not good neighbourliness they're leaking. Think, my friends. Think hard. How do we stall them?"

"No black box, huh?" asked Vir, a thin human with straight black hair and a bleak expression.

Flor shook her head. "Those would be a long time disconnected." No legitimate ship would put out into space without the black box interface between control systems and engines which transmitted automatic identification signals. To disconnect it disabled the drives. Unscrupulous engineers had been known to jury-rig components, but such a ship would never be allowed in an FSP-sanctioned port.

Zebara smashed his fist into a palm. "Stop denying the problem. Think. We've got to stall them long enough to let the Zaid-Dayan reach Ambrosian space."

No one spoke for a long moment. No one even exchanged glances in the tense atmosphere of the wardroom.

"What if we take off? Can't we outrun them?" Vir demanded to Wendell, the pilot.

"Not a chance," Wendell said sadly. "My engines don't have the kick to push us far enough out of their range to make a warp jump. They'd catch us halfway there."

"So we're stuck on this planet while the predators line us up in their sights," Dondara growled, scrubbing his dusty hair with his hands. He had taken only thirty minutes to run the distance from the pools after he'd received Flor's mayday recall. Lunzie was full of admiration for the heavyworlder's stamina.

Scarran cleared his throat. His perpetually red-shot brown eyes made him look choleric or sleepy and he had a naturally mild personality.

"What about a violent disease of some sort? We're all dead and dying of it. Highly contagious. Can't find an antidote," he suggested in a self-deprecating voice.

"No, that wouldn't work," Pollili scoffed, drawing her brows together. "Even assuming they're of a species with enough in common with ours to catch it, they'd blow our ship off the face of the planet to wipe out the contagion and then land where they pleased."

"What about natural disaster?" asked Elessa, collecting nods from Flor and Scarran. "Unstable tectonics? An earthquake! A volcano about to blow? They'd have sacrificed scanning potential to some sort of weaponry."

"Possibly," Pollili drawled. "Even the simplest telemetry systems warn you if you're going to put down on a shifting surface. And live volcanoes show up as hot spots on infrared."

"What about a hostile life-form?" Lunzie asked, and was generally hooted down by the others.

"What, attack ferrets?" Elessa held up the black-furred kittisnake, which curled around her hands, cooing breathily to show its contentment. "If the pirates are after Ambrosia when FSP has scarcely heard of its existence, they already know what's down here, besides us. Sorry, folks." "Hold it a moment," Bringan said, raising a hand. "Lunzie has made a positive suggestion that merits discussion. Lunzie..."

"I had in mind a free bacterium that gets into your breathing apparatus and caulks it up with goo," Lunzie said, warming to her topic. "Five of our officers are down with it already. Nothing, not even breather masks, seems to keep it out. I feel that it's only a matter of time before they die of oxygen deprivation. The organism didn't appear in our initial reports because it's inert, sluggish during the winter months. It dies off in the cold. Now that the climate's warmed up for summer, the bug reproduces like mad. We're all infected. I've just discovered that it's gotten into the ventilation system, housed in the filters. I doubt we'd ever be able to lift off again, with the ship's air-recycling system fouled. I'm putting Ambrosia on indefinite quarantine. Only moral, ethical action possible to a medic or any professionality. Contact between ships is likely to doom them both. In fact, it's my professional opinion that the ARCT-10 is in real danger since Zebara and Wendell were on board to report to Admin. Their lungs were already contaminated and the air they exhaled from their lungs would now be in the ARCT's air-recirculation system. Lungs are always warm - until the host is dead."

"What? What are you talking about?" demanded Vir, paling.

"What's this bacterium?" Elessa demanded. "I never observed one here and I prepared all the initial slides!"

"It's called Pseudococcus pneumonosis." Lunzie smiled slyly. She was rather pleased with the astonished reaction to her little fable. "I've just discovered it, you see. A nicely non-existent but highly contagious condition, inevitably and painfully fatal. It might just stall them. It will certainly make them pause a while. If we can be convincing enough." Then she chuckled. "If we get out of this alive, someone better check with the old ARCT and see just who scrambled to the infirmary, requiring treatment for a fatal lung disease."

Zebara and Bringan chortled and, when the rest of the crew realised she'd been acting out a scenario, they gave Lunzie a round of applause. Laughter eased the tension and indicated renewed hope.

"That just might work," Bringan agreed after several moments of hard thinking. He gave Lunzie a warm smile. "Would we have trouble with them understanding medical lingo?"

Lunzie shrugged. "If I could fool you for a few minutes, I maybe can fool them. You see, Bringan's only a xeno-medic. He diagnosed it as vacation fever: personnel pretending to be sick so they could lounge in the sun. Once we got back here, with me, a human-medically trained person, I began to suspect a serious medical problem. By then it was too late to contain the bacterium. It was widespread. And, for all I know, loose on the ARCT-10 as well.

"Sorry about this, folks, but I'll make it extremely personal: heavyworlders get it worst." She warded off the violent protests until Zebara bellowed for silence.

"She's got a valid reason to pick on us."

"I said I was sorry, heavyworlders. I'm not disparaging you but it's a fact, piracy has attracted many heavyworlders. Look, I'm not starting an argument..."

"And I'm ending it," Zebara said, showing his shark teeth. The muttering subsided immediately. "Lunzie's reasoning is sound. We take the lumps."

"How do you know so much about the planet pirates?" Dondara wanted to know, his eyes narrowed and unfriendly.

"Not my choice, but I do. Sorry about this."

"I'll forgive you if it works," Dondara said, but he gave her a wry twist of a smile.

"I think she's come up with the best chance we've got," the xenobiologist said approvingly. "Unless someone has thought up a better one just recently? Who delivers this deathless message to the pirates?" He looked at Zebara.

"I think I'd better," Zebara replied. "Not to decry Lunzie's dramatic abilities, but because the report of a heavyweight will be more acceptable to them than anything a lightweight could say."

"I hate such an expedient." With a fierce expression, Dondara exploded to his feet. "Do we have to compound the insult to all honourable heavyworlders who abhor the practice of piracy?"

With a sad expression on his face, Zebara shook his head at the geologist. "Don, we both know that some of Diplo's children have been weak enough to go into the service of unscrupulous beings in order to ease the crowding of our homeworlds." Dondara started to protest but Zebara cut him off. "Enough! Such weaklings shame us all and the good carry the disgrace along with them until the real culprits can be exposed. I intend to be part of that exposure. And this is one step in the right direction." He turned to Lunzie. "Brief me. Doctor Mespil!"

The plan, as plans do, underwent considerable revision until a creditable script was finally reached. With the help of the garment synthesiser and Flor's copious history diskfiles, Zebara was tricked out in the uniform of an attache of DipIo, the heavyworlders' home planet. On a simple dark blue tunic, Flor attached silver shoulder braid and a tight upright collar of silver that fastened with a chain suspended between two buttons. As Zebara was dressed, Lunzie rehearsed him on details.

Meanwhile, Flor and Wendell were tinkering with the scout's black box, trying to mask, shield, electronically alter or scramble its identification signal. Neither wanted to tamper with the box because that could lead to other problems.

With a prosthetic putty, Bringan sculpted a new nose for Zebara and broadened his cheekbones to enhance his appearance to a more typical heavyworlder cast. Lunzie was stunned by the result. It changed him completely into one of the dull-faced hulks that she remembered from the Mining Platform.

"Zebara, they've achieved parking orbit," Flor called. "The lead ship will be directly overhead in six minutes."

The last touches of his costume in place, the heavyworld captain swaggered into the communications booth and took his place before the video pickup. Out of sight, Lunzie sat next to Flor in the control room and watched as a hail was sent to the two strange ships.

"Attention to orbiting ships," Zebara announced in a rasping monotone. "Arabesk speaking, attache for His Excellency Lutpostig the Third, the Governor of Diplo. This planet is proscribed by order of His Excellency. Landing is forbidden. Identify yourselves."

On the screen before them, Lunzie and Flor saw a pattern shimmer into coherency. It was not a face but rather an abstract computer-generated graphic.

"So, they can see us, but we can't see them," Flor muttered to Lunzie. "I don't like this," the communications officer added miserably.

An electronically altered voice shivered through the audio pickup. Lunzie tried to guess the species of the speaker but it spoke a pure form of Basic with no telltale characteristics. Possibly computer-generated, like the graphic, she guessed.

"We know of no interdiction on this planet. We are landing in accordance with our orders."

Zebara gave a rasping cough which he only half covered with one hand. "The crew of this ship have contracted an airborne bacteria. Pseudococcus pneumonosis. This life form was not, I repeat, NOT, mentioned in the initial landing report."

"Tell me another one, attache. That report has been circulated."

Zebara's second cough lasted longer and seemed to rake his toes. Lunzie was impressed.

"Of course, but you should also know that the reports were made during the cold season in this hemisphere. Since the weather has warmed, the bacteria has awoken and multiplied explosively, infiltrating every portion of our ship." For good measure he managed a rasping gagging cough of gigantic proportion.

The voice became slightly less suspicious. "The effect of this warm season bacteria?"

"It infests the bronchial tubes, in a condition similar to pneumonia. The alveoli become clogged almost immediately. The first symptom is a pernicious cough." Zebara demonstrated, 'gagging dramatically. "The condition results in painful suffocation leading to death. Five of my crew have died already.

"We heavyworlders appear to be particularly susceptible due to our increased lung capacity," Zebara continued, injecting a note of panic into his voice. "First we tried to filter the bacterium out by using breather masks, but it is smaller than a virus. Nothing keeps it out. It can live anywhere that is warm. It flourished in the ventilation system and the filters are so caulked up that I doubt we will be able to cleanse them sufficiently to take off again. Ironic, for cold slows and kills it. Unfortunately, living pulmonary tissue never becomes cold enough. It even lingers in the lungs of the deceased until the body itself has chilled."

There was murmuring behind the whirling pattern of colours on the screen, then the audio ceased completely.

"Zebara." Pollili's voice came over the private channel. "I now have readings on their ships. They're big ones. One of them is a fully loaded transport lugger, full of cold bodies. There must be five hundred deepsleepers aboard. It's the smaller one that's leaking energy. An escort, carrying enough firepower to split this planet in two."

"Can you identify the life-forms?" Lunzie asked.

"Negative. They're shielded. I get heat traces of about a hundred bodies, but my equipment's not sensitive enough to identify type, only heat emanations." Pollili's voice trailed off as the pirate spoke again.

"We will consider this information."

"I warn you, in the name of DipIo," Zebara insisted, "do not land on this planet. The bacterium is present throughout the atmosphere. Do not land."

Zebara slumped back into the padded seat and wiped his forehead. Flor hastily cut the connection.

"Bravo! Well done," Lunzie congratulated him, handing him a restorative pepper.

The rest of the crew crowded into the communication station.

"What will they do?" Vir asked nervously.

"What they said. Consider the information." Zebara took a long swig of the pepper. "One thing sure. They're not likely to go away."

"First of all, they'll check their source files to see if there's any mention of the bacterium," Bringan enumerated, ticking off his fingers. "That alone should make it hot for the people who sold them the information and forgot to mention a potentially fatal air-borne parasite here. Second, they'll try to get a sample of the bacterium. I think we'll see an unmanned probe scooping the air, looking for samples to analyse."

"Third, they might try to put a volunteer crew down to test the effects of living beings," Elessa offered, bleakly. "A distinct possibility," Flor said. "I'll just rig a repeater signal to broadcast the Interdict warning over and over again on their frequency. Might make them just a teensy bit more nervous."

Her fingers flew over her console, and then clicked on a button at the far left side. "There. It'll be loud, too."

Lunzie grinned. She was becoming more impressed with the imagination and ingenuity of this EEC Team. "I can't imagine that 'volunteers' will be thick in the corridors. But they will figure out all too soon that there isn't anything. Shouldn't we grab some rest while we can?"

"Well, I can't," Bringan said. "When they don't find what they're expecting, they'll ask us to identify it, so I better design an organism. Vir, you're a good hack, you can help me."

"I'll help, too," Elessa volunteered. "I wouldn't be able to rest with those vultures circling, just waiting to land on top of us."

"I'll authorise sedatives to anyone who doesn't think he or she can sleep," Lunzie offered, with a look toward Zebara for permission. The captain nodded.

Those who weren't involved in designing the pseudobacteria scattered to their sleeping cubicles and left the others wrangling over mouse-controlled Tri-D graphics program.

Lunzie lay down on her bunk and initiated Discipline technique to soothe herself to sleep. She got a restful few hours before tension roused her. There had been bets as to when another transmission from the pirate vessel would arrive.

After a twenty-four-hour respite, tempers began to fray. The design team had an argument, ending with Elessa storming out of the scout to sit in tears behind a tree, agitatedly soothing her pet kittisnake.

Wendell took a nap, but he was so tense when he awoke that he asked Lunzie for a sedative. "I can't just sit around and wait," the pilot begged, twisting his hands together, "but if there's any chance of us lifting, I also can't be frazzled or fuzzy-minded."

Lunzie gave him a large dose of a mild relaxant, and left him with a complicated construction puzzle to keep his hands busy. Most of the others bore with the tension more stoically. Zebara alternated between popping mineral tablets and drumming on a table with an air of distraction and running the ships' profiles through the computer records. He badgered Flor with frequent updates on the Zaid-Dayan's ETA.

The outer two heavyworlders paced the common area for all the world like caged exotics; then Dondara irritably excused himself. He left the ship and headed downslope in the sled.

"Where's he going?" Lunzie asked.

"To break rocks," Pollili explained, turning her palms to the sky. "He'll come back when he can hold the frustration in check."

Dondara had been gone for nearly two hours when Flor appeared at the door of the common area. Zebara raised his head. "Well?"

She grimaced. "They've launched an unmanned probe. It's doing the usual loops." Then she really grinned. "I got good news, though." Everyone in the room snapped to. "I just stripped the beacon of a reply from the Zaid-Dayan. They say to hold tight. They ought to be here within three hours."

Ragged cheers rose from the crew when suddenly a low-pitched beeping came from the forward section.

"Uh-oh," Flor said. 'The upstairs neighbours ahead of schedule!" She turned and run forward, followed by the rest of the crew. The filtered voice came through the audio monitors.

"Diplomat Arabesk. I wish to speak with Diplomat Arabesk." Zebara reached for the silver-collared tunic but Lunzie grabbed his sleeve.

"You can't talk to them, Zebara, you're dead. Remember! Heavyworlders are more susceptible. The bacterial plague has claimed another victim. Pollili, you talk to them."

"Me?' squeaked the telemetry officer. "I can't talk to people like them. They won't believe me."

FIor was wringing her hands with nervousness. "Someone's got to speak to them. Soon. Please."

Lunzie hauled Pollili by the hand into the communications booth. "Poll, this can save all our lives. Will you trust me?"

The heavyworlder female looked at her beseechingly. "What are you doing to do?"

"I'm going to convince you that what you are about to say is one hundred percent the truth." Lunzie leaned forward and put a comforting hand, the one in the cast, on the other's arm. "Trust me?"

Pollili shot a desperate look at the beeping console. "Yes."

"Good. Zebara, will you clear everyone else out for a moment?"

Puzzled, the captain complied. "But I'm staying," he announced when everyone had left.

"As you wish." Lunzie resigned herself to his presence. "Flor can't hear us, can she?"

Zebara glanced at the set of indicator lights above the thick quartz glass panel. "No."

"All right. Poll, look at me." Lunzie stared into the heavyworlder's eyes and called upon the Discipline techniques she had learned on Tau Ceti. Keeping the small hypospray out of Flor's line of sight, she showed it to Pollili. "Just something to help you relax. I promise you it's not harmful." Pollili nodded uneasily. Lunzie pressed the head of the hypospray against the big woman's forearm. Pollili sagged back, her eyes heavy and glassy. Flor stared curiously from the other side of the panel and reached for a control. Zebara forestalled her with a gesture and she sat back in her chair, watching.

Lunzie kept her voice low and gentle. "Relax. Concentrate. You are Quinada, servant and aide to lenois of the Parchandri Merchant Families. You landed here with a crew of twenty-five. Eight have already died of the bacterial plague, all heavyworlders. Arabesk, the Governor's personal representative, has just succumbed. Nine lightweights, the oldest and weakest ones, are also dead and the clone-types are showing at least the first symptoms of infection. You have a pernicious, deep-lung cough which strikes whenever you get excited. The bacteria is found only within thirty feet of the ground." Lunzie turned to Zebara. "That's too low for a probe to fly safely. With topographical variances, it's more likely to crash into a tree or a rock outcropping." Zebara nodded approval.

Lunzie turned back to programming Pollili. "The bacteria multiplies in direct relation to warmer temperatures. It's 22 degrees Celsius here right now. Optimum breeding time. You, Quinada, have connections with the faction in the Tau Ceti sector. You are something of a bully so you are not easily cowed by the inferior dogsbodies of any pirate vessel." Now Lunzie signalled to Flor to open the channel to the communications booth. "Remember, your name is Quinada, and you don't take guff from anyone, especially the weakling lightweights. You respect only your master, and he is one of those who is ill. You know and trust those of us here in the ship. We are your friends and business associates. When you hear your real name again, you will regain your original memories. I will touch you now and you will reply as circumstances require."

"We seek Diplomat Arabesk," the tinny voice said again. Pollili roused the instant Lunzie touched her arm. The medic leaned out of range of the video pickup and crept from her side.

"Arabesk is dead. Who is this?"

"Who speaks?" the voice demanded, surprised.

"Quinada!" Pollili said with great authority and some annoyance.

"Who is this Quinada?" Zebara asked in a low voice as Pollili's expression assumed a suitably Quinadian scowl.

"Just who I said she is," Lunzie whispered, crossing her fingers as she watched the heavyworlder female lean forward, prepared to dominate. "She works for a merchant who knew about Ambrosia more than two weeks before I left Tau Ceti for the ARCT-10. I must now assume that lenois has direct lines with pirates from here, the ARCT-10 and Alpha Centauri. Since he's got such a wide family, I'd be willing to bet someone of his kin were involved in setting up the Phoenix double-deal."

"This Quinada must have made quite an impression on you," Zebara replied wryly. "However did you impose her on Poll?"

"A Discipline technique."

"Not one of which I've ever heard. You must be an Adept. Oh, don't worry," Zebara assured her as she began to protest. "I can keep secrets. More than one, if your information on this merchant is true."

"Do I have to repeat everything to you denseheads? I am Quinada," Pollili said, scowling and pulling her brows together in an excellent imitation of her model. "Servant to lenois, senior Administrator in the eminent Parchandri Merchant Families. Who are you to challenge me?" There was a long pause during which the audio was cut off.

"We know of your master and we know your name," the voice announced at last, "though not your face. What are you doing on this planet?"

"My master's affairs. My last duty to him," Pollili answered crisply. "No more of that. Arabesk is dead and I speak for those still alive."

"Where is your master?"

"The lung-rotting cough took him yesterday. The puny lightweight stock from which he springs will probably see the end of him before the week is over." Pollili delivered the last with an air of disgust overlaying her evident grief. Lunzie nodded approvingly from her corner. Pollili's own psyche was adding to the pattern Lunzie had impressed on her mind. Fortunately, there weren't the same dangerous leanings in Pollili's makeup that repulsed Lunzie in the original Quinada but the telemetry officer sounded most convincing.

"Quinada" confidently answered the rapid-fire questions that the voice shot to her. To consolidate her position, "Quinada" put up on the screen the genetic detailing of the bacterium which Bringan and the others had created. She explained what she understood of it. As Pollili, she knew a good deal about bacteria but the Quinada overlay wouldn't comprehend that much bioscience.

With her headset clasped to one ear, Flor gestured frantically for Zebara to join her in the soundproof control station. "Sir, I'm receiving live transmission from the Zaid-Dayan. They're approaching from behind the sun after making a triple jump! Those must be some fancy new engines. They'll be here within minutes!"

"Keep them talking!" Zebara mouthed through the glass to Pollili.

The woman nodded almost imperceptibly as she ordered the bio-map off the screen.

"It may interest you to know. Citizen Quinada, that we have taken atmospheric samples and find no traces of this organism which you claim has killed five of your colleagues." The voice held a triumphant note. "Eight," "Quinada" corrected him. "Eight are dead now. The organism hovers within ten meters of the surface. Your probe didn't penetrate far enough."

"Perhaps your entire complement is alive and well, with no cough at all. We have noticed no difference in the number of infrared traces in your group between our first conversation and now."

"Dammit," Bringan groaned. "I knew we forgot something."

"Quinada" had an answer for that. "We have placed some of the sick in cold sleep. You are picking up heat traces for the machinery." "Quinada" coughed pointedly.

"You are not fooling us," the pirate sneered. "Your ship's identification signal is being scrambled. We suspect it is EEC, not Parchandri or Diplo. We have doubts as to your identity, Quinada. Your bio-file will be in our records. If it is yours."

Nervously, Zebara began to drum on the door-frame. The sound affected Lunzie's nerves. Tension began to knot up her insides. She forced herself to relax, to set an example of calm for the others. In the communications booth, Flor was white-faced with fear. Bringan paced restlessly in the corridor.

Under strain from her interrogator, "Quinada" started coughing. "You dare not accuse me of lying! Not if you were standing here before me. Come down, then, and die!"

"No, you will die. We will broil you and your make-believe organisms where you lie." The voice became savagely triumphant. "We do not look kindly on those who deceive us. We claim this planet."

The team members looked at one another with dismay.

"Attention, unidentified vessel." Another voice, crisply female and human, broke into the transmission. "This is the Fleet Cruiser Zaid-Dayan, Captain Vorenz speaking. Under the authority of the FSP, we call upon you to surrender your vessels and prepare for boarding."

Pollili sat, eyes on the swirling pattern on the screen, without reaction. Scarran dashed for the telemetry station, the others right behind him.

"There is another blip! Phew, but the Zaid-Dayan is a big mother," he said.

The light indicating the FSP warship was fast closing with the planet from a sunward direction. On screen, it projected the same intensity as the transport ship but with much more powerful emanations. Statistics scrolled beside each blip. The enemy must have been reading the same information on its screens, because the two pirate vessels veered suddenly, breaking orbit and heading in different directions.

Tiny sparks erupted on the edge of the pirate escort facing the FSP cruiser as the transport ship broke for the edge of the Ambrosian system.

"What's that?" asked Lunzie, indicating the flashes.

"Ordnance," Timmins said. "Escort's firing on the ZD so the lugger can escape."

Answering flickers came from the FSP ship as it increased velocity, coming within a finger's width of the pirate.

"They've got to stop the lugger from getting away!" Elessa exclaimed.

"It can't get them both," Vir chided her.

"I'd rather the ZD took out the armed ship, myself. We're not safe and home yet."

"Oh, for a Tri-D tank," Flor complained. "The coordinates say that they're miles apart but you can't get the proper perspective on this obsolete equipment."

The transport zipped off the edge of the screen in seconds. The two remaining blips crossed. For a moment they couldn't tell which was which, until Scarran reached over and touched a control.

"Now they're different colours. Red's the pirate, blue's the Zaid-Dayan." Red vectored away from Blue, firing rapid laser bolts at the larger ship. The blue dot took some hits, not enough to keep it from following neatly on the tail of Red. Now it was Red's turn to be peppered with laser bolts. Then a large flash of light issued from the blue dot.

"Missile!" Scarran exclaimed.

A tiny blip joined the larger two on the screen, moving very slowly toward the red light. The pirate vessel began desperate evasive manoeuvres which apparently availed nothing against the mechanical intelligence guiding its nemesis. At last Red had to turn its guns away from Blue long enough to rid itself of the chasing light dogging its movements.

The Zaid-Dayan sank a beautiful shot in the pirates' engine section. The red blip yawed from the blow but recovered; the pirate had as much unexpected manoeuvrability as weaponry. But the FSP cruiser inexorably closed the distance between them.

The speakers crackled again. "Surrender your vessel or we will be forced to destroy you," the calm female voice enjoined the pirate. "Stop now. This is our last warning."

"You will be the one destroyed," the mechanical voice from the pirate replied.

"They're heading into the atmosphere," Flor said, and indeed it seemed that the pirate was making one last throw of the dice, a desperate gamble with death.

"Turn on visual scan," Zebara ordered.

The communications officer illuminated another screen which showed nothing but sky. Gradually they could catch the shimmering point of light growing larger and larger in the sky to the north.

"Increase contrast." Flor complied, and the point separated into two lights, one behind the other. "Here they come."

Even at a thousand kilometres the scout team could hear the roar of the ships as they plunged through the atmosphere in controlled dives. On the screen, the two ships resembled hot white comets, arcing from the sky. Laser fire scored red sparks in the blazing white fire of each other's hulls.

"They're coming in nearly on top of us," Flor said in a shriek.

Red fire lanced out of the lead ship on the screen. Instead of pointing backward at the pursuing vessel, it blazed toward the planet's surface. There was a loud hiss and an explosion from outside the scout. Fragments of stone flew past the open hatchway. The force field protected those inside, but it would not hold for long. A smell of molten rock filled the air.

"Bloody pirates!" Zebara roared. "Evacuate ship! Now!" He lunged for the command console, ripping it from its moorings, and made for the exit.

"Well, I expected retaliation," Bringan replied, cradling something against his chest as he followed the captain. "Everybody out!"

The rest of the team didn't wait to secure anything but dove through the hatch. Lunzie was nearly to the ground before she realised that Pollili still hadn't moved.

"Come on!" she yelled, urgently. "Hurry! Come on - Pollili!"

The woman looked around, dazed and incredulous.

"Lunzie? Where is everyone?"

"Evacuate, Poll. Evacuate!" Lunzie shouted, waving her arm. "Get out now! The pirates are firing on us."

The heavyworlder shot out of the booth like a launched missile. On her way down the ramp, she picked Lunzie up with one muscular arm about her waist and flung them both out of the hatchway. They hit the dirt and rolled down the hillside as another streak of red light destroyed a stand of trees to the left of the ship. The next bolt scored directly on the scout's engines. Lunzie was still rolling down the slope when the explosion dropped the ground a good three feet underneath her. She landed painfully on her arm brace and skidded down into the stream at the bottom of the hill, where she lay, bruised and panting. The only part of her which wasn't abraded was the forearm protected by the arm brace.

Pollili landed beside her. They flipped on their force-screens and covered their heads with their arms. The pirate escort made a screaming dive, coming within sixty feet of the surface. Its engines were covered with lines of blue lightning like St. Elmo's fire. It had sustained quite a lot of damage.

The pirate was followed by a ship so big Lunzie couldn't believe it could avoid crashing.

"The Zaid-Dayan'."

The two ships exchanged fire as they changed direction, headed out toward Dondara's rock flats before ascending once more into the sun. Radiant heat from their passage set fire to the trees on the edge of the plateau. The pirate and the cruiser continued to blast away even as they touched the bottom of their parabola and veered upward toward the sky. They were completely out of sight in the upper atmosphere when Lunzie and Pollili felt air sucked away from them and then heard a huge BOOM! A tiny fireball erupted in the middle of the sky, spreading out into a gigantic blazing cloud edged with black smoke. The explosion turned into a long rumble which altered to a loud and threatening sibilation.

"Into the water, quickly!" Lunzie gasped.

The two women were just barely under the surface when hot fragments of metal rained down around them, hissing angrily as they struck the water. The fragments were still hot when they touched the edge of their protective force-screen envelopes and passed through harmlessly. Lunzie's lungs were beginning to ache and her vision to turn black by the time the pieces stopped falling. When she finally crawled up the bank, her legs still in water, she gratefully pulled in deep breaths.

Pollili emerged next to her and flopped on her back, water streaming out other hair and eyes. There were burns on the fabric of her tunic, and a painful-looking scorch mark on the back of one hand.

"It's over," Lunzie panted, "but who won?"

"I sure hope we did," Pollili breathed, staring up at the sky as the thrum of engines overhead grew louder.

Lunzie rolled over and dared to look up. The FSP warship, its spanking new colours scorched and carbonised and lines etched into its new hull plates by the enemy lasers, hovered majestically over the plateau where the destroyed scout had once rested, and triumphantly descended.

"We sure did." Pollili's voice rang with pride.

"That," declared Lunzie, "is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Singed about the edges, scorched a bit, but beautiful!"

The Zaid-Dayan carried the scout team to rendezvous with the ARCT-10. Zebara's team was lauded as heroes by the Fleet officers for holding off the pirate invasion until help could arrive. Pollili especially was decorated for "performance far beyond the line of duty."

"It should have been for sheer invention," Dondara muttered under his breath.

Pollili was uncomfortable with the praise and asked Lunzie to explain just what she had done which everyone thought was so brilliant.

"I trusted you; now tell me what you trusted me to do," Pollili complained. When Lunzie gave a brief resume. Poll frowned at her, briefly resuming her "Quinada" mode. "Then you should take some of the credit. You thought up the deception."

"Not a bit," Lunzie said. "You did it all. I did nothing but allow you to use latent ingenuity. Chalk it up to the fact that people do extraordinary things when under pressure. In fact, I'd be obliged if you glossed over my part in it to anyone else."

Pollili shook her head at first but Lunzie gave her a soulfully appealing look. "Well, all right, if that's what you wish. Zebara says I can't ask how you did it. Only at least tell me what I said that I don't remember so I can tell Dondara."

Lunzie also reassured Dondara that his mate could not snap back into her "Quinada" role. He'd missed it all since he was just returning to the scout just as the ship was blown up. He had been set to wade into the molten wreckage and find some trace of Pollili. He was very proud that his mate was considered hero of the day and constantly groused that the computer record of her stellar performance had been destroyed along with the scout ship. Lunzie was relieved rather than upset and eventually gave Dondara a bowdlerised description of the events.

The other team members had suffered only bruising and burns in their escape, treated by Fleet medical officers in the Zaid-Dayan's state-of-the-art infirmary. Bringan's hands and feet were scorched and had been wrapped in coldpacks by the medics. In his scramble from the scout ship, he had been so concerned to preserve the records he salvaged that he hadn't turned on his force-belt. He also hadn't realised that he was climbing over melting rock until the soles of his boots began to smoke. He'd had a desperate time trying to pry the boots off with his bare hands.

Zebara had a long burn down his back where a flying piece of metal from the exploding scout had plowed through his flesh. He spent his first eight days aboard the naval cruiser on his belly in an infirmary bed. Lunzie kept him company until he was allowed to get up. She called up musical programs from the well-stocked computer archives or played chess with him. Most of the time, they just talked about everything except pirates. Lunzie found that she had become very fond of the enigmatic heavyworlder.

"I won't be able to give you the protection you'll need once we're back on the ARCT-10," Zebara said one day. "I'd keep you under my protection if I could but I no longer have a ship." He grimaced. Lunzie hastened to check his bandages. The heavyworlder captain waved her away. "I had a message from the EEC. I have number one priority to take the next available scout off the assembly line but if I break my toys, I can't expect a new one right away." He made a rude noise.

Lunzie laughed. "I wouldn't be surprised if they said just exactly that."

Zebara became serious. "I'd like to keep you on my team. The others like you. You fit in well with us. To reduce your immediate vulnerability, I'd advise that you take the next available mission ARCT offers. By the time you come back, I should be able to reclaim you permanently."

"I'd like that, too," Lunzie admitted. "I'd have the best of all worlds, variety but with a set of permanent companions. I think I would have enjoyed myself on Ambrosia. But how do I queue-jump past other specialists waiting to get on the next mission?"

Zebara gave her his predatory grin. "They owe us a favour after our luring a pirate gunship to destruction. You'll get a berth in the next exploration available or I'll start cutting a few Administrators down to size." He pounded one massive fist into the other to emphasise his point, if not his methodology.

CHAPTER Fourteen

Zebara was right about the level of obligation the EEC felt for the team's actions.

"Policy usually dictates non-stress duty for at least four weeks after a planetary mission, Lunzie," the Chief Missions Officer of the ARCT-10 told her in a private meeting in his office, "but if you want to go out right away, under the circumstances, you have my blessing. You're lucky. There's a three-month mission due for a combined geological-xenobiological mission on Ireta. I'll put you on the roster for Ireta. With the medical berth filled by you, there are only two more berths to assign. It leaves in two weeks. That's not much turnaround time...."

"Thank you, sir. It relieves my mind greatly," Lunzie said sincerely. She had come straight to him after that talk with Zebara. The scout captain had depressed the right toggles.

Then she had to give the Missions Officer her own report on the Ambrosia incident, with full details. He kept the recorder on through the entire interview, often jotting additional notes. She felt quite exhausted when he finally excused her.

She later learned that he had interviewed each member of the team as well as the Zaid-Dayan officers. Apparently the fact that the lugger with its cold sleep would-be invasion force had escaped didn't concern him half as much as he was pleased that the overgunned escort had been destroyed. Most of those ARCT-10 Ship-born felt the same way. "One less of those hyped-up gunships makes space that bit more safe for us."

The rest of Zebara's team was given interim ship assignments until a replacement explorer scout ship was commissioned. Lunzie, waiting out the two weeks before she could depart on the Iretan mission, found herself with one or more of the off-duty team, and usually Zebara himself. To her amusement, a whisper circulated that they were "an item." Neither did anything to dispel the notion. In fact, Lunzie was flattered. Zebara was attractive, intelligent, and honest: three qualities she couldn't help but admire. She was duly informed by "interested" friends that heavyworlder courting, though infrequent, was brutal and exhausting. She wasn't sure she needed to find out firsthand.

During his convalescence, Zebara strained his eyes going through ship records, trying to locate doctored files. The rumour of a bacterium on Ambrosia killing the landing party one by one had indeed made the rounds of the ARCT-10 before any report had come back from the Zaid-Dayan. It was arduously traced back to Chacal, Coe's asocial friend in communications. He was taken in for questioning but died the first night in his cell. Although the official view reported it as a suicide, whisper had it that his injuries couldn't have been self-inflicted. Lunzie felt compassion for Coe, who felt himself compromised by his "friend's" covert activities.

"Which gets us no further than we were before," Bringan remarked at Lunzie's farewell party the night before she embarked on the Iretan mission.

"Somebody's got to do something positive about those fardling pirates," Pollili said, glowering about the room. Lunzie was beginning to wish that she'd never imposed the Quinada personality on Pollili. Some of it was sticking. She devoutly hoped it would have worn off by the time she returned from her three months on Ireta.

At the docking bay while they were waiting for the ARCT-10 to reach the shuttle's window down to Ireta's surface, she had a moment's anxiety as she saw six heavyworlders filing in. Stop that, she told herself. She'd got on just fine with Zebara's heavyworld crewmen. This lot could be similarly sociable, pleasant and interesting.

She concentrated hard on the activity in the docking area for there were several missions being landed in this system. A party of Theks including the ubiquitous Tor were to be set down on the seventh planet from the sun. A large group of Ryxi were awaiting transport to Arrutan's fifth planet which was to be thoroughly investigated as suitable for colonisation by their species. Ireta, the fourth planet of the system's third-generation sun, was a good prospect - some said a textbook example - for transuranic ores since it appeared to have been locked into a Mesozoic age. Xenobiological surveying would investigate the myriad life-forms sensed by the high-altitude probe, but that search was to take second place to mining assay studies.

The teams would contact one another at prearranged intervals, and report to the ARCT on a regular basis by means of a satellite beacon set in a fixed orbit perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. The ARCT-10 itself discovered traces of a huge ion storm between the Arrutan system and the next one over. They intended to track and chart its course.

"We'll be back for you before you know it," the deck officer assured them on his com as the Iretan shuttle lifted off and glided out of the landing bay. "Good hunting, my friends." Ireta was named for the daughter of an FSP councillor who had been consistently supportive in voting funds to the EEC. At first it seemed that the councillor had been paid a significant compliment. Initial probe readouts suggested that Ireta had great potential. There was a hopeful feeling that if Ambrosia was lucky, Ireta would continue the streak. It possessed an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, indigenous plant life that ingested CO2 and spat out oxygen: probe analysis marked significant transuranic ore deposits and countless interesting life forms on the part surveyed, none of which seemed to be intelligent.

A base camp was erected on a stony height and the shuttle positioned on a massive shelf of the local granite. A force-screen dome enclosed the entire camp and the veil constantly erupted in tiny blue sparks where Ireta's insect life destroyed itself in clouds on the electrical matrix. Sufficient smaller domes were set up to afford privacy, a larger one for the messhall-lounge, while the shuttle was turned into a laboratory and specimen storage.

And then there was the extraordinary stench. The air was permeated with hydro-telluride, a fiendish odour like rotting vegetation. One source was a small plant, which grew everywhere, that smelled like garlic gone berserk. No one could escape it. After one good whiff when the shuttle doors had opened on their home for the next three months, everyone dove for nose filters, by no means the most comfortable appliance in a hot, steamy environment. Soiled work clothes were left outside the sleeping quarters. After a while, no amount of cleansing completely removed the stench of Ireta from clothes or boots.

The stink bothered Lunzie far less than the feeling that she was being covertly watched. This began on their third day dirtside when the two co-leaders, Kai on the geological side and her young acquaintance Varian as xeno, passed out assignments. The remainder of the team was a mixed bag. Lunzie knew no one else well but several of the others by sight. Zebara had personally checked the records of everyone assigned to that mission and she'd been delighted to learn that Kai as well as Varian and a man named Triv were Disciples. She was as surprised as Kai and Varian when three children had been included for dirtside experience on this mission. Bonnard, an active ten-year-old, was the son of the ARCT-10's third officer. The gen was that she was probably glad to have him out of her hair while the ARCT explored the ion storm. Cleiti and Terilla, two girls a year younger than Bonnard, were more docile and proved eager to help.

Kai and Varian had both tried to set the children aside.

"That's an unexplored planet," Kai had protested to the mission officer. "This mission could be dangerous. It's no place for children."

Lunzie was not proof against the crushing disappointment in the young faces. There would be a force-shielded camp: there were plenty of adults to supervise their activities. "Oh, why not? Ireta's been benchmarked. No planet is ever completely safe but it shouldn't be too dangerous for a short term."

"If," Kai had emphasised that, holding up a warning finger at the children, "they act responsibly! Most important of all, never go outside the camp without an adult."

"We won't!" the youngsters chorused.

"We'll count on that promise," Kai told them, adult to adult. "It isn't uncommon for children to join a mission," he said to the others. "We can use the extra hands if we're to get everything done."

"We'll help, we'll help!" the girls had chorused. "We've never been on a planet before." Bonnard had added wistfully.

The last-minute inclusion of the children was curiously comforting to Lunzie: she'd missed so much of Fiona's childhood that she looked forward to their company. Lunzie preferred making new acquaintances, for strangers wouldn't know any details of her life. The team leaders, of course, knew that she had experienced cold sleep lags, for those were on her file. Varian considered her somewhat mysterious.

Gaber was the team cartographer and endlessly complained about the primitive facilities and noxious conditions. Lunzie usually greeted these outpourings with raised eyebrows. After the scout ship on Ambrosia, their quarters, not to mention the privacy of a separate small dwelling, seemed positively elaborate. However, Lunzie was willing to tolerate Gaber because he had been able to achieve long-term (for an ephemeral) friendships with the oldest Theks on the ARCT-10 and she would divert his complaints to the relationships which fascinated her. She assisted Kai in making certain that the cartographer remembered to wear his force-belt and other safety equipment. That much was out of pure selfishness on Lunzie's part, for Gaber had to be constantly treated for insect bites and minor lacerations.

Trizein was a xenobiologist whose infectious enthusiasm made him popular with everyone, especially the youngsters, as he would patiently answer their many questions. Trizein applied the same amazing energy to his work though he was absentminded about safety precautions. Lunzie would be assisting him from time to time and had no problem with that duty.

Dimenon and Margit were Kai's senior geologists who would locate Ireta's deposits of useful minerals. They were specifically hoping for transuranics like plutonium which paid the biggest bonuses. Ireta's preliminary scan clearly displayed large deposits of radioactivity. Dimenon's crew was eager to get to work laying detective cores. Triv and Aulia and three of the heavyworlders, Bakkun, Berru and Tanegli, completed the geologists, while Portegin would set up the core-receiver screen and computer analysis.

Lunzie made no immediate efforts to approach the six heavyworlders. They didn't seem to mix with the lightweighters as easily as Zebara, Dondara and Pollili, The captain had instilled his team with his own democratic, bootstrapping ideals and, while on the ARCT-10, they had not limited their acquaintances to heavyworlders.

Paskutti, the security officer, was of the sullen, chip-on-the-shoulder type who would prefer a ghetto in the midst of an otherwise tolerant society. Lunzie wasn't sure if he was just sullen or stupid, but he ruled the female Tardma's every action. Lunzie refused to let him worry her. Her time with Zebara had shown that the attitude problem was theirs, not hers. Fortunately, as time passed Tanegli and another heavyworlder named Divisti became more sociable though they remained more distant with lightweights than Lunzie's comrades on Zebara's team had been. Bakkun and Berru were a recent pairing and it was understandable if they were much engrossed in each other.

Lunzie could not quite dismiss her lingering anxieties: Orlig's death still haunted her. Chacal, who had proved to be a spy, could never have strangled the heavyworlder. Knoradel and Birra, the Ryxi, when questioned, had both adamantly insisted that Lunzie had insulted Birra and then attacked Knoradel, who had gone to her assistance. Birra had left with the Ryxi settlers and Knoradel transferred off the ARCT-10.

Far from being a wonderland, Ireta's landscape became downright depressing after the novelty of it wore off. The purple-green and blue-green growth overhung the camp on every side. What looked like a flat, grassy meadow beckoning to the explorer usually turned out to be a miry swamp. The fauna was far more dangerous than any Lunzie had seen on Ambrosia or on any of the planets she had so far visited. Some of the lifeforms were monstrous.

The first sled reconnaissance flights sighted large bodies crashing through the thick green jungle growth but, at first, no images were recorded, just vast shadowy forms. When at last Varian's team saw examples of Ireta's native life, they got quite a shock. The creatures were huge, ranging from a mere four meters to over thirty meters in length. One long-necked, slow-moving swamp herbivore was probably longer, but it hardly ever emerged from the marsh where it fed, so that the length of its tail was still in dispute.

Lunzie watched the xenob films with disbelief. Nothing real could be that big. It could squash a human being in passing, even a heavyworlder, and never notice. Small life there was in plenty, too. Lunzie held morning and evening surgeries to treat insect bites. The worst of them was a stinging insect which left huge welts but the most insidious was a leechlike bloodsucker. Everyone activated their personal force-screens outside the camp compound.

Instead of a second balmy paradise like Ambrosia, Ireta had more nasty surprises and anomalies than Purgatory. Stunners were issued to the geology and xeno teams although Varian made far more use of telltale taggers, marking the native life-forms with paint guns trying to amass population figures. Anyone out on foot wore his lift-belt, to remove himself quickly from the scene of trouble.

Lunzie found it curious that there were so many parasites with a taste for red, iron-based blood, when the first specimens of the marine life forms which Varian or Divisti brought in to be examined proved to have a much thinner, watery fluid in their systems. To test the planet for viability, foragers were sent out for specimens of fruits and plants to test and catalogue. More than curiosity prompted that for it was always wise to supplement food stocks from indigenous sources in case the EV ship didn't get back on time. In this task, the children were useful, though they were always accompanied by an adult, often Lunzie, frequently Divisti who was a horticulturist. Whenever she thought about the ion storm which the ARCT-10 was chasing, Lunzie pressed herself to find safe sources of indigenous foodstuffs. Then she chided herself for half believing her "Jonah" reputation. That had been broken by the fortuitous outcome of the Ambrosia incident.

Because her skills did not include mapping or prospecting, Lunzie took up the duties of camp quartermaster. She spent hours experimenting with the local foods when she wasn't overseeing the children's lessons or doing her Discipline exercises. She didn't mind being the camp cook for it was her first opportunity to prepare food by hand since she had left Tee. Making tempting meals out of synth-swill and the malodorous native plants provided her with quite a challenge.

Lunzie and Trizein also combined their skills to create a nutritious green pulp from local vines that filled all the basic daily requirements. On the one hand, the pulp was an extremely healthful meal. On the other, it tasted horrible. Since she had concocted it, Lunzie bravely ate her share but after the first sampling no one else would eat it except the heavyworlders.

"They," Varian declared, "would eat anything."

Lunzie managed a chagrined smile. "My future efforts will be better, I promise. Just getting the hang of it."

"If you could just neutralise the hydro-telluride," Varian said. "Of course, we can always eat grass like the herbivores. D'you know, it doesn't stink?"

"Humans can't digest that much grass fibre." On one of their supervised "foragings," the children had spotted a shy, hip-high, brown-furred beast in the ferny peat bogs. All their efforts to capture one of the "cute" animals before an adult could follow the active children, were circumvented by the quadrupeds' native caution. Varian found that odd since there was no reason for the little animals to fear bipeds. Then a wounded herbivore too slow to escape with the others was captured. A pen was constructed outside the camp for Varian to tend and observe the creature. On the next trip, Varian brought back one very small specimen of a furry quadruped breed. It had been orphaned and would have fallen prey to the larger carnivores.

The two creatures proved to compound Ireta's anomalies. Trizein had been dissecting clear-ichored marine creatures, styled fringes because of their shape. The large herbivore, savagely gouged in the flank, was red-blooded. Trizein was amazed that two such diverse species would have evolved on the same planet. Trizein could find no precedents to explain red-blooded, pentadactyl animals and ichor-circulating marine creatures cohabiting. The anomaly didn't fit the genetic blueprint for the planet. He spent hours trying to reconcile the diversities. He requested tissue samples from any big creature Varian's team could catch, both carnivore and herbivore, and he wanted specimens of marine and insect life. He seemed to be constantly in the shuttle lab, except when Lunzie hauled him out to eat his meals. He'd have forgotten that minor human requirement if she'd let him.

Meanwhile, the little creature now named Dandy and the wounded female adult herbivore called Mabel had to be tended and fed: the children assumed the first chore. Lunzie had synthesised a lactose formula for the orphan and put the energetic Bonnard in charge of its feeding, with Cleiti and Terilla to assist. "Now you kids can't neglect Dandy," Lunzie told them. "I don't mind if you treat it as a pet but once you take responsibility for it, you'd better not forget that obligation. Understand me? Especially you, Bonnard. If you're interested in becoming a planetary surveyor, you must prove to be trustworthy. All this goes down on your file, remember!"

"I will, Lunzie, I will!" And Bonnard began issuing orders to the two girls.

Varian chuckled as she watched him grooming Dandy and fussing over the security of his pen while the girls refilled its water bucket. "He's making progress, isn't he?"

"Considerable. If we could only stop him bellowing like a bosun."

"You should hear his mother," Varian replied, grinning broadly. "I don't blame her for dumping him with us. I wouldn't want him underfoot if I was charting an ion storm."

"How's your Mabel?" Lunzie asked casually although she had another motive for asking.

"Oh, I think we can release her soon. Good clean tissue around the scar once we got rid of all the parasites. I wouldn't want to keep her in a pen much longer or she'll become tame, used to being given food instead of doing her own foraging."

"Mabel? Tame?" Lunzie rolled her eyes, remembering that it had taken all the heavyworlders to rope and secure the beast for the initial surgery.

"Odd, that injury," Varian went on, frowning. "All the adults of her herd had similar bite marks on their haunches. That would suggest that their predator doesn't kill!" Her frown deepened. "And that's rather odd behaviour, too."

"You didn't by any chance notice the heavyworlders' reaction?"

Varian regarded Lunzie for a long moment. "I don't think I did but then I was far too busy keeping away from Mabel's tail, legs and teeth. Why? What did you notice?"

"They had looked..."-Lunzie paused, trying to find exactly the right adjective - "hungry!"

"Come on now, Lunzie!"

"I'm not kidding, Varian. They looked hungry at the sight of all that raw red meat. They weren't disgusted. They were fascinated. Tardma was all but salivating." Lunzie felt sick at the memory of the scene.

"There have always been rumours that heavyworlders eat animal flesh on their home planets," Varian said thoughtfully, giving a little squeamish shudder. "But that group have all served with FSP teams. They know the rules."

"It's not a rumour, Varian. They do eat animal protein on their homeworlds," Lunzie replied, recalling long serious talks she'd had with Zebara. "This is a very primitive environment, predators hunting constantly. There's something called the 'desert island syndrome.' " She sighed but made eye contact with the young leader. "And ethnic compulsions can cause the most civilised personality to revert, given the stimulus."

"Is that why you keep experimenting to improve the quality of available foodstuffs?" Lunzie nodded. "Keep up the good work, then. Last night's meal was rather savoury. I'll keep an eye out for a hint of reversion."

A few days later Lunzie entered the shuttle laboratory to find Trizein combining a mass of vegetable protein with an ARCT-grown nut paste. She swiped her finger through the mess and licked thoughtfully.

"We're getting there, but you know, Tri, we're not real explorers yet. I'm sort of disappointed."

Trizein looked up, startled. "I think we've accomplished rather a lot in the limited time with so much to analyse and investigate. We're the first beings on this planet. How much more explorer can we be?" Lunzie let the grin she'd been hiding show. "We're not considered true explorers until we have made a spiritous beverage from indigenous products."

Trizein blinked, totally baffled.

"Drink, Trizein. Quickal, spirits, booze, liquor, alcohol. What have you analysed that's non-toxic with a sufficient sugar content to ferment? I think we should have a chemical relaxant. It'd do everyone good."

Trizein peered shortsightedly at her, a grin tugging at his lips. "In point of fact, I have got something. They brought it in from that foraging expedition that was attacked. I ran a sample of it. I think it's very good but I can't get anyone else to try it. We'll need a still."

"Nothing we can't build." Lunzie grinned. "I've been anticipating your cooperation, Tri, and I've got the necessary components out of stores. I rather thought you'd assist in this worthy project for the benefit of team morale."

"Morale's so important," Trizein agreed, exhibiting a droll manner which he'd had little occasion to display. "I do miss wine, both for drinking and cooking. Not that anything is likely to improve the pervasive flavour of Iretan food. A little something after supper is a sure specific against insomnia."

"I didn't think anyone suffered that here," Lunzie remarked, and then they set to work to construct a simple distillation system, complete with several filters. "We'll have to remove all traces of the hydro- telluride without cooking off the alcohol."

"A pity acclimatisation is taking so long," Trizein said, easing a glass pipe into a joint. "We'll probably get used to the stench the day before the ARCT comes for us."

They set the still up, out of the way, in a corner of Lunzie's sleeping dome. With a sense of achievement, they watched the apparatus bubble gently for a time and then left it to do its job. "It's going to be days before there's enough for the whole team to drink," Trizein said in gentle complaint.

"I'll keep watch on it," she said, her eyes crinkling merrily, "but feel perfectly free to pop in and sample its progress."

"Oh, yes, we should periodically sample it," Trizein replied gravely. "Can't have an inferior product."

They shut the seal on Lunzie's dome just as Kai and Gaber burst excitedly into the camp.

"We've got films of the monster who's been taking bites out of the herbivores," Kai announced, waving the cassette jubilantly above his head.

The lightweights watched the footage of toothy monsters with horrified interest. Varian dubbed the carnivores "fang-faces" for the prominent fangs and rows of sharp teeth. They were terrifyingly powerful specimens, walking upright on huge haunches with a reptilian tail like a third leg that flew behind them when they ran. The much smaller forepaws might look like a humorous afterthought of genetic inadequacy but they were strong enough to hold a victim still while the animal chewed on the living prey. Fortunately the fang-faces on film were not savaging herbivores in this scene. They were greedily eating clumps of a bright green grass, tearing them up by those very useful forelimbs, stuffing them into toothy maws.

"Quite a predator," Lunzie murmured to Varian. She ought to have hauled Trizein away from his beloved electro-microscope. He needed to have the contrast of the macrocosm to round out the pathology of his biological profiles.

"Yes, but this is very uncharacteristic behaviour for a carnivore," Varian remarked, watching intently. "Its teeth are suitable for a carnivorous diet. Why is it eating grass like there's no tomorrow?"

As the camera panned past the fang-face, it rested on a golden-furred flying creature, eating grass almost alongside the predator. It had a long sharp beak and wing-hands like the Ryxi but there the resemblance ended.

"We've seen avian nests but they're always near water, preferably large lakes or rivers," Gaber told Lunzie. "That creature is nearly two hundred kilometres from the nearest water. They would have to have deliberately sought out this vegetation."

"They're an interesting species, too," Kai remarked. "They were curious enough to follow our sled and they're capable of fantastic speed."

Varian let out a crow. "I want to be there when we tell that to the Ryxi! They want to be the only intelligent avians in the galaxy even if they have to deny the existence of others by main strength of will."

"Why weren't these species seen on the initial flyby of Ireta?" Divisti asked in her deep slow voice.

"With the dense jungle vegetation a super cover? Not surprising that the report only registered life-forms. Think of all the trouble we've had getting pictures with them scooting into the underbrush."

"I wish the ARCT wasn't out of range," Kai remarked, not for the first time. "I'd like to order a galaxy search on EV files. I keep feeling that this planet has to have been surveyed before."

Dimenon, as chief geologist, was of the same opinion. He was getting peculiar echoes from signalling cores all over the continental shield. Kai managed to disinter an old core from the site of one of the echoes. Its discovery proved to the geologists that their equipment was functioning properly but the existence of an unsuspected core also caused consternation.

"This core is not only old, it's ancient," Kai said. "Millions of years old."

"Looks just like the ones you're using," Lunzie remarked, handling the tube-shaped core. "That's true enough, but it suggests that the planet has been surveyed before, which is why no deposits of transuranics have been found in an area that should be rich with them."

"Then why no report in the EV files?" Dimenon asked.

Kai shrugged, taking the core back from Lunzie. "This is slightly more bulky but otherwise identical."

"Could it be the Others?" Dimenon asked in a hushed voice.

Lunzie shook her head, chuckling at that old childish nightmare.

"Not unless the Others know the Theks," Kai replied. "They make all the cores we use."

"What if the Theks are copying the science of the older technology?" Dimenon argued defensively.

While it was hard to imagine anything older than Theks, Lunzie looked at Kai who knew more about them than she did.

"Then the ancient core has to mean that Ireta was previously surveyed? Only who did it? What do the Theks say?"

"I intend to ask them," Kai replied grimly.

A few days later, Varian sought Lunzie out in her dome. The young leader was shaking and very disturbed. Lunzie made her sit and gave her a mug of pepper.

"What's wrong?"

The girl took a deep sip of the restorative drink before she spoke.

"You were right," Varian said. "The heavyworlders are reverting to savagery. I had two of them out on a survey. Paskutti was flying the sled as we tracked a fang-face. It chased down one of the herbivores and gouged bites out of its flank. It made me sick, but Paskutti and Tardma exhibited a grotesque fascination at the sight. I insisted that we save the poor herbivore before it was killed. Paskutti promptly blasted the fang-face with the sled exhaust, showing his superiority like an alpha animal. He did drive it off but not before wounding it cruelly. Its hide was a mass of char."

Lunzie swallowed her disgust. As surrogate mother-confessor and psychologist for the team, she knew that a confrontation with the heavyworlders was required to discover exactly what was going on in their minds, but she didn't look forward to the experience. Right now she needed to refocus Varian on her mission, to take her mind off the horror.

"The predator just took the animal's flesh," she asked, "leaving a wound like Mabel's? That's interesting. A fang-face has a tremendous appetite. One little chunk of herbivore oughtn't to satisfy it."

"They certainly couldn't sustain themselves just by eating grass. Even though they do eat tons of it in the truce-patch."

Lunzie stroked the back of her neck thoughtfully. "That grass is more likely to provide a nutrient they're missing. We'll analyse anything you bring us."

Varian managed a laugh. "That's a request for samples?"

"Yes, indeed. Trizein is right. There are anomalies here, puzzles left from eons past. I'd like to solve the mystery before we leave Ireta."

"If we leave," Gaber said irritably later that day when Lunzie invited him to share a pot of her brew of synthesised coffee. "I don't intend ever signing up for a planetary mission again. It's my opinion that we've been planted. We're here to provide the core of a planetary population. We'll never get off."

"Nonsense," Lunzie returned sharply, ignoring his basic self-contradiction to concentrate on reducing a new rumour. "The transuranics of this planet alone are enough to supply ten star systems for a century. The FSP is far more desperate for mineral wealth than starting colonies. Now that Dimenon is prospecting beyond the continental shield, he's finding significant deposits of transuranics every day."

"Significant?" Gaber was sceptical.

"Triv is doing assays. We'll have evaluations shortly," Lunzie said in a no-nonsense tone. Gaber responded to firmness. "Add to that, look at all the equipment we have with us. The EEC can't afford to plant such expensive machinery. They need it too badly for ongoing exploration."

"They'd have to make it look like a normal drop, or we all would have opted out." Gaber could be obstinate in his whimsies.

Lunzie was exasperated by the cartographer's paranoia. "But why plant us? We're the wrong age mix and too few in number to provide any viable generations beyond grandchildren."

Gaber sat gloomily over his mug of coffee. "Perhaps they're trying to get rid of us and this was the surest way."

Lunzie was momentarily stunned into silence. Gaber had to be grousing. If there was the least byte of truth to his appalling notion, she was a prime candidate for the tactic. If eighteen people had been put in jeopardy just to remove her, she would never forgive herself. Common sense took hold. Zebara had checked the files on the entire mission personnel: she had been a late addition to the team and, by the time she was included, it would have been far too late for even a highly organised pirate network to have manoeuvred a planting!

"Sometimes, Gaber," she said with as light a tone as she could manage, "you can be totally absurd! The mission planted? Highly unlikely."

However, when Dimenon returned from the north-east edge of the shield with his news of a major strike, Lunzie decided that tonight was a very good occasion to break out the quickal. There was enough to provide two decent tots for each adult to celebrate the discovery of the saddle of pitchblende. The up-thrust strike would provide all the geologists with such assay bonuses they might never have to work again. A percentage was customarily shared out to other members of an exploratory team. Even the children.

They had to be content with riches in their majority, and fruit juice now in their glasses. However, they were soon merry enough, for Dimenon brought out the thumb piano he never travelled without and played while everyone danced.

If the heavyworlders had to be summoned from their quarters by Kai to join in, they did so with more enthusiasm than Lunzie would have believed of the dour race. They also appeared to get drunker on the two servings than anyone else did.

The next day they were surly and clumsy, more of a distraction to the survey teams than a functioning part. There was physical evidence that the alcohol had stimulated a mating frenzy. Some of the males sported bruises, Tardma cradled one arm and Divisti walked in a measured way that suggested to Lunzie that she was covering a limp.

Lunzie spent hours over comparative chemical analysis and called the heavyworlders in one at a time that evening for physical examinations, trying to determine if their mutation was adversely affected by the native quickal. To be on the safe side, she added one more filter to the still. Nothing else which could be construed as harmful was left in the mixture. She took a taste of the new distillate and made a face. It was potent, but not potent enough to account for the heavyworlder behaviour.

Lunzie lay in bed late that night staring up at the top of the dome and listening to the bubbling of the still. If, she mused, aware that the quickal had loosened a few inhibitions, Gaber should be correct, I might be planted but I haven't lost anything. I've nothing left of my past except that hologram of Fiona in the bottom of my bag. I started my travels with that: it is proper for it to be with me now.

I wonder how Fiona is, on that remote colony of hers. What would she say if she could see me now, in an equally remote location, escaping yet another life-threatening situation, complete with fanged predators? Lunzie sighed. Why would Fiona care? She knew that when she had escaped from Ireta back to the ARCT-10, she'd join Zebara's team, stop running away, and have an interesting life. No big nasty pervert has dumped nineteen people on a substandard planet just to dispose of one time-lagged ex-Jonah medic.

Which brought her right back to the underlying motivation. The planet pirates. They were to blame for everything that had happened to her since her first cold sleep. They had unsettled her life time and again: first by robbing her of her daughter, trying to kill her and making her live in fear of her life. Somehow, even if it meant turning down a place on Zebara's team, she was going to turn matters around, and start interfering with the pirates, instead of them messing up her life all the time. She'd managed to do a little along those lines already: she just had to improve her efficiency. She grinned to herself. That could be fun now that she had learned to be vigilant. The Ireta mission had a few more weeks to run.

With a sigh, she started the Discipline for putting herself to sleep. In the morning, she kept her mind busy with inventorying the supply dome. As she checked through, small discrepancies began to show up in a variety of items, including some she had had occasion to draw from only the day before. She turned over piles of dome covers, and restacked boxes, but there was no doubt about it. Force-belts, chargers, portable disk reader/writers were missing. Stock had also been moved around, partly to conceal withdrawals. Quickly, she went over the foodstuffs. None of the all-important protein stores were gone, but quantities of the mineral supplements had vanished as well as a lot of vegetable carbohydrates.

The missing items could be quite legitimate, with secondary camps being established for the geology teams. There was no reason they couldn't just help themselves. She would ask one of the leaders later on.

From the hatch of the dome, Lunzie saw Kai coming down the hill from the shuttle and met him at the veil lock. "You look tired."

"Thek contact," Kai said, feigning total exhaustion. "I wish Varian would do some of the contacts but she just hasn't the patience to talk to Theks."

"Gaber likes talking with Theks."

"Gaber wouldn't stick to the subject under discussion."

"Such as the ancient cores?"

"Right."

"What did they say?"

Kai shrugged. "I asked my questions. Now they will consider them. Eventually I'll get answers."

Varian joined them as they walked to the dome. "What word from the Theks?"

"I expect a definite yes or no my next contact. But what in the raking hells could they tell me after all this time? Even Theks don't live as long as those cores have been buried."

"Kai, I've been talking to Gaber." Lunzie took the co-leaders aside. "He's heard a rumour about planting. He swears he has kept his notion to himself, but if he has reached that conclusion on his own, you may assume that others have, too."

"You're smarter than that," Kai snapped. "We haven't been planted."

"You know how Gaber complains, Lunzie," Varian added. "It's more of his usual."

"Then there's nothing wrong in the lack of messages from the ARCT-10, is there?" Lunzie asked bluntly. "There's really been no more news from our wandering ship in several weeks. The kids especially miss word from their parents."

Kai and Varian exchanged worried glances. "There's been nothing on the beacon since they closed with the storm."

"That long?" Lunzie asked, taken aback. "They couldn't have gotten that far out of range since we were dropped off. Had the Theks heard?"

"No, but that doesn't worry me. What does is that our messages haven't been stripped from the beacon since the first week. Look, Lunzie," Kai said when she whistled at that news, "morale will deteriorate if people learn that. It would give credence to that ridiculous notion that we've been planted. I give you my word that the ARCT means to come back for us. The Ryxi intend to stay on Arrutan-5 but the Theks don't want to remain on the seventh planet forever."

"And even though the Theks wouldn't care if they were left through the next geologic age," Varian said firmly, "this is not the place I intend to spend the rest of my life."

"Nor I," was Lunzie's fervent second.

"Oh, there can't be anything really wrong," Varian went on blithely. "Perhaps the raking storm bollixed up the big receivers or something equally frustrating. Or," and now her eyes twinkled with pure mischief, "maybe the Others got them."

"Not on my first assignment as a leader," Kai said, making a valiant attempt to respond.

"By the way," Lunzie began, "since I've got the two of you at once, did you authorise some fairly hefty withdrawals from stores?"

"No," Varian and Kai chorused. "What's missing?" Kai asked.

"I did an inventory today and we're missing tools, mineral supplements, some light equipment, and a lot of oddments that were there yesterday."

"I'll ask my teams," Kai said and looked at Varian.

She was reviewing the problem. "You know, there have been a few funny things happening with supplies. The power pack in my sled was run down and I recharged it only yesterday morning. I know I haven't used up twelve hours' worth of power already."

"Well, I'll just institute a job for the girls," Lunzie said. "They can do their studies at the stores dome and check supplies and equipment in and out. All part of their education in planetary management."

"Nice thought," Varian said, grinning.

Dimenon and his crew returned from their explorations with evidence of another notable strike. Gold nuggets glittering in a streambed had led them to a rich vein of ore. The heavy hunks were passed from hand to hand that evening at another celebration. Morale lifted as Ireta once again proved to be a virgin source of mineral wealth.

A lot of the evening was spent in good-natured speculation as to the disposition of yet another hefty bonus. Lunzie dispensed copious draughts of fruit ale, keeping a careful eye on the heavyworlders although she was careful not to stint their portions.

In the morning, everyone seemed normal. In contrast to the drunken incompetence they had displayed the last time, the heavyworlders were in excellent spirits.

A different kind of emergency faced Lunzie as she emerged from her dome.

"I can't take it! I can't take it!" Dimenon cried, clutching first his head and then falling on his knees in front of her.

"What's the matter?" she demanded, alarmed by the distortion of his features. What on Earth sort of disease had he contracted? She fumbled for her bod bird.

"That won't help," Kai said, shaking his head sadly.

"Why not?" she said, her hand closing on the bod bird.

"Nothing can cure him."

"Tell me I'm not a goner, Lunzie, Tell me." He waved his hands so wildly that she couldn't get the bod bird into position.

"He doesn't smell Ireta any more," Kai said, still shaking his head but smiling wryly at his friend's histrionics.

"He what?" Lunzie stopped trying to scope Dimenon and then realised that she hadn't had time to put in her own nose filters. And she didn't smell Ireta either. "Krims!" She closed her eyes and gave a long sigh. "It has to come to this, huh?"

Dimenon wrapped his arms about her knees. "Oh, Lunzie, I'm so sorry for both of us. Please, my smeller will come back, won't it? Once I'm back in real air again. Oh, don't tell me I'll never be able to smell nothing in the air again..."

"An Ambrosian shadow crab by another name will still get you wet," Lunzie muttered under her breath. Nothing for it but to play out the scene. She picked up Dimenon's wrist and took his pulse, shone the bod bird in first one eye, then the other. "If the acclimatisation should just happen to be permanent, you could install an Iretan air-conditioner for your shipboard quarters. The ARCT-10 engineers are very solicitous about special atmospheres for the odd human mutation."

Dimenon looked as if he believed her for a long, woeful moment but the others were laughing so hard that he took it in good part.

Despite the installation of Cleiti and Terilla as requisitions clerks, the depletion of supplies did not cease. More items than those checked out by the girls continued to go missing: some were vital and irreplaceable pieces of equipment.

Coupling that with the increasingly aberrant behaviour of the heavyworlders, Lunzie pegged them as the pilferers. At the rate supplies were being raided, they must be getting ready to strike off on their own. They were physically well adapted for the dangers inherent on Ireta. This wasn't, she admitted to herself, the usual way in which heavyworlders usurped a full planet. Perhaps her imagination was going wild. There were only six heavyworlders, not enough to colonise a planet.

But the Theks were still in the system, and the Ryxi. So the system was already opened up in the conventional way. The ARCT-10 would soon be back to collect them, and if the heavyworlders wished to indulge in their baser instincts until that time, they were no real loss. There were still five qualified geologists and she, Trizein, Portegin and the kids could help Varian complete her part of the survey.

With Bonnard as Varian's record taper and with the possible alteration of the camp in mind, Lunzie assisted Trizein in his studies of the now-obsessive anomalies of Iretan life-forms.

Today's first task was to lure Dandy into the biologist's lab so he could take measurements of its head and limbs, and samples of hair and skin from the shy little animal. The beast kicked and whistled when Trizein scraped cells from inside its furry ears. Lunzie took it back to its pen and rewarded it with a sweet vegetable. She stayed a moment calming and caressing it before returning to Trizein, who was peering into the eyepiece of a scanner. He gestured her over in excitement.

"There is something very irregular about this planet," he said. "You just compare these two slides: one from the marine fringes and the other fresh from the little herbivore." Obediently Lunzie looked and he was right; the structures represented radically differing biologies. "Judging by the eating and ingesting habits, I have no doubt that the square marine fringes are native to this planet but Dandy and his friends don't belong here.

"I have a theory about the primitive yeasts we've been documenting," Trizein went on in a semi-lecturing mode. "It's been plaguing me all along that there was something familiar about the configuration."

"How can that be?" Lunzie asked, racking her brains. "I'll grant you that the Ssli are a tad like the fringes but I've never seen anything like Dandy before."

"That's because Dandy is the primitive form of an animal you're used to in its evolved state: the horse. The Earth horse. The species is not only pentadactyl, it is perissodactyl."

"That's impossible!"

"I'm afraid there's no other explanation though it doesn't explain how the creatures got here - he couldn't have evolved on this planet, but here he is."

"Someone had to have conveyed the stock here," Lunzie mused.

"Precisely," the biologist said. "If I were to ignore the context and study only the data I've been given, first by Bakkun, and now from this little fellow's living tissue, I would have to say that he is a hyracotherium, a life-form which became extinct on old Earth millions of years ago!"

The sound of the sled interrupted them. Lunzie hurried to the shield controls to admit Varian and Bonnard. She informed them that Trizein had news that he wanted to share with them. It was his triumph and he should be allowed to enjoy it by himself. The absentminded biologist was seldom outside his laboratory except to eat or to visit with Lunzie or Kai and had been largely unaware of the other facets of the team.

To the amazement of his small audience, he displayed the disk showing an archival drawing of a hyracotherium from his collection of paleontological files. There was no doubt about it: Dandy was unquestionably a replica of an ancient Earth breed from the Oligocene era.

"Let's see if there's more alike than just the furred beasts," Varian said, leading Trizein to the viewscreen. Varian promptly sat the bemused biologist down to watch her tapes of the golden fliers. Trizein launched into raptures as the graceful creatures performed their aerial acrobatics.

"No way to be certain, of course, without complete analysis, but this unquestionably resembles a pteranodon!"

"Pteranodon?" Bonnard made a face.

"Yes, a pteranodon, a form of dinosaur, misnamed, of course, since patently this creature is warm-blooded...." One by one, he identified the genotypes of the beasts Varian and the others had recorded. Each of the Iretan samples could be matched to a holo and description from Trizein's paleontological files. He did point to some minor evolutionary details but they were negligible alterations.

Fang-face was a Tyrannosaurus rex; Mabel and her breed were crested hadrosaurs; the weed-eating swamp dwellers were stegosauri and brontosauri. The biologist became more and more disturbed. He could not believe that they existed just on the other side of the veil which he himself never crossed. When Varian gave him the survey tapes she'd compiled, he shook an accusatory finger at the screen.

"Those animals were planted here."

"By who?" gasped Bonnard, wide-eyed. "The Others?"

"The Theks planted them, of course," Trizein assured the boy.

"Gaber says we're planted," Bonnard added.

Trizein, in his mild way, was more saddened than disturbed by the suggestion. He looked to Varian.

"We're not planted, Trizein," the young co-leader assured him and gave Bonnard a very intense and disapproving glare.

Kai was urgently summoned back from the edge of the continental shield to hear Trizein's conclusions, leaving Bakkun alone on the ridge. Varian particularly wanted Kai separated from the heavyworlders, for by the time he returned, Trizein had given her even more disturbing news.

Paskutti had asked Trizein to test the toxicity of the fang-face flesh and hide, a question which was not mere idle curiosity. Varian now had films of a startling atrocity. That day, Bonnard had led her to Bakkun's "special place." It proved to be a rough campground where five skulls and blackened bones of some of the fang-faces lay among the stones.

Lunzie knew how quickly the parasites of Ireta disposed of carrion. That meant these were very recent. There could be little doubt that the heavyworlders had killed and eaten animal flesh. The situation narrowed down to how well Kai, and Varian, could control the heavyworlders until the ARCT-10 retrieved them.

CHAPTER Fifteen

With a grim expression, Varian began emergency measures. She ordered Bonnard to remove all the sled power packs and hide them in the bushes around the compound. The packs had been depleted at an amazing rate and now she had the answer. Overuse by the heavyworlders. They'd have to have sledded to reach their "secret place," for the ritual slaughter and consumption of the animals.

Kai met them in the shuttle at the top of the hill, puzzled at the unusual urgent summons. He was horrified when he heard Varian's conclusions. Lunzie confirmed the continued drain of supplies which led her to believe that the heavyworlders had reverted to primitivism.

"We're lucky if it isn't mutiny," Varian finished. "Haven't you noticed in the past few days how their attitude toward us has been altering? Subtly, I admit; but they show less respect for our positions than before."

Kai nodded. "Then you think a confrontation is imminent?"

Varian affirmed it: "Our grace period ended last restday."

The heavyworlders could take over. As Lunzie drily pointed out, the mutated humans were far more able to take care of themselves on wild Ireta than the lightweight humans.

"I realise I'm repeating myself," Lunzie added, "but if Gaber felt he had been planted, the heavyworlders must have come to the same conclusion." She paused, hearing the whine of a lift-belt in the distance and listened harder. Who'd be using a lift-belt now?

"Bonnard and I also saw a Tyrannosaurus rex with a tree-sized spear stuck in his ribs," Varian said, shuddering. "That creature once ruled Old Earth. Nothing could stop him. A heavyworlder did, for fun! Furthermore, by establishing those secondary camps, we have given them additional bases. Where are the heavyworlders right now?"

"I left Bakkun working at the ridge. Presumably when he's finished he'll come back here. He had a lift-belt..."

Lunzie glanced out of the shuttle door and saw the whole contingent of heavyworlders coming toward them up the hill. The drawn concentration on their heavy-boned faces was terrifying. They looked dangerous, and they harboured no good intentions for the lightweights in the ship. She shouted a warning to Kai and Varian. She saw the door to the piloting compartment iris shut almost on Paskutti's foot.

As she flattened herself against the bulkhead, she noticed the imperceptible blink that told her the main power supply had been deactivated and the shuttle was now on auxiliaries. Was it too much to hope that one of the leaders had managed to get a message out?

"If you do not open that lock instantly, we will blast," said the hard unemotional voice of Paskutti, blaster in hand.

He was fully kitted out with many items that had so recently gone missing from the stores. Of course, Lunzie told herself; she realised too late that most of that purloined equipment had offensive capability.

"Don't!" Varian's voice sounded sufficiently fearful to keep Paskutti from pulling the release but Lunzie knew the girl was no coward. It did no good for either of them to be fried alive in the compartment.

The hatch opened and massive Paskutti reached through it. He seized Varian by the front of her shipsuit and hauled her out, flinging her against the ceramic side of the shuttle with such force that it broke her arm. Grinning sadistically, Tardma treated Kai the same way.

Lunzie caught Kai and kept him upright, forcing her mind into a Discipline state to calm herself. This was far worse than she could have imagined. How could she have been so naive as to think the heavyworlders would just go quietly?

Then Terilla, Cleiti and Gaber were unceremoniously herded into the shuttle, the cartographer babbling something about how this was not the way matters should proceed and how dared they treat him with such disrespect.

"Tanegli? Do you have them?" Paskutti asked into his wrist com-unit.

Whom would the heavyworlder botanist have? Lunzie answered her own question - the other lightweights not yet accounted for.

"None of the sleds have power packs," said Divisti, scowling in the lock. "And that boy is missing."

"How did he elude you?" Paskutti frowned in annoyance.

"Confusion. I thought he'd cling to the others." Divisti shrugged.

Good for you, Bonnard, Lunzie thought, seeking far more encouragement from that minor triumph than it really deserved.

"Start dismantling the lab, Divisti, Tardma."

Trizein came out of his confusion. "Now wait a minute. You can't go in there. I've got experiments and analyses going on. Divisti, don't touch that fractional equipment. Have you taken leave of your senses?"

"You'll take leave of yours." With a cool smile of pleasure, Tardma struck Trizein in the face with a blow that lifted the slight man off his feet and sent him rolling down the hard deck to lie motionless at Lunzie's feet.

"Too hard, Tardma," said Paskutti. "I'd thought to take him. He'd be more useful than any of the other lightweights."

Tardma shrugged. "Why bother with him anyway? Tanegli knows as much as he does." She went toward the lab with an insolent swing other hips.

Lunzie heard the scraping of feet on the rocks outside and Portegin with a bloody head half carried a groggy Dimenon across the threshold. Bakkun shoved a weeping Aulia and a blank-faced Margit inside. Triv was stretched on the floor when Berru tossed him there, grinning ferociously at his gasps of pain. Inaudible to the heavyworlders, Lunzie could hear Triv begin the measured breathing which led to the trance state of Discipline. At least four of them were preparing for whatever opportunities arose.

"All right, Bakkun," Paskutti ordered, "you and Berru go after our allies. We want to make this look right. That com-unit was still warm when I got here. They must have got a message through to the Theks."

Methodically the heavyworlders continued to strip the shuttle. Then Tanegli returned. "The storehouse has been cleared and what's useful in the domes."

"No protests. Leader Kai, Leader Varian?" sneered Paskutti.

"Protests wouldn't do us any good, would they?" Varian's level controlled voice annoyed Paskutti. He shot a look at the obviously broken arm and frowned.

"No, no protests. Leader Varian. We've had enough of you lightweights ordering us about, tolerating us because we're useful. Where would we have fit in your plantation? As beasts of burden? Muscles to be ordered here, there, and everywhere, and subdued by pap?" He made a cutting gesture with one huge hand.

Then, before anyone guessed his intention, he grabbed Terilla by the hair, letting her dangle at the end of his hand. When Cleiti jumped up at her friend's terrified shriek and began to pummel his thick muscular thigh, he raised his fist and landed a casual blow on the top of her head. She sank unconscious to the deck.

Gaber erupted and dashed at Paskutti who merely put a hand out to hold the cartographer off while he dangled the shrieking child.

"Tell me. Leader Varian, Leader Kai, to whom did you send that message? And what did you say?"

"We sent a message to the Theks. Mutiny. Heavyworlders." Kai watched as Terilla was swung, her screams diminishing to mere gasps. "That's all."

"Release the child," Gaber shouted. "You'll kill her. You know what you need to know. You promised there'd be no violence."

Paskutti viciously swatted Gaber into silence. His neck smashed into pulp, Gaber hit the deck with a terrible thud and gasped out his dying breaths as Terilla was dropped in a heap on top of Cleiti.

Horrified, Lunzie forced herself to think. Paskutti had to know if a message had been beamed to the beacon. How would that information alter his plans for them? Triv had now completed the preliminaries of Discipline. Lunzie wished for a smidgeon of telepathy so that the four of them could coordinate their efforts.

"There isn't a power pack anywhere," Tanegli said, storming into the shuttle. He seized hold of Varian by her broken arm. "Where did you hide them, you tight-assed bitch?"

"Watch it, Tanegli," Paskutti warned him, "these lightweights can't take much."

"Where, Varian? Where?" Tanegli emphasized each syllable with a twist of her arm.

"I didn't hide them. Bonnard did." Tanegli threw Varian's suddenly limp body to the deck.

"Go find him, Tanegli. And the packs, or we'll be humping everything out of here on our backs. Bakkun and Berru have started the drive. Nothing can stop it once it starts."

Lunzie wondered what he meant and whether she dared to go over to Varian and examine her. The heavyworlder leader snarled at Kai.

"Get out of here. All of you. March." Paskutti kicked Triv and Portegin to their feet, gesturing curtly for them to pick up the unconscious Gaber and Trizein, for Aulia and Margit to lift the girls. Lunzie bent to Varian, managing to feel the strong steady pulse and knew the girl was dissembling. "Into the main dome, all of you," he ordered.

The camp was a shambles of wanton destruction from Dandy's broken body to scattered tapes, charts, records, clothing. The search for Bonnard continued, punctuated by curses from Tanegli, Divisti and Tardma. Paskutti kept glancing from his wrist chrono and then to the plains beyond the force-screen.

With Discipline-heightened senses, Lunzie caught the distant thunder. She spotted the two dots in the sky: Bakkun and Berru, and the black line beneath, a tossing black line, a moving black line, and suddenly, with a sinking heart, she knew what the heavyworlders had planned.

The Theks might get the message but they wouldn't reach here in time to save them from a fast approaching stampede. Paskutti was shoving them into the main dome now but he caught Lunzie's glance. "Ah, I see you understand your fitting end, medic. Trampled by creatures, stupid, foolish vegetarians like yourselves. The only one of you strong enough to stand up to us is a mere boy."

He closed the iris lock and the thud of his fist against the plaswall told them that he had shattered the controls. Lunzie was already checking Trizein over, briefly wondering if "your fitting end, medic" meant this whole hideous mess had been arranged to destroy her.

"He's at the veil," Varian said, peering over the bottom of the far window, her arm dangling at her side.

Trizein groaned, regaining consciousness. Lunzie moved on to Cleiti and Terilla and administered restorative sprays.

"He's opened it," Varian reported. "We ought to have a few moments when the herd tops the last rise when they won't be able to see anything for the dust."

"Triv!" Kai and the geologist jammed Discipline-taut fingers into the fine seam of the plastic skin and ripped the tough fabric apart.

Lunzie got the two girls to their feet. Gaber was dead. She gave the near hysterical Aulia another jolt of spray,

"There are four on lift-belts in the sky now," Varian kept reporting. "The stampede has reached the narrow part of the approach. Get ready."

"Where can we go?" Aulia shrieked. The thunderous approach was making them all nervous.

"Back to the shuttle, stupid," Margit said. "NOW!" Varian cried.

Stumbling, half crawling, they hurried up the hill. Trizein couldn't walk so Triv slung him over his shoulders. One look at the bobbing heads of crested dinosaurs bearing down on them was sufficient to lend wings to anyone. The shuttle hatch slammed behind the last human as the forerunners flowed into the compound. The noise and vibration was so overwhelming not even the shuttle's sturdy walls could keep it out. The craft was rattled and banged about in the chaos, death and destruction outside.

"They outdid themselves with the stampede," Varian said with an absurd chuckle.

"It'll take more than herbivores to dent shuttle ceramic. Don't worry. But I would sit down," Kai added.

"As soon as the stampede has stopped, we'd better make our move," a voice piped up from behind the last row of seats.

"Bonnard!"

Grinning broadly, the dusty, stained boy appeared from the shuttle's lab. "I thought this was the safest place after I saw Paskutti moving you out. But I wasn't sure who had come back in. Am I glad it's you!"

"They'll never find those power packs, Varian. Never," Bonnard said, almost shouting above the noise outside. "When Paskutti smashed the dome controls I didn't see how I could get out in time. So... I... hid!"

"You did exactly as you should, Bonnard. Even to hiding," Varian reassured him with a firm hug.

Another shift of the shuttle sent everyone rocking.

"It's going to fall," Aulia cried.

"But it won't crack," Kai promised. "We'll survive. By all the things that men hold dear, we'll survive!"

When the stampede finally ended, it took the combined strength of all the men to open the door. The carnage was fearful. They were buried under trampled hadrosaurs. It was full night now. Under the cover of darkness, Bonnard and Kai slipped out and, using lift-belts, managed to bring the power packs back to the shuttle. "Bonnard was right. We've got to make a move," Kai told them as the survivors huddled together, still shaken and shocked by their ordeal. "Come dawn, the heavyworlders will return to survey their handiwork. They'll assume the shuttle is still here, buried under the stampede. They won't be in any hurry to get to it. Where could it go?"

"I know where," Varian said.

"That cave we found, near the golden fliers?" Bonnard asked, his tired face lighting.

"It's more than big enough to accommodate the shuttle. And dry, with a screen of falling vines to hide the opening."

"Great idea, Varian," Kai agreed, "because even if they used the infrared scan, our heat would register the same as adult gifts."

"And that's the best idea I've heard today," Lunzie said briskly, handing around peppers which had been overlooked by the heavyworlders in the piloting compartment.

It required a lot of skill to ease the shuttle out from under the mountain of flesh but Lunzie knew it had to be done now while Kai and Varian held on to their Disciplined strength. The two managed, with Bonnard assisting in the directions since he'd been outside.

By dawn they had reached the inland sea and manoeuvred into the enormous cave, every bit as commodious as Varian and Bonnard had said. Not one of the golden fliers paid attention to the strange white craft that had invaded their area.

"The heavyworlders don't even know this place exists," Varian assured them when they were safely concealed.

Triv and Dimenon used enough of the abundant drooping foliage to synthesise padding to comfort the wounded on the bare plastic deck. Lunzie sent them out again to get enough raw materials to synthesize a hypersaturated tonic to reduce the effects of delayed shock. Then everyone was allowed to sleep.

Lunzie was one of the first awake late the next day. Moving quietly so as not to disturb the exhausted survivors, she cooked up another nutritious broth in the synthesiser, loading it with vitamins and minerals.

"Guaranteed to circulate blood through your abused muscles and restore tissue to normal," she said, serving up steaming beakers to Kai and Triv who had awakened. "We've slept around the chrono and half again."

After checking the binding on Kai's arm, she massaged his shoulders to work out some of the stiffness before she ministered in the same way to Triv.

Thanks. How long before the others rouse?" asked Triv, gratefully working his upper arms in eased circles.

"I'd say we have another clear hour or so before the dead arise," Lunzie answered, holding a beaker of soup to Varian. "I'll need some more greenery to fix breakfast for the rest of them."

They filled the synthesiser with vegetation from the hanging vines that curtained the cave's mouth. Weak sunlight, as bright as Ireta ever saw, shone in on the shuttle's tail through the tough creepers. By the time the others awoke, there was food.

"It's not very interesting, but it's nutritious," Lunzie said as she handed around flat brown cakes. "I'd do more with the synthesiser, but how long can we depend upon having the power last? And the heavyworlders might detect its use."

Varian set the children to keep a lockout at the cave opening, warning them not to hang beyond the vines. Bonnard thought that was wasted effort.

"They're not going to look for people they think they've already killed."

"We underestimated them once, Bonnard," Kai remarked. "Let's not make the same mistake twice." Duly thoughtful, the boy took a lookout post.

A very long week went by while the survivors recovered from shock and injury.

"How long do we have to wait for the Theks to come and save us?" Varian asked the three Disciples when all the others had gone to sleep. "They would have had your message within two hours after you sent it. 'Mutiny' ought to stir their triangles if 'heavyworlder' didn't."

Kai upturned his hands, wincing at the stab of pain in his broken wrist. "The Theks don't rush under any circumstances, I guess. I had hoped they might just this once."

"So, what do we do?" Triv asked. "We can't stay here forever. Or avoid the heavyworlders' search once they realise the shuttle's gone. I know Ireta's a big planet but it's only this part on the equator that's barely habitable. Even if we stay here, we've got to use energy to produce food. We could get caught either way. They've got all the tracers and telltaggers. They have everything, even the stun-guns. What do we do?"

Every instinct in Lunzie shouted "NO" at the obvious answer but she voiced it herself. "There is always cold sleep." Even to herself she sounded defeated.

"That's the sensible last resort," Triv agreed. Lunzie wanted to argue the point but she clamped her lips firmly shut while Kai and Varian nodded solemnly.

"EV is coming back for us, isn't she?" Triv asked with an expressionless face.

Kai and Varian assured him that the ARCT-10 would not abandon them. The richness of their surveys was on the message beacon to be stripped when the ARCT had finished following that storm. The beacon Portegin had rigged outside the cave, camouflaged as a dead branch, would guide the search and rescue team to them.

"With the sort of ion interference a big storm can produce, it's no wonder they haven't been able to make contact with us," Varian said staunchly but none of the others looked as though they quite believed her.

Lunzie kept trying not to think of the word "Jonah."

"Good, then we'll go cold sleep tomorrow once the others have been told," Kai decided briskly.

"Why tell them?" Lunzie asked. She would rather get the whole process over with before she lost her courage.

"They're halfway into cold sleep right now." Varian gestured to the sleeping bodies, startling Kai. "And we'll save ourselves some futile arguments."

"It's a full week now and at the rate carrion eaters work on Ireta, the heavyworlders may have discovered the shuttle is missing," Triv said ominously.

"There's no way the heavyworlders could find a trace of us in cold sleep. And there's a real danger if we remain awake much longer," Varian added.

With the other Disciples in agreement with a course she herself had recommended, Lunzie rose slowly to her feet. Unwilling as she was, she went to the cold-sleep locker and tapped in the code that would open it. She really hated to go into cold sleep again. She had wasted so much of her life living in that state. It was almost as bad as death. In a sense, it was a death - of all that was current and pleasant and hopeful in this segment of her life.

But she gathered up the drug and the spraygun, checked dosages and began to administer the medication to those already asleep. Triv, Kai and Varian moved among them, checking their descent into cold sleep as skins cooled and respirations slowed to the imperceptible.

"You know," Varian began in a hushed but startled tone as she was settling herself, "poor old Gaber was right. We are planted. At least temporarily!"

Lunzie stared at her, then made a grimace. "That's not the comfort I want to take with me into cold sleep."

"Does one dream in cryogenic sleep, Lunzie?" Varian asked as Lunzie handed her a cup of the preservative drug.

"I never have."

Lunzie gave Kai his dose. The young leader smiled as he accepted it.

"Seems a waste of time not to do something," he said.

"The whole concept of cold sleep is to suspend the sense of subjective time," Lunzie pointed out.

"You sleep, you wake. And centuries pass," added Triv, taking his beakerful.

"You're less help than Varian is," Lunzie grumbled.

"It won't be centuries," Kai said emphatically. "Not once EV has those uranium assays. It's too raking rich for them to ignore."

Lunzie arranged the cold-sleep gas tank controls to kick in as soon as its sensors registered the cessation of all life signs. She held her dose in her hand. She wouldn't risk them all if she stayed awake. Her body heat would register as a giff to any heavyworld over-flight of the area. She could stay awake.

But if she slept with these, she would, for once, have someone she knew, people she liked and had worked with. She wouldn't be quite so alone when she woke. That was some consolation. Before she could talk herself into some drastic and fatal delay, she tossed the dose down and lay down along one side of the deck, pillowing her head on a pad and settling her arms by her side.

Who knows when they'll come for us, she thought, unable to censor dismal thoughts. She grabbed at another consolation: the heavyworlders didn't get her, or the others. She'd wake again. And there'd be another settlement due her.

The leaden heaviness began to spread out from her stomach, permeating her tissues. The air on her cooling skin felt uncomfortably hot, and grew hotter. Suddenly Lunzie wanted to get up, run away from this place before she was trapped inside herself again. But it was already too late to stop the process. She felt her consciousness sinking fast into another death of sleep. Muhlah!

The End