Freedom's Landing

Chapter Ten

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pardon?"

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

"I do not always understand, Astrid said apologetically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You are out on patrol?"

"Most of the time."

"What are these machineries?" She looked puzzled.

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

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

"Got dropped here," Kris corrected automatically.

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

"Oh, help my English, too."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Boy" used as slang is an expression of amazement, amusement, pleasure, and it's usually said as "oh, boy!" or "0000 booooy!" or "0 boy!"' and she emphasized the different emotions with exaggerated gestures and tones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do all Catteni read?" she asked Zainal.

"Those on watch do," he assured her.

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

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

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

Or so Kris told herself.

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

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

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

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

Until a messenger came for Kris to report to Mitford.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How do you know then what each means?"

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

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

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

"Wanna bet?" he replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Happy now?" she asked with some asperity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We've got a phone?"

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

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

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

"Sarge wants you.

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

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

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

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

"Neat," she said.

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

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

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

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

"Sarge?"

"Yah?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Your friendly roving reporter!" She rose.

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

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

The code here is 369," and he grinned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Zainal knows."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Gotcha!"

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

"You coming?"

"Wash?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I miss a cigarette," Sarah said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I can handle myself," Sarah said indignantly.

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

Kris knows dangers."

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

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

"Like what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Small city," Kris said with a laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She shrugged and tapped out 369 and a strange voice answered.

"Worry here."

"Worry?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No sign of any fly-bys?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Would it be a salt sea?"

"We'll find out," Joe said.

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

"We go careful. Fishing year long."

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

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

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

"Tell the others."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next little wave ripple flooded over her legs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sea stuff is full of minerals and junk."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zainal went back to watching.

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

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

"Probably they contain some trace elements our present diet is not supplying," Joe suggested. "Sometimes our bodies know better than our heads what is required. But let's give it the overnight test. If no-one's had diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea or dies on us, the clams should be fairly safe to eat."

"Fresh," Kris added.

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

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

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

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

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

"Eye-teeth?" he asked.

She bared her lips and showed him.

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

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

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

"In between stompings?" asked Sarah irrepressibly.

"As you say," Zainal agreed, nodding.

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

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

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

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

"A launch site?" Joe suggested.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No satellite or Catteni do not explore."

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

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

"To be transported."

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

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

"Well," Joe remarked, obviously gratified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He shook his head but looked at Joe for confirmation.

Joe shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Heavenly."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was particularly interested in the shoreline building.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kris was wondering if this was an Antipodean habit - whistling for emphasis. Joe Marley was prone to whistle, too. Well, it made a nice change from swearing.

"And the computer guys are right beside "em wanting used in the motherboards

0m.

"So no-one re-invents the wheel here?" Zainal asked, astounding Worrell again.

"I thought you didn't speak much English, Zainal," he said, giving Kris a suspicious glance.

"I learn languages easily," Zainal said. "I learn -" and he paused briefly, touching his fingers in his counting, "fifteen with English.

"Some people got a real talent for it, that's the truth. I still have trouble with the Queen's English." Then Worry gave a big grin.

"You mentioned the wheel, well, I want to tell you, we have passed out the need for something as primitive as a mere wheel."

"We did?" Kris asked.

"One of the engineer blokes got one of the air cushion mechos working. Only now they gotta reprogramm it to work when thy want it to."

"Boy, o boy, boy," Zainal startled Worrell into an On-mouthe stare, "then we don't have to carry all those parts back here."

"You bet!" Worry's smile was proud as he shuffled to find another sheet of paper. "Ah, here we are. Your patrol's bunked in Mitchelstown. You got tomorrow off and I think they'll want you hanging about here a bit."

"Mitchelstown?" Kris asked.

"Yeah, we started naming the caves. Makes it more homey. So the main cook cavern's now Cheddar. We even got nameplates so you'll know when you get to the right one. Mitchelstown's quite roomy. Second turn on the left past Cheddar. Near the jacks, too."

"How is the Deski, Coo?" Zainal asked and Kris was annoyed with herself that she hadn't thought to ask after their comrade.

Worry looked his nickname. "Not good. Leon says he's holding his own but the thorn greens are not enough Sometoohinn, but not enough.

Sure that message gets read g, hope "We found a lot of stuff on our patrol - maybe edibles that might be good for the Deskis," Kris said.

"Clams, berries, nuts."

"Clams? No oysters?" Kris shook her head.

"I liked oysters," Worry said emphatically. Then he slapped both hands on his knees, rose and shook hands first with Kris and then Zainal, before turning to Joe and calling him over. "So, Marley, pull up a stone and show me what you brought in." His gesture included not only Joe but Sarah and the two Norwegians.

Cheddar had improved almost beyond recognitio - not the least of which were the solar panels, like chevrons, above the entrance. There were tables and stools, and brick hearths replacing circles of stones, and ovens ranged on one wall. Bread racks showed the day's produce which was not limited to large, economy loaves, but featured small ones as well. The supply area now had a front counter and shelving behind on the wall to display goods which proved that ingenuity was rampant.

A neatly curved doorway gave into a storage area beyond the main cavern but the door was closed. Store shut!

Someone had also been successful in blowing glass, Kris realized, noticing that the corridor lighting had glass shades: sort of lumpy and blurred but glass nonetheless.

Mitchelstown not only boasted a carved nameplate, the letters outlined in black against the lighter stone, but also some rough bedsteads and mattresses, covered by the ubiquitous thermal blankets and probably filled by the fluff. At least it wasn't raw dirt or stone. Little alcoves had been cut into the wall for shelf space and there were thick wooden pegs hammered into the wall for hanging things.

As if they had something to hang. But Kris did now - the map case which Worry had told her to hang on to for their next patrol and the comunit, which she carefully put on the pegs.

"Well," Kris said, settling tentatively down on the nearest bed, "all the comforts of home. What?"

"You did not give eye-teeth, Kris," Zainal said, his eyes twinkling at her "Didn't have to, she said, laying down fully but starting upright so quickiy that Zainal looked around anxiously to see what had startled her. "Muddy boots," she said and unfastened hers, kicking them off. "Definitely the comforts of home." She lay back again.

"What was your home on Terra like, Kris?" Zainal asked, removing the accoutrements from his belt and neatly bestowing them on the shelf above the bed next to hers.

"It wasn't a cave, that's for sure," she said, unexpectedly irked to be asked such a question. Suddenly she had a glimpse of why others could dislike Zainal simply because he was Catteni: his presence reminded them of what they had been taken from. She pushed down that irritation and, as civilly as she could manage, described the split-level ranch-style house she, her parents and her brother and two sisters had lived in: her neighbourhood, her friends. She rattled on, unable to stop talking about her black-and-white cat, about the dormitory she'd lived in at college, until Joe and Sarah appeared in the opening, Astrid and Oskar just behind them.

"Is this our home from home?" Joe asked in a bright voice.

"Yes, it is," Kris said and was suddenly impelled to leave.

Rising from the bed, she stamped back into the boots she had removed, left the room and half-ran across the cook cavern and out, taking the steps as fast as she could without any caution, and across the ravine and campfire site, beyond the stocks and up onto the heights, down behind them and off up the next rise, where she was away from anyone.

There she sat herself down and, burying her hands in her face, cried. She didn't know why she'd reacted in such a childish way, unless it was just that the "loss' had finally caught up with her. Up until the moment Zainal had asked her, she hadn't allowed herself to think about home, her family, and all the things that were dear and familiar. She had forced herself to concentrate on first, surviving, and then on the challenge of patrolling with Zainal, of proving herself useful on this crazy world.

She'd kept up, she'd done all that was asked of her, but that didn't make up - at this moment - for the future she had once planned for herself.

She sensed, rather than heard or felt, someone near by. Whirling around on her bottom, she saw Zainal.

"It was all your fault…" The moment the words were out of her mouth, she cried out. "NO! I didn't mean that, Zainal. I didn't mean it! Don't go." He stood where he was, rock solid and unsmiling, but apparently concerned enough to make sure she did herself no harm.

"Sarah says to cry is good."

"How did she know I'd cry?" A twitch of one huge shoulder. "She is woman, Terran like you. She was right, wasn't she? You cry."

"Don't blab it all over the mountain, damn it," she said, blotting her cheeks so she had a reason for keeping her want Zainal to see her crying: she didn't. "Do Catteni women cry?"

"Yes," he said so stoutly that she knew he was lying.

"You're lying in your teeth." The knowledge that he would prevaricate made her feel better.

"My eye-teeth?" And the rumble of his voice under her ear was tinged with laughter "You're Jag at me.. -" she said in an ominous tone.

"I am laughing at the thought of teeth with eyes as if teeth can see." "Yes, that is a bizarre concept, isn't it?" Zainal had eased himself closer to her and his proximity was comforting. He had a different body odour to human males, she realized. It wasn't an offensive pong, not oniony like most guys, but she couldn't identify what it did smell like, except that she liked it.

"I rarely get silly," she said briskly. She didn't want a sentry to come by and see her: this meeting could be misconstrued and she didn't want any more rumours about Zainal scooting about the camp.

"What is your home like or will that make you sad enough to cry?" The notion of a Catteni in tears made her giggle.

"You are better now," Zainal said and, putting a hand under her chin, tilted her face up.

Kris was nearly unbalanced by the unexpected tenderness in his warm yellow eyes. Why had she ever thought them an odd colour?

Then he slid an arm around her shoulders. "Are you better now?

Food is ready. Are you not hungry? Hungry brings tears, too.

She shot him a keen look. "I won't blame tears on hunger. I got homesick."

"Home sick?" He was puzzled.

"Yes, sick for the sight of familiar things and people you love."

"I don't think Catteni understand "homesick"," he said at his drollest.

Now he eased her towards the cavern. "Why do they call this Camp Ayers Rock? Joe laughed." Kris grinned again. "That's a big landmark in Australia." She glanced about her. "Much bigger than this but I guess the outline might be similar. The Aussies must have padded the vote.. if they even took one."

"That does not make them homesick?"

"That wouldn't," she said. "Do you never miss home?"

"Not my home world," he said so emphatically that she wondered if it was the planet itself or the people on it. "We go see Coo and Pess. Tell them about the new foods."

"Yes, we should," she said, now ashamed of her weakness when good friends were in desperate need.

Coo and Pess, and the other ill members of their species, were all together in one hospital cave. Weakness lay on them like a palpable cloak, turning their skin a pale, sickly green. They were lying on plump pallets but to Kris it seemed as if it was an effort for them even to breathe. Pess looked nearly transparent: he was the oldest of the Deskis. It was their bones, wasn't it, that were weakening? Not their lungs.

All the Deskis seemed happy to have visitors and they all gabbled in their own language to each other when Zainal and Kris told them about the foodstuffs that they had found on their latest patrol.

"You think good, you do good," Coo said, looking from Kris to Zainal and nodding. "Coo walk with you soon."

"Learning more English, too," Kris said, shifting her feet and slightly uneasy in the face of such a wasting illness. She remembered how indefatigable Coo and Pess had been on their first patrols together, To see them in such poor condition really disheartened her. If she wasn't careful, she'd start weeping again.

"Do you have seas on your planet?" she asked Coo.

"See?"

"Large waters, salty." Comments were exchanged and Coo, as spokesman, shook his head sadly. Then Kris tapped the water jug.

"Big water, you can't see across it."

"0." Both Pess and Coo responded to that and vigorously nodded. "Big water good."

"Good for Deskis?" and again Kris was rewarded by a nod. "Maybe the clam things will help." Then Leon put his head around the door frame. "Don't overtire them but I hear you found some possible nutrient sources on your latest trek?" All too relieved to have an excuse to leave the Deskis, Kris was happy enough to describe what Joe had found.

"I'll catch him later."

"How are they, Leon?" Kris asked in a low voice.

"Holding their own and the female's pregnant." Kris glanced over her shoulder. "Which is she?"

"The one next to Pess. Her mate. We're hoping he can last until she gives birth but it's doubtful. His age is against him. He's not as resilient as the others. If they were humans, I'd say they had rickets and they'd need vitamin C. I've ordered a microscope," and he gave a brief grin, "from those engineering blokes who say they can make anything we need from mecho scrap. Wish they'd hurry up.

At that point, Zainal joined them in the hall but he didn't need Leon's diagnosis to know how serious the Deskis' condition was.

They made a good meal that evening, the highlight being a fermented beer that was being brewed in Camp Rock.

It had a kick to it, all right, but the taste was weird.

"We'll get it right. We'll get it right," said Worry who had joined them at the table with his cup and the pottery pitcher that held his ration of beer. "Castlemaine XXXX or Foster's it ain't, but we'll have a respectable pint by the time winter comes. We'll need it then."

"We will?"

"Hmmm, meteorologist bloke says he thinks winters are bad here. Sees signs on the trees and stuff. We'll do a good business in rock-squat furs."

"Business?" Kris asked. She seemed to be asking a lot of questions.

"Sure, worker's worth his hire - in privileges. Mitford won't allow gold used as barter or we'd never keep people at their chores.

They'd be out gold digging. Working on some wine, too, out of those green berries. Right tasty. And a cordial for them who don't like the taste of beer."

"There are such people?" Kris said, her expression bland. "How do you like it?" she asked Zainal who was cautiously sipping his beer. "Is there anything like this on Barevi or Catten?" "Yes! Not as good as this," Zainal said, a comment which did his credit no harm.

The beer might taste odd, but it had the same effect as anything brewed on ol' Terra. Two cups and Kris was ready to sack out. Zainal remained behind with Joe and Oskar who was, perhaps, unwisely getting his cup refilled too often.

Early the next morning, it was clear that he had and Astrid, with Joe and Zainal's assistance, took him down to the lake for a remedial swim. Having nothing better to do, Sarah and Kris tagged along. They had the lake to themselves at that hour, it was still full dark outside.

So they were all together when Kris's comunit bleeped.

"Sentries report something big coming in," Worry said.

"Get out here."

"But it's still dark. They won't see the glyphs, Kris said in a wail, once again feeling the muscle-aching labour of making those marks in the hillside.

"I stay with Oskar," Astrid said, taking his limp arm from Zainal's grasp.

The five of them ran back up the steps, glad of the light from the glass-covered lamps that made a fall less likely. They ran along the corridors and through Cheddar Cave where the bakers greeted them cheerfully, then they erupted out, onto the ledge.

Listening intently, they could indeed hear the distant rumble of an airborne vehicle.

"Riding lights passing over," said a voice just beyond them on the ledge and Kris recognized it as Worry's.

"I've notified Mitford. He's alerting the local sentries. Is that Zainal there?" Worry swung a lantern. "Could you possibly tell "It slows for landing," Zainal said.

"I suppose there's no way of knowing where it will land?"

"No," and Zainal shook his head. "A guess would be where it landed before," and he pointed in that direction.

"Cor! We can't make that before it lands."

"We make it before they depart," Zainal said and, pivoting on his heel, passed Joe and Sarah as he made for the steps.

Kris followed, beckoning for the others to come, too.

She made a quick detour into Cheddar. Grinning at the bakers, she held her hand over the loaves just out of the oven.

"We gotta run but can we take some bread?"

"Sure And she tossed a loaf each to Joe and Sarah who had paused to see what she was doing.

Then they went after Zainal. The rumble was getting louder, like a swarm of very angry, very large insects.

Once they were off the Rock, Zainal set a bruising pace. When they stopped for a breather, the ship was passing overhead.

"Transport," Zainal said, peering up at the dark mass, outlined in blinking running lights.

Kris begged the stitch in her side to stop but when Zainal took off again, she was right on his heels and the others behind her.

Despite the darkness, they managed to get over the rough ground with few stumbles and no falls.

Something in the sound of the alien airship seemed to rev them up to the effort. Pictures of the wounds scavengers made on unresisting bodies plagued her when the stitch in her side returned and she ignored it again. If only she could keep from stumbling.

Zainal vaulted the first hedge, for once not considerate of those behind him. But he wasn't showing off his physical superiority, so Kris suppressed the surge of resentment as she trailed further and further behind him. She stood at the hedge that was too high for her to vault, Joe and Sarah coming to a halt beside her.

"Well, let's borrow an army trick," Joe said, observing the problem, and threw himself on the vegetation to make a way through the branches. Kris and Sarah carefully crawled over his body, then helped him through and they were away after Zainal who had reached the other side of the field.

"Damned Cat," Kris muttered under her breath but put her best effort into shortening his lead.

By now, the ship was well ahead of them but she could make out by the running lights that its stern end was swinging round. Did it land on its tail?

How did it disgorge its unconscious passengers? The mass of it disappeared below the hill down which they were pelting, faster than was wise in the light and the conditions underfoot. In the growing light of day, they could see Zainal plunging through a gap in the hedging and they altered their hell-bent pace in that direction and through to the next field.

Was this the one on which they'd been spread out, all unwitting of the dangers lurking underneath them? Kris wondered, but all the big fields looked similar. The main concern was that, even if the ship landed several fields onward, they should be close enough to prevent loss of life and injury. The skies were brightening. But, damnitalltohell'n'gone, the Cats weren't at the right angle to have seen the glyphs in the dark - even with the sparkling stones to outline the figures.

And, she nearly lost her balance at the thought, what if Zainal left with them? She whimpered, once, twice, but hadn't breath for more as she pumped her tired legs harder to keep up with the man.

Underfoot she felt from one pace to another the big ship's mass settle to the ground. "Its mighty engines roaring," she thought irreverently. Oh, God, what if the Cats captured them again? She was halfway to halting while she briefly considered that aspect of rushing to rescue unknown folks. The thought of Coo wasting away, of those of his species who had already died, and the baby that should be born, spurred her on. Aren't you the altruist! But such considerations lent the requisite energy to her legs.

Joe and Sarah nearly ran into her when she stopped at the next hedgerow, stunned by the mass of the landed vehicle. No wonder they'd had to use the larger Botany fields.

The ship had put down in the uppermost third of the space available. Suddenly lights came up, illuminating the field with beams so bright she had to shield her eyes.

"They don't…do things…by halves…do they?" Sarah said, panting, as she looked out through spread fingers at the scene, but she sounded cheerfully impressed.

Kris was quite willing to catch her breath until she saw Zainal, clearly outlined in the spotlights, running uphill, towards the ship.

That alarmed her so much that she found herself holding her breath and getting funny bright lights in her peripheral vision. So she made herself breathe long and deep. Now a wide ramp was emerging from an expanding hold aperture.

"Damn him," she muttered and pushed her way through the hedge, ignoring scratches on face, hands and wrenching her coverall free from a snag.

Just then Catteni started to unload their cargo, three or four obviously unconscious bodies at a time, two limply draped on broad shoulders and two, equally flaccid, hauled out by the fabric of their coveralls.

The fact that the Catteni then lined them up neatly in rows seemed oddly incongruous. Lots of Catteni and, despite her urgent need to be near Zainal, Kris felt her pace slowing.

"Oh God, do I know -.. what…I'm doing?"

"If. - you do. . let us. know," Joe said, coming up buide her: his stride faltered and his breath was laboured.

He bent over, hands on knees to restore himself.

Two Catteni paused in the unloading as Zainal approached: both covering him with hand-weapons.

With the ship still wheezing steam and interior parts of it clanking, she couldn't hear what was said, even if she had understood Catten, but Zainal was plainly acting authoritatively and both Catteni seemed to recoil. They hurried back into the ship but, now that the hold was wide open, Kris saw that one veered forward while the other merely resumed his labours.

The Catteni worked so swiftly that there were two full rows of unconscious bodies already spread out.

Two cartons, presumably the usual knives, hatchets and blankets, were in place at the side of the field.

Not quite brave enough for a closer confrontation with Catteni soldiers, Kris, Joe and Sarah, struggling to get their breath back, halted of one accord, just beyond the first two cartons, half-hidden in the shadows beyond the bright spotlights. Zainal swivelled slightly to his left, nodded at them, and then turned back. The other Catteni ignored him as they continued to unload.

Suddenly, those going back into the ship snapped to an attentive halt and three Catteni strutted into view.

Two stopped at the edge of the ramp while the third continued on to Zainal. They were of a height but Kris loyally thought Zainal was just a shade taller, and broader, and prouder.

She heard bits and pieces of the staccato language the Catteni spoke: the newcomer began to gesture impatiently, she thought. Then, with less vigour, he turned his head from side to side. Body language was not all that different, Kris thought. He didn't like what he heard or he didn't know if he could comply. Zainal seemed to stand even taller then and crossed his arms on his chest as if he had delivered an ultimatum.

That the other man was indecisive was now obvious to Kris.

Suddenly, he gave an abrupt nod and, doing a snappy pivot on one heel, marched back up the ramp, his two guards falling behind as an escort.

Zainal just waited, arms crossed, allowing the stevedores to make their way to either side of him.

"Why didn't he go aboard?" Joe asked.

"He didn't seem to receive an invitation to do so, Kris remarked.

"Then, too," and she recalled what Zainal had mentioned once, "he said that what was dropped is never picked up."

"Did he mean himself? I mean," and Sarah was surprised, "he acted like he outranked the captain or whoever that was. And whatever it was he asked for, I think he's going to get it. They didn't seem surprised to have another Catteni come out of the dark just like.. and Sarah snapped her fingers, ".. that either."

"Not that I've ever seen Catteni soldiers…" and Kris paused to make it plain that she didn't consider Zainal in that category, "… display surprise or any other

"Just doin' my job, man," Joe murmured.

"They said Zainal was an "emassi"," Sarah said, "so he wouldn't fraternize with the likes of those stevedores anyhow."

"He was a spacer, any road," Joe added, "not ground force."

"You've been hearing things about Zainal?"

"Don't get antsy, Kris," Sarah said, patting her shoulder placatingly and grinning in the darkness. "We like Zainal He's good stuff."

"Us Aussies appreciate a chap like Zainal," Joe put in.

"Hell's fire, we're all in this together. Operation Fresh Start, m'girl." The unloading continued inexorably and the skies lightened.

"Should we ah - -" and Joe nodded his head towards the hedgerow.

"No way. I'm not hiding from the likes of them Atta girl," Sarah said, chortling. "You tell "im."

"Sides, they can't do any more to me than they've already done, dropping me here," Kris said firmly. She wet her lips and tried to suck some moisture out of her cheeks to ease her dry throat. There'd be a stream near by, somewhere…when the Catteni had lifted off again.

She wasn't moving until they did. They could just decide to cart Zainal off with them.

The watching threesome were startled to hear low mutterings and swearing behind them. Swinging around, they saw dark figures pushing through the hedge and the next thing Kris knew, a somewhat breathless Mitford came to a jarring stop to her left. He'd brought quite a mob with him to judge by the numbers of white faces in the gloom, straggling onto the field. Though what men and women, armed with the primitive weapons they had, could do against the Catteni, she didn't know. A show of resistance might bring out the force-whips and the skin on her back crawled at the very thought of that deterrent.

"What's happened? What's Zainal doing?" Mitford asked in measured gasps.

"We think he's asked for stuff for the Deskis. That's what we need, isn't it?" Kris replied.

"He been inside yet?" someone asked from the anonymous crowd.

"No, and I don't think he got asked." Someone snorted in disbelief.

"Look at the way they're unloading those poor slobs," another man said. Kris thought it was one of the Doyles from the rueful lilt in the voice. "Poor bastards."

"Well, they'll be made welcome," Mitford said emphatically. "Won't they?"

"Sure, Sarge, sure." Now Mitford snorted, having set matters straight on that score.

More cartons were placed and the Catteni, seeing the observers, grinned and exchanged comments with each other.

"Not flattering, I'm sure," and that was Lenny's amused voice.

"The same to you, m'bhoy!" he said in a louder tone, although he was instantly hissed silent by those around him.

The Catteni looked back and one made a long forward step as If to see the reaction. No-one moved a step but Kris saw bows come up with notched arrows and spears readied to throw. The Catteni seemed surprised but a shout from the ship had him speeding up his return.

It seemed they had to wait for ever. But the sun was up and the urgency that had prompted their arrival was now irrelevant. But, and that thought sent a surge of pure panic through Kris, the Catteni made several drops in a trip, didn't they? Had they landed beyond Camp Rock?

No, Zainal had said that they were coming in at a landing angle.

This was their first drop? Couldn't Zainal have them drop the whole load here and save us from running all over the planet, picking up survivors? Kris thought, irritably. She tried to moisten her throat again and then felt Mitford press something against her: his water bottle. Well, he hadn't run off at the drop of a hat as she had but kept his cool long enough to bring necessary supplies.

She swilled the first sip around in her mouth and then 3" finally swallowed it, taking a larger drink before she passed the bottle to Sarah beside her.

And they waited: Zainal had not visibly moved a muscle since th amp; captain, or whoever, had left him. He was like a statue, bathed in the very white light of the glaring spots, making the in-and-out traffic go around him. At length, Kris decided that was funny and began to chuckle to herself.

"I'd like a laugh myself," Mitford muttered.

"He's like a traffic island. He's making them go around him but he's not moving an inch. See," and she pointed out a pair who were forced to divert. "And wouldn't you think, being Catteni, they'd push him out of the way? If they could? If they dared?"

"Yeah, you're right," Mitford answered in a pensive tone. He raised his voice a little louder so the others would hear. "Yeah, our Zainal's showing them, that's for sure." Kris thought how clever of the sergeant to broadcast his observation. And if Zainal really did Two Catteni came out with a largish carton which they placed to one side of Zainal.

Four more came with smaller packages. At that point, Zainal raised his left arm, gesturing broadly for them to approach.

"All right, let's pick our parcels up," Mitford said and called out five names.

"I'm coming, too," Kris said, stepping forward beside Mitford and found Joe and Sarah in step with her. When the sergeant gave her a frowning look, she added, "We're his patrol." Mitford grunted. Then, as a phalanx, they approached the ship, Mitford in front. Kris could feel herself trembling at being so close to a Catteni vessel, much less the creatures themselves. Two passed them, with their loads of human bodies. She'd already noticed that this drop was a very mixed bag indeed. She'd noticed Deskis, Rugarians, more Turs and some odd-looking troglodytes she hadn't ever seen on Barevi.

As they neared the hold opening, she became aware of the stenchemanating from the cargo: sweat, excrement, the stale odour of bodies long enclosed in an inadequate space, and the acrid tang of whatever was used to keep people in stasis for the length of the journey.

"What a pong!" Sarah said, fanning the air in front of her.

So they did not dally as they collected the crates. It took four men to manage the big crate, and the Catteni laughed to see their struggles with the mass and the weight, so it was as well that Zainal's patrol elected to come along.

Even the smaller crates were heavy, and Kris felt her back muscles strain as she picked up hers.

"You coming?" she murmured to Zainal who had resumed his cross-arm pose.

"Soon. I have not all I want.

"You'll stay with us?" It was extremely important to Kris that he did. She was in a panic that somehow she'd lose him now when she had suddenly realized how much he meant to her.

"I stay.

On the way back to the sidelines, she held herself to slow, even steps, determined that she would not give the Catteni any chance to laugh at her.

"Janiemac, what did they put in this?" Lenny Doyle exclaimed as he helped ease the crate to the ground.

"Careful now, it might be breakable.

"Naw, Lenny, but we sure are," Ninety said, groaning, and he made a big display of rubbing the small of his back.

"Is he coming?" Lenny asked Kris, gesturing to Zainal.

"Says he is. They haven't given him all he asked for."

"Let's hope they give him more than he should get," and, with a sudden spurt of fury, Kris recognized Dick Aarens' nasty voice.

"Why'n'hell bring him along?" Kris demanded of the Doyles.

"Only way to be sure he does his share," Lenny said.

Then he added, "He's getting far too cocky, showing off to everyone that he was the only one who could figure out how the mechos work and what parts'd be any good for us.

You don't suppose the Catteni would take him back?"

"Fat chance of that - - My God, look at the piles of folks," Kris said, for the original, fairly neat order of the rows had altered and bodies were being crammed close together.

"That's more than were in our drop," Mitford said, obviously doing a body count. "Many more. Maybe they're doing us a favour after all, putting the whole nine yards down in the one spot."

"Yeah, but Sarge, where'll we put "em when they're awake?"

"We'll make room. A lot of "em are ours!" the sergeant said in a determined growl.

"Yeah, but enough's enough. We've just got comfortable and now - -"

"So we share. We remember, don't we, what it was like.

So we damnitall share!" There was no further argument as the unloading continued. "I'd rather have them with us, where we can see "em, than turning wild and causing our camps no end of trouble." Fatigue from the tearing run to get here, as well as hefting that heavy carton, began to take its toll of Kris's energy. Wearily, she sat herself down on the carton.

"I've a loaf of bread to share," she announced, suddenly remembering that she had and reached into the map case.

She broke off a piece and passed the loaf to Mitford.

"Good idea," Mitford said. "At ease, men and women. Let's watch the big fat smelly Cats at work." So everyone assumed lounging positions, on the grass, seated on the line of supply cartons or just hunkered down. Joe and Sarah shared their loaves and many in Mitford's group had thought to bring food which they distributed.

"Lift that bale, tote that barge"," sang Lenny's tenor voice softly.

"I could sure stand getting a little drunk and landing in jail," another male voice said and sang the final word down to the bottom of his voice range.

Everyone laughed and the Cattenis heard.

"They're twitching."

"Let's not lay it on too thick."

"Ah, Sarge!' "Easy does it. You do remember force-whips, don't you?"

"They're not carrying any."

"Only because everyone's unconscious."

"Are you counting, Tesco?" Mitford added.

"I would if you -.. eight hundred twenty, one, two and three. .. don't interrupt me allatime."

"Let's not make them too mad, blokes," Joe Marley said. "They're taking it out on "em." Everyone shut up, now that Joe had pointed out the rough - rougher - way the Catteni were depositing the unconscious bodies. Almost slamming them into the ground.

"Zainal, can you tell them not to mash the cargo?" Mitford said, raising his voice to parade ground level.

Zainal swivelled at the hips and, seeing one Catteni doing exactly what Mitford protested, snapped a savage bark. The erring Catteni made a big show of placing his burden down more carefully. The others, under Zainal's watchful gaze, behaved more circumspectly "Is Zainal going to stay there until they finish?" Lenny asked, leaning down to Kris, his expression anxious.

"I think so. At least he can curb their boyish bad habits."

"How does he get away with it?" Lenny asked.

"Because he knows how to give orders," Mitford said, almost admiringly.

Idle conversation continued among the watching gang, but no more bursts of laughter to annoy the Catteni.

Tesco had got up to a thousand when Mitford gestured for Dowdall to take over. Then more cartons were brought out which the Catteni stacked on the other side of the field, in a sort of farewell gesture of bad feelings. Still Zainal waited.

All the soldiers had disappeared within the ship and the silence was broken only by noises from the vessel itself, metallic complaints and emissions of liquid and steam.

Suddenly the watchers could all hear the sound of boots on metal and a second delegation, five Catteni this time, appeared in the opening. Two stayed inside, three came down, and two stopped partway.

The remaining Catteni, dressed in a more elaborate uniform and shorter by a full head than Zainal, came right up to him and presented first a sheaf of what Kris thought had to be print-out and then another folder.

These were presented most punctiliously.

Kris thought for a moment that the officer was going to click his heels together and bestow a Teutonic military bow on Zainal.

Zainal accepted the offerings, almost diffidently, said a few words in a low voice and casually sauntered away from the ship. The blinding blue-white lights went out, the ramp was retracted and they could hear warm-up engine sounds from the ship.

For a moment Kris feared that the exhaust from its engines would fry the nearest bodies. But, whining at a pitch that made everyone cover their ears defensively, the big transport lifted vertically in a slow ascent, then edged forward. When it was several fields beyond its landing site, the rear engines glowed from yellow to white to a blue actinic light that made Kris and the others avert their eyes.

The wind of its passage was enough to knock several watchers off their feet: the bodies of the latest victims fortunately were low enough to be below the blast path.

Kris could no longer contain herself but rushed out to Zainal, who had begun to walk more briskly, undisturbed by the take-off wind.

"Did you get what you wanted? What did you want that took so long?" she cried as she neared him.

"I got the explore report "and he held up the folder, "and medicals on Deskis." He held up the sheaf. "Treatment for Deskis.. ." and he pointed to the carton Kris had lugged over. "Medicals for humans and Rugarians," and he indicated the others. "And testers."

"How come they snapped to for you, Zainal?" Joe asked.

Zainal grinned. "I may be down but not out.

Kris giggled nervously at his casual use of slang. Go to the head of the class, she thought.

"I am still Emassi and they know it," he added, snapping out the "know "So what's "emassi" when you're at home?" Joe demanded, cocking his head to one side.

"A born rank." Zainal shrugged it off.

"Birth rank," Kris corrected automatically. She wanted Zainal to speak English properly.

"I understood him," Joe said in tacit reprimand.

Kris firmly closed her lips to a smart retort. Now was not the time to bicker.

"Look at it this way, folks, we've almost doubled our population the easy way," Mitford announced when he jumped to the top of the crate.

"Back at the old stand, huh, Sarge?" someone shouted.

"Yeah, and we'll follow the same routine. Only this time, we're ahead of the game. We know the drill.

Dowdall, get back to Camp Narrow and organize beds and food. Send me at least twenty more people. Bring some buckets and pitchers so we can water "em. We'll start sending folks back as soon as they're able to walk.

It's not that far and that's a blessing. You, you, you and you, start moving among "em and pick out the injured those Cats really banged some of "em down hard - and any DOAs. Lenny, Ninety, break open these cartons.

Su, Jay, start distribution. Then, Jay, you lead the first group of fifty back to Camp Narrow." Mitford jumped down again and stood by Zainal. "It looks to me like they emptied their entire load on this one field. That right, Zainal?" Zainal nodded.

"Is that report readable?" Mitford peered at the glyphs which resembled those that Kris had helped carve in the hillside.

"Yes. I also told them that this planet is occupied by others of high-tech skill."

"Did they believe you?"

"No." Zainal's grin was bleakly amused. "But they will tell to those who need to know-' Mitford gave him a sharp stare. "Why didn't they believe you? Did they think you were lying or something, to get off-planet?" Zainal shook his head. "I told them, first, that I am dropped and I stay." He did not look in Kris's direction but she knew, definitely, that he was saying that for her benefit and her heart did a little painful jump.

Stupid!

But she was so glad that he hadn't gone. "They believe report says this planet…empty."

"Lord," Joe Marley said in a groan, "how'd they miss the garages.

"Garages do not show warm-blood life forms," Zainal said and grinned.

A nearby groan from one of the bodies interrupted the conversation and they sprang into action. Actually, Kris thought as she took Mitford's own canteen to the nearby stream to fill it, Zainal, she and the others needn't have run so fast or risked broken bones to get here.

It had taken the Catteni several hours, at least, to unload. They could've walked, or waited for breakfast, but she was damned glad they hadn't. She'd have missed Zainal standing there like a Gibraltar Rock.

Would he have continued to stand there all day if they hadn't been willing to accede to his requests? Or demands? Being an emassi certainly granted him privileges, even if he had been dropped.