"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& 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.

"Janie mac, 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.

Chapter Twelve

They were so well organized, and Mitford harangued so effectively, that the "indigenous personnel', as he referred to them, were served hot, revitalizing drinks from a hastily erected camp kitchen before the sun was halfway up the sky and, later, sandwiches for lunch. The newly awakened were kindly advised to stick to water at first and then slowly chew down a third of a ration bar: gorging on empty stomachs led to unpleasant reactions.

Mitford had immediately sent the medical crates - all but one tester kit - on to Camp Rock with news of this new drop and a request to Worry to send Leon and other medical assistance. The Catteni had broken a few bones of those they had slammed down so hard. Some of the new lot would have to be accommodated at the Rock, as people were beginning to call the cavern camp, almost affectionately. Kris felt considerable gratification at the thought that Leon would now be able to treat Coo, Pess and the pregnant female and to keep the newly arrived Deskis healthy.

By the time the first batch of flfty moved slowly out on their way to Camp Narrow, Mitford had taken Kris off wake-up duty and put her onto debriefing: getting names, occupations, origins, and lastly but just as importantly, what they might know of recent events - recent to them - on Earth. The mere fact that people were resisting the Catteni continued to boost morale. Today's encounter on the field also ranked as a major plus.

"Getting something out of the Cats without having to pay for it," was the happy summation.

When she took a few moments to eat her lunch, Mitford approached her for a synopsis of her findings.

"So far the humans I've got originated from North America, Canadians as well. Then there seems to be a whole raft of English, French and German. Resistance', and she grinned, "is increasing and the Catteni have had to call in reinforcements to deal with stoppages and sit-downs and all kinds of passive movements. There's also active sabotage, too - blowing up Catteni supplies or shipments destined for Catten or Barevi." "Shipments? Arty things?"

"Not that I heard.

Somehow, Sarge, I don't think our artistic tastes would parallel Catteni.

"Hmmm. Possibly. Any useful professionals?"

"Two Canadian dentists, nineteen teachers - it seems the Catteni emptied a private school for one reprisal.

They took . . . all the girls away," and the words came reluctantly out of her. "Some of the teachers are nuns.

They resisted the kidnapping. One said she had had her arm broken. It looks a bit crooked, and I can feel the excess calcium where the break was but basically it's completely knitted."

"A long time coming here, then. What do they use for this stasis junk?" Kris shrugged as she flipped over her sheets to pick out the more interesting occupations. "Five hairdressers, two masseurs, a reflexologist "A what?"

"Makes your feet happy.

"Argh."

"You should try it, Sarge, it can really relax you!"

"I said useful occupations!"

"How about two chemists, five pharmacists, a structural engineer, nineteen housewives, three with kids still attached, and . . . you know, there's not a single person over fifty among those I've talked to."

"Don't give me nightmares," Mitford said.

"Two jewellers, three ex-soldiers and a detective inspector." She came to the end of her report on the morning's interviews.

It took the rest of the long Botany day to process everyone.

Zainal talked to the new Deskis and sent several up to watch for fliers but Mitford felt that, having disassembled the garages, whatever mecho summoned the fliers had also been disabled, but he was quite willing to post sentinels, "just in case' Three hundred and two dead were left on the field.

Some could be identified by others who had been captured with them at the same time so their names were recorded.

Kris had to look away from the small bodies of the children.

Those under five could not endure the stasis.

Their deaths, so needless, so terrible, distressed her.

"You never knew them," Zainal murmured to her when he saw the tears in her eyes.

"No, and no-one will now.

She turned away, fighting with the fact that Zainal was Catteni, too, and a member of the species who had caused the deaths. She told herself flrnly that Catteni or not, Zainal had done all he could to help and certainly he had been able to reduce unloading injuries. They should also give thanks that he'd been able to ensure just one drop site. Even Mitford's talents as an organizer would have been stretched to mount multiple rescue operations and get everyone undercover before the scavengers emerged from the night ground.

Zainal touched her arm gently. "We go now. Night falls."

"Yes, it does," she said, heaving a sigh against the stresses of the very long day in which she had been going all-out most of the time.

The rescue teams were somewhat cheered by the hot meal awaiting them at Camp Narrow. Having so many barns available for housing since the resident population of the Camp was only a few hundred - made the difference between total chaos and mere confusion. Many of the newly arrived did their best to help, either settling their injured comrades, or lending a hand with the chore of feeding the multitude.

Leon and his medics had set up an infirmary for the injured and the weak. Kris saw Zainal and Leon examining the contents of the tester kits, Zainal carefully translating the properties of the various vials to the doctor.

Since there were a number of totally frightened aliens in that category, Leon had Zainal stay on to translate. Slav could at least reassure members of his own species who, Kris noticed as she ate, seemed quite cheerful. They were certainly inspecting Slav's weapons and even trying to pull his bow, hissing in the Rugarian equivalent to laughter.

Several of them were females which might account for Slav preening as much as he did. She hadn't really thought about how the other species would manage, either in relationships or propagation. If what was dropped on a planet stayed down, at least mating would be possible for all five species. Except Zainal. She put that exclusion to the back of her mind.

Mitford was everywhere, encouraging, detailing jobs, trying - it seemed to Kris watching him from the corner of the kitchen barn where she had wearily slumped - to make himself known to all the Terrans. To her surprise, she even heard him speaking a few words of German and French to representatives of those nationalities. She knew French well enough to tell that his usage was rudimentary, but he was trying. And the folks responded with a little more hope in their manner. Then she saw Aarens, hunkering down by a very pretty girl and chatting her up in what sounded like extremely fluent French. She was clearly flattered and, as clearly, recovering from the shock of the journey. Aarens, who wore a vest of many pockets and a belt of tools including an assortment of screwdrivers of all sizes, was making her laugh.

"Come," and Zainal held out a hand to her. "You sleep.

Tomorrow is another day." Grinning at his unwitting use of the famous Scarlett O'Hara phrase, she extended her hand and let him haul her to her feet. She couldn't help but notice that many eyes followed them out of the barn. Maybe she should paint "one of the good guys' on his forehead. Then she ffinched, remembering her own recent and less than charitable thoughts. But she'd been tired and upset when she'd thought them. And she'd had the grace not to voice them. She was even more tired now and where on earth was Zainal taking her? Halfway to the Rock? He turned her in at the last barn which, she noted, was relatively empty. Others were already sacked out - or would that be strawed out? She giggled.

"Soft bed," Zainal said when he had gently herded her to the far corner where a huge mound had been carefully prepared.

"Oh, thank you thankyou thankyou," and turning, she just let herself fall backwards into it. She was faintly aware that Zainal was tucking her against his body and then she was out for the count.

* * * She and Zainal both drew debriefing duty the next day, she with humans and he with the various aliens. As they were in the same barn for that job, she saw how he handled the different species: the forty Deskis with dignity, the twenty-nine Morphins with a cool, diffident manner, and the thirty-eight Turs with a sharp, very Cattenish delivery. Slav had been handling contact with his own species of whom there were sixty. Since there were over eight hundred humans, there were five other debriefers besides Kris, three of whom could speak other languages: German, French and Italian.

Late that afternoon, Mitford called a meeting in the garage of the Welcome Committee and his aides to organize the dispersal of the huge addition to Botany's population. Worry and Esker had made the trip over from the Rock, Tesco and the Doyles who were in charge of Camp Narrow were on hand, and Aarens was conspicuous by his absence. She'd last seen him breakfasting with a half-dozen girls.

Kris was amused to see that pieces of mechos were doubling as stools while the carcasses, in various stages of dismantlement, had been pushed back to allow enough space for the meeting. She noted the veritable snow of sketches, diagrams and drawings that were tacked up on the walls and hung over different worktops which were littered with components being reused.

Mitford made a point of having Zainal sit on his right while Slav was on his left.

"First off, folks, I'd like to say that we owe a lot more to Zainal here than we can ever repay. He got us nutrients that'll keep our Deskis alive and tester kits so we won't have to risk poisoning to find out what is edible. He got," and now Mitford held up the folder that the Catteni captain had passed to Zainal, "the "official"

-, and he paused for a sardonic grin, "survey report on this planet. You will be glad to know that we're on the biggest of Botany's four continents, the temperate one.

Zainal's translated the report and, frankly, I don't think much of the exploratory team that landed on this world.

Neither does Zainal."

"Nice to know the Cats aren't as great as they think they are," someone said. "No offence, Zainal!"

"None taken,' Zainal said with a cheery wave and a bland expression on his face.

"Zainal will summarize the report to us. Floor's yours," and Mitford sat down, gesturing for Zainal to stand.

"The report says that the planet has good air to breathe, good water to drink, and the. . . green plants - grow, so plants for other worlds can - - - grow well, too. True. The report says two . . .

Cats . .

and Zainal's use of that nickname in a pejorative tone of voice elicited grins from his audience, "disappeared one night. Guard saw movement but did not go see.

He thought men go to leak." Zainal might not be obviously trying to ingratiate himself, but he was couching his comments very cleverly indeed. "Not found anywhere. Guard tells of strange movement.

This planet has dangers. Two more are not seen so all sleep inside." "Ah, c'mon, Zainal, how'd they miss the garages and these barns and all?" Esker wanted to know.

"Sensors look for live flesh and ship lands in cold season." Zainal shrugged. "Sensors register metal but not much for . . ." He turned to Kris, "those who work in ground "Miners."

"Miners, and no special metals needed by Catteni."

"Some of those mecho alloys are very special indeed," Lenny Doyle said, "very special."

"I agree," Zainal said, "but the stupids on survey do not know. Take dirt, water, stone samples, and flesh of rock-squats, avians, loo-cows and critters they find on other lands, but . . . they do not see trees for forest." Ninety laughed aloud at that. "Attaboy, Zainal." Kris had been watching reactions and, of all there, only Dowdali and Tesco didn't seem to respond in any way to Zainal: they just sat there, eyes on the Catteni.

Kris wondered from their attitude if they even believed what he was saying.

"What about winters here, Zainal?" Lenny asked.

"Report of - - -" he frowned and turned to Kris, "what falls from skies, wet, cold, solid but . . . runs like water from sun "Snow.

"Ah, snow."

"Deep snow?" Lenny asked.

"Not when here. Oh, hand wide," and Zainal held his big thick hand flat, thumb down, to indicate the depth.

"That's deep enough."

"Longer day than Catten, longer y) "How long?" "Report says," and now he held up four fingers, then all five and flnally two.

"Oh Lordee, that's longer by three more months.

How're we going to feed twenty-five hundred plus all winter long?"

"Find more silos and start breeding rock-squats in captivity," Mitford said. "Anyone volunteer to farm rock-squats?"

"Hell, Sarge, don't take the fun out of it for us hunter types," Worry said plaintively.

"Say, Zainal, how long did this team of surveyors stay on Botany?" Zainal looked down at the report. "Twenty days.

"Hell's fire, we've surveyed better than they did, haven't we?" Ninety said, laughing.

Zainal tapped the sheets. "This has tests done which Leon and Joe Marley need. Useful. Some plants deadly."

"Tell us something we didn't find out the hard way," Tesco muttered.

"That'll help even at this date," Mitford said. "Now, would you mind telling us about your conversation with the Catteni ship captain?" Zainal's wide lips twisted briefly in mild contempt.

"Not captain. Below captain. One step."

"His exec?" Mitford suggested.

Zainal shrugged. "Emassi may command, even Emassi who is drop.

They obey. Good habit. They do not believe mechs. Do not wish to believe what is not in report." He gave an amused snort. "They will.

They also debrief." He shot a glance at Mitford. "We will see."

"Yeah, but they won't see any mechos if they do a fly-by now, will they, since we've disabled them all," Ninety said, almost querulously.

"So?" Zainal asked. "We are here. We can use mechos.

Next time Catteni drop, different story. I do not stand," and he imitated his cross-armed stance at the bottom of the ramp, "and wait." "You'd attack one of your own ships?" Ninety asked, surprised.

"Why not?" And Zainal regarded Ninety with amused condescension.

"A ship useful when mechos return next year to collect."

"You mean, you'd mount an expedition to follow them to their home system?" Kris asked, amazed by his intention.

Zainal nodded. "Be very good to see who farms whole planet."

"Hell, I'd be scared out of my wig," Dowdall said, regarding Zainal with interest. "Wouldn't they be a bit much for you by yourself?"

"You come with me?" "Me?" Dowdall was surprised and then he grinned, rather nervously, back at the Catteni. "Man, if you're willing to go, I guess I would be, too."

"We have six airline pilots now plus two retired NASA mission specialists," Kris said brightly. "Maybe we could Boy, I'd just give my eye-teeth to be in a first contact group."

"No eye-teeth left," Zainal told her with a big grin.

A rather odd silence followed that remark which made Kris blush though no-one was actually looking at her.

"A lot of us here would, not just those NASA blokes," Worry said, breaking in. "But I think that's down the road a while. You didn't happen to find out if they're going to dump more people on us, did you?" he asked wistfully Zainal shook his head. "Not the question to ask. Captain takes orders. Low captain. Not smart," and he held up one big hand, rocking it as he had seen Ninety do. "You Terrans make trouble, get put here. Simple." He grinned in what Kris took as approval. "Terrans make big trouble for Catteni." His grin broadened.

"And you like that?" Tesco asked, an edge to a voice that was louder than it need be.

"Yes, I do," and he jerked one thumb at his own chest, "other Catteni do not!" And he shook his head.

"Good on you, he added, "to make big trouble. Makes Catteni think." Worrell guffawed out loud. "Good on you, Zainal, too.

Couldn't be cast off with a nicer bloke."

"So, we can expect more?" Mitford said, not entirely pleased with that prospect.

"Believe so. But . . ." and Zainal held up his hand, "maybe report changes minds. Maybe .

"But don't count on it, huh?"

"And the Cats would let us take the rap from the creatures who own this planet?" someone at the front of the garage asked in a sharp voice.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law," Kris said emphatically, having caught the hostile tone in the murmured comments around the garage. "We're here and we're obviously going to stay "Catteni are not the highest. We take orders, too," Zainal surprised everyone by saying.

"From those Eosi you were telling me about?" Mitford demanded, scowling, his body tense.

"We work for the Eosi who own most planets good for humans, Catteni and others. You do not want to meet them," Zainal said, shaking his head.

"Oh yes I would if they're the ones responsible for this whole schtick,' Mitford said, his scowl black.

"That's what we heard back on Earth at any rate," Worrell said.

"Not that we saw any Eosi on Earth. Just their mercenaries." He grinned. "We'd made the planet a little too unsafe even for the occupying forces."

"And all this time I thought the Catteni were our enemies?" Dowdall said, trying to digest the information.

"While they're just hired hands."

"Now you know," Mitford said, scowling.

"How come we're only finding out about these Eosi now?" asked Dowdall, shooting an accusing glance in Zainal's direction. He wasn't a man who liked surprises.

Zainal grinned. "First I have no words. Second you do not ask.

Do not debrief me. The Doyles and Worrell laughed and Dowdall, now no longer quite as hostile towards Zainal, managed a weak grin.

"Eosi make good use of all peoples, Zainal said. "Very clever species." "Then let's take all the heat off Zainal," Kris said. "Let's make the bad guys the Eosi and spread the word." A second thought struck her and she hurried on. "Do you speak Eosi, if they came to investigate this place again?" Zainal considered that question. "If report goes high enough, I think they send but not Eosi. High Emassi.

But I do speak with Eosi." He didn't much like to, either, Kris decided from his expression.

"So, do we wait until some high muckymuck reads a report sometime this century or what?" demanded Tesco.

Zainal looked briefly at Mitford who nodded and took over the reply to Tesco.

"We do as we have been, what we can with what we have. If a mecho ship comes to look Botany over, we grab it if we can."

"And go where with it?" Tesco asked sardonically. "Not even NASA got beyond Jupiter."

"I take ship. I am space captain," Zainal said, "but will need crew." "Well, that's a great idea but how'll you do it? If you Cats don't know about the species which farms this planet, how would you know how to pilot one of its space ships?"

"If ship has living pilot, we make pilot take us back," 33' Zainal replied, not at all confounded by the snide query.

"If mecho, it will return to base: that is what it is made to do.

We ride on it."

"And then what?" Tesco demanded surlily.

Zainal shrugged. "First, ship has to come here. Where there is much . - - Yankee in-gen-oo-it-tee." Kris let out a laughing cheer, seconded by some of the other Americans present.

"Those of us from Oz aren't that bad in the make-do line either," Worry said staunchly.

"Which ship comes first, then we make plans. Right?" Zainal said and turned to Mitford who stood up again.

"That's it, Zainal, right on the nose. So, listen up, folks. We gotta get the latest recruits settled in and let "em know the score.

Worry, you call a meeting at The Rock as soon as you get back and tell "em what happened. All patrols are to make housing their priority, so hunt out some more garages. We'll need to get ready for the next group. I'll get on the blower to Shutdown and BellaVista," and he glanced fondly down at the comunit attached to his belt. "We might even claim Botany as ours! And the hell with Eosi or whatever."

"Long live King Mitford facetiously.

Mitford's expression turned sour instantly and he waved an angry finger at Lenny.

"Can that sort of crap, Doyle. I'm no king nor want to be.

Anyone else wants to carry the can on this planet, they're welcome to it!" He glared around him and no-one doubted the sincerity of his wish to step down, but no-one offered to take over either.

"Ah, I was kidding, Sarge," Lenny said contritely.

"You're doing great.

Lenny Doyle said "I'll second that," Worry spoke up, lifing his hand to raise a cheer. Which was unanimous.

"Well," and Mitford was only partially mollified, "I didn't ask for it but someone had to organize you sorry collection of individuals."

"Which you have done admirably," Kris said. "No-one else could have! So relax, Sarge."

"Ahhhh," and he made a mock swipe at her and then his expression cleared. "Is there any of that beer left?" The moment "beer' was mentioned, Kris noticed that the tension oozed out of the air. She was willing for a few pints herself until she saw Zainal edging towards the door. With the general movement and shifting in the room, she slipped out after him.

It was full dark outside, no moons up yet. She could see Zainal moving across the light shining out of the next barn door, left partly ajar.

"Zalnal," she called softly, knowing he could hear an even softer whisper. She saw him pause, saw him stride out a few steps, and then she ran to catch up with him, catching him by the arm. "Don't you dare run out on me, buddy!" He strode on, making her half-run to keep up.

"Do they still not understand? We Catteni are not our own masters . .

. either!"

"No, I don't think they did understand. I certainly didn't.

"We do Eosi - - dirty work. Explore for Eosi, fight for Eosi, police for Eosi, kill . . ." and that word came out violently, in great repugnance, "when killing needed.

People hate Catteni. They better hate Eosi!" The pent-up outrage within him had carried them well past the barns now and into the openness where the meat crates had been stacked.

"I didn't know that, Zainal. I think it will be easier for you when everyone else does."

"I do not ask easy," he said, angrily whirling towards her, a dark shape, his grey skin making him almost invisible in the shadows.

"Yeah, but you don't need hate. And there are, I have to say, a couple of people "Couple? More than couple. Couple only two, yes?"

"Yes, perhaps, but they are stupid people who don't like anyone not just like they are. So let's make them hate the real villains, the Eosi. Catteni have to take orders, though it never occurred to me you guys were taking orders from anyone." She paused, trying to sense if she was saying the right things. "So what are these Eosi like that they can command tough, big, brave Catteni?"

"They "and there was more to Zainal's pause than a search for an appropriate word. For the first time she sensed fear from him. "They are brains. . ." and he tapped his forehead, "who know . - - every thing.

"Brainy know-it-aIls," she began, with laughing irreverence and he caught her hands.

"Do not laugh at Eosi until you have met one.

She caught the tremor in his hands and heard it in his voice.

"You have?"

"Yes, as a child, I go with father to be - - examined by Eosi." He inadvertently squeezed her hands so hard, it took a great effort not to cry out. The examination must have been a painful process if his response to the memory of it was this fierce.

"You passed?" she asked, more curious than ffippant.

At that, Zainal straightened his shoulders and stood more erect.

He probably hadn't even noticed that he had been unconsciously contracting in on himself.

"I am Emassi. We speak to Eosi." Then she could see his teeth, whiter than his skin even in the shadows he stood in. And he was not smhing.

Kris thought of the Cabots and Lodges of the old Boston proverb.

Well, it was one way of shaking off the aura that Zainal's fearfulness of the Eosi had put into the atmosphere around them. But that chain of command did explain why the transport captain didn't dare ignore Zalnal.

"Maybe no-one will come to Botany and we won't have to worry about Catteni or Eosi or even the mechos' makers," she said, soothingly.

Zainal snorted. "No, they will come. The Eosi will send high Catteni." He paused a moment, evidently considering what he had just said.

"And the mechos will send their representative and they'll come together in a head-on collision and leave us to get on with our lives." She spread her hands wide and then banged both fists together, knuckle to knuckle. "Poof! They all disappear in a cloud of smoke and that's that!" He had her in his strong hands then and she was being lifted up a few inches off the ground so that they were eye to eye. He was smhing now"Is that how you wish it?"

"Sure, why not? The wheels of the universe turn in mysterious ways," she said, airily bending several aphorisms to her purpose. "Terrans will make so much trouble that the Eosi will have to give up on our planet. Or better yet, the Catteni will get a dose of the smarts and start collaborating with the irresistible Terran forces and go out against the Eosi domination and free the entire galaxy! You do come from this galaxy, don't you?"

"We do." He sounded cheerful again. Then his expression altered as he looked down at her. "You like this Catteni?" he asked, "this Emassi, this Eosi speaker?" She swallowed for she picked up on his sudden uncertainty.

"Yes," she said, trying not to sound as eager as she was.

Catteni wouldn't scare off easily, or would th? One kiss, a few hair touslings.

"I go slowly, like Jay," and he grinned. "You are not like Patti Sue -" "I should hope the hell I'm not."

"But you will have heard things about Catteni - - - "I know you, Catteni Emassi Zainal," and she jabbed a finger at his chest so hard she nearly bruised the tip.

"You're the one I worry about."

"You worry about me?" and if the notion pleased him, it also amused.

"Why, they could have shot you where you stood yesterday morning.

My heart was in my mouth the whole time."

"You worry about me?" He caught her by the arms, picking her up as if she were no more . . .

weighed no more than . . . than a Deski, her legs dangling.

"Yes, you great lummock. And with me you don't need to go slow.

I've been hoping you'd make some sort of a move on me for the - - He kissed her then, and the mere touch of his lips to hers was the catalyst for a storm of emotions within her, emotions and sensations that coursed up her veins and bones so that she had to fling her arms about his neck to be sure she wasn't reeling.

But Catteni don't kiss, she thought irrationally along with some other more sensual observations. His lips were firm and he seemed to know exactly how to kiss with great effectiveness. Oh, Lordee, but of course he'd seen Joe and Sarah exchanging affectionate kisses in the evenings. Oh, Lordee, but he'd learned fast.

With one arm pinning her to him, his other hand made short and devastatingly accurate examinations of her body. But he'd said, back in the ffitter - oh, ages ago - that he hadn't tried a Terran before.

That was when she'd had to deck him. She wanted to deck with him.

"Catteni are good lovers," someone else had told her more recently.

Well, she was going to find out, like real soon. She wriggled a bit to get some space and shoved her hand into his coverall to feel the sexily smooth skin she had admired during his illness.

He murmured against her lips and then began to move off, taking great eager strides to wherever he was hauling her. Wherever could he be taking her? There was so little privacy to he had in any camp and Kris wouldn't have thought they could find a secluded spot in a place currently jam-packed with bodies, but Zainal seemed to know exactly where he was going. Had he planned any of this? Then he altered his stride, grunted as he climbed up and over and into something metallic.

By the smell she knew it had to be one of the reconverted mechos she'd heard about and she was now being laid down in the load bed. On piles of blankets. Oh, they were in one of the reconstructed air cushion vehicles that had collected the stores from the drop field.

She didn't think about much after that because Zainal's hands, gentle for all their size and strength, were peeling off her coverall and she was trying to do the same with his, only their hands kept getting entangled.

"Always you must help - -" he said on a laughing note.

She threw her arms over her head. "So you do it. Nor did he waste time. He had hauled off her boots and shucked her out of the coverall in seconds. Then she saw him, a grey blur above her, as his hands pushed back her hair and his fingers outlined her face, in such a gentle, tender, loverly fashion that her senses were overwhelmed.

Who'd've thought a Catteni could behave like this?

She felt him lean into her, carefully, as if afraid to crush her body with his mass. One other fact about Cattenis sprang to mind: they were big! She could feel that he was, too. And she had a pang of fright.

"I do not hurt you," and his voice was no more than a hoarse whisper. "Not you, Kris. Do you believe? I go slow, slow, slow. .

." and she could feel the pressure that was slow oh, much too slow.

She squirmed, trying to force herself down and him in.

She heard his gasp, but he would not accede to her whispers and kept up the slow penetration until she was moaning for completion.

Never in her albeit brief experience at this sort of dalliance had she been so eager to accept all a man could give. Not even with Brace Tennemann and she'd thought he was the best-looking man on the football team in her sophomore year.

"You go too slow, Zainal," she cried, again trying to pull him as close as his fir'my propped arms would let her, kissing whatever part of him was in reach, sensuously caressing the marvelous skin of his body.

"Slow makes it better," he said, his tone rippling with laughter, possibly with delighi at her urgency. "Slow is better for me, too." And slowly he continued his seduction of her willing self, until she was so strung out with the incredible sensations he was producing that she wondered how she could survive the climax. Then it came over her, and him at the same instant, for they cried aloud in the same instant: cries of joy and immeasurable elation.

Just when she felt she could stand no more of the exquisite relief, it began to ease, and she was able to feel the shudders still rippling through him. They were both gasping for breath and he fell to one side of her, limp with such a massive release.

"You go that slow the next time, Zainal, and I'll kill you," she murmured.

"Slow is better for you and very, very good for me," he said, almost smugly but his hand, running softly down her body, expressed his tender concern for her.

"This is going to be an equal opportunity partnership, buddy," she said. "I get to call the pace now and then."

"Oh, do you?" To her total astonishment, he moved to cover her again.

"My God!" Where did he find the energy so quickly?

He chuckled in her ear. "Like the thorns of Barevi, it doesn't take a Catteni long to re-arm."

"Oh, my God!"

"No, 0 boy, 0 boy, 0 boy?" he asked teasingly.

"No, man, 0 man, 0 man!" She paused, taking a deep gulp of breath.

"I think we. . . do. . . it your way again.

Please!" Emassi Zainal was only too happy to oblige.

Sometime during the night, Zainal moved her back to her assigned sleeping place, clothes and all. She grinned when she woke up and found herself discreetly clothed, her boots at the side of the straw mound she was occupying.

Zainal was, it was true, on the other side of her, but beyond him were Joe and Sarah, much as they had bedded down all together during the patrol. It was very considerate of him to think of her reputation: if, indeed, he had given it a moment's thought in the midst of last night's ardour. She was, when she stretched, quite sore, despite his go-slow policy, and understood precisely why most human females would have felt terribly violated by their treatment in Catteni hands. But it does indeed depend on the man! Catteni or human!

Someone was moving outside in the aisle, rattling each barn door in turn to rouse the residents. Another Botanical day was starting.

This one was filled with sending people on to BellaVista, Shutdown or the Rock. The word was that Camp Narrow would concentrate its efforts on recycling the mechos, so those with mechanical skills or technical training would be based there. Now that they had the two vehicles, they could collect what they needed from the other garages, including "body' parts to make more useful vehicles. More comunits were being assembled and more mobile carriers made out of existing chassis.

"Not speedy, but they sure do manoeuvre the obstacles," Lenny told her at noontime. "Some of these lads are really clever," he went on enthusiastically. "They figured out how to short circuit, or whatever it is you do with programming

chits . .

"Chips, then, how to keep the versatility but give control to the driver. Clev-ver!"

"Indeed."

"They don't have much speed which the lads are still trying to improve "Personally, I'd rather not ride over this landscape at speed," Kris said.

Lenny just grinned. "You've never done it." Kris went back to debriefing, but was called over to help Mitford and his aides figure out where best to place the remaining recruits.

"How long does it take a person to become the "indigenous personnel"?" she asked Mitford at one point. She was finding it necessary to shift position a lot to ease her soreness. But it had been worth it. Zainal smiled a lot today as he went from one group of aliens to another.

"Huh? Oh," and Mitford grinned, leaning back to stretch his arms and ease his shoulder muscles. "Here, let's just say until they have to help a new batch in-flow. Say, tell me about this seaside building your patrol found?"

"There's not much to tell. It was closed up tight even though Zainal tried every which way to get inside. Maybe the fish aren't running."

"I do like sea food. Like clam chowder, too," and Mitford for once sounded a little wistful. Kris was rather pleased that she was audience to that mood.

"With one of those air-cushions, we could start at dawn and be back by nightfall with a sack of clams," Kris suggested.

"You could at that. If Dowdall hadn't interrupted just then, Kris was sure they might have been given a go-ahead on such a luxury run.

But the vehicles were more urgently needed for other tasks.

On the third day, she, Zainal, Joe and Sarah escorted an air-cushion car, carrying some of the less able recruits on their way to BellaVista via the Rock. Worry greeted Zainal and the others effusively from his office.

"Your patrol needs to hunt for us," he told them, "and you're to break in some of a mixed bag of the new blokes and sheilas. The Rock's going to be Supply Depot for meats and green groceries.

"Mixed bag?" Kris asked.

34' "Too right, since you've got Zainal and he can speak Deski, Rugarian and Turs."

"Oh, that kind of mixed bag," Kris said. If they had Turs to train, Zainal was the right teacher.

"We also need you on short day-trips," Worry said more confidentially to Kris. "In case of you know what?" And he tilted his chin skyward.

"Oh, in case we get surveyed again," Kris said, looking at Zainal who now sported a comunit.

Mitford expected to be back at the Rock the next day but he'd had a private word with Kris.

"Keep pretty close to Zainal, will you, Kris?"

"Why?" she'd asked, glaring at Mitford.

"I don't want to lose our most valuable alien asset. "You won't lose him."

"Not by his choice, I don't think," and Mitford gave Kris a searching look which she returned without a blush.

He nodded, as if he knew more than he would conirnit to words.

"He's emassi and can deal with Eosi . . . I guess they permit emassi Catteni to speak to them. We might need him badly to deal, for us, with these Eosi.

That is, if one of them ever does see a report on this planet."

"Zainal is sure they'll send some sort of emassi, higher in rank than he is. Eventually," and then Kris realized she'd reassured the sergeant on the very point that concerned him.

"There's a lot more going on, on Earth, on Barevi and Catten, than any of us knew," he went on.

"That's for darnn sure," Kris said.

"Just so's you know I'm counting on you, Bjornsen." She gave the sergeant a level look, noticing the new lines around his eyes, the muddy look in the pupils from the many problems he was dealing with.

"You can count on me, Sergeant, she said and this time, she did give him a formal salute.

He grinned as he returned it.

They were still bunked in the Mitchelstown cave and the possessions they had left behind were untouched. Fresh coveralls and pairs of boots had been added to each shelf.

Seeing these, Kris and Sarah voted on a dip in the lake so they could wash themselves and their coveralls, since they now had fresh ones to wear. Not that the coveralls showed any of the hard usage they'd been given over the past five weeks.

A youngster, not one of the rookies, caught them before they left their quarters.

"Kris Bjornsen?" he asked, looking from Kris to Sarah.

"Yes," Kris said.

"Dr Dane wants you to come speak to him. When you can. It's not urgent, he said."

"Tell him we got his message and will see him shortly.

And what's your name?"

"I'm Buzz," and the boy grinned to show two missing front teeth, "because I buzz abojit the place like a hornet.

Mom says I'm too noisy to be a bee and there aren't bees on Botany anyway. My real name's Parker but I don't like it at all."

"Buzz is a grand name for an active boy like you," Kris said and smiled back at him. "See you around."

"You will," he answered cheerfully over one shoulder, already "buzzing' off.

Leon wanted to report on some of the findings now that he had test kits. The information would be invaluable to any hunting party since Leon and his assistants had been able to identify other nutritionally rich plants, berries and nuts.

"We've put some of the younger members of the Rock out looking for these," and he tapped the nut-like shells.

"I've seen them in quantities around here. And these berries are rich in C and A." He pointed to some of the green globes that Joe had thought might be digestible.

"We're trying to dry them for storage. I know you hunter types would prefer to go for the meat but these can be just as important to a properly balanced diet."

"Can we see Coo?" asked Kris.

"If you can catch him," Leon said drily. "That stuff was magical on all the Deskis. I'm keeping a real close watch on Murn, the female.

Even Pess is back on duty.

Thanks, Zainal." And Leon gave him a comradely clap on the arm.

"You saved their lives, you know." Zainal merely flicked his eyebrows up but Kris had a sense that he was not as diffident as he appeared.

Leon was obviously of the same mind.

The Rock was full again. That seemed as it should be to Kris.

Furthermore, many more of the indigenous personnel waved or smiled at Zainal when they met him.

They hunted the next day, returning home laden with rock-squats and another loo-cow, since Bart and Pete in the Cheddar wanted to roast one whole to show the rookies that it could be done and that the meat was tasty.

They hunted the next two days, in different directions, and spent part of the day picking the nuts and stripping the branches of every berry-shrub they located.

"We'd've had more," Sarah said with a jaundiced glare at Joe Marley, "if more had actually landed up in the sack!" Joe merely raised his eyes in innocent surprise. Oskar guffawed aloud as he handed over a heavier sack than Joe's.

They did not hunt the next day, although that was the plan. Just past third moonrise a sentry excitedly stamped into Mitchelstown cave and called out Zainal's name.

"Yes?"

"You gotta come. Something's about to land. Not as big as the others but big enough," and with that, the man ran out.

"Wake Worrell," Zainal called after him.

"That's where I'm going," the man cried over his shoulder and was told to keep his bloody voice down as he proceeded down the corridor to Worry's quarters.

"All come," Zainal said, pushing his large feet into his boots.

The sentry's arrival had awakened everyone but they hadn't moved to dress. Now they did. In a hurry. But when Joe and Oskar reached for their spears, Zainal stopped them.

"No use against Catteni hand-weapons and shows bad faith," he said.

"Who do you think it is, Zainal?" Joe asked before Kris could.

"Catteni. And early even for them." It was two-moon time, so the night was bright with them, and clear. When they went up to the height with Worrell in tow, they could see the approach of the ship, its running lights twinkling.

"Small, fast ship," Zainal said. "It is heading for that field, I think," and he pointed to what was the nearest expanse, a twenty-minute hike from the Rock.

"They know where we are?" Worry sounded upset.

"Life-form readings," Zainal said succinctly. "They an effort to relax completely as he listened to what

know where transport landed. The Rock shows many people."

"Not dumb. Well, these Catteni at least," Worry said and started down from the heights. "No offence intended, Zainal."

"None taken," was the easy answer.

"Maybe we should let them wait long enough to discover the scavengers?" Joe suggested slyly.

Zainal only grunted but Kris thought the notion held a certain charm for him as well. So it wasn't surprising when Zainal neatly sling-shot a rock-squat fast asleep on a boulder and hauled it along with them as they traversed the rocky hillside.

The craft had landed long before they reached it. An open portal spilled light onto the stubble of the field.

Light didn't attract scavengers: it repelled them. Just outside the illuminated area, Zainal casually dropped the rock-squat.

"How long does it usually take?" Joe muttered.

"Longer near light," Zainal said and continued on his way to the ship.

It was a sleek one, Kris saw, and looked like it was meant for speed and manoeuvrability with its swept back wings and tapered nose.

But it was a large affair, not as big as the Challenger had been nor the Enterprise, but a fair size - three, four times the height of Zainal and about as long as a Boeing 727 but much wider.

Zainal halted right in front of the door and cracked out sharp Catteni words.

Instantly three Catteni filled the doorway, one of them striding down the ramp towards Zainal. Watching his face, Kris saw his eyes widen for an instant, in surprise, she thought, and his right hand, which she could see, briefly clenched into a fist. Then he seemed to make was said.

"My report cause trouble," he said to the others in a brief aside before spitting out more Catteni phrases.

The officer, for that's what Kris decided he was, was of high rank, to judge by the excellent fit of his tunic and the complexity of insignia on his collar and cuff.

Zainal didn't seem in awe of him, or even respectful, unless Cattenis always snapped at each other: sort of like the English who are scrupulously polite to people they do not like and continually insult their intimate friends.

The Catteni language sounded as if it was composed of growls, grunts, gutturals and fricatives, without a single mellowing vowel.

However, it might only sound vicious.

You'd think the Chinese were cursing each other until they smiled and bowed so politely "There is other trouble," Zainal said after a spate of raw staccato noise. "With Terrans and with Eosi." Now he grinned malevolently . . . at least his mouth looked malevolent in proffle.

"And " Worry prompted.

"I am drop. I stay drop. He say it is duty to come. I say I drop, I stay. His loss, your gain." Then he turned his grin on Worry, and Kris thought his look was as mischievous as if he was holding some kind of a royal flush in his hand in a high stakes poker game.

"Ughh," Sarah said suddenly, moving closer to Joe.

Zainal looked over his shoulder and so did Kris, so they both saw the first tentacular strands of a scavenger feeling its way out of the ground to encircle the dead rock-squat.

Zainal said something and stepped aside for the captain to see.

Although the tentacles seemed to avoid the lighted area of the body, they gleamed slimily in the shadows.

Strips of the squat animal noticeably disappeared at an ever increasing rate as the scavenger decided its victim was tasty.

Then Zainal held out his comunit, pointing to various elements of it, patently displaying irrefutable evidence of alien artefacts that had been recycled. That elicited a surprised exclamation from the captain and the other two Catteni who bent closer to see the device.

For one moment, Kris was afraid Zainal would let them have it.

That was when Kris thought Zainal began his own demands, for the captain shook his head vehemently at first but, as Zainal became insistent, he seemed to relent and ask questions of his own to which Zainal replied with a quick shake of his head or an affirmative nod.

Then the captain said something to one of the others who went off, down the blue-white lit companionway to the bow of the ship.

The captain continued his interrogation. Some of his questions Zainal answered. Others he shrugged off, impatiently or irritably or with an amused, superior expression.

The messenger returned with a handful of print-outs, some crumpled. The captain barked at him and, with a startled and penitent look, the man hastily reassembled them in good order before passing them over to the captain, who glanced down at the first sheet before he gave all to Zainal. Zainal immediately passed them to Worrell.

"Maps of this world from space," Zainal murmured.

"Show mountains, metal deposits, other data. He does do not want to give." Kris could see that only the sternest self-control kept Worrell from peering avidly at the material.

Zainal now stepped back from the open portal but the captain followed him a step or two, managing sharp and penetrating glances at the indigenous personnel, as if determined to store their faces for future reference. Kris did not like that scrutiny though it gave her a chance to identify this Catteni as another emassi like Zainal with his fine, almost patrician features. With his gaze still on Kris, the captain asked a short question. Zainal answered with a sort of supercilious expression on his face. Shock registered on the other man's face and he gave Kris a second startled look.

"I tell them you are very smart Terrans, all of you, and I am proud to be in your patrol, Kris."

"Thanks a peach skin, Zainal." If this fellow ever landed on Botany and started looking around for her, she'd make herself very scarce. He must blame her for Zainal's decision not to "take up his duty' Then his look turned "knowing' and sly. He said two short words.

So fast that his movements blurred, Zainal shot out a fist and decked him, ignoring the weapons which the other two immediately almed at him. He stood back, arms crossed on his chest - old Stoneface while the captain, waving aside the guards, got to his feet, rubbing his jaw.

"Nice to know he gets a bit of his own back, Worry murmured to Kris. "What'd the bloke say?"

"How would I know?" Kris muttered out of the side of her mouth but, from the look on the captain's face, she also decided to get into the act. Zainal had given her the clue - he was in her patrol. She gave Zainal a stern look as if he shouldn't have retaliated. "Now wasn't that a half-ass thing to do when all we have to defend ourselves with is slingshots?" she said to Zainal in as imperious a tone as she could muster, as if telling him off. Which she was, since the drawn weapons had scared her badly. She'd seen them in action and the charge they propelled jerked every nerve in a body unless you were lucky enough to be knocked out first.

"Worth it," Zainal said but he made a subservient nod of his head at her and, stepping back slightly behind her, crossed his arms again.

The captain asked one more question, his tone almost plaintive as he rubbed his jaw.

Zainal gave a "that's impossible' sort of hitch of his shoulder.

The captain said something else, more briskly now, waving at his two subordinates who moved off into the body of the ship. With a very respectful salute to Zainal, and a crisp but equally respectful bow to Kris, the captain stepped back into the ship and the portal slid shut, putting them in a darkness lit only by the one remaining moon in the sky.

"Hey, couldn't they leave the lights on until we got safely off this field?" Sarah cried.

"Stamp as you go," Zainal said, turning and trotting away from the ship, coming down hard every third step.

"You'll tell us what we couldn't understand?" Worry asked, trying to pace Zainal but his shorter legs were unequal to it.

"I will." They were safely away from the ship when it raised vertically, as the transport had done, and then gathered speed in an ascent angle.

"VTOL! Wow!" Joe said. "Do all your ships have that capacity, Zainal?" He mimed the action.

"The ones that land, yes. Biggest, stay above," Zainal replied and continued on.

Stamping, even every third or fourth step, jarred her tired body, but every time Kris felt herself slacking off, she thought of the slimy look to the scavengers' tentacles or feelers and that reinforced her step. They reached stony footing and, as one, leaned against the safety of the nearest rock.

"That last bit he said, before you socked him," Kris asked firmly.

"Socked him?" Zainal asked.

He wasn't temporizing because she realized "hitting' and its synonyms might not yet have come up m conversation. She demonstrated.

"In Catten women lead only other women," Zainal said.

"But special . . . ah, rank of women do command even Emassi."

"Why did you hit him?" Zainal's lips curled in a snarl before he answered. "He put a bad name on you. A wrong name."

"Thanks, but didn't you take a chance? They might have shot us because you hit their leader. That sort of thing got you in trouble before, you know." Zainal grinned, pressing his thumb against his chest.

"The trouble is mine. I do not "sock" to kill so the others do not fire. They only . . . how do you say . . ." and he crouched, reacting with his hand standing for, the weapon.

"Reflex action?" Joe suggested.

"Hmmm," Zainal said although he had not quite understood the tem.

"Let's leave the subject of Kris's honour aside," Worry said.

"Why did you want these?" He was unfolding the sheets. "Can't even see what they show in the dark."

"Maps of this planet from space to tell us where we are.

Where to go. Where. . ." and now he paused, frowning, unable to find words to use, "where biggest garage is."

"Really? Had your blokes found it?" He shook his head. "Show where metal is. A very oh, funny?

No, not funny." He struggled, turning to Kris to help him out.

"An anomaly?"

"How in hell would he understand "anomaly"?" Worry asked.

"Oh, hush, I'll explain it. An anomaly is something that should not be where it is. A deviation from the normal. A queer difference."

"Ah, yes." Zainal became quite agitated. "That is it.

More metal than good to be there. Many places. Lots of metal.

Not right metal. Anomaly . . . hmmm," and he almost tasted the word.

"Something that is different."

"They didn't want to give you these maps?" Sarah asked, also trying to discern details from the print-out.

"No."

"They wanted you to go with them, didn't they?" Kris asked pointedly.

"Yes, they said all was OK', and his grin was broad with malice, "to come home. More than one day. Catteni drop me here. I stay here.

They cannot make one rule for me, because I am useful to them, and one for other Catteni."

"Man's got a sense of honour, so he has," Joe said in mild surprise.

"Why not?" Kris snapped back.

"Why not indeed," Joe said in a placatory fashion.

"Why didn't you go, when, you could? What was the duty they want you for?"

"Emassi duty," and Zainal's voice turned inflexible.

"Too late for that duty now. Once I wanted that duty. Not now.

Much has happened. They drop me. I stay drop."

"Dropped," Kris said automatically.

"Dropped. Funny language, English."

"You're not the first to think so." "Nor will I be last," and he grinned in the night at her.

"So," Worry said, "they wanted you for a duty you no longer feel, you need do?"

"Right. No-one believes what I told transport men about mecho makers."

"So that's why you showed him the comunit," Sarah carried on, "because he knows what supplies came with us and that certainly wasn't included."

"Right," Zainal said.

"So you showed him and now they will have to believe you," Sarah went on, "but why wouldn't they believe you?"

"I dropped," and he emphasized the final d of the past tense.

"So now what?" Kris asked, worried.

"We wait. We see."

"And if the Eosi come before the mechos' makers?" "Not Eosi but someone higher than "Zainal jerked his thumb upwards indicating the late captain. "We wait.

We see."

"I don't like this," Worry said. Then the comunit he wore at his belt bleeped, a curious intrusion in the night.

"Worrell here . . . Oh, Mitford. Yes, Zainal did make contact with the spacecraft. Here," and Worry handed the unit to Zainal. "He shoulda called on yours." The conversation was one-sided but since everyone listening knew what had happened from Zainal's point of view, some of his responses were amusing, though possibly not on Mitford's end, or in the middle of a cold night - and Kris was beginning to feel the chill in the air. Finally Zainal gave a series of "OKs' in response to Mitford's instructions, depressed the "off' button and passed the device back to Worry.

"He knows. We know. We say nothing," Zainal informed them.

"Say nothing?" Worry exclaimed. "The whole camp got wakened by that damned sentry rousing you and then me.

They'll demand to know.

Zainal shrugged and struck off up the next tier of rock.

"False alarm, that's what we'll tell them. It was a false alarm.

Ship just flew over," Worry went on.

"Wrong time of night to overfly anything," Joe suggested, climbing behind Worry. "Moons went down early."

"Nonsense," Kris said firmly as she followed Joe, Worry and Zainal. "We tell the truth, or how will they trust us?"

"Good point," Sarah said, starting up. "We want to build trust, not destroy it."

"Say nothing," Zainal called down to them. "Smile and say nothing. Sarge will tell them what they need to know." "He's got a point there," Worry said.

"One thing puzzles me," Joe said, spacing out words as he climbed, "why your survey didn't tumble to the fact that this world - well, this continent at least - is all carved up into neat fields? Surely they must have seen the anomaly in that. . . a clear indication that this planet was, had been, cultivated?" Zainal answered. "Loo-cows and rock-squats not smart so planet is not occupied! They do not "see" the machinery." He added a plainly derogatory phrase in the harsh Catteni.

***** Then they all had to save their breath for climbing.

When they reached the Rock, only the sentries were awake, as they should be, and Worry brushed off their questions with a "Nothing to worry about. Tell you in the morning, I'm bushed."

Chapter Thirteen

Mitford arrived the next morning in a refitted tractor which had been altered to carry six passengers. Mitford had with him the two NASA mission specialists, both of whom, he said, had had training in discerning planetary features from space. Kris, Zainal and the others had breakfasted and were well prepared for a Mitford debriefing. The MSs - a man and a woman with really nothing to distinguish them from anyone else except that they had been in space - took charge of the maps at one end of Mitford's desk which Worry had hastily surrendered to the sergeant.

"Why'n't you take off with "em?" was Mitford's first sharp question to Zainal.

He smiled. "I like it here better. Zainal didn't look at Kris but Mitford did and she mildly returned his stare in a "none of your business' attitude. "I dropped," and again he made much of the past tense, emphasizing the t sound. "I stay." She really didn't think it was only her presence that had caused Zainal to stay: he had made it clear to the ship captain that he felt bound by some obscure point of honour, though he might have used that as an excuse, she thought.

Still and all, they must have really wanted him back to send a special fast courier to collect him.

Hadn't they known where Emassi Zainal had been taken, considering the circumstances of his capture before the grace period had expired?

The captain had registered surprise, not pleasant, either, on seeing Zainal at his portal. Possibly the captain hadn't known whom he was going to meet on this planet.

She found it hard to believe: did Zainal like her so much he couldn't live without her? Kris gave her head a little shake of denial but she couldn't help grinning slightly. Catteni and human were biologically sterile, even if they could enjoy sexual relations - and "enjoy' was a pale word to apply to that tempestuous event. She was sort of hoping he'd ask for more: not that they'd had time for any further such . . . enjoyments. She didn't consider herself remarkably sexy - well, until Zainal had aroused her. Even without the sexual rapport, she liked Zainal. He was a complex man. Man, oh man, wasn't he just! And he had conducted himself with tact and a respect for others during a very difficult few weeks. Back on Barevi, having a Catteni "interested' in you was not what you wanted. Zainal was, in all respects, different.

She had to wrench her thoughts back. The NASA pair were excited about some aspect of the symbols Zainal was translating from the map legend. Craning her head, she could see that not only were there overviews of each hemisphere of the planet but close-ups, if you wanted to call pictures of entire continents "close-ups', showing contours, mountains, valleys. There were even sea-scapes of the ocean floors and their mounts and abysses. Complete! Then she gave full attention to what was being said.

"The position is perfect for a command post, Sarge, the man - Bert Put - was saying, tapping an elevation point, almost dead centre of this, the main continent. "Not easy to get to but that's only a sensible precaution and here. .

he pointed a blunt finger again, "is another concentration that matches the same symbol of the abattoir which we've already discovered.

Possibly a garage, situated below the main facility. Everything's on remote so it doesn't matter how far above the garage the command point is."

"That location's not all that far . . ." Mitford said, pulling at his lower lip in a pensive fashion. "Hmmm." He walked his fingers the distance. "Well, a good week's march."

"Not now we have that vehicle,' Worry said eagerly.

"We've only got the one big one in operation . . Mitford began, "but hell's bells, it'll get a patrol there and back faster "n' safer than they could trot it. OK, Zainal, Kris, Bert, Sarah as medic, Joe as hunter, and you'll need a good mechanic." Mitford winced. "He's a pain in the butt, I know, folks, but the best mechanic we've got is Dick Aarens.

"Aw, Sarge," Kris began in protest.

"Now," and Mitford held up a placatory hand and stared her down, "he's not going to trouble you with Zainal along."

"He hates aliens' guts,' Kris complained.

"He may but he's proved that he can read the meco makers' schematics and alter them as easily as you'd play with a Lego set.

This is not an outing. This is a patrol! You gotta pass by Camp Narrow on your way, so I'll go with you and give Aarens the business.

You ." and Mitford turned to Zainal, including Joe and Sarah in the same glance, "discipline as and when he needs it. As hard as need be.

The trip may even do him good."

"We'll see that it does," Kris promised caustically but she wasn't at all pleased at Aarens' inclusion in what should have been a great jaunt with good people she trusted. Even if she didn't know Bert Put well, she liked his frank, open face and enthusiasm and the avid way he had examined the alien charts, like a boy with a gizmo he had never expected to own.

Careful inspection of the terrain to be crossed suggested this would take three, possibly four days, at the speed the modified tractor could make.

"We run faster," Zainal said with a little grunt.

"Not over some of the ground, m'friend," Mitford said, pointing out several areas that appeared to be significant heights and rivers.

"That thing hops barriers like a gazelle, saves you having to take the long way round. We tested its stability on every sort of terrain and it's better'n' a tank. Can't tip because it just lifts on its air cushions. More comfortable than the tractors I remember as a kid.

"Sarge, you were never a kid!" Kris said, teasingly.

"I begin to think you're right, Bjornsen," and he slipped the map over to Dowdall. "Dow'll make you a copy to take along. The originals aren't going out of my possession. Now, figure out the supplies you'll need and you're to take along some furs. You'll be at altitude and it's bound to be colder this time of year." Zainal looked even larger in the fur vest that had been made for him. But he wore it with an air that made it seem regal ermine.

"Biggest damn rock-squat I ever saw," Sarah said, grinning from ear to ear.

"I am funny?" Zainal asked in mock indignation. He flexed his shoulders. "It fit well. Warm." He slid out of it and, folding it up with care, tied the bundle with a thong.

There were fur rugs as well as vests for each member of the expedition, including Dick Aarens. Kris was still struggling to accept the necessity of him joining the patrol.

"I know he's a horse's ass, Kris, but he helped put this vehicle together and he knows how to get the most out of it. You will need him on the team."

"I will not like it, Sarge, and if he so much as - - "Clobber him. Or better still, let Zalnal do it. Only not too hard.

You may need him undamaged." Mitford gripped her arm in a firm but friendly emphasis to his orders.

Bert Put's presence helped a great deal, even when all he had to look at was the relevant section of map that Dowdall had competently produced. They let Mitford off at Camp Narrow and reluctantly collected a cockily grinning Dick Aarens, who was still festooned with his belt of tools and vest of pockets which bulged with unidentifiable lumps.

"Ready when you are," he said jauntily, climbing up to the seat Mitford had vacated between Joe Marley and Sarah McDouall.

"Just don't let it go to your head, buddy, Kris said, glaring at him because he was deliberately playing kneesies with her.

"Only trying to be friendly," Aarens said in an almost plaintive whine. "Maybe I should drive. I know this baby inside out."

"I drive," Zainal said and that was that. Mitford had tested his skill on the way to Narrow and this wasn't the first ground vehicle Zainal had ever driven.

Zainal turned the control handle and the Hopper moved forward. It had been so named on the trip down since it invariably "hopped' any terrain that exceeded its pre-programmed optimum angle. They had all learned to hang on to something to be secure against unexpected manoeuvres. Generally the air-cushioned vehicle proceeded smoothly Aarens' attempts to chat up Sarah failed when she made it obvious - by linking one arm through Joe's that she was uninterested. Aarens sulked until Bert Put's look of disbelief at such childish behaviour shamed him into neutrality The Hopper might be faster than the average tank but it was no McLaren on a Grand Prix circuit. It also "flew' neatly over a wide meandering river and three narrower ravines they encountered the first day. When they camped for the night on a rock ledge, above a small cataract and pool, Zainal and Bert figured they had covered nearly seventy miles.

Rock-squats and some tasty little fish taken from the stream provided supper. After reporting in to Mitford, Zainal assigned watches and gave Aarens the dog watch.

When Kris woke the next morning, she found Aarens asleep.

"What is there to watch for?" Aarens demanded in outrage when Zainal roughly shook him awake. "Hey, take it easy. Scavengers can't attack on rock and no-one's ever seen fiiers out at night."

"There're renegades still unaccounted for," Kris said, "and you know damned good and well they'd want this Hopper."

"We haven't seen ANYone," he protested.

"Do you think they'd be stupid enough to expose themselves until they were ready to attack?" Kris went on, livid with rage at his stupid arrogance, clutching her hands at her sides because she was afraid she'd deck Aarens. Even as she thought of the joy she'd have in seeing him prostrate on the hard rock underfoot, she realized the unwisdom of such retaliation. They might indeed need Aarens if the machine failed.

"But no-one did attack us," he replied in sullen self-defence.

That night he was made to gather firewood and rocksquat dung as punishment for dereliction. Nervously, Kris woke several times that night during Aarens' watch, to be sure he remained awake. Evidently Zainal did the same thing. The time they woke together, Zainal pulled her close to him and affectionately nuzzled her neck but that, unfortunately Kris thought, was as amorous as he got. She was glad of that much, though she ached for more.

It took them six days to make the designated point and the garage they found was visible for miles above the barren wasteland that spread out before it.

"Strange place for a garage," Joe Marley said, trying to gauge the height of the doors.

"The command post is directly above this, isn't it?" Kris said, peering over Bert's shoulder to check the map.

"It would appear to be - - - up there," Bert replied, pointing and then sighing at the sheer faade of the cliff it topped. Only the solar panels, too regular in shape to be a natural formation, marked its location. "I wonder if we can get the Hopper up there from another approach.

and he looked eastward along the range.

"No, we have rope," and Zainal hefted the coil from the storage shelf of the Hopper.

"And pitons," Joe said, gratefully, having watched Jay Greene include those recently manufactured items in their supplies.

"If you'll bring the Hopper alongside, I'll just start dismantling those solar panels," Aarens said, speaking for the first time that day.

"I wouldn't want anything fall down on you guys while you're climbing that cliff," he added with a sneer.

"Too right," Joe Marley said. "I'll help you. We don't all need to climb." Zainal peered at the sun, already well down the sky.

"Not today. Tomorrow. Today we all help remove panels. Get inside, too." But he did not appear too sanguine about that possibility as he inspected the huge grey-metalled doors. "No crack." When they reported in to Mitford, he was glad to hear they'd reached their destination but warned them to go slow if this appeared to be a totally different sort of installation. Since it might well be the control point for an entire planet, the Mec Makers might well have equipped it with safeguards.

Aarens took down the solar panels. "That's what I'm here for, isn't it?" he demanded nastily. "What I'm good at. You guys'll take forever and you. . ." and his hostile gaze settled accusingly on Zainal's heavy fingers, ". . might damage the panels. Some were damaged beyond use, you know. You guys don't respect technology like you should." Knowing how the patrol had had to struggle with the solar panels, Kris reluctantly had to admit that Aarens did it faster, and probably better than anyone else could.

The fact did not endear Aarens to anyone and he had to stand watch that night, too, though he complained about the duty.

"I have big hands," Zainal said, raising one big fist and examining it as if he'd never seen it before. He smiled and turned towards Aarens, his intent very clear. "Big hand, big damage."

"You wouldn't dare," and Aarens moved around the fire near Sarah, who promptly resettled herself, leaving him all alone again. "You need me as your mechanic. To tell you what's up there."

"Perhaps," Zainal said, "but I have pilot spaceship many years now. I know a thing or two about circuits and more about spaceships." Aarens retreated into dour silence again, glaring across the campfire at them.

"Wake me for the dog watch, Joe said in a low voice to Zainal. "I don't trust him."

"Where he go?" Zainal asked, with a shrug.

"Not so much where would he go, but what would he do? Like disable the Hopper for spite or slip some of those poisonous leaves in our morning tea? Hell, I wouldn't trust him not to usher renegades in and laugh while they slit our throats," said Joe.

Aarens said nothing the next morning when he was awakened at dawn with the others. But he had a smug sort of twist to his features as if he'd won a round by not having to stand a watch as the others did.

Which he had, Kris thought, disgruntled.

Try as they could, and Aarens was doing his level best to solve the problem, they could not find out how the door opened, and there was only the one.

So, having spent a fruitless morning, Zainal decided to use the afternoon daylight to make the climb.

"Why'n't we start tomorrow, early, first thing?" Aarens demanded in a suddenly nervous twitch. "Get some rest today. Hunt."

"No, we climb,' and Zainal slung one coil of rope to his shoulders. "I, Kris, Bert. Aarens, you go hunt greens by river. Joe, Sarah, watch. Kris, give Joe your comunit." When she had, Zainal approached the cliff beside the garage where there were some irregularities providing footand hand-holds. At least in the first fifty or so feet.

It wasn't as hard a climb as it seemed looking up at it. Indeed, the rock-face was most obliging even though it had an outward bulge that was a trifle awkward to manoeuvre. Then they came to the area of squared-off, dressed stone which must be the control post. A further twenty feet, easily scaled, got them to the array of solar panels crowning the cliff top. But, once again, no discernible way into the facility which they knew must be contained behind the rock. That is, until Kris, exasperated with the whole thing, climbed well above the panels and discovered the vents.

"Well, they had to have venting somewhere, didn't they?" she said when she had called Bert and Zainal to inspect her find. Then she saw both men regarding her, and she looked back at the vents and realized she was the slenderest one among them. "I knew we should have brought Lenny.

It took a good two hours to pry the grill off the vent with the use of the heaviest chisel of the ones Zainal "borrowed' from a protesting Aarens. He had showered imprecations on them if they nicked any of the blades. When Zainal had chipped enough space for his fingers, he gave one mighty pull and wrenched the vent cover off.

They slung a rope under Kris's arms and, not without scratching herself, she squeezed into the opening and was let down. A long way down into musty darkness.

Then, as soon as she touched the ground with her feet, lights came up: an orangey glow rather than the blue-white of the lighting the Catteni used. She could see the panels that lined the "front' of the facility and then the long boxy rectangles that ranged along the back.

There was nothing that resembled seating, nothing that resembled anything she was familiar with, bar the sloping control panels with their regular indentations. There were six rectangles of an opaque material which looked like screens, placed high up on the walls, and a larger one like a blank picture window in front.

"I think Bert better get down here, or you, Zainal," she said. "I haven't a clue what to do next." Bert's head appeared in the vent aperture. "Tell me what you have in front of you, Kris. Maybe I can talk you through it.

"Ha!" She ran her fingers lightly over the left-hand group of indentations and, in the next instant, everything lit up.

"Oh, Lord, I hit something. Hey, and there're sorts of pictograms that even I can read. And one of them looks like doors." She pressed her fingers together, ditheringly, and felt totally out of her depth to be confronted with such technology. She could now feel a humining through the soles of her boots, low and not menacing. She told them about it.

"We hear, too," Zainal said, his voice encouraging.

"How many door pictograms?" Bert asked.

"Five."

"Do they differ in any way?"

"You mean in size? Yes."

"Try the smallest and see what happens." Reluctantly she put her finger in the depression beside the small door pictogram. She heard a whoosh and saw a door panel swing open behind her "I've got access to the inside." "Take a look around, then." She did and came on to a blind corridor, wide and tall, cut into the rock. She reported.

"Try the next door glyph." She did and heard a roar from both of them, then Bert's raucous "Open sesame!" She felt the cool air before she realized that she had inadvertently opened the outer door. She was overwhelmingly relieved, however, when Bert and Zainal entered the room.

Bert's face was a study - the eager boy on Christmas morning with all the games he'd asked Santa for - as he pored over the control panel. Zainal was more interested in the rectangles on the inner wall, looking for the way in to their innards.

"Well, here goes on the Big Daddy Bear," Bert said in a tone of decision and pressed the last of the line of "doors' Immediately Zainal's comunit bleeped.

"Hey, man," and Joe's triumphant tones were audible to all three, "you did it. The main portal's sliding back inside the cliff, smooth as a baby's ass. And, wow!"

"What's inside?"

"Some kind of aircraft: one, no, two of "em, parked in tandem. Stubby wings, look like air-cushion lobs as I can't find any wheels but I'd say they were atmospheric planes. Maybe for the inspector general to have a look round, see if all the mechos are doing their jobs right.

Hey, now, wait just a sec, there, Aarens . . ." Abruptly the transmission cut off.

Zainal leapt for the outer door, Bert and Kris almost bumping into each other to follow.

Over the bulge of the cliff, they couldn't see what was happening at the base by the garage until Zainal's unit beeped again.

"S' all right here," Joe said. "Sorry to panic but that fool got himself inside one of the planes and I didn't know what would happen." "We need that fool up here, Zainal said, scowling, and Kris just wished that Aarens could see that expression: he'd take less risks if he had Zainal to account to.

While they awaited Aarens' arrival, Bert studied the panel hieroglyphics, trying to figure out what did what.

There were only a few identifying signs that made any sense, the doors being one. Another was a line of six depressions, marked with a blunt-nosed object, some sort of a projectile. One space did not light up.

"Could have fired one off," Bert said. "A probe? Some kind of a capsule?"

"Or a torpedo," was Kris's guess.

"Yeah, could be any one of those."

"Zainal?" The Catteni came in to study the line, shaking his head after a few moments, though he passed a hand over the torpedo/probeglyph. The comunit bleeped.

"He won't go," Joe said, thoroughly disgusted.

"He won't go?" Zainal repeated, blinking.

"He won't climb up. Seems he's afraid of heights."

"Afraid of heights?" Zainal echoed, as if he didn't believe his ears, or thought he had misunderstood the words.

"Wouldn't you know?" Kris said.

"He will climb," Zainal said flatly. The look on his face boded no good for Aarens.

"I'll help," Kris said happily, looking forward to Aarens' reaction when he realized he couldn't pull that sort of an act on a Catteni.

They rappelled down, Kris revelling in the manoeuvre, for she'd always liked this exercise in her survival course.

Joe and Sarah now had Aarens cornered in the garage, behind the two stubby-winged planes nose to tail in the long building. The garage was much higher than it needed to be to accommodate just the two planes. The garage was also lit, so all its functions were controlled from above.

Kris wondered if the planes were also remote control devices.

Maybe that was what the screens beside the control panels were for: remote viewing. Zainal now confronted Aarens, picked him up by the fold of his coverall and carried him, one-handed, to the front.

"No, no, I tell you I won't go. I can't handle heights. I'll faint. I'll be sick all over you " Aarens was protesting, batting vainly at the hand that carried him.

"You are needed up. You will go up!" Zainal told him and then gestured at Joe to bring the spare rope.

Without actually releasing the now violently struggling mechanic, Zainal created a harness that strapped his arms tight to his chest, with loops under his arms for him. Then Zainal fastened the loose ends of the harness to himself and started up the rock-face, hauling Aarens who was flailing hard with his legs to impede his upward progress.

"You'd better use your legs to keep from bruising yourself against the rock," Sarah suggested with objective indifference.

"Ah, I can't. I can't stand heights. Oh, God, oh, God, oh God," and he kept up that litany as Zainal inexorably hoisted him, dangling and banging against the cliff-face.

"Oh God, oh God." Kris followed behind, not that she could have rescued Aarens, or even wanted to, or would need to since Zainal had the exercise under complete control.

"Oh God oh God, oh God," Aarens' voice rose to an hysterical pitch.

"Keep your eyes shut then, you damn fool," Kris advised. "Don't look. Don't look down Aarens did not become sick but he did have an episode of incontinence. Kris was able to move out of the way of it which was as well, as it left a wet streak down the cliff.

The "o God o Gods' became piteous and hoarse but Zainal ignored them and then Bert helped haul the terrified man up onto the shallow ledge and through to the door into the control room.

"Pull yourseif together," Bert said with disgust to the quivering mechanic as he untied the ropes. Zainal was shrugging out of his harness. "This complex goes deep into the mountain, Zainal. Care to have a look?"

"No, I stay here," Zainal said, looking down at the sorry sight Aarens presented. "He must do work." Kris was glad to leave the close confines of the control room because Aarens' accident was smelling the place up.

She didn't know how Zainal could stand it, but the door was left open and perhaps the wind at this height would clean the air and dry Aarens off.

Bert led her out of the control room, through one door and then down a short flight of very wide steps with low risers. Lights came up, brightening slowly, as if slow from disuse, to the same orange glow that shone in the control room. They entered the first room and it was empty of everything but a sort of long pedestal table; no chairs or stools or anything to sit or rest on. The table did look used, with some edges smoothed and some scratches marring its surface. Scratches from what? Bert urged her to the room on one side.

"I don't know if these are beds or what," he said, pointing to large square platforms, built up a foot off the floor surface. "Much less this?" and he showed her an equally large room beyond, which had a square depression in its centre with what seemed to be a drain in the middle. "I can't find any water outlets or hoses or anything." They prowled here and there about the rooms and decided that those that had the same built-in equipment might be sleeping accommodation. The purpose of others was not immediately apparent. Some had large rectangular coffers which defied their attempts to open them. The wall shelving was all above her shoulder height.

"Big creatures? Appendages at this level?" Kris asked, pretending to remove something from a shelf.

"Not been used in yonks," Bert allowed, scuffing the dust on the floor.

"I don't know what this is," Aarens voice said, issuing from somewhere near the ceiling. "No reaction anywhere." Bert and Kris grinned at each other.

"Maybe we better tell them that they're on intercom," Kris said.

Bert shrugged. "Why?"

"Why are you touching the bullets glyphs?" Zainal was saying, a note of concern in his deep voice.

"They're for those torpedo-type gizmos on a rack in the garage," Aarens was saying in a smooth sly tone. "Could be "Don't!" Zainal's command crackled.

Just then they heard a rumbling that echoed up from below. With one accord they ran back to the control room.

Zainal was standing over the prone body of Dick Aarens, his right hand still clenched in a fist. In his left hand he held the comunit, its "on' light glowing.

"I decked him," Zainal said. Then he pointed to the panel where one pf the bullet depressions shone red.

Was red always the colour of alarm?

"He pressed it. It go off."

"Thanks, Zainal," Joe's voice could be faintly heard from the comunit. "We moved. The right way. Thing launched in a blaze and we'd've been all too close to its exhaust.

Wait till I get a hold of that Aarens!"

"You'll have to stand in line,' Kris said, pulling the comunit over to her so that she could register her priority.

"When he comes to, that is." She toed the prone body.

"What did he think he was doing, Zainal?"

"Make trouble," Zainal said.

"Oh!" That was from Bert Put because Kris was shocked into immobility by the very thought of deliberately summonmg the mecos' makers, and having to answer to whatever used solid rock as a bed and ate at a table without sitting and had shoulder-high storage units.

"Oh my God!" she finally said, leaning weakly against Zainal.

"Maybe good idea after all," he said at length, nodding his head.

"Then we know worst, or best."

"How could it be best?" Kris asked, very glad when Zainal put a supporting arm around her, his fingers tightening briefly on her shoulder, encouragingly.

"First, best to know. Second, fun to find out who makes mechos." He grinned at her exclamation of protest.

"If the condition of this place is any evidence, no one or no thing has been here in a long time, Zainal," Bert said, shaking his head. "Wish I could have seen it go," he added sorrowfully.

"Ask Joe when we get down again."

"And what do we do with sleeping beauty?" Kris asked, prodding Aarens' shoulder again.

Zainal took a deep breath and then let it out.

"It'd be more fun to lower him down when he knows he's up high," Bert said with a malicious expression on his usually pleasant face.

"And listen to the O-God-O-God-O-Gods for hours?" Kris said.

"Well, if I promise not to touch anything, can I stay up here and see if I can figure out any more of what that panel controls?" Bert asked.

Zainal shrugged and looked at Kris. "I don't see why not, NASA-man,' she said with a grin.

"First, we report to Mitford," Zainal said.

"He's not going to like this," Kris said, shaking her head.

"Especially since I think we were probably supposed to prevent just such a thing happening.

To her surprise, Mitford took somewhat the same attitude Zainal had: he wouldn't have authorized sending a message, if that was indeed what Aarens had managed to do. But he was, in a way, relieved that it had gone off "And if your guys are watching this planet, Zainal, it's going to give them a shock."

"There is that," Zainal replied.

"Should we come back to the Rock, Sarge?" Kris asked.

"Might as well, but on your way back check out the other sites on the part of the map I gave Bert." Then Mitford signed off.

In the end, Zainal lowered the unconscious Aarens down the rockface, with Kris guiding the strapped body's descent. It wasn't what she'd rather have done with Aarens but that would have been playing the game on his level. Sarah and Joe loaded up a sack of food, water and furs which Zainal then hauled more carefully up to Bert. He would leave his comunit with Bert so the MS could stay in contact.

"Tell Bert there's no real rush for him to come down," Joe said to Zainal on the com, winking at Sarah in a conspiratorial fashion.

They decided not to untie the unconscious Aarens but put him in the Hopper, between the seats. Sarah flung his fur over him.

"It may stink in the morning but that's his problem,she said.

"There's stew for supper," she added. "Just the four of us." Then Sarah smiled, a different sort of knowing smile. It didn't take a moment for Kris to catch on and she grinned back, nodding her head.

"We could stand our watches together tonight. Be sort of cosy, wouldn't it?"

"Great idea," Kris said, her eyes wandering over the area to see where she would place hers and Zainal's blankets and furs.

Certainly far enough away from Aarens to be able to ignore any complaints from him when he finally came to, and far enough not to impinge on the privacy of Joe and Sarah.

"I hear Catteni make great lovers," Sarah went on conversationally.

"You have?"

"Yeah. Back on Earth, I knew a couple of girls who took up with Catteni . . on purpose, to find out what they could," Sarah hastened to add.

"Ah, line of duty," Kris said.

"Well, the word I got was that giving out was not the hard part of the job." Sarah winked at Kris, and waited a moment, evidently wanting some indication of how Kris accepted the information. "In fact, they used to come home smiling. Oh, I know there were plenty yelling rape, and I heard all about Patti Sue, and I know some of the rougher types were brutal. But Zainal's different. Oh my word, but he's different and if I hadn't met Joe . . ." Sarah's smile was enviously wistful.

Then her expression changed to her usual forthright candidness. "What I'm trying to say is, don't worry about liking Zainal that way, Kris.

And I think you do like him."

"Hmmm. I think I do, too, Sarah. And thanks." Then, while Sarah went back to the fire to stir the stew, Kris watched Zainal rapelling down the faade, his movements deft and graceful. But then she was accustomed to his size and she certainly was no longer going to be worried about what other people thought.

Still it was good of Sarah to speak up as she had. Especially since a lot of people now on Botany had mentally paired Zainal and herself off a long time ago. She watched while he untethered himself, neatly coiled the rope for future use and then entered the garage. She watched him have a good look at the launch tube that had released the capsule and the other lour sitting in their tubes. Ventilators had come on when the missile had surged out of the garage so that the fumes had dispersed, but he sniffed, trying to decide what fuel had been used, she thought. Then he inspected the rest of the puzzling cabinets, panels and equipment.

He settled himself on the sloping stubby wing of the last plane and took some bark paper and his carbon pencil out of a thigh pocket.

She joined him when he began to make accurate sketches of the interior.

"Is Bert doing the same upstairs?"

"Upstairs?" Zainal asked, puzzled. When she pointed upwards, he grinned. "Yes. We get it all down for Sarge.

For report." Kris liked watching Zainal work, the deft way his fingers moved, big but not clumsy. She thought of how they would move on her, while they stood their double watches that night, and shivered with anticipation.

He had considerable skill as a draftsman because he only needed a quick glance before he sketched in a whole section accurately, frowning as he held the sketch up against the model to be sure he had done it with precision.

"You're a man of many talents, aren't you, Zainal?" she said when he had finished the lob.

"Not so many," he said in an abstracted tone. Then he put pencil and paper to one side and, catching her arm, pulled her against him, all his attention on her.

"How about standing a double watch with me tonight?" she asked, almost coyly. She disliked "coy' because girls who are five-foot ten don't do "coy' well but Zainal had changed many of her attitudes.

He ruffled her hair which was growing long again and would soon have to be braided or it would get in the way.

"I can possibly do that, he replied amiably.

"Sometimes, Zainal," she began, tsck-tscking in surprise, "you sound more American than I do."

"That's good?"

"I mean, it's great you've learnt English so well so quickly."

"I like to learn something else quickly and well," he said and nuzzled her neck, biting her ever so gently.

"Are lovebites part of a Catteni wooing?"

"Wooing?" he asked against her neck.

"Making love."

"I think so. I have not loved a Catteni." His phrasing made her catch her breath. If he hadn't loved a Catteni, did he love her? Don't be stupid, Kris girl. He's an Emassi where he comes from and has met Eosi. He's too important for a girl like you from ol' backwater-"f-the-galaxy Terra. But her arm, of its own accord, tightened around his neck and she kissed his cheek. His smooth cheek.

"Don't you Catteni ever need to shave?" She had no idea what possessed her to ask a question like that then, but that was her all over.

He laughed down at her. "Shave? Ah, take off face hair. No face hair on Catteni." Then he rubbed his cheek against hers.

"HEY, YOU HAIRY LOT," Sarah called from the campfire, unaware of the topic of their conversation.

"DINNER!" Zainal slipped his arm about her waist and pushed her off towards the fire and their dinner.

"When we stand watch tonight, I do not think we stand long," he said so only she could hear him, "though of course it can be done that way, too."

"Whatever," she managed to reply though the idea fascinated her.

Over the stew, Joe Marley was full of speculation about the prospect of a reaction to the homing capsule.

"Maybe it is not homing," Zainal suggested.

"What else could it be?" Joe replied. "Nothing's been blown up anywhere, if it was a torpedo, or Mitford would have told us. Besides, those mothers are big, complex affairs. It was fuelled, too, judging by the stink it left behind. So, possibly it could be a homer."

"True.

"And maybe now we've got into this place," and Joe jerked his finger at the maw of the garage, the orange light so dim they could not even see the tail of the first plane, "we might figure out how to get into the seaside facility."

"Not if we have to take Aarens along with us to get it to open," Kris said firmly.

"Bert comes," Zainal said.

"If we have time for it before the mecos' makers come back at us," Joe said gloomily.

"It could take decades for the homer to reach its destination."

"Then what good is a homer?" Joe demanded. "No, to be efficient, and these Meco Makers are damned efficient engineers, it would have to reach home in a relatively short period of time." He wasn't happy at the thought of what response would be made.

"Why borrow trouble, Joe?" Kris asked.

"Well, it's only smart to think ahead, to plan for contingencies.

"That's Mitford's job," Kris said easily. "And Worry's.

Let him do that for all of us." Her stomach was full and it was great to be able to lounge around the fire, close to Zainal, and knowing he was close to her and would be closer once they got Joe and Sarah off to their own bed.

"Honest, Zainal, d'you think we'll get a response soon?"

"We get one sooner from Catteni is my say, he said, hands clasped behind his head, his eyes gleaming gold in the firelight. He looked both alien and wonderfully familiar to Kris.

"Why? Would they have put up a satellite er something?" They had to explain what kind of satellite Joe meant and Zainal agreed that Catteni had such equipment.

"But they do not yet believe in the Mecho Makers.

Though maybe since - - -" and he paused, a slight frown creasing his forehead.

"Since that captain came?" Kris said,- prompting.

Zainal grinned at her. "He believe and is able to act without order." "Was he under Eosi orders to come here, then?" Zainal shook his head. "He came to get me."

"But you were dropped and you stay," Sarah said, teasingly.

Kris, who was aware that that had been a far more significant encounter than anyone else could know, glanced quickly at Zainal to see how he reacted.

"I stay," he said and then grinned.

"But he might have activated a warning device?" Joe asked, getting the matter straight in his own mind.

"That is possible.

"So they would know something's been launched." Zainal nodded.

"Maybe they won't drop any more unwilling pioneers on us then," Sarah said hopefully Zainal chuckled. "They had more Terrans to drop in safe place. Many more."

"Oh Lord, however will we manage?" Sarah cried.

"We've done very well so far," Kris said with some asperity.

Sarah and Joe were late droppers-in and acting as if they'd been here all along. Well, what's wrong with that? Kris chided herself. At least they want to be part of this cra colony.

"So we have," and Zainal unfolded himself from the ground. "We take first watch," he added casually.

"No, you'd fall asleep after all that lugging of bodies up and down that clifface," Joe said as casually.

"We should do something about feeding Aarens," Sarah remarked with no enthusiasm for the task. "And changing him or that Hopper will sure stink tomorrow' "He's not awake," Zalnal said with a shrug.

"You didn't hit him too hard, did you, Zainal?" Kris asked wistfully.

"Naw," Joe answered. "I've been checking him. Zainal just decked him right proper, that's all. Something we've all wanted to do, I might add.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God, not you, too?" Kris said mischievously.

That brought a laugh from the others.

The comunit beeped and Joe answered it. "Bert checking in, are you? . . . Naw, we wouldn't go off and leave you to explain to the Meco Makers. We're about ready to sack out now. Found nothing new, all right Oh. . . Well, we have had a day full of surprises, at that.

You'll stand first watch? Oh, that's good of you, mate.

You got the place to watch from all right. Over and out.

Then he grinned at Zainal. "He's first watch. He'll wake me.

And I'll wake you. I'll check Aarens again now."

"Just give me a shout," Zainal said. He held out his hand to Kris who let him pull her up and into his arms as Sarah disappeared into the dark after Joe. In the firelight, his eyes were golden. "I do not know your thought, Bjornsen," he said, "but I am lucky you were in the thorn-bushes of Barevi."

"You think you were lucky? Mter all that's happened since then?" She leaned back against his arms to catch the look in his eyes.

"You change my life. Not many change a Catteni."

"No, I don't think many do," she could agree wholeheartedly.

"Now, there is a long time before we stand our watch." There was devilment in his yellow eyes as he looked down at her. "What shall we do with all that time by ourselves?"

"Hmmm, oh, I think we can find something to do." And, of course, they did.

L "EN VOl Sergeant Chuck Mitford kept to himself the news that Aarens had sent off what appeared to be a homing projectile. Damn the man! Just like him to act with malicious intent. Before he'd heard who was leading the patrol, he'd been eager for the expedition to the putative control facility. Another chance to show off how clever Dick Aarens was. And the man did have a genuine -mechanical bent. All the experts agreed. But that didn't keep him from being a royal pain in the butt! And he'd been equally eager to devolunteer when he knew that he'd have to deal with Zainal. And that the Bjornsen girl was part of the team.

"D'you know about them?" Aarens had ranted. "D'you know she's sleeping with that Cat?"

"If she is, it's her own business, Aarens, and I wouldn't put on that innocent look were I you," Mitford had replied.

"You're quite the lover-boy on your own, aren't you? However, I'm warning you, I get one more complaint of harassment and, not only will I put you in the stocks every night so we'll know where you are, I'll get Dane to castrate you.

Get me!"

"You wouldn't dare?" That had shaken the mechanical genius because he knew all too well by now that Mitford did not make false promises.

So Aarens had taken the initiative the first chance he saw. But then, there would have been no message in the homing device, if that's what it was. Perhaps the Meco Makers would ignore its return. False alarm.

Mitford sighed and linked his fingers behind his head.

He'd hate it if all he'd built out of SFA here on Botany went down the tubes. He was rather proud of the order he'd been able to achieve out of nothing. And it had been pure heaven to be without any smartass captains and lieutenants with their smartass West Point training to tell him half of what he did wasn't in the Book. Well, it wasn't because he was writing this book himself.

He hadn't wanted the job but he'd come to enjoy it.

Starting off fresh and making one world the way it should be. Not many men get that chance.

Tomorrow morning, he'd start on contingency plans.

One thing for sure, they might be in for some serious trouble from the Meco Makers for messing up their machines. They'd probably have to leave the garages and barn facilities, so he'd better scout for more caves where they could hide and carry on in spite of owner occupation.

And then there were the Catteni. Would they maybe have dumped some sort of a satellite spy-eye to orbit the planet? To see if there was any contact with a technically advanced species who had a prior claim on the planet. He'd have to check with Zainal. Mitford had a hunch that more went on in that early morning meeting with the emassi ship than Zainal had reported. But he respected Zainal far too much to grill him. That guy was honourable and people wre beginning to see him in that light. Which was another load off Mitford's shoulders If the emassi were up to something that would affect Botany, Mitford was pretty certain Zainal would level with him.

Mitford grunted and muttered to himself, "I drop, I stay. And chuckled. Glad he hadn't listened to those who'd wanted to waste the Catteni on that field.

He wasn't all that happy that the Bjornsen girl had taken up with him, though. He'd've fancied her himself.

A leader had a few privileges. Damned few.

He suspected nothing was going to change the Catteni's plans for Botany. This was such a convenient dumping spot for all the troublesome dissidents the Catteni couldn't handle on Earth . . . and Barevi.

Well, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Only what law applied to Botany? He'd make it his if he could. He was getting pretty good at this governing business. Making a better show than either Democrats or Republicans ever had.

Or would they all be caught in between two master races. . . the mysterious Eosi and the even more unknown quantity of the Mec Makers?

Could be interesting. Could be fatal. Well, he wouldn't worry about that. This was a large continent.

He must remember to get in more bark sheets or have someone start to manufacture paper. They'd need more copies of the maps, geographical and spatial. Surely there was someone among his lot of individuals who knew how to make decent paper! He fumbled at his breast pocket, got out the slip of bark he kept there and one of the newer, more streamlined pencils and jotted down a note. There!

Tomorrow he'd start figuring out how to cope with invasions. Would he, as planetary leader, get a chance to confront representatives of either faction? Hmmm. Maybe he could get them to accept a compromise? To turn the planet over to him. Fat chance of that but Mitford chuckled at his presumption.

ASU-ME, he thought, remembering the old axiom of assunung too much. Whatever!

He'd get his six hours' sleep first, get his mind rested for the duties of the morning. So he turned over, socked the fluff-filled pillow into proper order, and slept.

The launch had been observed. The spatial direction of the torpedo noted and the report forwarded to those concerned with such matters.

THE END