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While the three young people kept a conversation going, Varian wondered, as she set the sled on its baseward course, just what happened to occasion Dimenon’s captious attitude. Perhaps it was no more than irritation with the heavy-worlders’ behavior in the morning, and reaction to the excitement of such a rich find. She must ask Kai later. She didn’t want her team coming into contention with his, and she would be the first to admit the heavy-worlders had been less than efficient. Or was Dimenon still irked over last night’s alcohol rationing?

There were dangers inherent in mixing planet- and ship-bred groups, and EV kept it down to a minimum whenever possible. The Iretan expedition had needed the brawn of the heavy-worlders and Varian and Kai would simply have to work out the problems.

Varian was a bit depressed. A computer could give you a probability index on any situation. This mission had had a good one. But a computer couldn’t adjust its input with such unexpected details as a stink and constant gloom or drizzle, affecting tempers, or a cosmic storm cutting off communications with the mother ship: it certainly hadn’t printed out the fact that a planet listed as unexplored was now giving immutable evidence of previous survey, not to mention anomalies like . . . But if, Varian thought, there had been the survey, maybe such things as pentadactyl development and aquatic collapsing parallelograms were entirely possible! Yet which was indigenous? Both couldn’t be!

Fliers having to find grass so far from their natural habitat? Varian’s spirits lifted again with excitement. And if the golden fliers, who were pentadactyl, were not indigenous, then the herbivores and predators they’d so far encountered were not indigenous either! Not anomalies: conundrums. And how? By whom? The Others? No, not the ubiquitous Others. They destroyed all life, it there was any substance to the rumor that such sentient beings existed.

The Theks might know about the previous survey . . . if Kai could stimulate them into a serious attempt at recall. By Matter! She’d sit through an interchange herself to find out! Wait till she told Kai that!

6

KAI had as much to reflect upon as Varian as he sledded back to the encampment. For one thing, he was minus some irreplaceable equipment that Paskutti and Tardma had dropped down a crevice. EV had allowed him only the minimum of seismic spares, and the last group he’d expect to be careless with equipment was the heavy-worlders. They moved so deliberately they avoided most accidents. He couldn’t restrict the heavy-worlders from drinking the distillation, but he’d have to ask Lunzie to dilute any given them from now on. He couldn’t afford more losses.

An expeditionary force was permitted so many credits in loss of equipment due to unforeseeable accidents, but above that figure, the leaders found their personal accounts docked. The loss of the equipment was bothering Kai more than any possible credit subtraction: it was a loss caused by sheer negligence. That irritated him. And his irritation annoyed him more because this should have been a day of personal and team satisfaction: he had achieved what he had been sent to do. Ruthlessly now, he suppressed negative feelings.

Beside him Gaber was chattering away in the best spirits the cartographer had exhibited since landing. Berru and Triv were discussing the next day’s work in terms of which of the colored lakes would be the richest in ore minerals. Triv was wishing for just one remote sensor, with a decent infrared eye to pierce the everlasting clouds. A week’s filming in a polar orbit and the job would be done.

“We do have the probe’s tapes,” Berru said.

“That only sounded land mass and ocean depth. No definition, no infrared to penetrate that eternal cloud cover.”

“I asked for a proper prelanding remote sensing,” Gaber said, the note of petulance back in his voice.

“So did I,” said Kai, “and was told there wasn’t a suitable satellite in Stores. We have to do it the hard way, in person.”