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“That would seem to be the criterion for this expedition,” said Gaber, giving Kai a sly glance. “Everything’s done the hard way.”

“You’ve gone soft, Gaber, that’s all,” said Triv. “Not enough time in the grav gym on shipboard. I enjoy the challenge, frankly. I’ve gone flabby. This trip’s good for all of us. We’re spoiled with a punch-a-button dial-a-comfort system. We need to get back to nature, test our sinews, circulate our blood and . . .”

“Breathe deeply of stinking air?” asked Gaber when Triv, carried away by his own eloquence, briefly faltered.

“What, Gaber? Lost your nose filters again?”

Gaber was easy to tease and Triv continued in a bantering way until Kai turned the sled through the gap in the hills to their encampment. Kai had affected not to acknowledge Gaber’s glance although, tied in with Gaber’s notion of planting, “doing everything the hard way” could well be a prelude to the abandonment that was euphemistically termed “planting.” It could account for quite a number of deletions in Kai’s original requisition list. Remote sensors were expensive equipment to leave behind with a planted colony. But, if the colony were supposed to be self-sufficient, surely some mining equipment would have been included so that they could refine needed metals for building and for replacement of worn-out parts, like sled members. There would have been . . . “Do it the hard way” rang ominously in Kai’s mind. He’d better have a long chat with Varian as soon as he could.

However, if this expedition were genuine—the urgent need for the transuranics was a chronic condition in the FPS—then someone, if not their own ARCT-10 EV, would strip the message from the beamer satellite and take the appropriate action of returning to Ireta to extract the all-important ores and minerals and, incidentally, rescue them. The positive thought encouraged Kai, and he employed the rest of the trip by formulating messages; first to the Thek and then for the long-distance capsule. No, he’d only the one capsule. Two large deposits did not really constitute cause for dispatching it. So, first he could frame a message for his next contact with the Thek about the old cores, and the uranium deposits. He would hold the ldc until he could justify its trip. He’d no genuine cause for alarm, apart from a vague suspicion of an aging cartographer.

To his surprise, the heavy-worlders, who had left the site considerably before him to return by lift-belt, had not arrived at the compound. The other sleds had all returned safely. The youngsters were cosseting Dandy while Lunzie watched. She used her overseeing as an excuse not to answer the importunities of Portegin and Aulia for more joy juice. He saw neither Varian nor Trizein and had decided she must be in the xenochemist’s laboratory in the shuttle when the heavy-worlders, in their neat formation, came swooping in from the north. The north? He started toward the veil lock to ask Paskutti about such a detour when Varian hailed him from the shuttle. She sounded excited so he hurried over, leaving Paskutti till another time.

“Kai, Trizein thinks he knows why the fliers must need the grasses,” she said when he got near enough. “The stuff is full of carotene . . . vitamin A. They must need it for eyesight and pigmentation.”

“Odd that they’d have to go such a distance for a basic requirement.”

“But it substantiates my hunch that the pentadactyls are not indigenous to this world.”

Kai was lifting his foot through the iris and stopped, grabbing at the sides to balance himself.

“Not indigenous? What in the name of raking . . . what do you mean? They have to be indigenous. They’re here.”

“They didn’t originate here,” and Varian gestured him to come into the shuttle. “Further, those parallelograms I saw today aren’t even vaguely arthropods, which would fit in with the vertebrates we’ve discovered like the herbivores, predators and even the fliers.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“I am. This planet isn’t. You don’t find animals forced to go hundreds of kilometers from their proper environment to acquire a dietary