He shook his head. "Orders. We walk how we are."
Maybe; then again, maybe not. She gave him her warmest smile, and said, "Orders; yes, of course. But I have my own orders, you know. Not only from Captain Kobolak, yonder, but from Captain Delarov on the Tamurlaine." She shook her head. "I don't think either of us would like it, if I had to tell Captain Delarov that you wouldn't let me carry out his instructions."
It worked. Not only did he step aside for her: leading the way, he cleared others from her path until she reached Anders. Then he stood, all too well within hearing range, until she smiled again, and said, "Thank you. I think it's all right, now, for you to return to your normal station."
Then he left their path of march. Lisele said, "Anders? Have you noticed-?" And she told him what she'd seen and deduced. "It's barbaric."
He shrugged. "UET always was. They've regressed even more here, is all." His hand clasped her shoulder. "Thanks for telling me, though; I missed it. And thanks, too, for coming
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to talk with me." His laugh sounded shaky. "I'd actually begun to feel lonesome-and restricted, somehow. As if our people were being deliberately kept apart."
"We were. Specifically. Mostly, I suppose we still are.
Look around, Anders, at the groupings."
After he'd done so, he said, "Then how did you-?" The knowledge might be helpful sometime, so she told
him.
Nodding, wiping sweat from his forehead, Anders nodded. "Yes. Counter their authority with some of our own. Whether it exists, or not. Damn! Isn't it hot, though?"
Lisele was also sweating; it looked as if everyone was. But until he mentioned the heat she hadn't really felt it, much. After thinking a moment, she decided that this, now, was about the same as halfway into the hot season near Shaarbant's equator. When she and Rissa and Tregare and the others could still manage to keep moving all day, well before they had to find shelter and wait out that world's deadly perihelion. Sitdown, here, was hot, all right-but nothing like what she'd survived, there. And this sun, a deeper yellow than Earth's, showed a smaller disc than either Earth's or Shaarbant's.
Coming out of reverie, she remembered to tell Kobolak about the "commodore" thing. He chuckled. "Whatever the man wants to be called is fine with me."
With nothing more to talk about, Lisele began to pay attention to her surroundings. First they'd walked in a dusty patch, the dust rising enough to impede observation, but now they were into greenish-blue ground cover. At first glance it appeared to be grass, but actually the calf-height growth branched quite a lot. It wasn't hard to walk through, though; at the slightest pressure the stuff bent or broke away.
From time to time she'd noticed a form of plant life that looked like a tree trunk with no limbs, bare toward the bottom but with the upper part green-covered, its silhouette bulging to twice the lower diameter. Now as the party neared a group of these growths, Lisele guessed the largest to be roughly half a meter thick at the base and perhaps five or six meters tall. The foliage, from this distance, looked something like moss.
Were these the source of what looked like wood in the
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buildings ahead? Until she saw a dead one, she wasn't sure. But that bare trunk, covered with scrawny, equally-dead twigs, was either wood or this world's counterpart.
She nodded; all right, a few things about this place were coming clear. When the scout could next communicate with March Hare, there'd be some info to relay to Katmai Delarov.
Until they topped a slight, gradual rise, the stream ahead was hidden from view. More than a stream, less than a river: a creek, perhaps? Not more than six meters wide, but the noticeable current ran smoothly, so the flow had some depth. The crude wood-and-stone bridge spanning the water substantiated Lisele's guess; too deep for wading.
Along both sides stood bushlike growths. Yellow-foliaged, these; a seasonal change, Lisele wondered? Or normal hue? Each bore three branches, diverging at a low height and making loose upward spirals. The shaping caught her attention; she looked more closely. Yes, they all spiraled clockwise. A vagrant datum from her days at the Junior University: this place was north of Sitdown's equator; in the southern hemisphere the things probably turned the other way. Whatever passed for leaves were feathery and hung vertically limp.
Crude or not, the bridge was solid enough; the troop's passage caused no vibration.
Not far ahead, now, the buildings began. No two alike, yet among the smaller ones especially, an overall sameness of stone and wood. For the most part they were built to only one level, with shallow-slanted roofs-generally just two sections, sloping from a fore-and-aft peak. Average ground area, she estimated, was roughly ten to fifteen meters on a side, with a few larger. Bigger families, maybe.
These people provided enough windows to let in plenty of light. Lisele saw no glass or screens, only shutters, most of them open. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen anything on the order of insects, flying or otherwise. But from the total lack of barriers at those windows, she decided there must not be any dangerous predators around. Or nuisance-type intruding animals, either.
Either that, or all such creatures were nocturnal; maybe
at night the shutters were closed.
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As they passed the first few structures, Lisele glimpsed people peering from windows-looking around one edge or another, showing only parts of faces. They were off to the sides of the line of march, and with all the groundsiders around her, Lisele got no clear view of any watcher. But some faces showed whiskers and others didn't, and certainly the small heads peeking over sills had to be young children.
For some reason, that knowledge eased Lisele's tensions.
Ahead, above the low, nearer roofs, a taller building showed. About three times as high as the others, Lisele guessed. Quite a lot wider, though, and since the party was approaching from an angle, Lisele could see one side as well as the front. Perspective disguised the relative proportions, but a quick count showed that front and side walls had the same number of windows. So the thing was basically square. And how large? Comparing the large structure with the others, she estimated each side at fifty meters.
The group passed the last of the houses; ahead lay the big building. If ever a safety perimeter had been marked around the downed ship, those marks were long since overgrown or scuffed away. But Lisele knew how large the danger zone should be, and this building definitely violated it.
If the Patton couldn't lift, the placement hardly mattered. On the other hand, one of Katmai Delarov's possible scenarios involved repair of that ship. Lisele shrugged; no point in worrying about too many things, ahead of time!
Now, closer at hand, she studied the building itself. The front, at least, was faced with stone to a height of about two meters. In the center of it, stone facing also rimmed high, wide double doors. Their height, level with the tops of the first-level windows, indicated an inside structure of two floors only, but the lower was tall enough for two. Most of the wall showed roughly-dressed wood slabs, once painted a color that might have been red but now had weathered to a greyish brown.
A short flight of broad steps led to the entrance. On those steps stood another group of groundsiders, this one led by the big man, First Officer Goral Craig. The rest were younger, and like the scout crew's escort, carried only belt knives. As Deryth Mangentes brought her group to a halt, only a few paces from Craig's, the woman said, "Reporting. Here they are, First. Is the commodore ready to receive them?"
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The man nodded. "Report acknowledged, Second. We'll take charge now. Dismiss your group and come along."
Alter a certain amount of military ritual that seemed to make very little sense, the two officers, plus six of Goral Craig's contingent, escorted the five offworlders inside.
Lisele suppressed either a gasp or a chuckle; she wasn't sure which. Because the interior, although wood and not metal, was painted the dull blue-grey of a UET ship's galley.
Even without the double-height ceiling, the simulation wasn't exact. To one side, the area for preparation and serving of food was fairly standard, and the hierarchal placement of tables for officers, ratings, and unrated crew fit UET's normal distribution. But in no ship did the officers' table stand on a raised platform against a rear wall, with all seats behind that table, facing outward toward the main area.
So, a galley and auditorium combined. And mounted on that wall, high enough for good viewing from the entire room, was a large monitor screen.
Behind the raised table Lisele saw the high backs of ten chairs. Hmmm-all right: the captain and three control officers, a similar allotment for Engineering, plus Drive and Comm chiefs, whose subordinates were ratings, not officers.
Now, though: as Lisele faced that table and those who sat there, the three chairs at the table's right end were vacant. In the next sat a fat, balding man, then Commodore Cray Maiden. To Maiden's left the row was filled by a man, two women, then two more men.
Craig ushered the group past the tables, now vacant, reserved for unrated crew and lower ratings. The chief ratings' table was well-attended, with only a half-dozen seats empty. On reaching that point, the man said, "Captain Kobolak, you sit up front there. The rest of you-" The man gestured. "-find your places here."
Not liking this separation at all, Lisele took a seat between two of the Patton's ratings and watched Brower and Houk and Alina do the same-each isolated from the others, no two together-as Anders Kobolak was led to the vacant chair at the head table's end. Beside him sat Second Officer Deryth Mangentes; Goral Craig took the remaining vacancy.
Quickly, before any attempt to talk with the ratings at table with her, Lisele looked at the table itself. Each place
