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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

_The windblown grit didn't scratch the moissanite visors pro-
tecting the faces of the detachment, but bare skin—the backs of Daniel's hands and his throat above his collar—already felt as though it was sunburned. What was it going to be like a week from now?

Daniel grinned broadly. Well, that was something he could wait a week to learn. Any number of things could happen before then to render present concern empty. Some of the possibilities were even survivable.

"Unit," he said to key the general channel. "We'll camp here, down in the swale and out of the wind. Hogg, choose a site for the tent. Vesey, take Matahurd and see if there isn't water here too. Captain out."

Daniel took his knapsack off and waited as the crewmen slid over the crumbling bank. The region must get some rain for this dry riverbed and its contributory ravines to exist, but rain must be very infrequent. The hard-stemmed bushes growing to the level of the bank were at least several years old; a downpour as fierce as the ones that had excavated the riverbed would uproot any vegetation present at the time.

When Daniel himself stepped down, the sudden absence of wind was as great a relief as warm shelter after a blizzard. He hadn't appreciated just how enervating the wind's cutting pressure was until he'd escaped it—for a time.

Hogg was giving orders in a voice that remained clear despite obvious wear from the dust and dryness. They'd all been drinking their fill in expectation of replenishing their water supply, but the mucous membranes of noses and mouths still suffered in this damnable atmosphere.

"How far'd we get, sir?" Sun croaked. If the gunner had wanted information instead of a reason to speak to Daniel, he'd have read the figure off his helmet's navigation display. He was working his arms alternately to loosen them after the pull of his packstraps, switching the powerful impeller from hand to hand so that he wasn't flailing it around.

"Ten point three one miles, Sun," Daniel said. "A pretty decent hike for spacers on the first day, I'd say. We'll try to double that in the future."

"Umm . . ." Sun said, rubbing his mouth with the back of his free hand. He was a wiry man of middle height, and one of the solidest of the Princess Cecile's crew—under normal circumstances. "I wonder, sir? If this gully was going in more or less the right direction—"

He'd obviously already looked at his map overlay. It would have showed him that the dry river entered the Middle Sea within ten miles of the cape where the beacon was set.

"—and we followed it, we could stay out of the wind."

"I wish we could do that, Sun," Daniel said truthfully, "but the vegetation down here is too thick for us to use ravines for passage."

He gestured, calling attention to the brush around them. Daniel could differentiate at least a dozen species, though they all had smooth trunks and small, oval leaves. Several varieties had foliage covered with fine spines, even though Sexburga had no large herbivores. Daniel had seen that sort of adaptation before in desert climates: the spines created a zone of still air so that constant wind didn't dry the plant out faster than the roots could replenish its fluids.

The armed leaves would nonetheless lacerate anybody moving through them quickly. Besides, the trunks of neighboring bushes twisted around one another in a slow-motion attempt to wrestle more of their valuable riverbed real estate.

Sun looked at the vegetation and sighed. "Yeah, I should've known that," he said. "I don't . . . I'm not used to the wind, I guess. Sorry, sir."

He turned and walked back to where his men had cleared a tent-sized area under Hogg's direction. The detachment had only one powered cutting bar, though Hogg had sharpened the two shovels on a rock slab at the landing site. They'd come here to view what might be foundations carved into bare rock, not to hack through the continent's rare stretches of vegetation.

Daniel didn't let the concern he felt for Sun reach his face. The constant wind was unpleasant to anybody, but the gunner's reaction was just short of phobia. It wasn't the sort of problem that would arise aboard a starship.

And there wasn't a thing to do about it now.

The fire's dense yellow flames crackled, throwing heat even to where Daniel stood twenty feet away. This South Land brushwood burned with an oily intensity, but Dasi and Pring had been unable to light it until Hogg feathered one of the chopped stems with his knife before touching the lighter to it.

Hogg sauntered over, smiling with satisfaction at a job well done—and also, if Daniel knew his servant, at his superiority to a bunch of city folk. "Want to take a little walk with me, master?" Hogg asked. "There's something you might want to look at."

"Certainly, Hogg," Daniel said, feeling a touch of excitement that took him back to his boyhood. That was the way Hogg always prefaced a chance to view a part of nature that almost no one ever saw. There'd been the day the crystal moths issued from every pore of a tree their grub forms had eaten hollow, mating in the sunlight they saw only once in thirty years; the cave under the sea cliff, always in the past empty, from which the scaly head of leviathan rose one evening to follow the line of Hogg's low-skimming aircar; the roc lifting as the sun woke updrafts from the hinterlands of Bantry . . .

Hogg picked up a shovel and handed the impeller to Barnes. "She's switched off right now," he said. "Which would be a pretty good way to leave her unless you want to blow somebody's ass off for fun."

"I'll be careful, mother," Barnes said with a grin. Hogg sniffed and gestured with his free hand for Daniel to follow him into the brush.

Hogg and the Sissies respected one another and had been through some tense times together. Both sides had a genial contempt for the group the other represented, however. Daniel had a foot in either camp. He found the mutual chauvinism amusing, since they'd shown that in a crisis they'd join ranks against a common enemy.

Hogg held the sharpened blade of the shovel out in front of him like a horseman's lance and duckwalked down a tunnel of branches growing from pedestals of dirt laced high by roots. The soil was so light and dry that even here in the riverbed the breezes carved it away except where something bound it.

Daniel's hands were empty, so he scrambled along on all fours. The knife on his equipment belt would make a satisfactory weapon at close quarters, but he saw no need to draw it now.

"There you go, master," Hogg said, making room for Daniel by squeezing against a bush whose tiny white berries grew from the underside of its leaves. He pointed with the shovel; its broad tip had a wicked sheen where he'd stroked the metal to an edge.

He indicated a bush whose stems swelled at intervals into fist-sized nodules. They weren't the result of disease as Daniel had thought when he first viewed them, but rather reservoirs in which the plant stored a white, starchy substance. Daniel had tasted a pinch and found it flavorless but not apparently harmful. He'd thought of using it to supplement their diet if necessary.

Half this bush had been stripped: the stems cut a foot or two above the ground, then cut again to excise the nodules. The undamaged stems looked forlorn, springing from a base meant for twice their number.

"It's not sawed," Hogg said, "and it's not hacked with a machete either. I'd say either teeth or a sharp little knife."

Daniel flicked on his handlight. The sky was still bright enough for normal vision, but he needed more intensity to judge how fresh the cuts were. Bark curled resiliently under the pressure of his fingertip. He said, "It didn't happen more than a day ago."

"Not even that, dry as this place is," Hogg said. "Less than an hour, I'd say. I'll bet he scampered when the thundering herd come down the bank."

"It could be a castaway," Daniel said. He didn't know what he believed, so he stated what seemed the most reasonable possibility. "Out of rations and living off the land."

"Could be," Hogg said. From his tone, he didn't know what he believed either. "That don't explain why he ran, though. I sure hell wouldn't want to be alone in this place if there was a choice."

He resumed waddling forward, along the trail rubbed in the friable soil. The markings were faint, but even Daniel could have followed them; Hogg had another generation's worth of experience in woodcraft.

Fifteen feet ahead, he gestured to one of the chopped-out nodules, dropped beside the track. Daniel nodded.

"Captain, is things all right?" Dasi asked through the helmet. The fact that it was a spacer checking rather than Sun, the petty officer in charge, was a bad sign. "Over."

"Unit," Daniel said, "Hogg and I are scouting the perimeter. There's no problems, we're just making sure. Captain out."

The trail had led them back to the wall of the dry channel. A block of sandstone the diameter of a dinnerplate projected from the bank. It didn't look as though it belonged there. Hogg tested it with the heel of his left hand, leaning some, then all of his weight against it. "Stuck in from the other side and wedged, I say," he commented.

Daniel grimaced. "We need to keep moving," he said. "Much as I'd like to go after it, we can't take the time to do that now."

Hogg eyed the neighboring brush. He chose a plant, then notched its stem with his shovel and stripped a line of bark up from the cut. It was as tough and flexible as rawhide. "I'll tell you what, young master," he said. "You leave me here for an hour or so to set a snare. And then we'll see if something doesn't come to us."

Daniel chuckled. "Yes, all right, Hogg," he said. "Commodore Pettin ordered me to make a survey of constructions on South Land. This hole appears to be one of the more recent constructions . . . and I wouldn't want the commodore to think I'd disobeyed his orders."

Adele worked at the seven separate screens on her display while Tovera stood behind her chair, facing toward the bridge proper. The servant wore, unusually for her, an RCN commo helmet. She was echoing Adele's display on the visor.

"By God!" Lt. Mon said. He slammed his fist on the command console and stood. "By God, I won't have them play games with the RCN! Officer Mundy, a word with you!"

Adele locked her display and set her wands on the flat surface. She rotated her seat to face Mon, but she was rubbing her eyes instead of meeting his furious gaze.

"Koop and Lamsoe just called in from South Land," Mon said. "They've reached the site and done everything but plow the ground up. Captain Leary isn't there, there's no sign that he ever was, and I can't get through to the Captal da Lund for an explanation! A message says he's not taking calls!"

A part of Adele wondered idly whether that was the sort of information that all RCN commanders thought they had to tell their signals officers. Whose console did Mon think the calls were routed through?

Aloud she said, "Yes, I'm sorry, Mon, I should've kept you better informed. I've been busy."

She gestured toward the command console. "Sit down again and I'll explain what's been going on."

Mon's face darkened for a moment; Adele realized that her brusqueness had tripped Mon's little-man belligerence. He nodded, remembering her civilian background, and sat down obediently.

"Sorry," Adele muttered, irritated with herself. If she'd been a man instead of a slender woman whose physical presence threatened no one, her error might have precipitated a scene in the current charged atmosphere.

She faced around and unlocked the display, saying, "No one's come out of the Captal's compound since his driver and aircar returned late yesterday evening."

Her wand highlighted a movement log, culled from the compound's own sensors.

"The car came back?" Mon said. "By—" He caught himself. "Go ahead, Officer Mundy," he said with the controlled tension of a gymnast balancing.

"Yes," said Adele, throwing up time-slugged imagery of the car landing in the courtyard. "And if you'll look here—"

She split the display to show two versions of the vehicle's left quarter panel recorded when it left the compound and on its return. The quality wasn't good enough to show detail, but the fist-sized dents in the latter image were sufficiently clear.

"It appears that shots hit the car between the time it left and when it came back," Adele said. "That implies that at least one member of the expedition was alive after Dorotige left them."

"Can you get me through to the Captal da Lund?" Mon said in a cold voice. "I'd like to discuss the matter with him."

For all the lieutenant's bubbling temper, he didn't bluster when there was a serious task in front of him. That was probably why Daniel liked having Mon as a subordinate.

"I can get you through his blocking program," Adele said. "I don't recommend that, however, since it would alert him to how open his systems are to intrusion. I have full access to his security system, for example. That's where this imagery is coming from."

Mon's mouth opened, then closed. "Christ," he said in a wondering voice, "you are a wizard, just like they told me after I got out of a cell on Kostroma. Do you have a plan?"

"I'm working toward one," Adele said carefully. Put as baldly as Mon had, she realized that she should've been discussing matters with the acting captain at every step of the way. "I have some ideas."

Mon touched the intercom key. When the attention call sounded, he said, "Officers to the bridge ASAP. Out."

Mon's words reached Adele through the helmet, through the air directly from his lips, and in a whispering echo from the ceiling speakers down the corridor. He gave her a smile as tight and sharp as the knots spun into a length of barbed wire.

"I'm supposed to handle your communications," Adele said apologetically. "I haven't been communicating very well."

"I'm more interested in people doing their jobs," Mon said, "than in them telling me about it. And right now I'm damned sure that Captain Leary feels the same way."

Woetjans and Taley dropped through the dorsal hatch, reaching the bridge a half step before Betts arrived from his sleeping compartment in the warrant officers' quarters. Pasternak had been in the Battle Direction Center for some reason. He came running down the corridor, the crash of his boots warning curious crewmen out of his path.

"Go ahead, Officer Mundy," Mon said. Betts sat at his console where he could import imagery from Adele's display, but the other officers would have to make do with their helmet visors.

"The Captal's dwelling is under Berengian exterritorial jurisdiction," Adele said, "just as the Cinnabar Commission is legally Cinnabar territory. That means neither the Sexburgan local government nor Admiral Torgis can legally demand access to the Captal's compound. Furthermore, the Captal is far too important a person on Sexburga for the authorities to be willing to ignore the legalities."

Tovera had gathered much of the background on her own, even before Daniel's disappearance created a need for it. She apparently liked to know the power structures wherever she was.

"I'm willing to ignore legalities," Mon said without raising his voice. He was tapping the index and middle fingers of his right hand into the opposite palm with the steady deliberation of a bell-ringer. "I'm willing to hover the Princess Cecile on top of the damned compound and let the exhaust burn it out if that's the best way to get the captain back."

"Damn right," Woetjans said.

An instant later all the other officers nodded. They must know as surely as Adele did that the Navy Office would have to treat any such overt violation as piracy, to be punished by the consequent hanging of the officers and crew of the offending vessel.

"That would not be helpful," Adele said in a tone of cold disgust. It wouldn't necessarily be possible, either: the Captal had prepared defenses to meet just such an attack. Saying as much would only inflame the officers around her into an attitude of heroic self-sacrifice. "We need information which we won't be able to get from a pile of slag and ashes. I—"

The code A501 flashed in red at the upper margin of Adele's display. It wouldn't echo on the other displays and she'd toggled off the audio cue; no one knew about it but the Signals Officer. A502 would have meant the call was from squadron command; A501 meant—

Adele locked her display and pointed a wand toward Lt. Mon. "There's a call to the Princess Cecile from Commodore Pettin's own console," she said. She'd lost track of who was on watch; perhaps she herself was. "Shall I take it, or . . . ?"

Mon shook his head curtly and keyed his audio. "Acting captain," he said without inflection. "Go ahead."

"This is Commodore Pettin," the speaker said. Adele might be reading irritation into Pettin's tone, but the man was certainly not above thundering angrily at any delay in getting the acting captain. Nor was he above regretting a chance to display that righteous indignation. "I haven't been able to raise your Mr. Leary. Can you tell me what he thinks he's playing at?"

"No sir," Lt. Mon said. His face, always angular, changed shape as the muscles tightened over his jaw and cheekbones. "Captain Leary proceeded to South Land via the civilian transportation which you had arranged for him, sir."

RCN communications were normally voice-only to minimize bandwidth. That was fortunate in this case, because Mon wasn't a good actor. His voice stayed almost flat, but the fury toward the commodore in his expression could scarcely have been more obvious.

"I shouldn't be surprised to find insolence in Mr. Leary's subordinates, should I, Mon?" Pettin said. "Well, for now you may tell your captain that the squadron has been fully refitted and will lift in twelve hours, not the thirty-six I previously estimated. If Mr. Leary has not returned by then, the Princess Cecile will lift without him, under your temporary command. Is that understood?"

"Yessir," Mon said through clenched teeth. "I understand you very well, Commodore Pettin."

"By God," Pettin snarled, "for half a piastre I'd slap you in custody and put my third lieutenant aboard that grubby little corvette. Half a piastre!"

The transmission ended in an electronic click rather than the crash that Pettin obviously would have preferred if the technology permitted it. Adele smiled at the thought, then wiped her face blank lest Mon misunderstand her humor.

"If them buckets lift in twelve hours, they'll all three of 'em lose antennas before we make Strymon," Woetjans said. "They arrived here in crappy shape, and they don't have the crews to make things right even in the three days Pettin allowed at the start."

"He's playing games," Taley agreed, looking even more than usually as if she were following a coffin. "I wouldn't want to be the Winckelmann's machinist, I can tell you that."

"Yeah, but how about us?" Pasternak said. "Can we find the captain in twelve hours? It's six just to fly to where he was supposed to be, right?"

"Officer Mundy has a plan to get information from the Captal da Lund," Mon said, his hands laced together so tightly that the fingertips raised white halos against the tanned backs. "We're going to do whatever it takes to execute that plan."

His face was savage. "Whatever it takes," he repeated, but his voice had sunk to a growl.

"All right," said Adele. Her wands twitched, expanding an image to full-display size. "Here's a set of the builders' plans for the Captal's dwelling. You'll note . . ."

The rattle of pebbles in empty ration cans wasn't loud thirty feet away from the tent, but it was so different from the wind's keening overhead that even before Hogg gripped his shoulder Daniel had awakened in a rush. He sat upright and slapped on the commo helmet, saying, "Unit, I'm going to look for an animal with Hogg. Nobody else leave the camp till summoned. Captain out."

"Unit, don't get fucking trigger happy, it's me and the master out there in the woods!" Hogg rasped. His helmet would continue to broadcast on the unit push because he hadn't closed the transmission. That was actually a good idea to keep the crew informed of what was going on. It was simply sloppy procedure on Hogg's part, of course.

Daniel had slept in his boots, but he paused to slide the closures tight before stepping out of the warmth of the tent behind Hogg. Barnes rose onto one elbow; he'd be outside as soon as Daniel's eyes were off him, joining his friend Dasi on guard.

It was the guards, Dasi and Sentino, that Daniel had been warning; the other spacers remained asleep. Spacers on a long voyage learned to sleep through any amount of racket and crowding, unless it was their name or their watch that had been called.

Daniel dialed his visor's light enhancement up to daylight normal as he crawled along after Hogg. Sentino squatted near the head of the track, her impeller pointed up at a 45-degree angle to show that it didn't threaten anybody. She lifted her left index finger to acknowledge Daniel; he nodded as he passed her.

The creature in the trap ahead of them was screaming. The sound was high-pitched and as loud as a saw cutting stone. It almost completely drowned the rattling of the cans tied to the snare.

The track curved around a bush whose branches dropped runners to the ground, completely blocking Daniel's view of the camp—and vice versa. When he was out of Sentino's sight, he drew his knife.

Hogg thrust the shovel into the base of a shrub with ghostly white stems, then lifted it with a twist of deceptively strong wrists. He flung the clump out of the way so that Daniel could squat beside him. Nobody whom Hogg had spanked would mistake him for a soft fellow beyond the curve of middle age.

Hogg had set his double noose snare over the mouth of the hole plugged by the sandstone block. The eighty-pound creature which had tripped the triggers now hung in the air, flailing in the grip of the pair of springy branches Hogg had used to tension the trap.

It was white and hairless except for bushes of red-gold hair in its armpits. It had four broad, stubby limbs and a neck so thick and powerfully muscled that the nooses which should have choked the creature unconscious by now merely served to suspend it. It gripped the right-hand tether with blunt claws, jangling the rattles Hogg had attached to the rig to warn him when he'd made a catch.

"By God," Hogg muttered, easing closer and cocking the shovel back for a thrust. Its broad blade would let the creature's life out faster than an explosive bullet. "That little bastard's untying the damn knots."

"Wait," said Daniel. He put his hand on Hogg's right shoulder, emphasizing the warning. "Don't. We don't need food."

The creature's screams had turned to mewls as Hogg and Daniel came into sight. Its eyes were large and round, set in circuits of bone. When it closed them in terror, sheets of muscle rather than thin skin covered the orbs.

The noose gave way: untied from the springy branch, just as Hogg had said. The remaining noose flicked the creature sideways like the popper of a whip. From behind it looked like a grub worm, ugly beyond easy description. Daniel might have underestimated its weight because there was no hair to bulk up its form.

Hogg swore softly. The creature squirmed both forepaws under the bark cord and tugged outward. Interrogatory chirps were coming from the burrow; Daniel could see fairy lights deep within the ground.

"Master," Hogg said, poising the shovel again.

"No!" said Daniel.

The tensioned branch sprang back. In a reciprocal motion, the creature leaped for the opening and vanished within as smoothly as water swirling down a hole.

Hogg was breathing hard. He kept the shovel pointed at the burrow even after the sandstone plug thudded into the opening and was wedged into place with a series of clacks muted by the surrounding bank.

"Did you see its face?" Hogg said. "When it jumped, it looked at us. Did you see?"

"Yes," said Daniel. "I did. Let's get some sleep. We've got a long way to walk tomorrow."

He turned and started back for the tent. He was panting too, though he hadn't been exerting himself.

"Christ, master, it looked human," Hogg said.

"Yes," said Daniel. "It did. Let's get some sleep."

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Framed

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

_The windblown grit didn't scratch the moissanite visors pro-
tecting the faces of the detachment, but bare skin—the backs of Daniel's hands and his throat above his collar—already felt as though it was sunburned. What was it going to be like a week from now?

Daniel grinned broadly. Well, that was something he could wait a week to learn. Any number of things could happen before then to render present concern empty. Some of the possibilities were even survivable.

"Unit," he said to key the general channel. "We'll camp here, down in the swale and out of the wind. Hogg, choose a site for the tent. Vesey, take Matahurd and see if there isn't water here too. Captain out."

Daniel took his knapsack off and waited as the crewmen slid over the crumbling bank. The region must get some rain for this dry riverbed and its contributory ravines to exist, but rain must be very infrequent. The hard-stemmed bushes growing to the level of the bank were at least several years old; a downpour as fierce as the ones that had excavated the riverbed would uproot any vegetation present at the time.

When Daniel himself stepped down, the sudden absence of wind was as great a relief as warm shelter after a blizzard. He hadn't appreciated just how enervating the wind's cutting pressure was until he'd escaped it—for a time.

Hogg was giving orders in a voice that remained clear despite obvious wear from the dust and dryness. They'd all been drinking their fill in expectation of replenishing their water supply, but the mucous membranes of noses and mouths still suffered in this damnable atmosphere.

"How far'd we get, sir?" Sun croaked. If the gunner had wanted information instead of a reason to speak to Daniel, he'd have read the figure off his helmet's navigation display. He was working his arms alternately to loosen them after the pull of his packstraps, switching the powerful impeller from hand to hand so that he wasn't flailing it around.

"Ten point three one miles, Sun," Daniel said. "A pretty decent hike for spacers on the first day, I'd say. We'll try to double that in the future."

"Umm . . ." Sun said, rubbing his mouth with the back of his free hand. He was a wiry man of middle height, and one of the solidest of the Princess Cecile's crew—under normal circumstances. "I wonder, sir? If this gully was going in more or less the right direction—"

He'd obviously already looked at his map overlay. It would have showed him that the dry river entered the Middle Sea within ten miles of the cape where the beacon was set.

"—and we followed it, we could stay out of the wind."

"I wish we could do that, Sun," Daniel said truthfully, "but the vegetation down here is too thick for us to use ravines for passage."

He gestured, calling attention to the brush around them. Daniel could differentiate at least a dozen species, though they all had smooth trunks and small, oval leaves. Several varieties had foliage covered with fine spines, even though Sexburga had no large herbivores. Daniel had seen that sort of adaptation before in desert climates: the spines created a zone of still air so that constant wind didn't dry the plant out faster than the roots could replenish its fluids.

The armed leaves would nonetheless lacerate anybody moving through them quickly. Besides, the trunks of neighboring bushes twisted around one another in a slow-motion attempt to wrestle more of their valuable riverbed real estate.

Sun looked at the vegetation and sighed. "Yeah, I should've known that," he said. "I don't . . . I'm not used to the wind, I guess. Sorry, sir."

He turned and walked back to where his men had cleared a tent-sized area under Hogg's direction. The detachment had only one powered cutting bar, though Hogg had sharpened the two shovels on a rock slab at the landing site. They'd come here to view what might be foundations carved into bare rock, not to hack through the continent's rare stretches of vegetation.

Daniel didn't let the concern he felt for Sun reach his face. The constant wind was unpleasant to anybody, but the gunner's reaction was just short of phobia. It wasn't the sort of problem that would arise aboard a starship.

And there wasn't a thing to do about it now.

The fire's dense yellow flames crackled, throwing heat even to where Daniel stood twenty feet away. This South Land brushwood burned with an oily intensity, but Dasi and Pring had been unable to light it until Hogg feathered one of the chopped stems with his knife before touching the lighter to it.

Hogg sauntered over, smiling with satisfaction at a job well done—and also, if Daniel knew his servant, at his superiority to a bunch of city folk. "Want to take a little walk with me, master?" Hogg asked. "There's something you might want to look at."

"Certainly, Hogg," Daniel said, feeling a touch of excitement that took him back to his boyhood. That was the way Hogg always prefaced a chance to view a part of nature that almost no one ever saw. There'd been the day the crystal moths issued from every pore of a tree their grub forms had eaten hollow, mating in the sunlight they saw only once in thirty years; the cave under the sea cliff, always in the past empty, from which the scaly head of leviathan rose one evening to follow the line of Hogg's low-skimming aircar; the roc lifting as the sun woke updrafts from the hinterlands of Bantry . . .

Hogg picked up a shovel and handed the impeller to Barnes. "She's switched off right now," he said. "Which would be a pretty good way to leave her unless you want to blow somebody's ass off for fun."

"I'll be careful, mother," Barnes said with a grin. Hogg sniffed and gestured with his free hand for Daniel to follow him into the brush.

Hogg and the Sissies respected one another and had been through some tense times together. Both sides had a genial contempt for the group the other represented, however. Daniel had a foot in either camp. He found the mutual chauvinism amusing, since they'd shown that in a crisis they'd join ranks against a common enemy.

Hogg held the sharpened blade of the shovel out in front of him like a horseman's lance and duckwalked down a tunnel of branches growing from pedestals of dirt laced high by roots. The soil was so light and dry that even here in the riverbed the breezes carved it away except where something bound it.

Daniel's hands were empty, so he scrambled along on all fours. The knife on his equipment belt would make a satisfactory weapon at close quarters, but he saw no need to draw it now.

"There you go, master," Hogg said, making room for Daniel by squeezing against a bush whose tiny white berries grew from the underside of its leaves. He pointed with the shovel; its broad tip had a wicked sheen where he'd stroked the metal to an edge.

He indicated a bush whose stems swelled at intervals into fist-sized nodules. They weren't the result of disease as Daniel had thought when he first viewed them, but rather reservoirs in which the plant stored a white, starchy substance. Daniel had tasted a pinch and found it flavorless but not apparently harmful. He'd thought of using it to supplement their diet if necessary.

Half this bush had been stripped: the stems cut a foot or two above the ground, then cut again to excise the nodules. The undamaged stems looked forlorn, springing from a base meant for twice their number.

"It's not sawed," Hogg said, "and it's not hacked with a machete either. I'd say either teeth or a sharp little knife."

Daniel flicked on his handlight. The sky was still bright enough for normal vision, but he needed more intensity to judge how fresh the cuts were. Bark curled resiliently under the pressure of his fingertip. He said, "It didn't happen more than a day ago."

"Not even that, dry as this place is," Hogg said. "Less than an hour, I'd say. I'll bet he scampered when the thundering herd come down the bank."

"It could be a castaway," Daniel said. He didn't know what he believed, so he stated what seemed the most reasonable possibility. "Out of rations and living off the land."

"Could be," Hogg said. From his tone, he didn't know what he believed either. "That don't explain why he ran, though. I sure hell wouldn't want to be alone in this place if there was a choice."

He resumed waddling forward, along the trail rubbed in the friable soil. The markings were faint, but even Daniel could have followed them; Hogg had another generation's worth of experience in woodcraft.

Fifteen feet ahead, he gestured to one of the chopped-out nodules, dropped beside the track. Daniel nodded.

"Captain, is things all right?" Dasi asked through the helmet. The fact that it was a spacer checking rather than Sun, the petty officer in charge, was a bad sign. "Over."

"Unit," Daniel said, "Hogg and I are scouting the perimeter. There's no problems, we're just making sure. Captain out."

The trail had led them back to the wall of the dry channel. A block of sandstone the diameter of a dinnerplate projected from the bank. It didn't look as though it belonged there. Hogg tested it with the heel of his left hand, leaning some, then all of his weight against it. "Stuck in from the other side and wedged, I say," he commented.

Daniel grimaced. "We need to keep moving," he said. "Much as I'd like to go after it, we can't take the time to do that now."

Hogg eyed the neighboring brush. He chose a plant, then notched its stem with his shovel and stripped a line of bark up from the cut. It was as tough and flexible as rawhide. "I'll tell you what, young master," he said. "You leave me here for an hour or so to set a snare. And then we'll see if something doesn't come to us."

Daniel chuckled. "Yes, all right, Hogg," he said. "Commodore Pettin ordered me to make a survey of constructions on South Land. This hole appears to be one of the more recent constructions . . . and I wouldn't want the commodore to think I'd disobeyed his orders."

Adele worked at the seven separate screens on her display while Tovera stood behind her chair, facing toward the bridge proper. The servant wore, unusually for her, an RCN commo helmet. She was echoing Adele's display on the visor.

"By God!" Lt. Mon said. He slammed his fist on the command console and stood. "By God, I won't have them play games with the RCN! Officer Mundy, a word with you!"

Adele locked her display and set her wands on the flat surface. She rotated her seat to face Mon, but she was rubbing her eyes instead of meeting his furious gaze.

"Koop and Lamsoe just called in from South Land," Mon said. "They've reached the site and done everything but plow the ground up. Captain Leary isn't there, there's no sign that he ever was, and I can't get through to the Captal da Lund for an explanation! A message says he's not taking calls!"

A part of Adele wondered idly whether that was the sort of information that all RCN commanders thought they had to tell their signals officers. Whose console did Mon think the calls were routed through?

Aloud she said, "Yes, I'm sorry, Mon, I should've kept you better informed. I've been busy."

She gestured toward the command console. "Sit down again and I'll explain what's been going on."

Mon's face darkened for a moment; Adele realized that her brusqueness had tripped Mon's little-man belligerence. He nodded, remembering her civilian background, and sat down obediently.

"Sorry," Adele muttered, irritated with herself. If she'd been a man instead of a slender woman whose physical presence threatened no one, her error might have precipitated a scene in the current charged atmosphere.

She faced around and unlocked the display, saying, "No one's come out of the Captal's compound since his driver and aircar returned late yesterday evening."

Her wand highlighted a movement log, culled from the compound's own sensors.

"The car came back?" Mon said. "By—" He caught himself. "Go ahead, Officer Mundy," he said with the controlled tension of a gymnast balancing.

"Yes," said Adele, throwing up time-slugged imagery of the car landing in the courtyard. "And if you'll look here—"

She split the display to show two versions of the vehicle's left quarter panel recorded when it left the compound and on its return. The quality wasn't good enough to show detail, but the fist-sized dents in the latter image were sufficiently clear.

"It appears that shots hit the car between the time it left and when it came back," Adele said. "That implies that at least one member of the expedition was alive after Dorotige left them."

"Can you get me through to the Captal da Lund?" Mon said in a cold voice. "I'd like to discuss the matter with him."

For all the lieutenant's bubbling temper, he didn't bluster when there was a serious task in front of him. That was probably why Daniel liked having Mon as a subordinate.

"I can get you through his blocking program," Adele said. "I don't recommend that, however, since it would alert him to how open his systems are to intrusion. I have full access to his security system, for example. That's where this imagery is coming from."

Mon's mouth opened, then closed. "Christ," he said in a wondering voice, "you are a wizard, just like they told me after I got out of a cell on Kostroma. Do you have a plan?"

"I'm working toward one," Adele said carefully. Put as baldly as Mon had, she realized that she should've been discussing matters with the acting captain at every step of the way. "I have some ideas."

Mon touched the intercom key. When the attention call sounded, he said, "Officers to the bridge ASAP. Out."

Mon's words reached Adele through the helmet, through the air directly from his lips, and in a whispering echo from the ceiling speakers down the corridor. He gave her a smile as tight and sharp as the knots spun into a length of barbed wire.

"I'm supposed to handle your communications," Adele said apologetically. "I haven't been communicating very well."

"I'm more interested in people doing their jobs," Mon said, "than in them telling me about it. And right now I'm damned sure that Captain Leary feels the same way."

Woetjans and Taley dropped through the dorsal hatch, reaching the bridge a half step before Betts arrived from his sleeping compartment in the warrant officers' quarters. Pasternak had been in the Battle Direction Center for some reason. He came running down the corridor, the crash of his boots warning curious crewmen out of his path.

"Go ahead, Officer Mundy," Mon said. Betts sat at his console where he could import imagery from Adele's display, but the other officers would have to make do with their helmet visors.

"The Captal's dwelling is under Berengian exterritorial jurisdiction," Adele said, "just as the Cinnabar Commission is legally Cinnabar territory. That means neither the Sexburgan local government nor Admiral Torgis can legally demand access to the Captal's compound. Furthermore, the Captal is far too important a person on Sexburga for the authorities to be willing to ignore the legalities."

Tovera had gathered much of the background on her own, even before Daniel's disappearance created a need for it. She apparently liked to know the power structures wherever she was.

"I'm willing to ignore legalities," Mon said without raising his voice. He was tapping the index and middle fingers of his right hand into the opposite palm with the steady deliberation of a bell-ringer. "I'm willing to hover the Princess Cecile on top of the damned compound and let the exhaust burn it out if that's the best way to get the captain back."

"Damn right," Woetjans said.

An instant later all the other officers nodded. They must know as surely as Adele did that the Navy Office would have to treat any such overt violation as piracy, to be punished by the consequent hanging of the officers and crew of the offending vessel.

"That would not be helpful," Adele said in a tone of cold disgust. It wouldn't necessarily be possible, either: the Captal had prepared defenses to meet just such an attack. Saying as much would only inflame the officers around her into an attitude of heroic self-sacrifice. "We need information which we won't be able to get from a pile of slag and ashes. I—"

The code A501 flashed in red at the upper margin of Adele's display. It wouldn't echo on the other displays and she'd toggled off the audio cue; no one knew about it but the Signals Officer. A502 would have meant the call was from squadron command; A501 meant—

Adele locked her display and pointed a wand toward Lt. Mon. "There's a call to the Princess Cecile from Commodore Pettin's own console," she said. She'd lost track of who was on watch; perhaps she herself was. "Shall I take it, or . . . ?"

Mon shook his head curtly and keyed his audio. "Acting captain," he said without inflection. "Go ahead."

"This is Commodore Pettin," the speaker said. Adele might be reading irritation into Pettin's tone, but the man was certainly not above thundering angrily at any delay in getting the acting captain. Nor was he above regretting a chance to display that righteous indignation. "I haven't been able to raise your Mr. Leary. Can you tell me what he thinks he's playing at?"

"No sir," Lt. Mon said. His face, always angular, changed shape as the muscles tightened over his jaw and cheekbones. "Captain Leary proceeded to South Land via the civilian transportation which you had arranged for him, sir."

RCN communications were normally voice-only to minimize bandwidth. That was fortunate in this case, because Mon wasn't a good actor. His voice stayed almost flat, but the fury toward the commodore in his expression could scarcely have been more obvious.

"I shouldn't be surprised to find insolence in Mr. Leary's subordinates, should I, Mon?" Pettin said. "Well, for now you may tell your captain that the squadron has been fully refitted and will lift in twelve hours, not the thirty-six I previously estimated. If Mr. Leary has not returned by then, the Princess Cecile will lift without him, under your temporary command. Is that understood?"

"Yessir," Mon said through clenched teeth. "I understand you very well, Commodore Pettin."

"By God," Pettin snarled, "for half a piastre I'd slap you in custody and put my third lieutenant aboard that grubby little corvette. Half a piastre!"

The transmission ended in an electronic click rather than the crash that Pettin obviously would have preferred if the technology permitted it. Adele smiled at the thought, then wiped her face blank lest Mon misunderstand her humor.

"If them buckets lift in twelve hours, they'll all three of 'em lose antennas before we make Strymon," Woetjans said. "They arrived here in crappy shape, and they don't have the crews to make things right even in the three days Pettin allowed at the start."

"He's playing games," Taley agreed, looking even more than usually as if she were following a coffin. "I wouldn't want to be the Winckelmann's machinist, I can tell you that."

"Yeah, but how about us?" Pasternak said. "Can we find the captain in twelve hours? It's six just to fly to where he was supposed to be, right?"

"Officer Mundy has a plan to get information from the Captal da Lund," Mon said, his hands laced together so tightly that the fingertips raised white halos against the tanned backs. "We're going to do whatever it takes to execute that plan."

His face was savage. "Whatever it takes," he repeated, but his voice had sunk to a growl.

"All right," said Adele. Her wands twitched, expanding an image to full-display size. "Here's a set of the builders' plans for the Captal's dwelling. You'll note . . ."

The rattle of pebbles in empty ration cans wasn't loud thirty feet away from the tent, but it was so different from the wind's keening overhead that even before Hogg gripped his shoulder Daniel had awakened in a rush. He sat upright and slapped on the commo helmet, saying, "Unit, I'm going to look for an animal with Hogg. Nobody else leave the camp till summoned. Captain out."

"Unit, don't get fucking trigger happy, it's me and the master out there in the woods!" Hogg rasped. His helmet would continue to broadcast on the unit push because he hadn't closed the transmission. That was actually a good idea to keep the crew informed of what was going on. It was simply sloppy procedure on Hogg's part, of course.

Daniel had slept in his boots, but he paused to slide the closures tight before stepping out of the warmth of the tent behind Hogg. Barnes rose onto one elbow; he'd be outside as soon as Daniel's eyes were off him, joining his friend Dasi on guard.

It was the guards, Dasi and Sentino, that Daniel had been warning; the other spacers remained asleep. Spacers on a long voyage learned to sleep through any amount of racket and crowding, unless it was their name or their watch that had been called.

Daniel dialed his visor's light enhancement up to daylight normal as he crawled along after Hogg. Sentino squatted near the head of the track, her impeller pointed up at a 45-degree angle to show that it didn't threaten anybody. She lifted her left index finger to acknowledge Daniel; he nodded as he passed her.

The creature in the trap ahead of them was screaming. The sound was high-pitched and as loud as a saw cutting stone. It almost completely drowned the rattling of the cans tied to the snare.

The track curved around a bush whose branches dropped runners to the ground, completely blocking Daniel's view of the camp—and vice versa. When he was out of Sentino's sight, he drew his knife.

Hogg thrust the shovel into the base of a shrub with ghostly white stems, then lifted it with a twist of deceptively strong wrists. He flung the clump out of the way so that Daniel could squat beside him. Nobody whom Hogg had spanked would mistake him for a soft fellow beyond the curve of middle age.

Hogg had set his double noose snare over the mouth of the hole plugged by the sandstone block. The eighty-pound creature which had tripped the triggers now hung in the air, flailing in the grip of the pair of springy branches Hogg had used to tension the trap.

It was white and hairless except for bushes of red-gold hair in its armpits. It had four broad, stubby limbs and a neck so thick and powerfully muscled that the nooses which should have choked the creature unconscious by now merely served to suspend it. It gripped the right-hand tether with blunt claws, jangling the rattles Hogg had attached to the rig to warn him when he'd made a catch.

"By God," Hogg muttered, easing closer and cocking the shovel back for a thrust. Its broad blade would let the creature's life out faster than an explosive bullet. "That little bastard's untying the damn knots."

"Wait," said Daniel. He put his hand on Hogg's right shoulder, emphasizing the warning. "Don't. We don't need food."

The creature's screams had turned to mewls as Hogg and Daniel came into sight. Its eyes were large and round, set in circuits of bone. When it closed them in terror, sheets of muscle rather than thin skin covered the orbs.

The noose gave way: untied from the springy branch, just as Hogg had said. The remaining noose flicked the creature sideways like the popper of a whip. From behind it looked like a grub worm, ugly beyond easy description. Daniel might have underestimated its weight because there was no hair to bulk up its form.

Hogg swore softly. The creature squirmed both forepaws under the bark cord and tugged outward. Interrogatory chirps were coming from the burrow; Daniel could see fairy lights deep within the ground.

"Master," Hogg said, poising the shovel again.

"No!" said Daniel.

The tensioned branch sprang back. In a reciprocal motion, the creature leaped for the opening and vanished within as smoothly as water swirling down a hole.

Hogg was breathing hard. He kept the shovel pointed at the burrow even after the sandstone plug thudded into the opening and was wedged into place with a series of clacks muted by the surrounding bank.

"Did you see its face?" Hogg said. "When it jumped, it looked at us. Did you see?"

"Yes," said Daniel. "I did. Let's get some sleep. We've got a long way to walk tomorrow."

He turned and started back for the tent. He was panting too, though he hadn't been exerting himself.

"Christ, master, it looked human," Hogg said.

"Yes," said Daniel. "It did. Let's get some sleep."

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