Darkover Landfall

Chapter One

The landing gear was almost the least of their worries; but it made a serious problem in getting in and out. The great starship lay tilted at a forty-five degree angle with the exit ladders and chutes coming nowhere near the ground, and the doors going nowhere. All the damage hadn't been assessed yet--not nearly--but they estimated that roughly half the crew's quarters and three-fourths of the passenger sections were uninhabitable.

Already half a dozen small rough shelters, as well as the tent like field hospital, had been hastily thrown up in the great clearing. They'd been made, mostly out of plastic sheeting and logs from the resinous local trees, which had been cut with buzz-saws and timbering equipment from the supply materials for the colonists. All this had taken place over Captain Leicester's serious protests; he had yielded only to a technicality. His orders were absolute when the ship was in space; on a planet the Colony Expedition Force was in charge.

The fact that it wasn't the right planet was a technicality that no one had felt able to tackle... yet.

It was, reflected Rafael MacAran as he stood on the low peak above the crashed spaceship, a beautiful planet. That Is, what they could see of it, which wasn't all that much. The gravity was a little less than Earth's, and the oxygen content a little higher, which itself meant a certain feeling of web-being and euphoria for anyone born and brought up on Earth. No one reared on Earth in the twenty-first century, lie Rafael MacAran, had ever smelled arch sweet and resinous air, or seen faraway hdlg through such a clean bright morning.

The hills and the distant mountains rose amend them in an apparently endless panorama, fold beyond fold, gradually losing color with distance, turning first dim green, then dimmer blue, and finally to dimmest violet and purple. The great sun was deep red, the color of spilt blood; and that morning they had seen the four moons, like great multicolored jewels, hanging off the horns of the distant mountains.

MacAran set his pack down, pulled out the transit and began to set up its tripod legs. He bent to adjust the instrument, wiping sweat from his forehead. God, how hot it seemed after the brutal ice-cold of last night and the sudden snow that had swept from the mountain range so swiftly they had barely had time to take shelter! And now the snow lay in melting runnels as he pulled off his nylon parka and mopped his brow.

He straightened up, looking around for convenient horizons. He already knew, thanks to the new-model altimeter which could compensate for different gravity strengths, that they were about a thousand feet above sea level--or what would be sea level if there were any seas on this planet which they couldn't yet be sure of. In the stress and dangers of the crash-landing no one except the Third Officer had gotten a clear look at the planet from space, and she had died twenty minutes after impact while they were still digging bodies out of the wreckage of the bridge.

They knew that there were three planets in this system: one an oversized, frozen-methane giant, the other a small barren rock, more moon than planet except for its solitary orbit, and this one. They knew that this one was what Earth Expeditionary Forces called a Class M planet --roughly Earth-type and probably habitable. And now they knew they were on it. That was just about all they knew about it, except what they had discovered in the last seventy-two hours. The red sun, the four moons, the extremes of temperature, the mountains all had been discovered in the frantic intervals of digging out and identifying the dead, setting up a hasty field hospital and drafting every able-bodied person to care for the injured, bury the dead, and set up hasty shelters while the ship was still inhabitable.

Rafael MacAran started pulling his surveying instruments from his pack but he didn't attend to them. He had needed this brief interval alone more than he had realized; a little time to recover from the repeated and terrible shocks of the last few hours-the crash, and a concussion which would have put him into a hospital on crowded, medically hypersensitive Earth. Here the medical officer, harried from worse injuries, tested his reflexes briefly, handed him some headache pills, and went on to the seriously hurt and the dying. His head still felt like an oversized toothache although the visual blurring had cleared up after the first night's deep. The next day he had been drafted, with all the other able-bodied men not on the medical staff or the engineering crews in the ship, to dig mass graves for the dead. And then there had been the mind-shaking shock of finding Jenny among them.

Jenny. He had envisioned her safe and well, too busy at her own job to hunt him up and reassure him. Then among the mangled dead, the unmistakable silver-bright hair of his only sister. There hadn't even been time for tears. There were too many dead. He did the only thing he could do. He reported to Camilla Del Rey, deputizing for Captain Leicester on the identity detail, that the name of Jenny MacAran should be transferred from the lists of unlocated survivors to the list of definitely identified dead.

Camilla's only comment had been a terse, quiet `Thank you, MacAran.' There was no time for sympathy, no time for mourning or even humane expressions of kindness. And yet Jenny had been Camilla's close friend, she'd really loved that damned Del Rey girl like a sister--just why, Rafael had never known, but Jenny had, and there must have been some reason. He realized somewhere below the surface, that he had hoped Camilla would shed for Jenny the tears he could not manage to weep. Someone ought to cry for Jenny, and he couldn't. Not yet.

He turned his eyes on his instruments again. If they had known their definite latitude on the planet it would have been easier, but the height of the sun above the horizon would give them some rough idea.

Below him in a great bowl of land at least five miles across filled with low brushwood and scrubby trees, the crashed spaceship lay. Rafael, looking at it from this distance, felt a strange sinking feeling Captain Leicester was supposed to be working with the crew to assess the damage and estimate the time needed to make repairs. Rafael knew nothing about the workings of starships--his

own field was geology. But it didn't look to him as if that ship was ever going anywhere again.

Then he turned off the thought. That was for the engineering crews to say. They knew, and he didn't. He'd seen some near-miracles done by engineering these days. At worst this would be an uncomfortable interval of a few days or a couple of weeks, then they'd be on their way again and a new habitable planet would be charted on the Expeditionary Forces star maps for colonization. This one, despite the brutal cold at night, looked extremely habitable. Maybe they'd even get to share some of the finder's fees, which would go to improve the Coronis Colony where they'd be by then.

And they'd ail have something to talk about when they were Old Settlers in the Coronis Colony, fifty or sixty years from now.

But if the ship never did get off the ground again... .

Impossible. This wasn't a charted planet, okayed for colonizing, and already opened up. The Coronis Colony--Phi Coronis Delta--was already the site of a flourishing mining settlement. There was a functioning spaceport and a crew of engineers and technicians had been working there for ten years preparing the planet for settlement and studying its ecology. You couldn't set down, raw and unhelped by technology, on a completely unknown world.

It couldn't be done.

Anyway, that was somebody else's job and he'd better do his own now. He made all the observations he could, noted them in his pocket notebook, and packed up the tripod starting down the hill again. He moved easily across the rock-strewn slope through the tough underbrush and trees carrying his pack effortlessly in the light gravity. It was cleaner and easier than a hike on Earth, and he cast a longing eye at the distant mountains. Maybe if their stay stretched out more than a few days, he could be spared to take a brief climb into them. Rock samples and some geological notations should be worth something to Earth Expeditionary and it would be a lot better than a climbing trip on Earth, where every National Park from Yellowstone to Himalaya was choked with jet-brought tourists three hundred days of the year.

He supposed it was only fair to give everyone a chance at the mountains, and certainly the slidewalks and lifts installed to the top of Mount Rainier and Everest and Mount Whitney had made it easier for old women and children to get up there and have a chance to see the scenery. But still, MacAran thought longingly, to climb an actual wild mountain--one with no slidewalks and not even a single chairlift! He'd climbed on Earth, but you felt silly struggling up a rock cliff when teen-agers were soaring past you in chairlifts on their effortless way to the top and giggling at the anachronist who wanted to do it the hard way!

Some of the nearer slopes were blackened with the scars of old forest fires, and he estimated that the clearing where the ship lay was second-growth from some such fire a few years before. Lucky the ship's fire-prevention systems had prevented any fire on impact-otherwise if anyone had escaped alive, it might have been quite literally from a frying pan into a raging forest fire. They'd have to be careful in the woods. Earth people had lost their old woodcraft habits and might not be aware any more of what forest fires could do. He made a mental note of it for his report.

As he re-entered the area of the crash, his brief euphoria vanished. Inside the field hospital, through the semi-transparent plastic of the shelter material, he could see rows and rows of unconscious or semiconscious bodies. A group of men were trimming breaches from tree trunks and another small group was raising a dymaxion dome--the kind, based on triangular bracings, which could be built in half a day. He began to wonder what the report of the Engineering crew had been. He could see a crew of machinists crawling around on the crumpled bracings of the starship but it didn't look as if much had been accomplished. In fact, it didn't look hopeful for getting away very soon.

As he passed the hospital, a young man in a stained and crumpled Medic uniform came out and called.

"Rafe! The Mate said report to the First Dome as soon as you get back--there's a meeting there and they want you. I'm going over there myself for a Medic report --I'm the most senior man they can spare." He moved slowly beside MacAran. He was slight and small, with light-brown hair and a small curly brown beard, and he looked weary, as if he had had no sleep. MacAran asked, hesitatingly, "How are things going in the hospital?"

"Well, no more deaths since midnight, and we've taken

four more people off critical. There evidently wasn't a leak in the atomics after all--that girl from Comm checked out with no radiation burns; the vomiting was evidently just a bad blow in the solar plexus. Thank God for small favors--if the atomics had sprung a leak, we'd probably all be dead, and another planet contaminated."

Yeah, the M-AM drives have saved a lot of lives," MacAran said. "You look awfully tired, Ewen--have you had any sleep at all?"

Ewen Ross shook his head. "No, but the Old Maws been generous with wakers, and I'm still racing my motors. About midafternoon I'm probably going to crash and I won't wake up for three days, but until then I'm holding on." He hesitated, looked shyly at his friend and said, "I heard about Jenny, Rafe. Tough luck. So many of the girls back in that area made it out, I was sure she was okay."

"So was I.' MacAran drew a deep breath and felt the clean air like a great weight on his chest. "I haven't seen Heather--is she--"

"Heather's okay; they drafted her for nursing duty. Not a scratch on her. I understand after this meeting they're going to post completed lists of the dead, the wounded and the survivors. What were you doing, anyway? Del Rey told me you'd been sent out, but I didn't know what for."

"Preliminary surveying," MacAran said. "We have no idea of our latitude, no idea of the planet's size or mass, no idea about climate or seasons or what have you. But I've established that we can't be too far off the equator, and--well I'll be making the report inside. Do we go right in?"

"Yeah, in the First Dome." Half unconsciously, Ewen had spoken the words with capital letters, and MacAran thought how human a trait it was to establish location and orientation at once. Three days they had been here and already this first shelter was the First Dome, and the field shelter for the wounded was the Hospital.

There were no seats inside the plastic dome, but some canvas groundsheets and empty supply boxes had been set around and someone had brought a folding chair down for Captain Leicester. Next to him, Camilla Del Rey sat on a box with a lapboard and notebook on her knees; a tall, slender, dark-haired girl with a long, jagged cut across her cheek, mended with plastic clips. She was wrapped in the warm fatigue uniform of a crewmember, but she had shucked the heavy parka-like top and wore only a thin, clinging cotton shirt beneath it. MacAran shifted his eyes from her, quickly--damn it, what was she up to, sitting around in what amounted to her underwear in front of half the crew! At a time like this it wasn't decent... then, looking at the girl's drawn and wounded face, he absolved her. She was hot--it was hot is here now--and she was, after all, on duty, and had a right to be comfortable.

If anyone's out of line it's me, eyeing a girl like this at a time like this... .

Stress. That's all it is. There are too damn many things it's not safe to remember or think about... .

Captain Leicester raised his gray head. He looks like death, MacAran thought, probably he hasn't slept since the crash either. He asked the Del Rey girl, "Is that everyone?"

"I think so" the Captain said, "Ladies, gentlemen. We won't waste time on formalities, and for the duration of this emergency the protocols of etiquette are suspended. Since my recording officer is in the hospital, Officer Del Rey has kindly agreed to act as communications recorder for this meeting. First of all; I have called you together, a representative from every group, so that each of you can speak to your crews with authority about what is happening and we can minimize the growth of rumors and uninformed gossip about our position. And anywhere that more than twenty-five people are gathered, as I remember from my Pensacola days, rumors and gossip start up. So let's get your information here, and not rely on what somebody told someone else's best friend a few hours ago and what somebody else heard in the mess room--all right? Engineering; let's begin with you. What's the situation with the drives?"

The Chief Engineer--his name was Patrick, but MacAran didn't know him personally--stood up. He was a lanky gaunt man who resembled the folk hero Lincoln. "Bad." he said laconically. "I'm not saying they can't be fixed, but the whole drive room is a shambles. Give us a week to sort it out, and we can estimate how long it will take to fix the drives. Once the mess is cleared away, I'd

say three weeks to a month. But I'd hate to have my year's salary depend on how close I came inside that estimate."

Leicester said' "But it can be fixed? It's not hopelessly wrecked?"

"I wouldn't think so." Patrick said. "hell, it better not be! We may need to prospect for fuels, but with the big converter that's no problem, any kind of hydrocarbon will do--even cellulose. That's for energy-conversion in the life-support system, of course; the drive itself works on anti-matter implosions." He became more technical, but before MacAran got too hopelessly lost, Leicester stopped him.

"Save it, Chief. The important thing is, you're saying it can be fixed, preliminary estimated lime three to six weeks. Officer Del Rey, what's the status on the bridge?"

"Mechanics are in there now, Captain, they're using cutting torches to get out the crumpled metal. The computer cobsole is a mess, but the main banks are all right, and so is the library system."

"What's the worst damage there?"

"We'll need new seats and straps all through the bridge cabin--the mechanics can handle that. And of course we'll have to re-program our destination from the new location, but once we find out exactly where we are, that should be simple enough from the Navigation systems."

"Then there's nothing hopeless there either?"

"It's honestly too early to say, Captain, but I shouldn't think so. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I haven't given up yet."

Captain Leicester said, "Well, just now things look about as bad as they can; I suspect we're all tending to look on the grim side. Maybe that's good; anything better than the worst will be a pleasant surprise. Where's Dr. Di Asturien? Medic?"

Ewen Ross stood up. `The Chief didn't feel he could leave, sir; he's got a crew working to salvage all remaining medical supplies. He sent me. There have been no more deaths and all the dead are buried. So far there is no sign of any unusual illness of unknown origin, but we are still checking air and soil samples, and will continue to do so, for the purpose of classifying known and unknown bacteria. Also--"

"Go on."

"The Chief wants orders issued about using only the assigned latrine areas, Captain. He pointed out that we're carrying all sorts of bacteria in our own bodies which might damage the local flora and fauna, and we can manage to disinfect the latrine areas fairly thoroughly--but we should take precautions against infecting outside areas."

"A good point," Leicester said. "Ask someone to have the orders posted, Del Rey. And put a security man to make sure everybody knows where the latrines are, and uses them. No taking a leak in the woods just because you're there and there aren't any anti-littering laws:"

Camilla Del Rey said, "Suggestion, Captain. Ask the cooks to do the same with the garbage, for a while, anyhow."

"Disinfect it? Good point. Lovat, what's the status on the food synthesizers,"

"Accessible and working, sir, at least temporarily. It might not be a bad idea, though, to check indigenous food supplies and make sure we can eat the local fruits and roots if we have to. If it goes on the blink--and it was never intended to run for long periods in planetary gravities--it will be too late to start testing the local vegetation then." Judith Lovat, a small, sturdily built woman in her late thirties with the green emblem of Life-support systems on her smock, glanced toward the door of the dome. "The planet seems to be widely forested; there should be something we can eat, with the oxygen-nitrogen system of this air. Chlorophyll and photosynthesis seem to be pretty much the same on all M-type planets and the end product is usually some form of carbohydrate with amino acids:"

"I'm going to put a botanist right on it," Captain Leicester said, "which brings me to you, MacAran. Did you get any useful information from the hilltop?"

MacAran stood up. He said, "I would have gotten more if we'd landed in the plains--assuming there are any on this planet--but I did get a few things. First, we're about a thousand feet above sea level here, and definitely in the Northern hemisphere, but not too many degrees of latitude off the Equator, considering that the Sun runs high in the sky. We seem to be in the foothills of an enormous mountain range, and the mountains are old enough to be forested--that is, no active apparent volcanoes

in sight, and no mountains which look like the result of volcanic activity within the last few millennia. It's not a young planet."

"Signs of life?" Leicester asked.

"Birds in plenty. Small animals, perhaps mammals but I'm not sure. More kinds of trees than I knew how to identify. A good many of them were a kind of conifer, but there seemed to be hardwoods too, of a kind, and some bushes with various seeds and things. A botanist could tell you a lot more. No signs of any kind of artifact, however, no signs that anything has ever been cultivated or touched. As far as I can tell, the planet's untouched by human--or any other--hands. But of course we may be in the middle of the equivalent of the Siberian steppes or the Gobi desert--way, way off the beaten track."

He paused, then said, "About twenty miles due east of here, there's a prominent mountain peak--you can't miss it--from which we could take sightings, and get some rough estimate of the planet's mass, even without elaborate instruments, We might also sight for rivers, plains, water supply, or any signs of civilization."

Camilla Del Rey said, "From space there was no sign of life."

Moray, the heavy swarthy man who was the official representative of Earth Expeditionary, and is charge of the Colonists, said quietly, "Don't you mean no signs of a technological civilization, Officer? Remember, until a scant four centuries ago, a starship approaching Earth could not have seen any signs of intelligent life there, either."

Captain Leicester said curtly' "Even if there is some form of pre-technological civilization, that is equivalent to no civilization at all, and whatever form of life there may be here, sapient or not, is not of any consequences to our purpose. They could give us no help in repairing our ship, and provided we are careful not to contaminate their ecosystems, there is no reason to approach them and create culture shock."

"I agree with your last statement" Moray said slowly, "but I would like to raise one question you have not yet mentioned, Captain. permission?"

Leicester granted, "First thing I said was that we're suspending protocol for the duration-go ahead."

"What's being done to check this planet out for habitability,in the event the drives can't be repaired, and we're stuck here?"

MacAran felt a moment of shock which stopped him cold, then a small surge of relief. Someone had said it. Someone else was thinking about it. He hadn't had to be the one to bring it up.

But on Captain Leicester's face the shock had not gone away; it had frozen into a stiff cold anger. "There's very little chance of that."

Moray got heavily to his feet. "Yes. I heard what your crew was saying, but I'm not entirely convinced. I think that we should start, at once, to take inventory of what we have, and what is here, in the event that we are marooned here permanently."

"Impossible," Captain Leicester said harshly. "Are you trying to say you know more than my crew about the condition of our ship, Mr. Moray?"

"No. I don't know a damn thing about starships, don't know as I particularly want to. But I know wreckage when I see it. I know a good third of your crew is dead, including some important technicians. I heard officer Del Rey say that she thought--she only thought--that the navigational computer could be fixed, and I do know that nobody can navigate a M-AM drive in interstellar space without a computer. We've got to take it into account that this ship may not be going anywhere. And in that case, we won't be going anywhere either. Unless we've got some boy genius who can build an interstellar communications satellite in the next five years with the local raw materials and the handful of people we have here, and send a message back to Earth, or to the Alpha Centauri or Coronis colonies to come and fetch their little lost sheep."

Camilla Del Rey said in a low voice, "Just what are you trying to do, Mr. Moray? Demoralize us further? Frighten us?"

"No. I'm trying to be realistic."

Leicester said, making a noble effort to control the fury that congested his face, "I think you're out of order, Mr. Moray. Our first order of business is to repair the ship, and for that purpose it may be necessary to draft every man, including the passengers from your Colonists group. We cannot spare large groups of men for remote contingencies," he added emphatically, "so if

that was a request, consider it denied. Is there any other business?"

Moray did not sit down. "What happens then if six weeks from now we discover that you can't fix your ship? Or six months?"

Leicester drew a deep breath. MacAran could see the desperate weariness in his face and his effort not to betray it. "I suggest we cross that bridge if, and when, we see it in the distance, Mr. Moray. There is a very old proverb that says, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I don't believe that a delay of six weeks will make all that difference in resigning ourselves to hopelessness and death. As for me, I intend to live, and to take this ship home again, and anyone who starts defeatist talk will have to reckon with me. Do I make myself clear?"

Moray was evidently not satisfied; but something, perhaps only the Captain's will, kept him quiet. He lowered himself into his seat still scowling.

Leicester pulled Camilla's lapboard toward him. "Is there anything else? Very well. I believe that will be all, ladies and gentlemen. Lists of survivors and wounded, and their condition, will be posted tonight. Yes, Father Valentine?"

"Sir, I have been requested to say a Requiem Mass for the dead at the site of the mass graves. Since the Protestant chaplain was killed in the crash, I would like to offer my services to anyone, of any faith, who can use them for anything whatsoever:"

Captain Leicester's face softened as he looked at the young priest, his arm in a sling and one side of his face heavily bandaged. He said, "Hold your service by all means, Father. I suggest dawn tomorrow. Find someone who can work on erecting a suitable memorial here; some day, maybe a few hundred years from now, this planet may be colonized, and they should know. Well have time for that, I imagine."

"Thank you, Captain Will you excuse me? I must go back to the hospital"

"Yes, Father, go ahead. Anyone who wants to get back now is excused--unless there are any questions? Very well." Leicester leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes briefly. "MacAran and Dr. Lovat, will you stay a minute, please?"

MacAran came forward slowly, surprised beyondwords; he had never spoken to the Captain before, and had not realized that Leicester knew him even by sight. What could he want? The others were leaving the dome, one by one; Ewen touched his shoulder briefly and whispered, "Heather and I will he at the Requiem Mass, Rafe. I've got to go. Come around to the hospital and let me check that concussion. Peace, Rafe; see you later," before he slipped away.

Captain Leicester had slumped in his chair, and he looked exhausted and old, but he straightened slightly as Judith Lovat and MacAran approached him. He said, "MacAran, your profile said you've had some mountain experience. What's your professional specialty?"

"Geology. It's true, I've spent a good deal of time in the mountains."

"Then I'm putting you in charge of a brief survey expedition. Go climb that mountain, if you can get up it, and take your sights from the peak, estimate the planet's mass, and so forth. Is there a meteorologist or weather specialist in the colonist group?"

"I suppose so, sir. Mr. Moray would know for sure!'

"He probably would, and it might be a good idea for me to make a point of asking him," Leicester said. He was so weary he was almost mumbling. "If we can estimate what the weather in the next few weeks is likely to do, we can decide how best to provide shelter and so forth for the people. Also, any information about period of rotation, and so forth, might be worth something to Earth Expeditionary. And--Dr. Lovat--locate a zoologist and a botanist, preferably from the colonists, and send them along with MacAran. Just in case the food synthesizers break down. They can make tests and take samples "

Judith said, "May I suggest a bacteriologist too, if there's one available?"

"Good idea. Don't let repair crews go short, but take what you need, MacAran. Anyone else you want to take along?

"A medical technician, or at least a medical nurse," MacAran requested, "in case somebody fall down a crevasse or gets chewed up by the local equivalent of Tyrannosaurus Rex."

"or picks up some ghastly local bug," Judith said. "I ought to have thought of that."

"Okay, then, if the Medic chief can spare anybody," Leicester agreed.

"One more thing. First Officer Del Rey is going with you."

"May I ask what for?" MacAran said, slightly startled. "Not that she isn't welcome, though it might be a rough trek for a lady. This isn't Earth and those mountains haven't any chairlifts!"

Camilla voice was low and slightly husky. He wondered if it was grief and shock, or whether that was her natural tone. She said, "Captain, MacAran evidently doesn't know the worst of it. How much do you know about the crash and its cause, then?"

He shrugged. "Rumors and the usual gossip. All I know is that the alarm bells began to ring, I got to a safety area--so-called," he added, bitterly, remembering Jenny's mangled body, "and the next thing I knew I was being dragged out of the cabin and hauled down a ladder. Period."

"Well, then, here it is. We don't know where we are. We don't know what Sun this is. We don't know even approximately what star cluster we're in. We were thrown off course by a gravitational storm--that's the layman's term, I won't bother explaining what causes it. We lost our orientation equipment with the first shock, and we had to locate the nearest star-system with a potentially habitable planet, and get down in a hurry. So I've got to take some astronomical sighting, if I can, and locate some known stars--I can do that with spectroscopic readings. From there I may be able to triangulate our position in the Galactic Arm, and do at least part of the computer re-programming from the planet's surface. It is easier to take astronomical observations at an altitude where the air is thinner. Even if I don't get to the mountain's peak, every additional thousand feet of altitude will give me a better chance for accurate readings." The girl looked serious and grave, and he sensed that she was holding fear at bay with her deliberately didactic and professional manner. "So if you can have me along on your expedition, I'm strong and fit, and I'm not afraid of a long hard march. I'd send my assistant, but he has burns over 30 per cent of his body surface and even if he recovers--and it's not certain he will--he won't be going anywhere for a long, long time. There's no one else who knows as much about navigation and Galactic Geography as I do, I'm afraid, so I'd trust my own readings more than anyone else's."

MacAran shrugged. He was no male chauvinist, and if the girl thought she could handle the expedition's long marches she could probably do it. "Okay," he said, "it's up to you. We'll need rations for four days minimum, and if your equipment is heavy, you'd better arrange to have someone else carry it; everybody else will have his own scientific paraphernalia." He looked at the thin shirt clinging damply to her upper body and added, a little harshly, "Drew warmly enough, damn it; you'll get pneumonia."

She looked startled, confused, then suddenly angry; her eyes snapped at him. but MacAran had already forgotten her. He said to the Captain, "When do you want us to start? Tomorrow?"

"No, too many of us haven't had enough sleep," said Leicester, dragging himself up again from what looked like a painful doze. "Look who's talking--and half my crew are in the same shape. I'm going to order everybody but half a dozen watchmen to sleep tonight. Tomorrow, except for basic work crews, we'll dismiss everyone for the memorial services for the dead; and there's a lot of inventorying to do, and salvage work. Start--oh, two, three days from now. Any preference about a medical officer?"

"May I have Ewen Ross if the chief can spare him?"

"I's okay by me'" Leicester said, and sagged again, evidently for a split second asleep where he sat. MacAran said a soft, "Thank you, sir," and turned away. Camilla Del Rey laid a hand, a feather's touch, on his arm.

"Don't you dare judge him," she said is a low, furious voice, "he's been on his feet since two days before the crash on a steady diet of wakers, and he's too old for that! I'm going to see he gets 24 hours straight sleep if I have to shut down the whole camp!"

Leicester pulled himself up again. "--wasn't asleep," he said firmly. "Anything else, MacAran, Lovat?"

MacAran said a respectful, "No, sir," and slipped quietly away, leaving the Captain to his rest, his First Officer standing over him like-the image touched his mind in shock---a fiercely maternal tiger over her cub. Or over the old lion? And why did he care anyhow?