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"You and me both." Greenberg pulled off his shoes and stared at his feet. "I keep waiting for them to swell up right before my eyes."

"Me, too," Je

Greenberg also ate some Foitani people chow. He washed it down with his own water. "Better?a little better," he said. "If they're going to the research base tomorrow, at least they won't walk our legs off, Je

Je

The old imperial Foitani must have eliminated or at least intimidated the Rof Golani on the ground, for Je

She grimly went through a stretching routine she hadn't used since she was in the field on her last trading run. By the time she started to sweat, some of the kinks in her legs and back began to come loose. The Great Ones watched her with impassive curiosity.

Greenberg also needed limbering up after a rugged day and a night on the ground. When he was done stretching, he looked around for a bush to go behind. But when he started to go behind it, one of the old-time Foitani growled and lifted his weapon. Greenberg sighed. "Sorry about this, but I can't wait any longer," he said to Je

"Don't turn around," she warned him. "In coveralls, this is a lot more inconvenient for me than it is for you." As she unfastened herself and squatted, she thought again that this was a problem Middle English science-fiction writers had ignored, especially for women. She wished she could ignore it herself. She also wished she could ignore the Foitani. As they had while she was exercising, they studied her now.

Relieved?and also relieved of her dignity?she got to her feet. "It's all right now," she told Greenberg.

"All right," he said, and turned around. "Shall we have a lovely breakfast of dry dog food?"

"Since our other choice is leaves and whatever Gilver uses for bugs, I suppose we might as well."

They crunched for a while. Je

After a cautious pull at his canteen?who could guess when he'd get a chance to refill it??Greenberg said, "I meant what I told you yesterday, you know."

"What did you tell me yesterday?" she asked, a little testily?far, far too much had happened yesterday. When his face fell, she remembered all at once what he'd told her. She felt herself turn red. "I'm sorry, Bernard. I know you did."

"And so?" he said.

It was a good question. Over the years, a lot of men had said they loved her, a lot more than she wanted to hear it from. To many of them, it meant nothing more than that they wanted to go to bed with her. She was already going to bed with Bernard, and it had been her idea as much as his. She knew that saidsomething. But living with Ali Bakhtiar, in the begi

She shook her head. "Bernard, right now I just don't know what to say to you. I think maybe the only thing I ought to say right now is that this isn't really the time or place to say much of anything. You know I'm fond of you?or if you don't, I've been doing something wrong." She smiled wryly. "But love? I'm not even sure what love is. Let's talk about it later, when we can think straight and feel something besides being scared out of our minds."

"Fair enough," he said, his voice unreadable.

They had no further chance to talk about it, anyhow. The imperial Foitani, with the gift for timing all Foitani races seemed to share, chose that moment to break camp and start for the research base of the Foitani from Odern. They still didn't want the humans talking while they marched. A warning growl made that quite clear.

The Great One who had Greenberg's communicator used it to call the base. Je

Far off to the south, gunfire crackled. From several kilometers away, it sounded cheery rather than terrifying. The Great Ones grew alert when they heard it, but it wasn't close enough even for folk as aggressive as they to hose down the area with their hand weapons.

The breeze, a fickle thing, played with the marching Great Ones and wearily trudging humans, blowing sometimes from behind them but more often into their faces. The old-time Foitani ignored it; like their descendants from Odern, they were good at ignoring anything they didn't care for. Je

She walked past a couple of emplacements the Foitani from Odern had built to protect the way to the Great Unknown. No one came out to greet the returning imperial Foitani. She looked down into one gun pit close by the side of the road. A blue Foitan lay inside, sprawled and dead.

"I hope Pawasar Pawasar Ras knows what he's doing, treating with the Great Ones," she whispered to Greenberg. She got another growl from the armed Great One for that, but no more, for it was the first thing she'd said since the day's journey began.

When the party of Great Ones came within a few hundred meters of the research base, Foitani from Odern emerged to meet them. Je

She still had trouble telling one Foitan from another, but thought she recognized Pawasar Pawasar Ras and Thegun Thegun Nug among the Foitani from Odern in the group that had come out of the base. All the Foitani from Odern bowed low and chanted at the Great Ones. Without the translator, Je

The gesture of submission seemed to have meaning to the imperial Foitani. They came out of the skirmish line in which they'd advanced and formed up into a single compact group. Once they were all together, they bowed, too, though not nearly so low as the Foitani from Odern had.

After that recognition ceremony, ancient and modern Foitani walked toward one another. The two groups were only a few meters apart when the breeze stopped blowing into Je

The Foitani from Odern had been moving forward with every sign of the reverence they gave to anything that pertained to the Great Ones. All at once, they stopped short. They bared their teeth. Pawasar Pawasar Ras?Je