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"I’m going to go out and catch one of these things, “ said Terl.
“Not with any of my crews or equipment you ain't, “ said Char.
Terl heaved his mammoth bulk off the seat and crossed the creaking floor to the berthing hatch.
“You're as crazy as a nebula of crap, “ said Char.
The two Chamco brothers got back into their game and intently laser-blasted the entrapped mayflies into smoky puffs, one by one.
Char looked at the empty door. The security chief knew no Psychlo could go up into those mountains. Terl really was crazy. There was deadly uranium up there.
But Terl, rumbling along a hallway to his room, did not consider himself crazy. He was being very clever as always. He had started the rumors so no questions would get out of hand when he began to put into motion the personal plans that would make him wealthy and powerful and, almost as important, dig him out of this accursed planet.
The man-things were the perfect answer. All he needed was just one and then he could get the others. His campaign had begun and begun very well, he thought.
He went to sleep gloating over how clever he was.
Chapter 2
It was a good day for a funeral, only it seemed there wasn't going to be one.
Dark, stormy-looking clouds were creeping in from the west, shredded by the snow-speckled peaks, leaving only a few patches of blue sky showing.
Jo
His father was dead and he ought to be properly buried. He hadn't died of the red blotches and there was no question of somebody else catching it. His bones had just crumbled away. So there was no excuse not to properly bury him. Yet there was no sign of anyone doing so.
Jo
Aunt Ellen hadn't cared for the orders. She had broken her sharpest rock, she said, and couldn't skin and cut the meat, and certain men hadn't dragged in any firewood lately.
Jo
There ought to be more activity in the village, Jo
Well, that wasn't the way you went about it, Jo
He spun on his heel and with one motion went aboard Windsplitter. The thump of his hard bare heel sent the horse down toward the courthouse.
He passed by the decayed ruins of cabins on the outskirts. Every year they caved in further. For a long time anybody needing a building log hadn't cut any trees: they had just stripped handy existing structures. But the logs in these cabins were so eaten up and rotted now, they hardly even served as firewood.
Windsplitter picked his way down the weed-grown track, walking watchfully to avoid stepping on ancient and newly discarded food bones and trash.
He twitched his ear toward a distant wolf howl from up in a mountain glen.
The smell of new blood and the meat smoke must be pulling the wolves down, thought Jo
Legend said that there had been a thousand in the valley, but Jo
No, it wasn't food. It was something else. Animals reproduced, it seemed, but man didn't. At least not to any extent. The death rate and the birth rate were unbalanced, with death the wi
Maybe it was this valley.
When he was seven he had asked his father about it. “But maybe people can't live in this place, “ he had said.
His father had looked at him wearily. “There were people in some other valleys, according to the legends. They're all gone, but there are still some of us.“
He had not been convinced. Jo
Jo
Tyler. But his father had not brought any of this up. He had just said wearily, “There's no timber down there to build cabins. “
This hadn't explained anything, so Jo
His father had knelt down, patient for once, and said, “You're a good boy, Jo
Monsters, monsters. All his life Jo
But thinking of his father brought an unwelcome wetness to his eyes.
And he was almost unseated as his horse reared. A string of foot-long mountain rats had rushed headlong from a cabin and hit Windsplitter's legs.
What you get for dreaming, Jo