Farfetch

As the afternoon wore on she grew accustomed to the thumping of her canteen against her thigh, the abrading sand in every crease of her skin, the desiccating heat. She had been strengthened by the hard life she'd lived since she'd defied the Emperor to break Jindigar out of prison.

Gradually, without intending to, she began to move faster than those ahead of her, and rather than waste the momentum in the sled, she stepped out of line and passed them one by one, exchanging cordial words with everyone but Viradel, who looked her up and down as if Krinata were trying to show her up. The sun was perceptibly lower, begi

She was tiring. It was getting harder to ignore the places where she hurt, but she was approaching Jindigar, who was towing his sled far in the lead, setting a cautious pace, working his eyes from side to side searching the ground. The moon, off to their right, was riding higher. Sunset would not stop them.

She shivered in sudden dread of the desert night and fought a growing sense of menace as if she were walking into a nightmare where however hard she ran, she could not escape.

Just then Jindigar turned his head, saw her coming, and gave what could only be a warmly welcoming smile. Suddenly the smile flicked through alarm to anger. He shrugged out of his towing harness, leaving it to trail in the sand as his sled kept going on momentum, and waded to her sled, nailless fingers working the controls adroitly. In seconds he had slowed and turned her sled, inserting it at the center of the line next to his own, dragging her with it.

As he slipped back into his own harness he roared, "Are you trying to get yourself eaten alive by sandswimmers? I thought you were an ecologist!"

"But—"

"Didn't you hear me state explicitly that no one should stray from the direct line of march?"

Jindigar never gave orders, he made statements. But she'd never seen him angered by someone who ignored one of his statements. "I got going so fast, I couldn't—"

"Trying to wear yourself out before the night's over?"

"Jindigar, nothing happened," she said reasonably.

"No? You miss walking yourself—and one sixteenth of our gear—into a traplair and you say nothing happened?"

Sandswimmer? Traplair? Tasting the words, she recognized them as generic terms for sorts of desert life she'd rather not meet on a dark night. She twisted to glance over her right shoulder at the strip of sand she would have walked on if Jindigar hadn't pulled her into the line. She saw no sign of any animal lurking beneath the sand surface, but if Jindigar said it was there, it was there.

She shuddered, but the sense of menace had evaporated. Had she picked up some awareness from the duad Jindigar and Frey maintained? "Thank you, Jindigar. I'm sorry."

He studied her as they paced side by side, his anger evaporating. "Not really your fault. I expect too much of you." A troubled look crossed his dark indigo features. "I don't know why." Then he smiled, the warmth of welcome back again as he asked, in a softer tone, "Is your arm hurting?"

"It just aches, but I think the heal-jelly is working."

"Good," he replied. Then, as if he needed to rationalize his interest in her, he added, "I hope the others are doing as well. Serious infection could jeopardize our survival."

"And what about your thigh? This is a hike, not a mountain climb. My thighs are killing me!"

"The Dushau body handles infection a little better than the human," he replied.

That was the biggest understatement Krinata had heard in a long time. The Dushau were virtually immune to even the most virulent cross-species infections that had developed in the galaxy. "But you don't heal so very much faster, and you were bleeding even more than I was."

"I took a blood replacement accelerator, and the heal-jelly is working." He brought his ever-roving gaze to focus on her and said in a different tone, "Yes, it does hurt."

"I'm glad you admitted that., Maybe your thigh will tell you when us office workers could use a rest?"

"Soon. Right in the shadow of that big dune, there. The sand should be cool enough to sit on by now, and there are no lurkers waiting to eat us. Also, notice how the ridge of the dune runs right along our course? It will shelter the sleds from the wind so we won't have to chase them."

When they reached the dune and the entire marching column was in the shade, he glanced at her. "Ready?"

"Anytime!"

Before she knew what had happened, he had slipped out of his harness, ducked under his sled, and as it passed her by, he gave it a hefty shove. Only then did he notice she had not followed suit. "Need help? Here."

He paced with her, helping her worm her injured arm out of the harness. "I'll shove it for you," he offered. "Help me get the others unharnessed!"

He worked his way back along the line, shouting, "Get loose, let the sled pass over you, then give it a good push. It will come to rest about an hour straight on, and we'll pick them up after we rest!"

She helped others out of their harnesses, until they came to the trailing sled, pulled by Frey. "All right, Frey, let's get this thing stopped!" called Jindigar. It was the water sled, massive enough to pose a problem.

The young Dushau slipped out of the harness and turned to catch at the control panel on the leading edge, dancing back before the oncoming mass. He got his hand on the brake lever, but it would not move down. "It's stuck!" yelled Frey.

"Storm!" yelled Jindigar, throwing himself at one corner of the sled. "Drag it down!" And then to Frey, he called, 'Take the other corner!"

Krinata took the middle of the front of the sled, held on, and let it drag her heels in the sand. The Lehiroh caught the rear corners, and as the mass dragged them toward the group of humans, the two men, Gibson and Fenwick, joined on the sides. The commotion excited the piols, who scampered from side to side and chittered happily, as if this were the grandest entertainment.

The sled stopped just short of the two exhausted Holot who'd slumped in their tracks without noticing the commotion.

"Our first equipment failure," said Jindigar, grimly eyeing the furred, six-limbed Holot while examining Krinata's arm. "Is it bleeding again?" With a medic's firm touch he pushed her sleeve back to poke at the bandage. "Looks all right. How does it feel?"

"Fine," she lied. She didn't think it would bleed.

Jindigar knelt beside the drooping Holot, who were Wearily aware they'd almost been run over. Examining their eyes, one hand feeling each sweat-plastered pelt, he said, "You just need water. You'll be fine. You've done well so far, and it's going to be easier now that the sun's down."

For Jindigar, Krinata knew, the darkness would bring the greater hardship of near blindness. The intense desert light was dim to his perceptions, while the slightly higher gravity was his norm. She asked Frey, "Can you get at the water?"

"Yes." He attacked the shrouded cargo, the two piols peeping over the edge at him as he loosed tethers.

Gibson helped, saying, "My canteen went dry hours ago."

Krinata remembered her own canteen, which she'd barely touched. She gave it to Jindigar, who held it for the Holot female, Terab, who'd been a spaceship captain until she'd lost her license for helping Jindigar's son, and Jindigar had financed her new start in life. She struggled to drink from the spout built for humanoid lips, then curbed her eagerness, shoving the canteen toward her mate. "He needs it more!"

Jindigar rose, pleased they'd revived enough to share the water. As he passed Krinata, heading for where Frey had the cargo exposed, he scolded, "You shouldn't have refrained. You could go down with heatstroke."