Farfetch

She had barely thought the question when it was answered. In a single voice the people below raised a cheer that rang off the cliff and startled the busy scavengers into stillness.

Again the cheer, and again. Cy took Krinata's hand and raised it in a gesture of victory. Storm stepped to the forward railing and raised Jindigar's hand.

Trooper and settler together, at least five species, cheered louder and clearer, until she made out then– words, "Krinata and Jindigar! Krinata and Jindigar!"

"But we didn't do it alone!" she protested, pulling her hand from Cy's.

Jindigar pulled his hand out of Storm's grasp and hugged the Lehiroh, though his voice was distant, distracted by the Oliat threads he still held. "No, we didn't. How could they have come by such an impression?"

Storm said, "Terab's been talking, I'll bet. And Shorwh. Even Viradel. They all went down hours ago."

Something caught Krinata's eye in the east, the sun clearing the horizon accompanied by a slice of new moon. "Look!" She pointed.

Above the rushing of the wind and the chanting cheer below she heard Darllanyu whisper, "Darllanyu again, but a good omen this time."

The Cassrian Commander, standing in the pilot's dock, bent over his instruments. "Good omen? For whom?"

"What do you mean?" asked Storm, craning his neck to see, but Cy pointed at the horizon again.

"A ship!"

"Can you identify it?" asked Krinata tensely, knowing Jindigar's wish that he hadn't adjourned them.

"I'm trying," answered the Cassrian working intently. "It's a lander—large one. Could be that privateer. This colony may be a short-lived one."

"Can you make voice contact at least?" asked Krinata.

The distant rumble finally attracted the attention of everyone on the ground, and cheering subsided as they sca

"Can the Oliat identify it?" asked the Commander, frustrated.

"We're adjourned," answered Jindigar, as if it were only of academic importance, yet she could feel his anxiety. "Can't dip in and out of Oliat as easily as a duad."

She remembered how much more difficult it was to assemble and adjourn a triad and realized that if she were pulled back into that deep seven-way contact again right now, she'd probably go into a screaming fit and drive them all beyond the ends of sanity. She shuddered. Don't let it be necessary!

The Commander a

Jindigar pulled the microphone for the platform's address system out and shoved it into Krinata's hand. "Tell them." Then he gently replaced the Commander at the controls, saying, "Let me see what I can do."

His fourteen long fingers danced over the controls as he spoke into the pickup in Dushauni. In moments he had an image on the tiny screen, an indigo face, and a voice came ti

Another cheer and everyone was ru

Trinarvil was a small woman, stately, darker than Jindigar's deep indigo. Her voice was high and pleasant, and her face now unmarked by the intense anxiety Krinata had last seen there the night before Dushaun withdrew its embassy from the Allegiancy, breaking diplomatic relations. "Jindigar!" sang the Ambassador with obvious joy. "I should have known you'd get here before I could, but when we saw the Squadron leaving, we feared we'd find nothing here but pulverized ground. It looks like that from the air, you know, and your signal is being generated by Imperial equipment."

"Where's the Squadron?" asked Jindigar.

"That's the curious thing. They took one look at us and detimed." Trinarvil added to Jindigar, "I brought The Organizer, an unarmed passenger ship. Ripped out bulkheads so we've got three hundred aboard, with about fifty ephemerals. A good bit of cargo too. Couldn't have run from them as Truth could."

"They've gone for reinforcements," predicted Jindigar with that detached air, but he was gradually begi

The Cassrian Commander said, "I don't think so. They left expecting the stampede to wipe us and the settlement out. Our—objective—had been accomplished."

Trinarvil's eye had traveled over the armor with the neutrality of a trained diplomat, and Jindigar told her, "We both have long stories to tell. Can you land by the clay dig?"

"Jindigar," she answered with good-humored asperity,

"I've been piloting since before you were born. I could land in that dig if I had to."

They all laughed, and Krinata glanced down. They were over the dig now, and the small lake that had gathered in the center. The settlement was already experimenting with farming fish in the pond, and Krinata was unsurprised to see a piol waddling out of the water with a wriggling catch in his mouth.

Then she saw his destination—a mud-and-straw nest halfway up the slope. "Jindigar, look!"

Cy leaned over the forward rail, peering below. "Piol cubs! How many?"

Jindigar was working with the screens and brought a close-up onto the weapons target. "Four," he counted. He flashed an intimate, private grin to Krinata, then warned Trinarvil, "You'd better not land in the pond. The colony has begun to establish itself!"