Footfall

The gangling warrior-Rashinggith? something like that-was still talking. “Exactly! The target world orbits in about seven eighths of a Homeworld year. After three generations in space, we still follow a mating season of one year; and the sleepers, because they were wakened at the wrong time—”

“I know. During your mating season we feel a discomfort, an itch we can’t wet.”

“It’s the same with us. So, will both mating seasons be skewed on the target planet?” The spaceborn dissidents did not obey the custom established by the Herdmaster. They would not call the target world Winterhome. “Suppose some of us adjust and some do not? A few generations on the target world and we could all be mildly in heat all the time. Woo!”

“Two mating seasons a year might be fun. If it comes, it will come whether we land or not.”

“And that’s only one possible problem. There are bound to be parasites we never adjusted to—”

A voice bellowed through the room. “Tulk!”

“I am summoned,” Fathisteh-tulk said, and he moved toward the voice of his mate, answering with a cheerful “Tulk”

Moving among sleepers now, spraying muddy water to greet friends, he passed beneath an older frieze. The time was mating season, by the state of the foreground plants and the activities of half-seen fithp among the trees. He had worked on this bas-relief himself. He was pleased to see that it had been kept up, repainted.

But these next ones were recent. Here a swath of jet black powdered with white points, and a small pattern of concentric rings: the Winterhome sun, repeatedly outlined as it grew larger over the decades. There the ringed storm-ball with its company of moons, and the raggedly curved horizon of the Foot, with a mining party around a digit ship tanker—

“Tulk!”

He stopped his dawdling.

She waited impatiently at the exit. Smatter than the average female, Chowpeentulk was turning massive with the increase in her unborn child. She said, “Come. We must discuss.”

The platform elevator lifted them into a corridor. Fathisteh-tulk said, “We are halfway between Winterhome and the Foot. What can be urgent?’

“You were among dissidents!”

“So I was. Dissidence isn’t forbidden.”

“Tulk, I think it will be, soon. The dissidents claim that-the War for Winterhome is u

“I’ve said little. Mostly I listen. What I hear makes sense. We reached the ringed gasball with the ship depleted of virtually every necessity. Within three years Message Bearer was resupplied. We could have left then if we had not needed the Foot, or we could have stayed as long as we liked.”

Fathisteh-tulk had not bred her when mating season followed the Awakening. This was common enough, even expected, among males who had lost status. Chowpeentulk remembered that she had been almost relieved. Her next child would not be of fighting age during the War for Winterhome

The Traveler Herd had reached the ringed gasball and were at work on the Foot when her season came again. Again her mate was impotent. Perhaps she had treated him badly then. She remembered her own irritability well enough.

The next season he had recovered; and the season after that had borne fruit. Her mate’s status as the Herdmaster’s Advisor had been enough; he had recovered his self-respect. She had been slow to recognize the other change in him.

Fathisteh-tulk was still talking. “Space holds most of the resources we need, and no prey to be robbed. We—”

“Tulk! Have you forgotten what it is like to wallow in natural mud beneath an open sky? To take natural prey? The difference between a shower and rain?”

He hesitated. “No.”

“Then what is this nonsense?”

“I’ve talked to spaceborn. They don’t remember. They don’t miss it. Tulk, we’ve started the war, and that is well. But if we have to back off, we know the natives can’t follow us. We should be prepared for this. A generation hence we may be trading with them, nitrogen for refined metals—”

“Trading? With fragile, misshapen things that look like they would fall over any moment?”

“Isn’t that better than enslaving them into the Traveler Herd? We would then be living with them, Can you picture them as our equals, generations from now? That is the fate of successful slaves.”

He laughed as she flinched from that picture. “It won’t hurt to keep those now in power a little unbalanced. I want to keep their minds working. The dissidents are doing something worthwhile.”

That dangerous, destructive humor. She simply hadn’t noticed in time.

Fathisteh-tulk was not mad, exactly. Not suicidal. He would never hurt the Traveler Tribe or his family or their cause. But political interactions just didn’t mean anything to him anymore. Nor did his mate’s authority in matters of family. In the twelve years that passed between her first and second pregnancies, he had lost his sense of these nuances too.

“We are at war,” she said. “When a herd moves it must not scatter to the winds.”

“It may be a needless war. Certainly these think so.”

“Let them do their work without your support. You’re damaging the position of all sleepers. The first step is docility.”

“We have not joined a new tribe. Our tribe was captured from within. Tulk, it may be that I am wrong. I intend to find out.”

“How?”

But that he would not tell her.

Je

There’s Ed. One of the officers was her brother-in-law, Ed Gillespie. She’d heard about his arrival, but she’d been too busy to see him. There’d been nothing useful in his report on the mission to deliver Congressman Dawson to Kosmograd, and Je

Jack Clybourne came in after Je

But he watches everyone just the same. Je

She got A reaction to that. All the military people jumped to attention. The science-fiction writers stared curiously; then those sitting down remembered their ma

The President came in with Admiral Carrell and General Toland. He looked blankly at the large mom with its disorderly crowd.

“Carry on,” Admiral Carell said. “Well, Major? It’s your show.”

“Yes, sir.” Je

“Mr. President, this is Robert Anson. He’s the senior man among the writers.”

“Mr. President,” Anson said formally. He introduced the others.

“David Coffey,” the President said. “Major Crichton says you’ve got something for me.”

“Yes, sir,” Anson said. “Thank you for coming. I’ll not waste more time in pleasantries. First. It now seems clear that their objective is conquest, either of the Earth or of a substantial part of it. The evidence says they want it all.”