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"Glad you're here," Zack said. "What do you make of this?"
Cadma
He asked, "Have we taken a cast of this?"
"Marnie did. We're reinforcing the fences, and we can put the power back through them if we have to."
There were eight of the prints, some faint, some clear and sharp. One in front of the chicken coop was smeared. He stood and looked back along the path the tracks had taken-they led in the direction of the mountains, but disappeared long before they reached the plowed ground. Suspicion niggled at the back of his mind.
"You know," Cadma
Zack shook his head. "Beats me. There was someone here all the time, Cad. The overcast was pretty bad. Maybe the sun had to be just so high before we could spot them."
The crowd had thi
"Hola, amigo. Any ideas?"
Cadma
Erin, standing next to Carlos, was having trouble managing his face.
Cadma
He turned on his heel.
"Cadma
"Yeah?"
"Nothing."
As he walked away Cadma
"What do you think. Cad?" Zack looked puzzled.
"This was a hoax. This was." Cadma
Cadma
Behind him someone made a doglike yipping sound. He didn't turn to look.
Chapter 4
RAINY NIGHT
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.
WILLIAM BLAKE, Appendix to the "Songs of I
Six weeks after the incident at the coops, a mild eruption on the northwest side of the island shook the ground. Three days later threadlike wisps of ash still drifted from the air. The mists that enshrouded the mountain peaks had dropped in a gray blanket, diffusing the light of Tau Ceti.
Streamers of light flashed within the cloud banks, and thunder echoed distantly onto the plain. Cadma
"Don't worry," Mary A
The alfalfa replanting was being cautiously hailed as a success. Failure of the first crop was attributed to the thorn trees which had once dominated the plain. When the trees were burned away their taproots remained alive underground, leaching moisture from the soil. Alfalfa, with a potential yield of ten tons per acre, requires tremendous amounts of water. Omar Isfahan and Jon van Don, two of the Colony's engineers, had pla
"We could use the water, either way. But if it's going to rain, I'm wasting my time up here."
"Practice. Practice. We all take rotation in the fields." Mary A
Hibernation Instability. He saw her differently now. She wasn't bright... and yet she had been. Wounded in the war to capture Avalon; wounded in his war.
The electrified fences had been expanded and strengthened. When there was no additional trouble, the animals were turned out into the northern pasture. Some of the older lambs and calves were already grazing contentedly.
No additional trouble...
Cadma
He had returned twice to Geographic. He liked that. Checking the embryos was sheer routine; but one side of the crew lounge was a wide window. Cadma
So beautiful. Spirals of white storm, blazing white of polar caps, the spine of jagged white-capped mountain range along the single continent.... white against the rich blue of a water-and-oxygen atmosphere, a world that men could take and tame.
Zack had been right. Their grandchildren would conquer this world, and the first hundred and sixty colonists would be remembered for all time.
Immortality.
At what price? A century of sleep? Brain damage for a few; Ernst and
Mary A
Tau Ceti Four's colonials had it easy.
The air was suddenly cold. Raindrops spattered against his hands and the hood of the tractor.
"Shit-oh-dear," Mary A
"So much for the weather report, Mary A
She clipped a handful of green sprouts and stuffed them into her blouse pocket. She hunched her shoulders and clopped through the broken ground, climbed up behind him on the tractor and wrapped her arms around him. He felt her shiver as her breasts pressed into his back.
He said, "We'll just have to have Town Meeting early. Good. I want that damned current turned back on. I'm sick of hearing about how I'm overreacting." He lifted the digging tool from the ground and headed back toward Civic Center.
She squeezed him tight, in a special rolling way that she had. It took the edge off his ire, but he grumbled on. "Well, it sure as hell isn't the power. We've got all the power we need, rain or shine."
"Everybody says it's a lot of trouble just to stop a dog."
"Right. A dog." He sighed. "All right. They're entitled to their opinion. I'm entitled to mine."
Her voice was muffled against his back. "You're not alone. You have me, too. But we're just two."
The rain was still fairly light as he drove the tractor into the shed. The other farming equipment was being brought in, and the colonists were begi