The Leagacy of Heorot

"Good going, Weyland."

Bloody idiot. Cadma

"Eh?"

"Sheena."

"Oh. The dog. Yeah, I hope so. Listen, Sylvia sent me to get you. If you want to come to the beach party, get moving. We've got the last jeep and we're leaving now."

"Yeah, well..." There was nothing out there now, no sound but rushing water. Screw the picnic. I need a flashlight.

"Are you coming?"

Damn you! "Sheena! Come, Sheena."

"I'm leaving." Terry's thin lips twitched with a nervous tic that made it hard for Cadma

Did you ever recover from puberty? What if I throw you in the creek? The dogs were quiet now. Heidi nickered and came to the edge of the pen seeking sugar. "All right."

The jeep slewed around in a tight circle, so quickly that only the ballast of several enthusiastically inebriated colonials kept it from tipping over on two wheels. Zack Moscowitz leaned out of the driver's seat. He was wearing driving goggles above a shaggy black mustache. "All aboard! Will each passenger kindly check his or her own tokens?"

Cadma

Moscowitz wiped at his goggle lenses but only succeeded in smearing the dirt more evenly. "Good to see you, Cadma

"Great." Cadma

"Here we go, Cad." George Merriot squeezed over to make room. It took some squeezing-George could use a few extra sit-ups.

"Thanks, Major."

"Not any more. Cad."

"Right." Weyland climbed over Barney Carr and Carolyn, one of the

McAndrews twins. He wiggled his way into the middle.

"Seat belts, right? Everybody, right?"

There was a chorus of bored assents. Zack gu

"No problems, Cadma

"Ah-nothing, Zack." Cadma

"What about the fence?"

"Nothing serious. Break. I fixed it."

George Merriot laughed. "Hey, Zack, for a bare instant there, I thought you weren't playing company director this evening."

Moscowitz wove deftly around a pothole. "Never happened. Check that fence in daylight tomorrow, would you, Cad?"

"Enough!" Rachel Moscowitz shouted. "No business tonight. The night shift's on duty. Remember?"

"There was something," Cadma

Moscowitz slowed, his eyes still on the road. "Yes?"

"Bit of disturbance with the animals. They were acting like rush hour at the stockyard. Scared. Crazy." The jeep lurched, and Cadma

"Aw, not Sheena. Where'd she go?"

"Who cares?" George demanded. "They all got out last week. She'll come back."

Zack kept the jeep burning along the track at a racing pace, and as they bumped over a rise near the ring of thorn bushes, Cadma

Zack said, "Naw, I've been slipping her a few scraps, that's all."

"He wants her in our home," Rachel said. "And we don't have enough room."

"Wouldn't be fair anyway." When Zachariah Moscowitz laughed, his heavy arching eyebrows and thick mustache simply cried for a thick cigar and a round of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady. "Ten dogs, and a hundred sixty colonists. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to get proprietary, does it?"

"No. Zack, stop. I'll go back and find her."

"Come on." Moscowitz flipped up the filthy goggles. "Gives me a whole new outlook on life. George, give the Colonel a drink, will you? Cad, we're not on duty tonight. Smell the sea and drink the beer and the hell with it."

Cadma

Zack was still talking. "I don't suppose that this really impacts on you. Cad, but I've been a paper pusher most of my life. Administration type."

"You're still the only man I know with pencil calluses behind his ear."

"Ah, but things aren't the same anymore. I still ride a keyboard, but I ride it light-years from home, on a planet still two twitches this side of the Jurassic."

"And so?" Cadma

"And so on Earth I made decisions and was responsible for maybe one five-billionth of what happened on the planet. Here, I'm one one hundred and sixtieth of this planet's history. I'll have cities, states named after me. We'll be in the history books, Cadma

They always did name cities after their founders. They used to name them after warriors, too, but what's to fight here?

The jeep slowed to a crawl as the road ended at the edge of the beach. Bonfires had already been lit and tended down to a low roar, and the other colonists waved in greeting.

Minerva One was ass-on to the beach. A team had anchored a winch in the rock so that the shuttle could be pulled up after landing. Nice design there. Land on water, take off on water, never worry about finding an airport. Its desalinization plant was a box floating alongside, with membranes inside to filter the seawater. The shuttle would be flying up to the mother ship tomorrow, one of Sylvia's monthly jaunts. She wouldn't be able to take it next month. Regardless of her protests, no one was going to allow an obviously pregnant biologist to undergo u

As soon as the jeep slewed to a halt, Cadma

"Damn straight. You have no idea how hard I fought for that beer." He dipped into the cooler and extracted a pouch. "We'll have our brewery next year."

"Thirty months?" Hendrick Sills shouted, his arm tight around Phyllis's admirably trim waist.

"Earth year," Zack answered. The Avalon year was two point six times as long as Earth's.

Cadma

"Eh?" Mary A

"Juniper berries. You're in agriculture. Did we bring the seeds?"

Mary A

"I want to make the first drinkable martini on Tau Ceti Four. That will earn me a statue."

She frowned, then gri

"Cold, isn't it?"

"Sure! But it's nice when you get out." She reached toward him.

"Mary A