Hello! Welcome to Fossicker Press's web site. Please feel free to download Kir Bulychev's Those Who Survive and give it a test read. The complete hard copy book can be ordered directly from Xlibris.com, and is only 432 pages long. Information on the animated movie will be posted later.

- JHC

Chapter One

In all the world the only place Oleg knew he would ever be dry and warm was in this house.

A fly was buzzing the candle that sat lit on the wooden table. The candle should have been extinguished hours ago, when the sky turned gray. Mother had forgotten, of course. Out on the street gloom reigned in the constant, misty fog.

Oleg lay sprawled on his cot where he had awakened only moments before. He had been spending his nights guarding the settlement, chasing off the zhakals. On his last night a whole hunting pack had crawled up to the barn and almost carried him off instead.

The night had left him drained, a feeling of emptiness and boredom had overcome him, as though he had no reason at all to feel any excitement about what had happened and about what was to come and no right to feel terror. It was either or, fifty fifty, you returned or you didn't. And what were the odds of survival at fifty percent to the fourth power? There should have been some regularity, there should have been tables, or else you're always re-inventing the bicycle. But anyway they were all ready to ask the Mayor what a bicycle was. There was a paradox here. There were no bicycles, but the Mayor kept reproaching them for not hunting for the meaning hidden by the words.

From the kitchen Oleg heard his mother start to cough. So she was home.

"You didn't go?" Oleg called out.

"You're awake? Want some soup? I've cooked some," His mother asked.

"Then who went after the muzhrumes?"

"Marianna and Dick."

"That's all?"

"Some of the children may have tagged along."

They should have awakened him! Called him.! Marianna hadn't promised, but it would have been natural for them to have called him.

"I'm really not hungry."

"If the rains don't stop the kewkumbers won't ripen before the frost sets in," His mother said. "Mold's growing on everything."

Oleg's mother came into the room, chased the fly away with the palm of her hand and extinguished the candle. Oleg looked up at the ceiling. The spot of yellow mold had grown, changing its shape. The night before it had resembled Vaitkus's profile with a potato nose. But today the nose had puffed up as though stung by a wasp, and the forehead had been distended with a new bump.

Dick's going into the forest was alarming. Why would he want to pick muzhrumes? He was a hunter, a plainsman, or so he kept telling everyone.

"There are lots of flies," His mother said. "They find it too cold in the forest."

"So you've found someone to feel sorry for."

The house was divided down the middle; on the other side lived the Mayor and the Durov twins the Mayor had taken in after their parents had died in the last epidemic. The twins were always sick with something: as soon as one recovered the other immediately fell ill.

If it hadn't been for their constant howling and whimpering at night Oleg would never have agreed to be town watchman. He could hear them now begin to snivel in chorus -- they were hungry. Starved. The Mayor 's monologue - unintelligible, distant, ever present like the wind, -- cut off and a bench squeaked on the wooden floor. That meant the Mayor had gone into the kitchen. Immediately his students started to make a racket.

"And why do you have to go?" Oleg's mother said. "Don't go! You'll be lucky if you return in one piece!"

Now his mother began to cry. She was often crying now-a-days. She would mumble something, turn toward him and then turn abruptly away, and begin to cry silently -- you could tell because she wiped her nose. And she begin to whisper, like some invocation or chant: "I can't take it. I can't take it any more. It would be better if I were dead..." Oleg, if he heard, froze lest he show he wasn't sleeping, as though he were looking at something he had no right to see. Oleg was ashamed to realize that there was no way he could comfort his mother. She cried about things that meant nothing to him. She cried about countries he would never see, about people who were not here and never had been.

Oleg did not remember his mother ever being any different, only the same as she was today. She was a thin, stringy woman with straight, mottled hair gathered behind her in a bun; heavy strands of hair were always getting loose and hung down her cheeks and she had to blow them away from her face. Her face was red with willowwasp pockmarks, there were dark bags under her eyes, and her eyes were too bright as though they blazed.

His mother sat down at the table, ran her coarse palms under callused hands. Well, start crying, why don't you? Will she reach for the photograph now? He was right. She pulled the box towards her, opened it, and pulled out the photograph.

On the other side of the wall the Mayor was cooking the twins something to eat. The twins were sniveling. The students were shouting and horsing around, helping the Mayor feed the infants. As though this was going to be a typical day. As though nothing out of the ordinary was about to happen. But what were they doing in the forest? It will be noon soon. They'll come back for lunch. It's time they got back. They knew what can happen to people in the forest.

His mother kept looking at the photograph. She was in it, with his father. Oleg had seen it a thousand times and a thousand times he had tried to find a resemblance between himself and that man. He couldn't. His father's head was covered with curly blond hair, a face with full lips, a cleft chin jutting forward. In the picture his father was laughing. Mother said he was always laughing. Oleg resembled his mother more -- not the way she was now, but back when the photograph with his father had been taken. Straight black hair and thin lips. Wide, steep eyebrows like arches over bright blue eyes. Skin so pale the red blood vessels showed through. Oleg burned easily. He had thin lips and black hair, like his mother in the photo. His father and mother had been young and very happy. And striking. His father had been in a uniform, and his mother in a dress without shoulders. Something called a sun dress.

That was twenty years ago and Oleg hadn't been born. He was now a little more than fifteen.

"Mother," Oleg said. "Don't, please."

"I won't let you go," His mother said. "I won't let them send you. Over my dead body."

"Mother, enough already." Oleg said and sat up on the cot. "I'd better have some soup."

"You can have it in the kitchen," His mother said. "It hasn't gotten cold yet."

Her eyes were moist. She'd been crying just the same, as though she had buried him already. Or maybe she was crying for his father. For her the photograph was the man. But as much as he had tried, Oleg could remember absolutely nothing about his father.

The boy got to his feet and went into the kitchen. The Mayor was at the hardened clay stove, trying to set fire to some dried wood.

"I'll do it," Oleg said. "You want the water boiling?"

"Yes," The Mayor said. "Thanks. But I have to finish the lesson now. Come get me when it's ready."

***

Marianna had filled the basket with muzhrumes. She'd been lucky. True, she had to go some distance, all the way to the gorge. With Oleg along she would have had too much sense to go so far from the settlement, but with Dick she felt more confident because Dick felt confident with himself, everywhere, even in the forest, even if he preferred the plains. Dick insisted he was a born hunter, but in fact he had been born earlier, before they had built the settlement.

"But you know the forest as well as you know your own home," Dick said.

He spoke too loudly. He was walking in front and a little to one side. A leather jacket with its fur out sat on him like his own skin. He had sewn the jacket himself. Few of the women in the settlement could have sewn it as well.

The forest was sparse and uneven, the trees here rose to hardly more than man height before bending their tops to the side as though they feared to stick out from the mass of their neighbors. The trees were being sensible. The fierce winter winds would have torn away anything that stuck out too far above the rest. The needles dripped chill rain. Marianna's hand gripping the basket had frozen; she stretched her fingers and moved the container to her other hand. The muzhrumes in the basket had begun to shake and chitter. The girl's palm hurt; one of the muzhrumes had stung her with its barb while she was digging them up. Dick had extracted the stinger so there would be no infection. Marianna sipped the bitter antidote from the bottle that always hung from her neck.

Marianna spied a violet blossom nestled between the fat, slippery white roots of a payn.

"Hold on, Dick," She said, "There's a flower there I haven't seen before."

"Don't you think we can do without flowers?" Dick asked. "It's time we got home. I just don't like this place." Dick had a nose for danger.

"Just a second," Marianna said and knelt down by the trunk.

The spongy soft blue bark that covered the payn pulsed slightly, its veins pumping themselves full of water, and the roots had shot out tendrils so as not to miss a single droplet. What she had noticed was a flower. An ordinary flower, a violet, only somewhat brighter in color and larger than those growing around the settlement, and with longer thorns. Marianna yanked it from the ground and held it too high for the flailing roots to grasp hold of the payn, and a moment later dropped the violet into the basket with the muzhrumes that were chirping and twittering so much that Marianna even began to laugh and paid no attention to Dick's cry.

"Duck!"

The word and the danger sank in; Marianna jumped forward, fell, dove into the warm mass of pulsing roots. But too late. Her face burned as though she'd been struck by a whip.

"Your eyes!" Dick shouted. "Are your eyes all right?"

Dick grabbed the girl by the shoulders, pulled her clenched fingers out of the mass of roots and made her sit still despite the intense pain.

"Keep your eyes tight!" He told her and quickly started to extract the thin needles from her face; he continued angrily:

"Idiot, we can't let you loose in the forest. You have to listen. It hurts, doesn't it."

Unexpectedly he threw himself on Marianna and pressed her into the roots.

"That hurts!"

"Another one just flew past," Dick said, half rising. "We'll take a look later. It managed to dust my back."

Two willowasps had flown past three meters above the ground; spheres taut and fat with needle-like spores, but lighter than air with their hydrogen fill. They would fly until the wind carried them against a tree or drove them against the cliffs. Billions of spheres died without issue, but should one find a baer it would riddle the warm pelt with needles carrying its young. In the sporing season you had to be careful in the forest or you would be scarred for life.

"Well, that's all," Dick said. "No needles left. And most important, none got in your eyes."

"Is it bad?" Marianna asked quietly.

"You're beauty hasn't been damaged," Dick said. "Now let's get home fast. Let Egli smear you with grease."

"Right." Marianna ran her palm along her cheek.

Dick noticed and grabbed at her hand.

"There are more than enough muzhrumes, you got a flower. Are you off your head? Do you want to get it infected."

In the meantime the muzhrumes had escaped from the basket, crawled in among the roots; a few even managed to bury themselves halfway into the ground. Dick helped Marianna gather them, but they never found the violet. Dick gave Marianna the basket back; it was light but he wanted to keep his hands free. In the forest you only had seconds to react, and the hands of a hunter had to be kept free.

"Look," Marianna said, taking the basket. She caught at Dick with her thin, frozen hand. "Is my face spoiled?"

"Don't be silly," Dick said. "We all have marks on our faces. Me too. Is my face spoiled? They're our tribal tattoo marks."

"Tattoo?"

"You forgot? One of the Mayor's history lessons, how wild tribes decorated themselves with special marks. As a sort of badge of honor."

"But those were savages," Marianna said. "And this hurts."

"We're savages too."

Dick was already walking ahead. He didn't turn as he spoke, but Marianna knew he was listening to everything. He had a hunter's hearing. Marianna jumped over the gray stem of a hunting vine.

"Later on you'll itch, it'll be impossible to sleep. The most important thing to remember is don't scratch yourself. Then you'll be scarred permanently. Only everyone scratches."

"I won't," Marianna said.

"You'll forget while you're sleeping and scratch...."

The rain drove down harder, but they moved along slowly. Anyone who ran without looking where they were going ended up dinner for a vine or oak. The muzhrumes beat against the sides of the basket, but Marianna didn't want to throw them away. Soon They would see the clearing and then the settlement. Someone would certainly be on guard by the stockade. She saw Dick pull his knife out of his belt and shifted his cross-bow into a more comfortable position. She unsheathed her own knife as well, but the blade was too narrow, too thin, and good only for cutting vines or digging out muzhrumes. If the pack of zhakals found you the knife would be of little use. No better than a stick.

***

Oleg finished the soup and placed the pot with the leftovers on a shelf higher up. The students' feet pounded on the hard clay floor of the next room; through the arrow slot in the wall. Oleg saw them rush out the door and jump into an enormous puddle that had swollen over the past few days, splattering mud everywhere. Then one of them shouted: "Wyrm!" and they swirled around in a mass, grabbing for the wyrm.

The critter's scarlet tail rose out of the water and struck at the students' legs. Ruth, Thomas's red haired little girl, began to wail: apparently the wyrm had swatted her bare hand with its burning sucker. The little girl's mother stuck her head from her house opposite, shouting:

"Have you gone crazy! Don't go poking in the water! You could lose your hands. It's home for you all. Now!"

But the students had decided to carry the wyrm over their heads, and Oleg knew why. As the wyrm dried it changed color, first to red, then blue, then it became very interesting, but only to those who did not panic at the sight of wyrms, harmless and cowardly critters that they were. Unlike mothers.

Linda, Thomas's wife, stood at the edge of the puddle and called her daughter, and Oleg, guessing what his mother was about to ask him, said:

"I'll go now."

He went out into the street and looked down to the end, toward the gates in the fence where Thomas stood tense with a cross-bow in his hands. Something's wrong. Oleg thought. Wrong, just like I thought. Dick must've really led Marianna somewhere far off, and something happened. Dick doesn't realize she's different and he didn't watch over her.

The children continued their dance with the wyrm over their heads; the animal had aleady become quite black, it couldn't adapt to captivity any more. Linda Hind pulled her red haired daughter from the parade and dragged her home captive. Oleg ran off toward the fence and only halfway there did he realize he hadn't taken a cross-bow and would be completely useless if anything happened.

"What's up?" Oleg asked Thomas.

"Shakals lurking about. A pack." The man didn't bother to turn around.

"The same ones as last night?"

"Don't know. Didn't used to hunt at night. Waiting for Marianna?"

"She went off hunting muzhrumes with Dick."

"I know. Let them through myself. No need to worry. With Dick, nothing will happen. Born hunter."

Oleg nodded. It was embarrassing but Thomas had no desire to insult the boy. Dick was simply more useful. Dick was a hunter. Oleg wasn't much of one. As though skill at hunting was the greatest thing you could have in the world.

"Of course I understand," Thomas suddenly laughed. He lowered the cross-bow and leaned his back against one of the great boles that formed the fence. "It's a question of priorities. In any small scale society, ours being the example at hand, abilities in, say, mathematics are in less demand than the ability to kill a baer. It just ain't fair, but it is understandable."

Thomas's smile was polite, the long lips bent at the corners of his mouth as though they had trouble fitting a face that was a mass of deep scars, and eyes that were darker still. And the whites of Thomas's eyes had turned yellow. Thomas's liver was diseased. Perhaps that was why he had gone completely bald and coughed all the time. But Thomas was a survivor and knew the road to the mountain pass better than anyone else.

Thomas pointed his cross-bow and, without sighting, fired a bolt. Oleg's eyes followed after the bolt, there was a yowl, and the wood stuck from the hide of a zhakal that hadn't dodged in time. The creature fell out of the branches, as though the tree had been holding on to it but now let it drop. The zhakal's black maw gaped open, the individual hairs of its white coat stuck out like needles. The critter crashed onto the meadow, twitched, and grew quiet.

"Great shot."

"Thank you. We'll have to drag it away before the croes come."

"I'll do it," Oleg said.

"No. He's not alone." Thomas stopped him. "Get your cross-bow first. If the kids do return, they'll have to walk through a pack of them. How many zhakals were there last night?"

"I counted six," Oleg said.

Oleg had just turned to run after his weapon when Thomas's whistle brought him up short. The whistle was loud enough to be heard anywhere in the settlement.

Stop now? No, better get the cross-bow first! It would only take a minute.

"What's happening?" His mother stood in the doorway.

He darted around her, grabbed the cross-bow from the wall, and almost cried out in alarm. Where were his bolts? Under the table? Had the twins carried them off?

"Behind the stove," His mother said. She had hid the quiver from the twins. "What's happening? Is Marianna all right?"

The Mayor had run out with a spear; he could hardly fire a cross-bow with only one hand. Oleg ran around the Mayor, pulling a bolt from the quiver as he ran although he'd always been taught never to do that. All the settlement's children were hurrying to the fence.

"Get back from there!" Oleg shouted in his loudest voice. No one listened to him.

Sergeyev was already standing next to Thomas with a long bow in his hands. The men were listening tensely. Sergeyev lifted a three fingered hand and ordered those running toward them to stop.

And then a cry reached them from the straight gray wall the forest. A human cry, from far off, and brief, cut off; endless silence followed from the settlement. And Oleg imagined -- no, he could see Marianna and Dick out in the forest, behind the wall of rain and thick white trees, in the living, breathing, crawling forest. Marianna stood with her back against the warm and smarting bark of apayn and Dick, half fallen to his knees -- blood dripping from a hand torn by the teeth of a zhakal, trying to pick up the spear.

"Mr Mayor!" Thomas shouted. "Boris, stay at the gate. Oleg, with us."

Aunt Luiza caught up with them at the forest edge; in one hand she carried the enormous ax she'd used to chase off a baer last year, in the other hand she carried a burning torch. Aunt Luiza was a large, fat and terrifying woman -- short gray locks of matted hair rolled down the sides of her head, her loose coveralls blown by the wind to bell shape. Even the trees dragged back their branches in fear and the leaves twisted out of her way; Aunt Luiza was like the wolfwind that ripped down the gorge in winter. And when she stumbled over hunting vynes they slithered behind the nearest tree in fright.

Thomas came to a halt so abruptly that Sergeyev almost ran into him. He put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. No one else in the settlement could manage such a deafening whistle.

When the sound died away Oleg realized the others had grown completely still. The forest feared human trampling, human fears and human rage. All that could be heard was Aunt Luiza's heavy breathing.

"Here!" Marianna's voice sounded quite close by. She had hardly shouted enough to be heard from one end of the settlement to the other. They ran on and Oleg heard Dick's voice -- rather his roar -- and the furious barking of a zhakal.

Oleg dashed to one side to be able to shoot around Aunt Luiza, but he was blocked by Sergeyev's naked back; Marianna's father hadn't had time to dress, he had come running at Thomas's call, pulling up his leather trousers.

Marianna stood with her back pressed into the soft white bole of a fat old payn just as in Oleg's premonition; it had begun to cave inward as though it were trying to embrace the girl. But Dick still stood; he had driven back an enormous gray zhakal with his knife. The critter dodged the blow, hissing and twisting. Still another zhakal was writhing on its side on the ground, an arrow sticking out of the fur. And five of the critters sat in a row to one side like an audience. The humans had never been able to explain zhakal behavior. The animals did not fall on their prey in a pack but took turns. If the first failed to take down the prey the second took his place, and so on, until they won, without pity or concern for their own fallen. Sergeyev, when he had dissected one of the animals, had difficulty finding the brain.

The audience of zhakals, as on command, turned their muzzles to the people who had rushed onto the field. Oleg thought for a moment the red points of the zhakals' eyes were sizing him up. Could it be they were all going to attack together? That wasn't in the rules.

The zhakal that had been trying to grab Dick's knife with its teeth suddenly jerked to one side; an arrow poked out from the base of the long neck. Thomas had managed to fire while Oleg was still trying to decide what to do. Dick, as though he had been waiting for this, immediately turned on the remaining zhakals and ran at them with his spear. Alongside him were Sergeyev and Aunt Luiza with the ax and firebrand. Before the zhakals could understand what was happening, two lay sprawled dead in the meadow and the rest turned on their claws, the tips of their scaly flat tails arched to the bare backs of their heads, and vanished into the depths of the forest. No one went after them. Oleg went over to Marianna.

"You okay?"

Marianna was crying. She was clutching the chittering basket to her breast and crying bitterly.

"I was stung by a willowasp," Marianna cried. "Now I'll be marked."

"It's a shame you came so fast," Dick said, wiping blood from his cheek. "I was just beginning to have fun."

"Don't talk like a fool," Aunt Luiza said.

"The third or fourth would have had you for dinner," Sergeyev added.

***

On the way back to the settlement Dick began to shake from the toxins of the zhakal bite. They hurried to Vaitkus's house. Vaitkus himself was sick in bed, but his wife Egli pulled lotions and antidotes for zhakal poison from the medicine box in the corner for him, then washed Marianna's wounds thoroughly and made her lay down and get some sleep. Dick left; the fever had come on him, he felt sick and looked bad, and he did not want other people to see him.

Egli put a bowl of the sugar they obtained from the roots of one of the swamp grasses on the table. Only she and Marianna were able to distinguish the sweet sedge from the usually poisonous variety, and a few of the younger kids who knew by smell which grass was sweet and which bit back. Then Egli poured hot water into the cups, and everyone ladled out himself a spoonful of thick gray sugary gelatin. No formalities. Everyone liked visiting the Vaitkuses.

"Nothing too serious?" Thomas asked Egli. "Dick can still go?"

"He's like a cat. He'll heal fast."

"Any doubts?" Sergeyev asked the other man.

"No doubts..." Thomas answered. "No other choice, really. Are you prepared to wait three more years? We'll die out from poverty."

"We won't die out," Vaitkus said from his bed. His beard and a mop of hair on his head covered all his face. All that could be seen was the red nose and the bright points of his eyes. "We're going terminally wild."

"All the same," Thomas said. "If I could get my hands on Daniel Defoe I'd wring his neck! Miserable liar!"

Vaitkus laughed; it sounded more like a cough.

Oleg had heard this conversation before. Now it was all small talk and banter. He'd have preferred to drop by the barn where the Mayor and his students were preparing the dead zhakals' hides, to have a word with the Mayor . Simply speak with him for a while. But then he looked at the bowl with sugar and decided to stay and have some more. He and his mother had finished their sugar ration at home the week before. He started to draw the spoon through the bowl but took only half a spoonful. Well, he hadn't come here to have dinner.

"Drink this, Marianna," Egli said. "You're tired."

"Thank you," Marianna said. "I'll go let the muzhrumes soak first, then I'll get some sleep."

Oleg looked Marianna over, as though he was seeing her for the first time, the spoon hung idly over the bowl. Marianna's lips were drawn precisely, a little darker at the edges, very remarkable lips, unlike anyone else's in the settlement. Although she did look a little like Sergeyev. Quite a lot. Of course she also resembled her mother, but Oleg didn't remember the woman. And maybe she looked like her grandfather as well? A remarkable thing, genetics. The Mayor had conducted an experiment for the students with peas in the hothouse pit behind the barn, Marianna's domain. Well, not with real peas, but with a local plant that could pass for a lentil. Everything had agreed with theory, but with some differences, Different rules for assortment of the chromosomes, evidently. Marianna had a triangular face, wide cheekbones and forehead, and a sharp chin, so there were a lot of spaces for eyes to rest on her face, and Oleg's eyes occupied all the free spaces. And a very long neck, with a long red scar she'd had since childhood on one side.

Marianna was used to it, and she'd survive the willowwasps. And it hardly mattered if someone had marks on their face or not, did it? Everyone had them. And instead of a necklace of pearls around her neck Marianna had a string with a wooden flask of antidote, like everyone else in the settlement.

"You should reconsider; this little jaunt might end tragically," Sergeyev said.

"If I thought that I wouldn't have anything to do with it," Thomas said.

Vaitkus began to laugh again, a gurgle that started from somewhere in the middle of his beard.

"Fellows, Dick and Oleg are the hope of our colony, its future. Thomas, you are one of our four last men."

"Amen to that," Luiza said in her basso voice and began to blow loudly into her cup to cool the boiled water.

"You haven't convinced me," Thomas said. "But if you're so much afraid, let Marianna stay here."

"I'm afraid for my daughter, yes. But we're talking about more important things."

"I'll go soak the muzhrumes," Marianna said and got easily to her feet.

"Skin and bones." Aunt Luiza looked after her.

Walking past her father, Marianna ran the ends of her fingers along his shoulders. He lifted a three fingered hand to touch the back of his daughter's palm but she had already taken her hand away and quickly headed for the door. The door opened, letting in the rain's gentle droning, and closed loudly behind the girl. Oleg had almost darted after Marianna, but stopped himself. Somehow he felt uncomfortable.

One of Vaitkus's sons toddled out of the second room. How old was he now? The first boy had been born in the spring, and the other not long ago, when the snow fell. That meant half a year. In all Vaitkus had six children. The world record.

"Sug-gaa.," The child said angrily.

"I'll show you sugar!" Egli said in exasperation. "You want your teeth to ache. Like mine? And who said you could walk barefoot? Did I?"

She picked up the boy and carried him out of the room.

Oleg saw that he had forgotten himself and begun to spoon sugar from the bowl again. In anger he poured the spoon full back. Then he wiped the empty spoon with his tongue.

"Let me pour you some more hot water," Aunt Luiza said. "I keep worrying about our children. They're always so underfed."

"There's nothing more we can do," Egli said, coming back into the room. After her came the deep-throated wailing of a Vaitkus-fils. "We can go muzhrume hunting now. They have vitamins. Worse with proteins...."

"We'll be going now," Aunt Luiza said. "You look quite worn out."

"You know why." Egli tried for a smile, but the smile became a grimace; the thought was painful.

A month ago Egli had given birth to another child, a stillborn daughter. The Mayor said that she was too old to give birth now. And her body was exhausted. But she thought it her duty. "The species has to continue. Don't you understand?" Oleg understood, although talk about such things was unpleasant, because for some reason it was as though they weren't supposed to talk about such things.

"Thanks for the hospitality," Aunt Luiza said.

"How you manage to put on weight I can't understand," Thomas said, watching Aunt Luiza's enormous bulk moving toward the door.

"Not from living the good life, I can tell you," Luiza said without turning. At the door way she stopped and said to Oleg: "With all the commotion you forgot to stop in at Kristina's. They're waiting for you. Naughty."

Of course. Damn! He should have dropped by more than an hour ago.

Oleg got to his feet.

"I'll go now."

"Well, it has to be done. I can do it, for discipline," Aunt Luiza said. "I'll drop by to see her myself. I'll go after I feed my own pack."

"You don't have to."

Oleg jumped off the house platform into the street after Aunt Luiza and immediately remembered he had forgotten to thank Egli for the hot water and sugar; everthing had become awkward.

The two walked together; it wasn't very far. The whole settlement could be circumnavigated in about five minutes along the fence perimeter.

Two lines of houses sitting on stilts, under slanting lean-to roofs, huddled together, clutched at each other on either side of a straight swath of mud that cut the settlement in half from the gates in the palisade fence to the common barn and warehouse. Roofs covered with the long flat reddish leaves of water tulips glistened in the rain, puddles everywhere reflected the ever cloudy sky. Four houses on one side, six on the other. Of course after last year's epidemic, three stood empty.

Kristina's house was the next to last, with only Dick's beyond. Aunt Luiza lived opposite.

"Aren't you afraid to be going?" Aunt Luiza asked.

"It has to be done," Oleg answered.

"A true answer, worthy sir." For some reason Aunt Luiza started to laugh.

"Will Sergeyev let Marianna go?" Oleg asked.

"Your Marianna will be going," Luiza said. "She'll be going."

"Nothing's going to happen to us," Oleg said. "Four people. All armed. It's not our first time in the forest."

"In the forest, no," Luiza agreed. "But when you get to the mountains it will be totally different."

They stopped in the road between her house and Kristina's. Luiza's door had already been opened and they could see the boy Louisa had adopted, Kazik, waiting.

"The mountains are horrible," Luiza said. "I'll remember how we trudged through them the rest of my life. People died as you watched and you could do nothing..... When we got up in the morning... some people were frozen to the ground."

"It's summer now," Oleg said. "No snow."

"Don't delude yourself. There's always snow in the mountains."

"If we can't make it there, we'll come back," Oleg said.

"Just make sure you do."

Luiza headed for her own door. Kazik ran out to meet her. Oleg turned to Kristina's door.

Kristina's house was stuffy, there was a bitter smell in the air. The mold had covered the insides like wallpaper; although the mold was yellow and orange it did nothing to brighten the room; - there was never any light.

"Hello," Oleg said, holding the door open to see who was where in the dark. "You're not sleeping?"

"Oh, someone's come," Kristina said. "I thought you wouldn't, guessed you'd forgotten. What with preparing to go into the mountains why should you remember me?"

"Don't listen to her, Oleg." A small voice said almost in a whisper. That was Liz. "She's always grumbling. She grumbles at me. You get sick of it."

Oleg found a stool, groped for it with his hands and sought the candle; he pulled iron and flint from his belt pouch.

"Why are you sitting in the darkness?" He asked.

"The lamp's out of oil," Liz said.

"But where's the can?"

"We have no oil," Kristina said. "Who needs two helpless women like us? Who'd bring us oil?"

"There's oil on the shelf to your right," Liz said. "When are you leaving?"

"After lunch," Oleg said. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay. Just weak."

"Egli said that you'll be able to get up in two or three days. If you want we can take you over to Luiza's."

"I won't leave mama," Liz said.

"Fine," Kristina said. "Get her away from here. Why should she die with me?"

Kristina was not Liz's mother, but they had always lived together. When they had arrived at the settlement Liz was less than a year old, the youngest of the children. Her mother had frozen to death in the mountain pass and her father hadn't even made it that far. Kristina had carried Liz through those days. That was when she had been strong and brave. When she had eyes.

And the two of them had stayed together. Then Kristina went blind. It had been the willowwasps -- at the time they hadn't known what to do. So now she sat. She rarely left her house. Only in summer. If it wasn't raining. Everyone else was used to the constant rain and didn't even notice it, but not her. If it rained she wouldn't leave the house for anything; if it was dry she would sit on the porch, guess who the passers-by were from the way they walked, and complain.

The Mayor said that Kristina wasn't entirely normal any more. Once upon a time she had been a famous astrophysicist. Liz once staid to Oleg: "Try to imagine being in her position; her life was looking at the stars, and then found herself in a forest where there weren't any stars, and then she went completely blind as well. You can't understand her."

Oleg looked around and found the jar of grease on the shelf. It wasn't empty yet. He poured some in the lamp, and lit it. Immediately the room became bright. He could see the wide bed on which Kristina and Liz huddled together under skins. Oleg was always surprised at how similar the two were; it was hard to believe they weren't even related. Both had pale white skin and yellow hair, with wide squarish faces and small lips. Liz had green eyes. Kristina's eyes were closed, but the Mayor and his mother said they had once been green as well.

"There's enough oil to last the week," Oleg said. "Then the Mayor will bring more. You don't have to ration it. Why sit in the dark?"

"I'm sorry I got sick," Liz said. "I wanted to go with you."

"You'll go next year."

"You mean in three years?"

"In a year."

"After this year means after three of our years. I have weak lungs."

"It's a long time 'til winter. You'll get better."

Oleg understood that this girl with the wide face was not talking about what awaited him. When she spoke of going with him she didn't mean into the mountains. She wanted Oleg to remain with her always. She was afraid. She was completely alone. Oleg tried to be polite but he didn't always succeed. Liz was a pest -- her eyes were always asking for something.

Kristina got up off the bed, picked up her stick and walked over to the hearth. She was able to do everything for herself but preferred that her neighbors help her.

"...go out of my minds," The woman mumbled. "I was someone. I used to do real work. And men would turn their heads when I walked by. Now I have to live in this stye and everyone's abandoned me... damned by fate...."

"Oleg," Liz said. She rose half way on her elbows revealing a breast that had grown large and white since the end of winter. Oleg turned away. "Oleg, don't go. You won't return. I know you won't return. I have a premonition..."

"Can I bring you some water?" Oleg asked quickly.

"We have some," Liz said. "You just don't want to hear me out. Just for once in your life!"

"I'd better get going."

"Yes," She said bitterly.

Her words reached him at the door:

"Oleg, would you look for cold medicines there? For Kristina. You won't forget?"

"I won't forget."

"You will," Kristina said. "There'll be nothing surprising at all about that."

"Oleg!"

"What is it?"

"You haven't said good-bye to me."

"Au revoir."

***

The Mayor was washing himself over the basin in the kitchen.

"The critters you killed weren't fully grown," He said. "The coats are poor quality, summer coats."

"That was Dick and Sergeyev."

"Are you angry? Were you with Kristina?"

"They're all right. Just bring them some grease. And they're out of bowtatoes too."

"Don't get upset. Come into my room. We can finally have our talk."

"Just don't take too long." Oleg's mother called from behind the partition.

The Mayor grinned sourly. Oleg held the rag so the old man could wipe his left hand more easily. The Mayor had lost the right hand fifteen years ago when they had made the first attempt to go back across the mountain pass.

Oleg went into the Mayor's room, sat down at the table polished by the students' elbows and pushed the home-made bacus to one side, the counters made from dried nuts rattling in their grooves. How many times had he sat at this table? Several thousand, certainly. Nearly everything he knew, he had learned at this table.

"For me the worst thing is sending you," The old man said, sitting down opposite him in his teacher's seat. "I thought that in a few years you will take my place teaching the children."

"I'll be back," Oleg said. He thought: What's Marianna doing now? She must have finished soaking the muzhrumes already, then she has to go through the herbarium and select what she'll be taking along. Is she getting ready? Is she talking to her father?

"Are you listening to me."

"Yes, certainly, teacher."

"But at the same time it was I who insisted they take you with them up to the mountain pass. In fact you're more necessary than Dick or Marianna. You can be my eyes and my hands."

The old man raised the one hand and looked it over with interest, as though no one was looking. And was lost in thought. Oleg said nothing, his eyes roaming the rest of the room. The old man sometimes fell silent like that, unexpectedly, for a minute or two. Everyone had some weakness of his own. The fire from the lamp illuminated the polished little pocket microscope on the wall. It had once been part of a much larger portable medical lab, but everything else had been lost; it didn't even have a real lens any more. A thousand times Sergeyev had told the Mayor the empty tube was just a great luxury. "Let me bring it to the workshop, Borya. I can get you two knives from it.." But the Mayor never surrendered it.

"Sorry," The old man said. He blinked his gray eyes twice, stroked the carefully trimmed white beard that caused Aunt Luiza to call him 'Mister Fashionplate.'

"I've been doing some thinking. You know about what? Back in the history of Earth there were a number of cases -- groups of people cut off from the general current of civilization by accident or disaster. And here we're in a position to carry out a qualitative analysis..."

The old man fell silent again and pursed his lips, lost in his own thoughts again. Oleg was used to this. He liked sitting next to the old man, simply saying nothing, and it seemed to him that the knowledge of the old man was so great that the air of the room was simply filled with it.

"Well, naturally one should study temporal diapason. Diapason -- it's a concord of notes, and by extension of that meaning a range of possibilities effected over time. remember?"

The old man always explained the words which his students hadn't encountered before.

"To regress a single individual to barbarism all you need is a few years. It's because man is born tabula rasa. a blank sheet of paper. It's known that children who fell among wolves or tigers at an early age -- they used to tell such tales in India and Africa -- after a number of years were hopelessly behind their contemporaries in linguistic skills. They remained feral. A feral person is..."

"I remember."

"Yes. Hmn.... They were never able live among other people afterwards. They even walked on all fours."

"What if they were adults."

"The wolves didn't take in adults."

"And on desert islands? Like Tasmania and...."

"That depended on the circumstances, but people inevitably experienced regression. The degree of regression..."

The old man glanced at Oleg. The later nodded his head -- he knew that word.

"The degree of regression depends on the level which the person had reached at the moment of isolation and on his character. But we cannot pose an historical experiment on a single developed personality. We are talking about the social experience of the group. Is it possible for a group of people under conditions of isolation to maintain the level of culture which held at the moment of separation?"

"Maybe," Oleg said. "There's us."

"You can't," The old man said. "For a child five years is enough to turn him into a savage. For an isolated band, if it doesn't die out, it will take two or three generations. For a large group or a tribe -- several generations. For a nation -- a century maybe. But the process is irreversible. It's been proven by history. For example, the Tasmanian and Australian aborigines..."

Oleg's mother entered the room. Her hair was combed and she had put on her best and only real dress.

"I'll come and sit with you," She said.

"Take a chair, Irina," The old man said. "We were speaking about social progress. Or more precisely, regress."

"I've already heard," Oleg's mother said. "Have you decided how much longer it will take before we walk on all fours? I've already told you -- we'll all be dead before then. Thank God. I've had enough."

"But Oleg hasn't," The old man said. "And my twins haven't."

"It's because of him I'm still living," Oleg's mother said. "So why do you want to send him to certain death?"

"In your point of view death threatens us here every day just because we get up, Ira." He spoke as the tribal Mayor . "The forest out there -- that's death. Winter is death. The spring floods are death. The hurricanes are death. A bee sting is death and a flea-bite is worse than death. There's no way of telling where death will come from or what form it will take."

"It will come whenever it wants and choose whomever it wants," Mother said. "One after the other until no one is left."

"There are more of us now than there were five years ago. Our main problem isn't physical survival, but moral."

"We are fewer! You and I are fewer! You understand. There aren't enough of us left! How will these puppies survive without us?"

"We might," Oleg said. "Would you go off into the forest alone?"

"It would be better to hang ourselves. I fear going out into the street at times."

"But I am going on the climb now. And I'll return. With the hoard."

"We almost didn't save Dick and Marianna today."

"That was an accident. You certainly know that zhakals don't hunt in packs."

"I don't know any such thing! Did they all run off as a pack or not? Did they?"

"Yes."

"That means they hunt in packs."

Oleg couldn't think of a reply. His mother grew silent as well. The Mayor sighed, waited for a pause in the argument and continued his monologue.

"For some reason or other I remembered another bit of history today. It seems like I haven't thought of it for a thousand years, but today I remembered it. Perhaps it was your going and this place...

"It happened in 1530 AD, shortly after the discovery of America. A German ship was hunting whales to the south of Iceland. It was caught by a storm and driven to the north west, into uncharted waters. For some days the ship sailed the waves among icebergs. Icebergs are..."

"It's a mountain of ice in the water. I know," Oleg said.

"Correct. After several days the snow capped mountainous shores of an unknown land appeared. Now they call it Greenland. The ship let down anchor and the sailors went ashore. And you can imagine their surprise when they soon saw a half ruined church and then the remains of stone cabins. In one of the cabins they found the corpse of a red haired man in clothing sewn from sealskins, along with a worn down, rusty knife. And all around them emptiness, cold, snow..."

"Borya, there's no need to frighten the boy," Oleg's mother said. Her fingers nervously rapped on the table. "Pseudohistoric fairy tales...."

"Just a moment. This is no fairy tale. It's been very carefully researched and documented. The dead man was the last of the Vikings. You remember what Vikings were, Oleg?"

"You told us all about Vikings."

"The Vikings were sea rovers. They conquered whole countries like France and England. They settled Iceland, came ashore in America, which they called Vinland, even founded a kingdom of their own in Sicily.

"And they had an important colony in Greenland. There were several settlements with stone houses and churches. Then the Vikings stopped sending their ships out to sea. Their colonies fell to other people or were abandoned. Contact with Greenland came to an end. And at the same time the climate grew worse. The herds of cattle died out, and Greenland's population started to drop. The reason for this was the loss of contact with the rest of the world. The Greenlanders, once heroic seamen, forgot the art of constructing sea-going ships, because they had no trees. Their numbers dwindled. It's known the last marriage in Greenland was celebrated in the middle of the fifteenth century. The descendants of the Vikings became primitives. They were too few to withstand the elements, make progress or even preserve what they had. You can imagine the tragedy -- the last wedding in an entire country?" The Mayor glanced at Oleg's mother.

"Your analogies are less than convincing." Oleg's mother said. "However many the Vikings were, however few, nothing would have saved them."

"But there were alternatives. Had the German ship come thirty years earlier everything might have turned out differently. The Vikings could have sailed to the continent and returned to the human family. Or else once they had re-established contact with other countries, traders might have come, new settlers, perhaps even new tools, knowledge..... Everything would have been different."

"Well, no one is going to sail the seas to us." Oleg's mother said.

"Our salvation will not to be found in adapting to nature." The old man said with certainty. This time he had turned to Oleg. "We need help. Help from the rest of the human race. And that's why I insist that your son go to the mountain pass. We still remember, and our duty is not to break that thread of memory."

"Empty words." Oleg's mother said tiredly. "Shall I pour you more hot water?"

"Pour away." The Mayor said. "Let us indulge ourselves with hot water. We're threatened by loss of our past. The people who remember what we need all the fewer. Some are dying, some others are simply too busy staying alive from day to day. And now we have a new generation. You and Marianna are just the transition stage. You're like a knot uniting us with our future. Have you any idea, any image of what it's going to be like?"

"We're not afraid of the forest." Oleg said. "We know the muzhrumes and the trees, we can hunt on the plains..."

"What I am afraid of is a future ruled by a new type of man, a Dick-the-Hunter; for me he's a symbol of our failure. a symbol of the surrender of mankind in the struggle with nature...."

"Richard is a fine boy." Oleg's mother said from the kitchen. "He hasn't had it easy growing up alone."

"It's not his character I worry about." Boris said. "It's everyone else becoming like him that I fear. When are you going to learn to ignore trifles, Irina?"

"I may ignore trifles or not, but if Dick hadn't killed that baer this winter we'd all have starved to death."

"Dick already thinks of himself as a native here. He stopped coming to class five years ago. I'm not even certain if he remembers the alphabet."

"And why should he?" Oleg's mother asked. "There aren't any books at all and nowhere to write letters to. And no one else."

"Dick knows a lot of songs." Oleg said. "And he composes some himself."

Oleg had become somewhat ashamed that he was so pleased at hearing the old man's displeasure toward Dick he felt he had to defend the other boy.

"We're not talking about the songs. ongs are the dawn of civilization. But for the younger kids Dick has become their idol.

"Dick is the hunter!" The Mayor turned to Oleg's mother. "And for you he is an example. 'Look at Dick. What a good kid.' To the girls he's a knight in shining armor. Haven't you ever seen what sort of eyes he casts at Marianna."

"Let him look. They'll get married. That's good for the settlement."

"Mother!" Oleg couldn't stand it any longer.

"But what?"

As usual his mother had noticed nothing of what was going on around her. She lived in some sort of other world of her own, re-living the past.

"And does a world of Dicks suit you?" The Mayor as ashen. He even slammed his fist on the table. "A world of successful, quick footed savages."

"And what do you offer in its place?"

"This." The old man placed his heavy palm on Oleg's head. "An Oleg-world. Your world and my world, the world you are so willing to toss away, even though there's nothing else to put in its place."

"You're not right, Borya." Oleg's mother said. She went into the kitchen took the pot with the boiling water from the fire and brought it into the other room. "The sugar's all gone."

"Mine too." The old man said. "The roots are almost dried out now, losing their sweetness. Egli says that we'll have to wait another month for more. Have some bread. Can't you see our chances of rebuilding civilization are doomed if a world of Dick the Hunters replaces us."

"I can't, Borya." Mother said. "We should survive. I'm not talking about myself personally but about the settlement. The children. When I look at Dick or Marianna I have hope. You call them wild, and I think that they might be able to adapt. And if they die now, we all die. The risk is too great."

"And you mean to say that I haven't adapted." Oleg asked.

"You have adapted less than the others, yes."

"You're simply afraid for me." Oleg said. "You don't want me to go to the mountains. But I can shoot a cross-bow better than Dick."

"Of course I'm afraid for you. You're my only son. You're all I have left. And with every day you're drifting further and further away from me, going off somewhere, becoming strange."

The old man paced slowly about the room as he usually did when he was displeased with his students. Stooping down he lifted a globe from the stool. He had made it from a giant muzhrume which had grown that winter beside the barn. The Mayor had drawn all the continents and seas of the Earth from memory. The globe had turned pale with time, and in two years it had withered like a round apple.

Oleg saw a small point of reddish fungus on the table Unlike the yellow fungus this was poisonous. He carefully wiped away the spot with his sleeve. It's dumb when your own mother prefers someone else to you. In fact it's a betrayal. A very real betrayal.

"We're going to die, you know." The old man said.

"I know it very well. We've lived long enough." Oleg's mother said.

"All the same we're not forcing the issue, we're clutching onto life as best we can."

"We're cowards." Mother said.

"You've always had Oleg."

"He's the only reason I chose to live."

"You and I are going to die." The old man continued. "But the settlement should live. Otherwise our lives would have no meaning."

"A settlement of hunters will have a better chance of survival."

"The settlement of Olegs will have a better chance of survival in the long run." The old man said. "If Dick and others like him rule our tribe, in a hundred years time no one will know who we were or where we came from. The rule of the strong will triumph, the laws of primitive tribes."

"And they'll be fruitful and multiply." Oleg's mother said. "They'll become many. They'll invent the wheel and, in a few thousand years, the steam engine." Oleg's mother began to laugh. To laugh and cry at the same time.

"You're joking, aren't you?" Oleg asked.

"Irina is right." The old man said. "A struggle for simple survival will lead to hopeless regression. To survive at the price of adapting to nature rather than adapting nature to us means surrender."

"And living." Mother insisted.

"She doesn't think so." Oleg said to the old man.

"No. She doesn't" The old man agreed. "I've known Irina for twenty years now. I know she doesn't think like me."

"In general, I prefer not to think at all anymore." Mother said.

"You're lying." The Mayor said. "We're all thinking about the future, fearing and hoping. Otherwise we stop being people. It is precisely the weight of the knowledge which Dick has chosen not to burden himself with, which will save us, not the simple laws of the forest. For so long as that alternative remains we can still hope."

"And for the sake of this alternative you are send my son to the mountain."

"For the sake of the preservation of knowledge, for your sake and mine. For the sake of the struggle with savagery, isn't that clear?"

"You always were an egoist." Irina said.

"But your blind maternal egoism isn't to be taken into account?"

"Why do you need Oleg? He won't survive the trip. He's too weak."

She should never have said that. She herself understood this and looked at her son, pleading with her eyes.

"I'm not ashamed. Mom." Oleg said. "But I want to go. I want to go more than the others do, maybe. Dick would rather not go at all. The dyr are starting to herd together. The real hunting's on the plains."

"He's needed for the climb." The old man said. "As much as I may disapprove of his power over us in the long term, today his experience, his strength might save us."

"Save us!" Mother tore her eyes from Oleg. "You harp on salvation. How can you deceive yourself? Our people have gone back up to the mountain pass three times. How many returned? With what?"

"That was before we even knew what we were doing. We didn't know the local rules. We went when there was still snow in the pass. Now we know that it only melts at the end of summer. You have to pay for any knowledge."

"If they hadn't died how much better-off would we be? There would even be more hands providing food for the children."

"We'd still be regressing and powerless to stop it. Either we are a part of the human race and guard its knowledge or we're savages."

"You're an idealist, Borya. A bit of bread today is more important than an abstract pineapple."

"You really remember the taste of pineapple?" The old man turned to Oleg and added: "Pineapple is a tropical fruit with a very specific taste."

"I understand." Oleg said. "She's trying to be funny."

Chapter Two

"Paper." The Mayor repeated. "Even a dozen pages."

"You'll have it." Thomas said.

Those who were to depart had gathered by the gate in the fence. The others had come to see them off. They were all pretending the climb was just an ordinary jaunt. As though they were going for roots in the swamp. But everyone knew their farewells could be forever.

Those going on the climb were warmly dressed -- the clothing had been gathered from all over the settlement. Aunt Luiza herself had gone about collecting, taking this piece of clothing in or letting that out to the necessary sizes. Oleg had never before been so warmly dressed. Only Dick carried nothing that was not his own. He had done all his own sewing. The rain had almost stopped, and water-tygers were splashing and squeaking in the puddles around the bases of the trees that formed their palisade. That meant good weather.

Thomas looked over the water-tygers and said:

"The rain's stopping. You'll have to strengthen the fence."

"Don't think about it." Aunt Luiza said. "We'll handle it."

"What are you going to bring back for me, Pa?" Thomas's daughter Ruth asked.

"Don't." His wife Linda said. "Don't even think about that. All that matters is that your father comes home. Bundle up or you'll catch a cold again."

"Coming back from the pass you head to the right." Vaitkus told Thomas again. "Remember?"

"I'll remember." Thomas laughed. "It's like I can see it now. You should be in bed."

Oleg's mother held him by the hand and he was unable to tear the hand away. He felt Dick's eyes on him, smirking. Irina wanted to go with them as far as the cemetery, but Sergeyev wouldn't let her pass through the gate. He let no one else through but the Mayor and Luiza.

A number of times as they walked up the hill Oleg turned to look back. His mother stood there, her hand raised, as though she wanted to wave to them and had forgotten what to say. She was trying not to cry.

Over the gate he could make out the heads of the adults: Mother, Egli, Sergeyev, Vaitkus, and lower down, through the bramble laced chinks in the fence, the dark forms of the children. A tiny column of people, and after them, the sloping reddish roofs of a small cluster of huts glistening in the rain.

Oleg looked back for the last time from the hill. They all still stood by the fence, only some of the smaller children had run off to one side and made for the puddle. From the height of the hill he could see the street -- a rut between the huts. And the door of Kristina's house. A woman was standing in the doorway, but from the hill he could not make out if it was Kristina or Liz. And then he walked further and the top of the hill cut the settlement off from view.

The graveyard was fenced in like the settlement of the living.. Dick looked inside to see if some animal were lurking there before pulling the gate wide. If it was me I'd have forgotten to do that. Oleg thought.

Inside, it was eerie. The graves were weighted down with slates of a soft shale quarried from the nearby cliff. They numbered more than the people in the settlement, although the settlement was all of sixteen years old. Oleg's father wasn't here; he hadn't even made it as far as the mountain pass.

Dick stopped before two individual slabs better kept than the others. His father and mother.

The Mayor pulled his clothing tighter against the cold and damp of the rising wind and slowly walked from grave to grave. He had known them all. Sixteen years ago they had numbered some thirty-six adults and four children. Nine adults and three of those children remained. Three. Dick, Liz, and Oleg. Twelve of the children had been born in the settlement, including Marianna. That meant, seventeen years ago there had been forty people, now there were a little more than twenty. The math was simple. No, not so simple. The graves were more numerous than all the children who had died or perished. The ones who were here.

Into his ear, as though she had listened in on his thoughts, Aunt Luiza said:

"The majority died in the first five years."

"Naturally." The Mayor agreed. "We paid for every bit of knowledge in blood."

Oleg stopped in front of the slabs in the center of the graveyard. The slabs were unkempt, dirty, crooked, the tenacious rusty paws of the moss had started to wind around them and turn them into little round hills.

Oleg wanted to go back, to take one more look at the settlement; he knew that his mother was still standing by the gate hoping to see him again. Oleg even walked a little toward the gates in the fence but then Thomas said:

"It's time to go. It will be getting dark soon, and we have to make it to the cliff."

"Oh!" Marianna said. She was running her fingers nervously along the bag that hung over her shoulder.

"Forget something?" Dick asked.

"No. Maybe. I wanted to take one last look at dad...."

"Let's be going, Marianna." Thomas said. "The sooner we get going the sooner we return."

Oleg saw that Marianna's eyes were full of tears. Anything else and they'd pour down her cheeks.

Marianna trailed after the others. Oleg walked over to her and said:

"I wanted to go back too. Or just take another look from the top of the hill."

They walked side by side and said nothing.

Thirty paces from the fence the wall of underbrush, sticky and crafty, began.

Luiza kissed them all. The Mayor shook their hands. Oleg was the last.

"I'm putting my hopes on you." He said. "More than Thomas. Thomas will look after the interests of the settlement, for today. You have to think about the future. Do you understand me?"

"Pretty well." Oleg said. "Look after mother, make certain she doesn't sit around doing nothing but worry. I'll get you that lab kit."

"Thank you. Return as fast as you can."

Dick used the end of his spear to jerk back the sticky tentacles and entered the underbrush first.

"Stay close behind me." He said. "Before they can react."

Oleg didn't look back. There was no time to look back. If you turned back the branches would stick themselves to your boots, and whether you pulled them off or not you'd stink for three weeks. The underbrush worked at being unpleasant.

***

They made it to the cliffs by evening, just as Thomas had calculated.

The forest stopped some ways off from the cliff wall; the scarlet fangs of rock jutted up from naked valleys covered by circles of lichen. Rags of clouds flew by so low the sharp crags disemboweled them and they scattered to fine mist, lost in the gray overcast. Thomas had told them the cave where he had spent the night the last time was dry and could be reached easily. Everyone, other than Dick, was tired, but if Dick had been tired he wouldn't have admitted it to any of the others anyway. The only sign was that his teeth chattered.

"It was colder the last time." Thomas said. "We figured it would be easier to cross the swamp in the cold. But the mountain pass was closed. I remember we were walking about here and we could hear the frosty ground cracking beneath our feet."

An off-white circular area about twelve meters in diameter lay between the travelers and the cliffs ahead.

"You were here and you could hear he ground cracking beneath you, you say?" Dick asked. He was walking ahead of the others. Abruptly he stopped at the edge of the spot; the surface almost glistened like the bark of a payn.

"In fact, yes." Thomas stopped beside Dick.

Oleg held back. An hour ago he had taken Marianna's bag so she wouldn't be worn out. Marianna hadn't wanted to surrender it, but Thomas said:

"He's right. Tomorrow I'll help you, after that Dick."

"Why are we doing this now?" Dick said. "We're carrying a lot of stuff we don't need in the bags and no one noticed that Marianna can't carry as much as the rest of us. It should have been thought of earlier. Two months we've been getting ready for this and no one thought of it."

Interesting, and who was thinking of it? So you're a thinker as well as everything else. Oleg thought but said nothing.

Even though it was Dick who said it, they did have to carry a lot if they weren't going to worry about food, and he was going to eat. They had taken both preserved meat, roots, and dried muzhrumes, but most of the weight was in the form of dried wood, without which they could neither boil water nor chase away animals.

"You know what this looks like?" Marianna said when she caught up with the men at the border of the white spot.. "The top of a muzhrume. The biggest I've ever seen."

"Could be." Dick said. "Best we walk around it."

"Why?" Asked Oleg. "We'll have to clamber along the rocks at the base of the cliff."

"Why don't I test it, then?" Marianna got down on her knees and pulled out her knife.

"What do you plan to do?" Thomas asked.

"Cut off a small piece. And smell it. If it's one of the edible varieties think how great that would be! It could feed the whole settlement."

"It's not worth cutting." Dick said. "I don't like your muzhrume very much, if it really is one."

But Marianna had already thrust her knife into the edge of the spot. Before she could cut anything off the white spot suddenly distended, convulsed and twitched and then billowed in Marianna's direction, knocking the knife out of her hand.. Dick grabbed the girl and pulled her back with him, and the two of them clattered across the stones. Thomas jumped back after them, his cross-bow raised.

From where he sat on the stones Dick began to laugh.

"To kill it you'd have to fire the arrow from the woods or beyond."

"Well I told you it was a muzhrume." Marianna said. "There was no reason to be afraid, Dick. It smells just like one."

The white spot continued to shudder; ripples, born in the center, moved to the edges like the circles raised in water by a stone. But the center of the muzhrume kept rising and rising, as though it were about to burst. Then dark cracks appeared in the center; the cracks ran to the sides, widened, and from the center emerged the spikes of enormous petals. The petals started to twist back and forth, although no flower appeared.

"That's beautiful." Marianna said. "It's simply beautiful, isn't it?"

"And you wanted to walk on it." Oleg said to Dick in the voice of an older person, although they were the same age.

Thomas threw his cross-bow over his back and bent down to pick up Marianna's knife.

"Researchers in the field find it useful to think first, then conduct their experiments."

"That may have nothing to do with us." Marianna said. "It's simply showing how beautiful it is!"

"So long as nothing is hiding in it." Dick said. "Shall we be going? It's getting dark and we still haven't found the caves. We came especially at this time so we could spend the night safe in a place we knew."

They walked around the white spot across a vast sloping field of scree at the base of the cliffs. From where he stood above it Oleg tried to look down into the core of the flower, butit was too dark. The petals gradually retracted again as the giant muzhrume slowly quieted down.

"What will we call it?" Marianna asked.

"Todestule." Thomas answered.

"Is that some kind of muzhrume?"

"Yes." Thomas wheezed out. "Large and poisonous. A red cap... white spots on red cap."

"Not very similar." Dick said.

"But it sounds pretty." Marianna added.

For a long time now it was Thomas who had the task of bestowing names on the beasts of the fields. The names he chose were familiar, and not always appropriate. Why think of new ones? Just so long as they had similar characteristics. Everyone knew muzhrumes grew in the earth and you could dry them out and preserve them. That meant that orange or blue balls that dug themselves into the ground, but which you could dry, fry and roast and eat if you first de-veined them henceforth bore the name muzhrume. The zhakals roamed in packs, devoured carrion, were cowardly and greedy. It was unimportant that the zhakals here were reptilian. And baers had coats of long, bushy hair and were large... Although here their fur were the sprouts of willowasps, which looked like long strands of greenish hair.

Oleg started to pant while they picked their way across the scree, the stones slipping from beneath his feet. Marianna's back-pack dragged at his hand, his own weighed down his shoulders. Oleg was counting his steps. Where was that damned cave?

The air began to turn blue; the day had been overcast from the beginning and already he was having trouble making out objects ahead. A grey cloud lifted from the earth. It was time to go to ground. Even Dick wouldn't risk the forest at night. They left the darkness to the night prowlers. If you went outside the stockade at night you didn't come back. But here, so far from the settlement... Oleg glanced back; it seemed something was following him. Now, only a cloud. He didn't notice he had quickened his pace until Thomas almost raised his voice.

"Don't run into me. You'll knock me down. Keep a distance."

But despite everything Oleg could not get away from the feeling that something was following him.

Thomas's back vanished -- he had cut in front of Marianna. Now Marianna was walking in front of Oleg. She had a narrow back, narrow even in a warm jacket. Marianna stumbled. She had trouble seeing in the twilight. Egli had called it night blindness. "Night blindness, but not the ordinary kind, rather it's endemic. Endemic means it's a property of the environment, the locality." Oleg found the Mayor 's voice repeating the words in his ears, as though the old man were at his side.

"Do you want to take my hand?" Oleg asked.

They were walking side by side through the swamp in the mist, wallowing in it up to their knees.

"No." Marianna said. "Thanks anyway."

"Stop!" Dick's hollow voice reached them from far ahead. "The caves."

***

They were lucky to find the cave empty; a baer could have been using it or, worse, one of the night wraiths that roamed outside the stockade and sometimes shook at the palisade walls trying to get in. They were drawn to the human settlement and feared it.

Once Marianna had come home dragging a young gote out of the forest on a leash. The gote had a loud and piercing voice, worse than the twins. A green mop of hair hung to the ground, it stamped armor-covered feet and howled.

"It bleats." Vaitkus had said with some pleasure. "I could get used to the voices of domestic animals."

"So we'll call it a gote." Thomas had said.

The gote had lived in the settlement until winter, when night stretched from hesitant dawn to abrupt sundown almost without interruption. It got used to people, ate almost nothing and stuck around the workshop where Sergeyev fashioned furniture and carved plates and bowls all the time, where it was warm and Oleg enjoyed helping Sergeyev. Then one night the wraiths came and carried the gote away. Marianna found a few scraps of green fur beyond the graveyard, but by then it was already spring. She could have been mistaken.

Vaitkus had looked at the remains and said:

"So we'll have to put aside the development of animal husbandry for the future, I guess."

"You mean gotes' milk, more to the point." Egli had added.

The cave had one drawback -- a large entrance. They stretched a tent of sewn fish skins across the space and lit a fire -- the night walkers hated fire. The cave grew warm and Oleg lay flat with pleasure on the smooth stone floor. Marianna lay down beside him.

"I feel exhausted!" Marianna said. "It was terrible."

"Me too." Oleg said quietly. "I kept thinking that something was coming up behind us."

"I'm glad I didn't know that." Marianna said.

Dick untied the bundles of dried sticks. They had brought along the very best, slow burning wood. Thomas opened the bag of dried muzhrumes and reached for the tripod and crosspiece to hold the kettle over the fire.

"Oleg." He said. "Bring me some water."

Oleg had the water in a gourd container. All Thomas had to do was take two steps and grab the water himself. Oleg understood that Thomas was speaking as his teacher. The older man didn't want to have to order Oleg to carry out this or that job. It wasn't as if he hadn't been working -- they had hung the tent and lit the fire together. Next time I won't be too tired to do housekeeping; I did drag Marianna's bag along today.

Naturally Oleg said nothing aloud. He didn't even have a chance to get to his feet. Dick stretched out a long arm and deposited Oleg's bag by Thomas's side.

"Let him rest." Dick said without any feeling beyond indifference. "He's dead tired. He carried two packs today."

"Go lay down." Thomas agreed.

Oleg sat up.

"Is there anything that has to be done?" He asked. "If there's anything you want I can do it."

"Wait a moment, Thomas." Marianna said. "I'll boil the water myself. You don't know how many muzhrumes to put in."

"I had the feeling that something was coming up behind us." Dick said.

"You too?" Oleg asked.

Then they heard heavy steps on the other side of the screened cave entrance. Dick ran for his cross-bow. Thomas leaned toward the fire to grab a log. The clattering animal steps died away and it grew very quiet. They could hear the occasional patter of rain dripping from the cave overhang.

"We got here just in time." Marianna said.

"Quiet."

The shiny curtain of fish hides reflected the dancing fire. It was dead silent.

Dick held the spear over his head and went to the curtain. He carefully edged the corner to one side and looked out.

Oleg looked at Dick's broad tense back and waited. He should have taken a spear as well... No, now the screen and what lay beyond it was Dick's business. The unfairness of the situation was evident to Oleg, but he could console himself that he was there for other reasons. He was here to spot things the others weren't interested in. The Mayor was counting on him....

Marianna kept busy by the fire, going through the muzhrumes and the dried berries. She always cooked them separately and then mixed them together. She was on her knees, the sleeves of her jacket rolled up, her fine hands a mass of cuts and scars. Oleg thought Marianna's hands were beautiful. The scars were nothing: everyone had scars.

Thomas was looking a Marianna's quick hands. He was watching the girl bury herself in religious rites that held no meaning for him, who would always be a stranger here. He noted each scar on her hands -- the price the forest extracted for each quantum of knowledge -- and thought about the gulf which the settlement had dug between him and these teenagers. He watched them delighted now to fall asleep on a stone floor, covered with nothing and not feeling the damp, penetrating cold. Nor did they find the smell of these short legged plants they called muzhrumes without his objections revolting. They knew all the different local smells. Even the children here smelled different. Even his own children. Should his own daughter Ruth ever find herself lost in the in the forest she might die or she might not die, but she certainly would not starve. The forest might be dangerous, insidious, and crafty, but it was theirs. If he, Thomas Hind, was a man in this forest, these kids were fawns, baby rabbits or even better, wolf cubs. They were not the strongest of the local fauna certainly, but they were more cunning than most, and they would survive...

Marianna examined a doubtful muzhrume, gave it a pinch, and threw it away. On the surface it looked just like any other muzhrume....

Again something heavy was moving around outside in the darkness past the cave entrance; it almost touched the half transparent curtain. Damned night stalkers. They make as much of a racket as elephants, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were poisonous... The kids are tired, but Dick looks like he's ready to go chasing shakals in the underbrush. Oleg is weaker. Of course. The kid isn't stupid...

Something touched the curtain, sending the sewn hides to shivering. Their night visitor had evidently had decided to pull it down. Thomas lifted a burning stick and got to the curtain even before Dick. He looked out into the twilight and mist. A dark shadow floated off into the distance, merging with the gray fog as though some jester were trailing behind him a child's balloon....

"I don't know what it is." Thomas said before the kids could ask him. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"We'll have to keep watch all night by the fire." Dick said.

"I'd rather not sleep at all." Oleg said.

"I could use a good pistol now." Thomas said.

"You'll have soup in five minutes." Marianna said. "Tasty soup. Aunt Luiza picked out all the white muzhrumes for us, or she tried."

Far in the distance some things banged and came crashing through the undergrowth. Then they heard the light hammering of numerous feet and bleating. A number of voices.

Marianna jumped to her feet.

"Gotes!"

"Yours got eaten long ago." Dick said. "What's doing the chasing."

"Alleyfants with fangs, and venom." Thomas blurted out unexpectedly.

"What?" Marianna asked in surprise.

Dick began to laugh. "We might as well call them that."

The bleating turned into a shrill cry, like the cry of a child. It cut off abruptly. All was silent but for the hammering of feet.

"I think they have something to do with the giant white muzhrume. I think it releases them." Oleg said.

"What?"

"The poisonous alleyfants."

"Those are evil spirits. Kristina told us all about them." Marianna said.

"There are no such things." Oleg replied.

"Go further into the forest and say that," Disk challenged.

"Quiet, all of you." Thomas told them.

The fleeing gotes were quite close by. After them came their pursuer, moving in soft and infrequent steps.

The people stepped back behind their camp fire, leaving the flames between themselves and the curtain, and the strange and terrifying animals on the other side.

The curtain was jerked to one side. It was torn slantwise, and a green furred animal about the height of a man rushed into the cave; it had a rounded body on four legs, with a bony spine down the back jutting up out of the mat of hair like a chain of sharp hills from a forest.

The animal was shivering rapidly and softly. Small red eyes looked uncomprehending at their doom.

Dick took careful aim with the cross-bow.

"Stop that!" Marianna shouted at him.. "It's just a gote."

"You're right." Dick whispered, not moving from where he stood, not even moving his lips. "It's meat."

But Marianna had already run around the fire and was approaching the gote.

"Wait..." Thomas tried to stop her. Marianna shook his hand away.

"It's my gote." She said.

"Your gote was something's supper long ago." Dick said, but he dropped his hand from the cross-bow's trigger; they already had enough meat. There would be no pleasure in just killing. A hunter should kill only as much as he can carry back.

The gote was terrified. And froze in its tracks. It was obvious that whatever crept around outside was more fearsome than Marianna. Marianna bent down and quickly picked up a tasty white muzhrume from the basket and offered it to the gote. The animal snorted, sniffed, opened its hippopotamus mouth wide and obediently crunched down the gift.

***

Oleg kept the first watch. The gote didn't leave. It huddled in place by the cave wall as though trying to merge with it, kept one eye on Oleg and sniffed noisily from time to time. Then it began to rub its body against the wall.

"You're starting to get fleas." Oleg said. "Stop making a racket or I'll chuck you out."

The gote looked up at Oleg, eyes not blinking. The animal gave the impression it was listening to him and understanding all he said. In fact the animal was listening to what was going on outside.

Staring at the dying fire Oleg found himself dozing off without realizing what was happening. It seemed he was not sleeping but watching the blue sparks and flames twist together in their final dance upward over the burning wood. Then the gote snorted and began to bleat, drumming hooves in terror. Oleg jumped to his feet, not realizing right away where he was, and it was only after a second or two he understood that the gote had left its old spot and had retreated in panic into the depths of the cave and that a gray and pimpled mass like extruded dough was slowly insinuating itself into the cave through the hole in the curtain.

The mass seemed determined, eager, and the gote bleated in desperation, begging to be saved - the animal had evidently decided that the dough had come especially for him.

Oleg reached his hand over the stones but could not find his crossbow nor he could not drag his eyes away from the approaching mass. He was able to think that, even for a night crawler, this the mass of dough was exceptionally ugly. It exuded a stiflingly bitter smell. Then he saw a cross-bow's arrow suddenly appear - impaled half way into the side of the creature, and the mass easily and quickly gathered itself up and pulled back, and vanished; the awning fluttered gently as it pulled the last of its body out through the hole.

Oleg was finally able to move his eyes; his cross-bow lay two centimeters from his outspread fingers. Dick was sitting on his side, alert, awake as though he hadn't laid down to sleep. He put down his cross-bow and said:

"Maybe it wasn't worth shooting. I should have waited."

"Shot what?" Marianna asked, not getting up, but reaching out her hand and stroking the armored hooves of the gote, which had turned to Marianna in terror for comfort, sobbing like a child.

"Oleg froze, and that critter almost got him." Dick said without the desire to upbraid Oleg or shame him, just saying what he was thinking. He always said what he thought. "There was no time to start the fire going again."

"You fell asleep?" Thomas asked Oleg.

Thomas was laying with the bag of dried meat under his head wrapped in his blanket, shivering. He's never gotten really used to the cold. None of the adults have. He'll have the worst trouble of any of us when it becomes really cold. Oleg thought.

"I fell asleep. I didn't even notice it. The gote woke me up."

"Smart of the gote." Marianna said.

"Good for the gote." Dick said, turning onto his side. His palm rested on the cross-bow's gunstock; the wood was intricately carved and polished. He had made it himself. "They'd have eaten us all..." He fell asleep without finishing.

Thomas couldn't sleep. He got up and took Oleg's place on watch. The boy only argued a little before agreeing; his eyes closed almost at once and he slumped exhausted on the cave floor. Thomas clutched the blanket tighter around his shoulders. It would have been better to throw more wood on the fire's embers, but they had to guard and ration out their supply.They didn't have very much, and it would be cold... Thomas remembered the first time they had come across the mountain pass. Fatally, hopelessly cold. Even worse when they went the second time. Of course, only two of them had returned from that second climb -- he and Vaitkus.

Thomas glanced at the kids. Why didn't they feel how bitter and cold it was sleeping on the stone? What sort of changes had occurred in their metabolisms over the years? They were true savages, looking on him -- the old man -- with the native's polite condescension. That's why they frightened Boris so; with each passing year they became better adapted to this world of damp forest and gray clouds. And Boris was both right and wrong. He was right that the transition to savagery was unavoidable. Thomas could see that in his own daughter and the other kids. But what other solution, what other chance of survival did they have? There was the mountain pass, but that was a symbol no one believed in any longer, even if it was impossible to deny.

The gote paced back and forth, clattering on the stones with armored hooves. Dick opened his eyes without moving, listened for a moment, and fell back to sleep. In her sleep Marianna had edged closer to Oleg and placed her head on his shoulder. To be much more comfortable. Far off in the forest something howled; a slowly dying roar transfixed him. Thomas pulled out one of the thicker logs and fed the fire.

***

It grew light at first dawning and a blue mist poured through the hole in the curtain; in the distance, in the forest, the early wakers were greeting the new day. Dick, who had kept the watch on the dying fire and busied himself by shaving down pieces of wood for arrows carefully placed the sticks in his bag and quietly dropped off to sleep, so no one had seen when the gote left the cave. When Marianna awoke she was furious; she ran outside and checked around the base of the cliff wall outside, but she could find no trace of the gote anywhere.

"I hate him." Marianna said when she returned.

"Why, because he didn't thank you?" Oleg asked.

"He'd have been better off with us. Less danger."

"Too bad I didn't shoot him at dawn." Dick said. "I thought about it, but decided it would be better to do it during the day."

"That's rotten." Marianna said. "He did save us during the night."

"That's really irrelevant." Dick said. "Don't you understand? And anyway the gote was just thinking of his own hide."

Oleg picked up the skin bag and set off to search for water.

"Don't forget your spear." Marianna said.

"And don't walk off too far." Thomas added.

"I'm not a baby." Oleg shot back. But he took his spear.

The morning mist had yet to completely dissipate; it still hid out in hollows. The clouds had sunk almost to the level of the ground and in some places collums rose from the pillows of mist to connect the clouds and the land, as though the clouds were stretching out arms to the mist calling it after as they flew past. But the mist wanted to sleep and didn't like flying about the sky. Oleg had thought that he would have agreed to fly off to the south with the clouds in the mist's place, to the great forests, in the direction of the sea, where Sergeyev had gone with Vaitkus and Dick last year. Poznansky had been with them at the time, but hadn't returned. They hadn't been able to get very far and hadn't seen the sea; the forests were too vast, filled with predatory vines, animals and poisonous reptiles, and the warmer it got the more animals there were, all of them dangerous to human beings. But if you could fly with the clouds, then you could sail over the tops of the trees and over the sea like the floaters, which sometimes darted like shadows about the clouds in good weather, but which never come to ground. People could fly, evidently they could fly somewhat faster than the clouds themselves. But in the settlement everyone was forced to begin all over again at the beginning. And that was difficult because there were no tools and no time to make them.

Oleg had dreamed of building an aerial balloon, but for a balloon you needed far too much in the way of fish hides and thread, and no one other than the very youngest and the oldest had wanted to help him.

"In theory, it's not a bad idea." Sergeyev had said then. "In about a hundred years we'll certainly get around to it."

The Mayor had answered:

"In a hundred years we'll all have succeeded in forgetting the very idea. We'll have filled the clouds with invented gods who won't be thrilled at us mortals getting too close to them."

And nothing at all had come of the idea of the balloon.

As Oleg walked downslope toward the sound of flowing water. There would be springs coming out of the cliffs. Then he went onto the stone scree and could see the top of the enormous muzhrume that had opened itself yesterday evening. The white spot had risen during the night and was sticking out of the earth. The cover of mist had flowed off the white circle, and Oleg saw that slowly the petals were once again opening themselves from within the muzhrume, and from the mist on the far side of the little valley a series of spongy, soft looking gray spheres a little darker than the muzhrume rolled triumphantly out of the trees. They came in a line, one after the other, well spaced out. First one, then a second, a third, a fourth... What had their night visitor been? The poisonous alleyfant, a piece of dough?

"The hunters return home." Oleg said in a low voice and suddenly realized the spheres were heading in his direction and moving faster than the uniformity of their movement hinted.

Oleg stumbled backwards on the scree and one after the other the spheres stepped onto the muzhrume's resilient top and headed for the center, to the yawning petals. Then the first sphere, gently pushing the leaves apart, passed inside. A moment later the second followed, then the third. A moment later, as if it was checking that everything was in order in the daytime world, the last. And vanished. And slowly, satisfied, the petals retreated to their position within the center, and the giant muzhrume sank gently into the ground, resuming the appearance of a frozen island.

Oleg started to shiver. An icy wind had sprung out of the west, stinging his face and hands. It was west they were headed. He remembered what was waiting for them. But this wasn't what frightened Oleg; he feared they would fail, they would not best the mountain pass any more now than they had in the past. Dick would be delighted -- he could return to his beloved plains. Marianna would console herself in finding new grasses and muzhrumes. Thomas was used to failure and didn't believe they'd succeed anyway. The would only really disappoint Oleg. And the Mayor .

***

All day they walked through the open moorland, only infrequently encountering thickets of underbrush and no really tall bushes. In these places it was empty and devoid of life, but walking was easy, and they weren't tired yet. Thomas said they had guessed the time correctly. Summer this year was warm; last year at this time the barrenlands had still carried an impassable mantle of snow. Dick was bored, from impatience he vanished off to the side, reappearing after half an hour without any game, disappointed.

The gote was lucky. The animal reappeared during one of Dick's absences. Otherwise, Oleg decided, Dick would have certainly shot it. It was the same gote as the night before. It came blundering out of the underbrush with a crash, causing them meet it with raised cross-bows. But they recognized it from some distance away. A hairy giant, it's spinal comb taller than Oleg, noisily overjoyed it had met up with its friends from the night before again. The gote ran past them, throwing up heavy hind quarters, crashing spinal plates together and bleating deafeningly.

The gote was with them for the journey. He was even delighted when he spotted Dick's return from a kilometer off, and then crawled into the center of their file, not wanting to be either off to one side or the last, and getting underfoot. Oleg thought the gote would trample him with its sharp hooves but the animal proved far more agile than they first thought.

The animal's sense of smell and hearing were remarkable. It could sense the presence of living beings for several kilometers, and toward evening Marianna had already convinced herself there were real thoughts behind the sounds and the gote was telling them a field with tasty muzhrumes lay up ahead, but when they got to it and looked down at their feet they saw it was crawling with hunting vines.

The party stopped for the night some time before it began to grow dark. The real climb upward would begin just ahead of them, and Thomas said they would have to hunt for a particular valley in the morning. The mouth of a stream flowed out of it. Then they would head up the valley, which would then narrow into a gorge. They would be in the valley for no less than two days.

There was no cave or any other cover hereabouts and they slept in the tent, which the gote did not like, and although the there was no danger that night, the gote demanded that they let him inside where it was warm all the same, and in the end he huddled on top of the tent, bleating his disappointment at all of them, but they endured it because the animal would be standing guard for them; it was already clear that if any undesired guest came the gote would raise such a cry he would wake them all.

***

Toward morning Oleg became terribly cold. He hadn't been able to sleep, he felt like he had been plunged into an icy swamp and was unable to extricate himself. Oleg began to shake. Then suddenly he grew warmer and slept more easily. He awoke when the gote decided to find itself a spot higher up on the tent. Oleg pulled up his feet, opened his eyes and saw Thomas had exchanged places with him in the night and now lay on the outside. The older man was white from the cold; he lay with teeth clenched, his eyes closed and pretending to sleep. Oleg felt ashamed. Even back in the village they had decided Thomas would have to be looked after when it became really cold. The old man'slungs were weak and he had difficulty standing the frosts. The children would have an easier time of it. They were healthy and adapted to the cold.

"Thomas." Oleg spoke in a low voice. "I've warmed up. Let's change places."

"No, don't." Thomas whispered, but his lips hardly moved.

Oleg crawled over him. The fish hide tent passed the cold through to its occupants and that night all of them had slept under blankets, even Dick who boasted that he could sleep in the snow.

"Thanks." Thomas said. The man's body shuddered.

The gote had realized the humans within the tent had awakened and got to its feet. It stamped around in a circle, calling them out with its bleating, evidently having gotten enough sleep. Dick threw his own blanket over Thomas and crawled quickly outside.

"Hey!" Dick shouted from outside. "Get a move on. Come on, look; it's great!"

Oleg forced himself to crawl out after Dick.

Snow had fallen during the night, covering the valley ahead of them. It sparkled white and clean, brighter than the clouds which, in contrast, appeared quite violet. The gote stood a short distance off shaking icicles from its fur. The white curve of the valley rested against the sharp incline of the tableland. The bushes growing along the slope were slowly shaking their branches, filling the air around them with clouds of snow.

Their firewood was going faster than they had expected back in the settlement. That disturbed Dick, but he only told this to Oleg in a low voice when they had walked a short distance from the dirty little hill that was their tent.

"We shouldn't have taken Thomas along." He said. "He's getting sick."

"It would be harder to make it through the pass without him." Oleg said.

"It'll be even harder with him." Dick said, and fired a crossbow bolt at a dark niche on the cliff face. Oleg had seen nothing there, but snow exploded from the niche and a ribbit flew out in enormous leaps, its proboscis tossed over its back, speeding away. Dark drops of blood marked its trail.

"I'm going to pick it up." Dick said. His opinion remained unchanged.

It was difficult to argue with Dick; when he was convinced of something he didn't argue. He just left. And Oleg only found reasonable words afterwards, and left Dick unanswered even if he was wrong.

And how are we supposed to get there without Thomas? Oleg found himself continuing the argument with Dick in his mind. It isn't just we don't have a road, it's what we're going to find when we get there. We've never even seen a bicycle, so how are we to know one from a steam engine? Dick thinks he knows everything that's of use to any man in the settlement or in the forest. Maybe he's afraid of finding himself in another world,where he's not the strongest, where he's not the fastest?

Marianna had lit the fire. The gote was already seen flame before, decided that he had nothing to fear from it, and had edged up to the campfire. Marianna shouted to Oleg to drag the damned animal away. Dragging an adult gote anywhere was nearly impossible, but Oleg tried. He struck at the gote with the handle of his knife until he grew tired, but the animal evidently decided Oleg was caressing it and squealed with pleasure.

Thomas was running around in the snow to warm himself; he was wrapped in the blanket and stooped, and looked to Oleg like a wizened old man, although the boy knew Thomas was only forty. Egli had once mentioned that the processes of aging were faster in the settlement. Aunt Luiza had retorted that, on their diet, all of them should have kicked off long ago. Everyone had diarrhea and indigestion most of the time, as well as allergies; the older generations's kidneys simply couldn't cope. It was true the children were comparatively healthy. The settlement was just plain lucky the majority of local microfauna hadn't adapted to the human metabolism. "At least not yet." She added.

"It's too bad we're not in the swamp." Marianna said. "I could have found the grasses he needs, I know which ones."

"Why didn't you pick them earlier?" Oleg asked. Marianna could tell the different grasses apart better than anyone else in the village.

"Don't be silly." Marianna was surprised. "You have to eat them right away, while they're fresh. How could you preserve them?" She always thought it strange that other people didn't know what she knew.

"Oleg." Thomas called. "Come over here."

Thomas had lowered himself down on the tent; there was more pain than usual in his face.

"My back's hurting again." He said. "Lumbago."

"Then I'll massage you." Marianna said.

"Thanks, but it doesn't help." Thomas laughed. He looked like the crow they'd seen drawn in the Mayor 's biology lessons. A dark bird with an enormous sharp beak. "Listen, you remember where I've put the map? If anything happens to me."

"Nothing is going to happen." Oleg said. "We're all going there together."

"And we're not going to take any risks. Are you certain you've familiarized yourself with the map?"

The map was drawn on a piece of paper -- the settlement's greatest treasure. Oleg had always felt a special awe toward it. Paper, even blank sheets, was a magical force connected with knowledge. It had been created to express knowledge. Paper was, as it were, an aspect of divinity.

Thomas spent some time coughing, then made Oleg point out the road to the mountain pass on the map. The route was familiar, they had already taken it in thought with Vaitkus and the Mayor. The reality was different. It was impossible to feel the essence of the journey, the cold and the desperation, at home in the settlement where it was warm, comfortable, where the lamps were burning and rain drummed against the other side of the wall....

Dick brought back the rabbit. For some reason the lifeless meat frightened the gote and it bounded off up the slope and stood there, sadly shaking its head.

"It can sense what's in store for it." Dick said. He threw the rabbit down. "Let's eat now, it's better to go on full stomachs. And it will be better for Thomas. It would be even more useful if he'd drink the warm blood; I always do that when I'm out hunting. Go on, try some, Thomas!"

Thomas shook his head. No.

"What are you doing? Going over the map again?" Dick asked.

"Thomas asked us to practice in the event for some reason he doesn't continue..."

"Idiots." Dick squatted down and began to skin the carcass. "You can still walk. And if it gets bad we'll go back."

Oleg realized that Dick didn't want to embarrass Thomas. Dick had thought Thomas wouldn't make it from the beginning.

"It's nothing." Thomas said; not showing his displeasure at Dick's casual tone. "It's better if we have some insurance."

While they were drinking tea made from a local root the gote padded closer to the fire on the side away from where Dick had tossed the rabbit's skin, as though it were shielded from the pelt by the fire and the tent. He hooted loudly and Marianna threw him some dried muzhrumes.

"Now that's too much." Dick said. "We need the muzhrumes ourselves. It might turn out we won't be able to find anything. How'll we get back?"

"There is food there, on the other side of the pass." Thomas said.

"We don't know that it is still there." Dick answered. "It's stupid to starve to death. And we have to eat a lot to keep going in this cold."

"If it comes to that we can eat the gote." Oleg said.

"What do you mean 'If?'" Dick asked. "Of course we'll eat him. And soon. Before he runs off."

"Don't even think of it." Marianna said. "Don't."

"Why?" Dick was surprised.

"Because he'll return with us to the settlement and live there. It's time we had our own animals."

"I can bring you a thousand gotes like him." Dick said.

"Wrong. You're just bragging. You couldn't. At least not alive. There aren't that many of them in the forest, and if it wasn't willing you couldn't lead it anywhere."

"I'll take you along and you can talk to the animals." Dick said and began to cut the ribbit into equal portions for each of them.

"I'm not going to let you kill it." Marianna said. "He's going to have little ones."

"Who?" Oleg asked.

"The gote." Marianna said. "The she-gote."

"You mean it's a 'nanny'?" Thomas asked.

"Yes. She-gote. Nanny. I know."

"If Marianna is right, then let the she-gote live." Thomas said. "It's a very useful thing to think there's going to be a tomorrow."

"And even better to know you're not going to die today." Dick said.

"We can feed the gote enough to keep it going with us." Marianna said.

"I don't think so." Dick said.

"I'll give it my own." Marianna looked straight at Dick, her chin pointed forward. Dick tilted his head, examining Marianna as if she were some animal he'd never encountered before.

Thomas got to his feet first and started to fold the tent. He was shaking.

"Don't you think you should go back?" Dick asked him.

"It's too late." Thomas said. "I'm going on."

"Think what you're saying!" Marianna flared up at Dick. "Thomas can't go back to the settlement alone.

"Oleg could return with him." Dick said to have the last word.

"It's time to move on." Thomas said. "If it all goes well we should make it up to the tablelands today. The last time we got bogged down in this gorge. The snow was up to our belts and we had a blizzard."

Thomas walked ahead along the wide stream bed. Only a trickle was flowing down now, just enough to break off the flatpieces of ice that had grown along the shore during the night.

At first the gote rushed forward as though it were showing them the road, but then thought better of it and stopped. Dick threatened it with his hand, but then the gote honked and plodded after the people, although at times it stopped and howled disconsolately, cautioning them to head back.

The air grew a little warmer; the snow under their feet turned to water and the ground to slippery mud. Over the course of the day they had to cross the stream flowing down the valley, jumping from bank to bank a dozen times, and everyone's feet became battered and sore.

***

All the next day the tiny valley through which the stream flowed closed in on them, the dark stone walls angled upwards and drew close, covering the stream in constant shadow. The noise intensified the gloom, it reverberated from wall to wall, growing louder. Other than Thomas none of them had ever been in the mountains; even Dick lost his eternal self-assuredness; he stopped leaving the party to forge ahead. Dick looked upwards constantly, as though he feared falling stones, and he kept asking Thomas:

"Soon now? Will we be out soon?"

"By evening." Thomas answered.

Thomas, like the others, had grown warmer; he was even sweating from the exertion. The coughing had stopped and he was walking faster than yesterday. He only clutched his side in pain occasionally.

"Do you recognize where we are?" Marianna asked.

She had been walking behind them, urging the gote on. The animal had long since grown tired of the journey and was often stopping and looking backwards, as though begging Marianna to let her go back to the open spaces of the forest.

"Like I told you, the last time we didn't make it this far in." Thomas answered. "But when we were coming from the mountain pass fifteen years ago there was snow here, the days were short, and we hardly had time to look around. At the time we had hopes.. That was the first time we'd even begun to hope... But we were exhausted. The trip from here to where the settlement is now took more than a week at the time, what with the state we were in."

Dick, waking ahead, suddenly froze. He lifted his hand.

Everyone stopped. Even the gote, as though it understood his order.

With his crossbow at the ready Dick slowly walked ahead. He bent down.

"Look at this!" Dick shouted. "They really were through here."

Behind a large boulder, shining dully and reflecting in the coppery river, lay something wonderful. It was made of white metal and resembled a flattened sphere with a white excrescence on top. Attached to it was a cord so that it could be carried over the shoulder.

Dick lifted the object and said: "A rock fell on you here, right?"

"No. No stone. Nothing like that." Thomas said and went over to Dick, taking the thing from his hands. "We called a halt here and someone... Vaitkus! This is Vaitkus's flask. He'll be delighted when we bring it back to him!"

"It's called a 'flask'?" Marianna asked.

Thomas shook the thing in the air and they all heard water swishing around inside it.

"Useful item." Dick commented.

"They're made flat deliberately." Thomas explained, carefully unscrewing the stopper. "To make it easier to carry on your side."

"Wonderful." Marianna said.

"I could use it hunting." Dick said. "Vaitkus doesn't need it; he's sick all the time."

Thomas brought the flask to his nose and sniffed,

"Damnation!" He said. "I must be mad!"

"What's happening?" Oleg asked. He wanted to hold the flask.

"Kids, this stuff's cognac! Have you any idea what cognac is?"

The gote had walked a short distance away and began to bleat in surprise, calling them.

Oleg walked over to her. In the hollow behind the a pile of water washed stones lay a pile of metal cans and small pans - he'd never seen such a treasure hoard before in his life.

"Thomas!" He called. "Look. Here's something else you forgot!"

"Not forgot." Thomas said. "You must understand, at the time we knew that we were going into the forest and ate here for the last time. These are cans, containers for prepared and preserved foods do you understand? These are cans we didn't need any more."

"Didn't need?"

"So it seemed to us at the time." Thomas brought the flask to his nose and sniffed again. "I'm out of my mind. I must be. I'm dreaming."

"That means it's true." Dick said. "You did come through here. I always thought that you didn't -- I thought the settlement just always was here."

"You know, sometimes I think the same thing myself." Thomas laughed.

He drank out of the flask, a single mouthful, and closed his eyes tightly.

"I'll live." He said. He began coughing, but he didn't stop laughing.

Marianna had gathered the empty cans and was packing them in a bag. The gote was honking and groaning. She didn't like the cans. They were strange.

"You don't want to carry them." Thomas began to smile. "Really you don't. If you really need them you can get thousands of them. Understand?"

"I don't know." Marianna said soberly. "But if we don't find anything else, we can always put these to good use. We won't be returning empty handed. Father can do a lot with these cans."

"Then pick them up on our return." Oleg said. He was beginning to want to try the cognac which had so enlivened Thomas.

"What if someone takes them?" Marianna asked.

"Who?" Thomas shot back. "No one's taken them in the last sixteen years. The gotes don't need cans."

But Marianna gathered up all the cans, even the ones with holes.

Dick said:

"Let me try it, Thomas. What's in the flask?"

"You wouldn't like it." Thomas said. "Children and wild men don't like cognac."

But he handed Dick the flask.

I always have to ask. Oleg thought. I always just think about doing something, and Dick's already gone ahead and taken it.

"Just be careful." Thomas said. "Just one small sip."

"Don't worry." Dick said. "If you can do it, I can do more. I am stronger than you are."

Thomas said nothing. Oleg thought the older man was laughing.

Dick upended the flask and swallowed a mouthful. Evidently, this cognac was very bitter; he threw the flask away and began to cough terribly, clutching at his throat. Thomas just managed to catch the flask without spilling any of the contents.

"I did tell you." Thomas said, wasting no sympathy.

Marianna ran over to the red faced Dick.

"Everything's burning...." Dick sputtered.

"Why did you do that?" Marianna was angry at Thomas. She began to dig around in her bag. Oleg knew she was hunting an ointment for burns.

"It will pass in a minute." Thomas said, "You really are a wild man, Dick. You should approach an unknown liquid as if it might be a poison, first with the tongue...."

Dick waved him off angrily.

I did." He said. "You drank it first!"

Dick had been utterly humiliated. He couldn't stand it.

"Here." Marianna said. "Chew on this herb. It'll help."

"I don't need it." Dick said.

"It will all pass." Thomas said. "He should be feeling warmer already."

"No." Dick said. "You lied."

"Do you still have the desire to warm yourselves?" Thomas asked. "No, my brave tribespeople? By the way, the Indians -- the North American ones -- did call this 'fire water.'"

"And then they ruined themselves and sold their land to the white colonists for trinkets." Oleg remembered the history lessons.

"Precisely. Only those potables were of, ah, somewhat greater strength."

Thomas hung the flask over his shoulder. Dick looked at it with envy. He wanted to pour the damned cognac out and fill it with water.

They stretched out over the stones to take a rest. Marianna gave them each a handful of the dried muzhrumes and a slice of dried meat each. She gave muzhrumes to the gote as well. Dick scowled but said nothing. The gote crunched the muzhrumes almost delicately, then looked at Marianna hoping for more. The gote was having trouble finding food so high above the living forest. She was hungry.

"Was all your food in these cans?" Oleg asked.

"No just cans." Thomas sighed. "Our food was in plastic bags and boxes. Containers, bottles, tubes, bulbs and lots of other things. Let me tell you friends, there was a lot of food. And there were even cigarettes, something I also dream about a lot."

And suddenly Oleg understood that finding the flask, the preserved food cans, the remains of the camp had produced an effect not only on him or Dick. Even more, it had changed Thomas. It was as though the older man hadn't really believed that they had eaten out of shining cans and drunk cognac out of flasks on the other side of the mountain pass himself before now. And this strange world, a world Oleg desired and Dick found unnecessary, had cast Thomas out.

"Let's get going." Thomas said and got to his feet. "Now I nearly believe that we'll get there, although the most difficult part of the journey lies ahead."

They went on. Marianna stayed closer to Dick, she was worried that he felt bad. Marianna felt sorry for him. She'll feel sorry for anything. Oleg felt jealous. It was perfectly evident that Dick was healthy, although his eyes were watery and he talked louder than usual.

"It's a door." Thomas said. He was walking close to Oleg. "It's a door I've stepped through and my memories begin here. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Oleg said

"Before this it was something I could only dream about." Thomas continued. "And I completely forgot about this halt. Your mother was carrying you in her arms. She was totally exhausted but she wouldn't give you up to anyone else. And you were silent. Dick was bawling. That was normal; he was tired and hungry. But you were silent. Egli kept hovering around your mother; the two of them were really both still girls, about twenty five years old, and they'd been friends before... Egli wanted to see if you were alive or not, but your mother wouldn't hand you over. She had nothing left to live for, only you."

Thomas suddenly began to cough, he doubled over, leaning his arm against the stone cliff face and Oleg noticed how yellow and thin his fingers were. Dick and Marianna had already run forward and vanished around the bend.

"Let me carry your pack." Oleg said.

"No. It'll pass. I can make it." Thomas laughed guiltily. "After all, I should be leading, setting an example for you kids, but I can hardly carry myself. You know, it seems that if I drink enough cognac everything will be all right. It's nonsense, but that's the way it feels."

"You can still drink the rest..." Oleg said.

"I mustn't. I have a temperature. Just let me make it to the mountain pass. I should be in a hospital getting a good rest and competent treatment, not climbing a mountain."

Two hours later the gorge came to an end. The stream they had been following to its source began as a small waterfall flowing over a short precipice. It was only about two meters high but getting up it proved complicated. Thomas had become so weak they were forced to drag him. They pulled the gote on its rope, and it was a miracle the frightened animal didn't trample someone to death with its armored hooves.

Covered by snow, with occasional patches of bare stone, the tablelands stretched on for many kilometers until the came to nestle against the wall of mountains. It was a strange sensation: for two days they had been ascending through the narrow, twilit gorge, hearing only the water rushing over stones and then, suddenly, around them scowled a vast and merciless plain, the like of which Oleg had never seen before.

Looking back the way they had come the plateau dropped down the endless sharp slope, flowing into a wide, at first stony, valley. Beyond the valley grew the individual points which were bushes and trees, and ever so distant, to the horizon, these points flowed together, thickened into the endless forest. There, four days march distant, was the settlement. From here it was lost in the wilderness.

"It was right here we realized we weren't going to die. Or, at least, not yet." Thomas said. He was still trying to catch his breath. "We had come out of the mountains, those of us who'd been able to walk, crawling some times, dragging the sick and injured. We were freezing. We didn't really believe there was any point in going on. And then, without warning, we came to the edge of the plateau. As you can see the land toward the mountains is flat until it reaches the edge so it wasn't until we got to this point that we knew we had any hope at all. It was snowing of course, a blizzard.... Who was the first? Boris, it seems. Yes, it was Boris. He was walking out ahead of the rest and suddenly stopped. I remember how he just froze, but I was so tired that I didn't understand why. When I reached him he was crying, and his face had gone white. The visibility that day was terrible, but from time to time the curtain of snow parted and we knew that down there, in the valley, were trees. That meant there was life..."

The wind was blowing, fortunately it wasn't very strong. The gote began to jump and frisk about, glad to be done with the narrow valley, throwing up furry hindquarters and leaving deep triangular tracks in the sheet of snow. It stopped beside a barren patch and it began to dig into the frozen earth with the horny ridge on its nose, hooting, groaning and bleating - evidently, it had smelled something edible.

"There's no game here." Dick said, his voice telling them who he blamed. He turned to look at Thomas.

"In about three days if everything goes okay, we'll be there." Thomas said. "Or after the fourth."

"But they said you had to walk for two weeks."

"We walked for thirteen days. It was winter, there were a lot of sick and injured, and now we're traveling light. Remarkable, it's as if it just happened this morning. we stood with Boris and looked down."

They made it to the mountains before dark.

***

At night the air froze. Dick and Oleg put Marianna and Thomas in the middle. Thomas was so exhausted he didn't even argue. He was burning, but there was no way he could get warm, and when he began to lapse into a dry cough Oleg closed his arms around him and Marianna made him drink the mixture she had prepared for the cough. Marianna couldn't sleep; to hurry the night she whispered with Oleg, but Dick, who wanted to sleep, turned over. Then he said:

"We won't be taking any rest stops tomorrow, is that clear?"

"What do you mean?" Oleg asked.

"I'll be making you walk no matter how much you want to sleep."

"Don't worry." Oleg said. "I won't be holding us back."

"It's not you I was thinking of."

Oleg didn't bother to argue. He understood that Dick had Thomas in mind. He thought that Thomas, asleep, had heard nothing. But Thomas had heard, and said:

"I'm not competent to issue a diagnosis. Just my opinion, but I have pneumonia. I'm sorry things turned out this way, friends."

They had worked the tent into a large niche where it was sheltered from the wind and the gote paced alongside, wheezing, then began to paw the earth.

"What's she looking for?" Marianna whispered.

"Snayls." Oleg said. "I saw her find one."

"I thought it was too cold here."

"We can live here. I guess other things can too."

"There's nothing here." Dick said. "Get some sleep."

Thomas began to cough; Marianna made him drink more medicine. They could hear his teeth chatter at the edge of the cup.

"You should have gone back." Dick said.

"Too late." Thomas said. "I'd have never made it to the settlement."

"You're an idiot, Dick." Marianna said. "You've forgotten the law."

"I haven't forgotten anything." Dick spoke up louder. "I know we should look after the sick. I know what my duty is -- better than you do. But they've been pounding into our heads that if he don't reach the mountain pass now, if we don't bring back metal and tools, the settlement will die out. But I don't think so. I don't believe we will. We can get along perfectly well without a lot of things. I can take down a baer with my crossbow from a hundred paces."

That's because you have steel tips on your arrows." Oleg said. "If Sergeyev couldn't forge them how would you take the baer?"

"I can make my points out of stone. It's not a matter of the materials but of skill. Now they've made us come up here, to the mountains..."

"No one's made you come up here; you're here on your own..." Oleg said.

"Yeah. Sure. But you know it could start blowing snow real hard at any moment. And if we drag this out at all we might not make it back."

"So what do you propose to do?" Oleg asked.

Neither Thomas nor Marianna had said a word while the two of them spoke; the others just listened. Even the gote was quiet, listening.

I propose we leave Marianna behind with Thomas. We give them the blankets and food. And just you and me travel light to the mountain pass."

Oleg didn't answer, but he realized he couldn't leave Thomas behind. It would take away the man's reason for living. That would kill him. But what if Dick thought that he was afraid to go ahead just the two of them together?

"Are you scared?" Dick asked.

"Not for myself." Oleg answered finally. "If Thomas becomes sick, he can't defend Marianna. Or Marianna him. What if there are animals? Predators? How will she cope?"

"Marianna, can you cope?" From Dick it wasn't a question, it was a command. Dick felt he had the right to give orders.

"I am going on." Thomas said. "I'll make it, don't worry about me. I have to get there. I've been going there for sixteen years now." Thomas's voice ran hot with his words, as though filled with tears.

"The get some sleep." Dick said after a pause. No one agreed with him, and he had convinced no one of anything either.

But in the morning the argument was moot.

Oleg got up first; his head hurt, his feet were blocks of wood, his back was ice. He pushed his way out of the niche and looked around; on the white snow was a chain of enormous indentations. Oleg couldn't guess what had made the tracks; it looked like someone had come along stamping the snow with gigantic barrels.

Oleg shook Dick awake and the two of them followed along the trail in the direction the tracks seemed to be headed, looking about warily. The trail ended at a sharp precipice -- whatever the animal was, it could climb cliffs.

"What was it?" Oleg asked in a whisper, drawing back from the precipice.

"If we followed it home we could pounce on it." Dick said. "We could catch it there."

"Forget it!" Oleg said. "Even with your cross-bow. You won't get a chance to try on its fur."

"I can try." Dick said.

"Where were you?" Marianna called out when she saw them. She was lighting the fire. "Thomas's temperature has fallen. Great, isn't it?"

"Fine." Oleg said.

They told her about the tracks; Marianna hadn't noticed them. She shrugged. There could be few such animals around in this barren wilderness. Not all could be dangerous. The animals were going about their own business.

"Sit down." Marianna said. "Have some breakfast."

Thomas crawled out of the tent. He was pale and weak. The man held the flask in his hand. He sat next to Oleg, opened the flask, and took a swig.

"I have to get warm." He said hoarsely. "Once upon a time doctors used to prescribe Cahors -- a type of wine -- for the weak and sick."

Marianna reached for her bag. A single muzhrume tumbled out of it.

The bag had been torn open. Chewed open. It was empty.

"Where are the muzhrumes?" Marianna asked Thomas, as though he should have known where they were.

Dick jumped to his feet.

"Where was the bag lying?"

"I was so tired I thought I put it in the tent." Marianna said. "But I must have left it outside."

"Where is that beast?" Dick asked quietly.

"Are you crazy?" Marianna began to shout. "It might not have been the gote."

"Who? Was it me? Or Thomas maybe? What will we eat now?"

"We still have some meat left." Marianna said.

"Show it to me. Or is that gone too?"

"Why would a gote eat meat?"

Dick was right. When Marianna counted the portions the gote had missed two dozen dried strips of meat remained for them.

"This time I'm not joking." Dick picked his cross-bow out of the snow. The gote sensed what threatened her, and jumped back down the slope.

"You won't get away!" Dick said.

"Wait a moment." Oleg said. "Wait, if you have to, you can do it. You can always do it. But Marianna does want to start herding them. You understand important it will be for the settlement. It would mean we'd always have meat."

"It's important for the settlement that we don't die up here." Dick said. "The gote won't get to the settlement if we don't. She doesn't have anything to eat either. She'll run off."

"No, Dick, please." Marianna said. "The gote's going to have little ones, remember?"

"Then we go back." Dick said. "Our trip's over."

"Wait." Thomas said. "The decision's still up to me. If you want, I'll let you go back. I don't doubt that you'll make it. I'm going on. And anyone else who wants to come with me."

"I'm going on." Oleg said. "We can't wait three more years until next summer."

"I'm going too." Marianna said. "And Dick will go on too." She told Oleg and Thomas. "He isn't evil, don't think that. He just wants to do what he thinks is the best for everyone."

"You don't have to explain." Dick said. "I'm going to kill the animal anyway."

"We have food for today." Marianna said. "It will be more useful to take the gote back with us."

"We could even load her, use her as a pack animal." Thomas said.

Thomas swallowed another sip of cognac and swished the flask around. From the sound it was clear very little remained of the fire water.

Marianna busied herself by the camp fire, wishing the water would boil. She still had some sweet roots left, about two handfuls.

"We still have one more day before it's too late to return." Dick turned to the older man. "And that concerns you more than the rest of us, Thomas."

Chapter Three

After two hours' march Oleg was forced to draw the conclusion that Dick had been right all along. They were walking along an empty, snow-covered country without marked paths. The route led upwards, but they would still have to go around a chain of cliffs, work their way along a line of crevices, and cut across glaciers. The cold cut through their furs, their breathing strained. Oleg was used to never being able to eat enough to fill himself, but before now he had never really starved -- the settlement had always managed to have some sort of stores on hand.

But here hunger, having wandered into the neighborhood, quickly became Oleg's constant companion; as soon as it became clear that they had days head of them without food Oleg caught himself looking at the gote with desire, wishing that she'd fall into a crevasse and break her neck and he would have more to eat than his own words -- Ooh well, we'll find another, he hammered the thought in silently. We'll find another.

And, as though he had been listening to Oleg's thoughts, Thomas said:

"It's our good fortune the meat is walking on its own. Otherwise we'd have to carry it."

"Stop."

That had come from Dick's. Dick walked over to the gote, carrying a strong rope woven out of water rushes, and slipped it over the animal's neck. The gote just stood there without making a sound while they tied her up. Then Dick extended the rope's free end to Marianna and said:

"You lead her. I don't want to risk it."

They did make a halt that day. They rested for longer than usual because they were all exhausted, but Thomas was still on his feet even if he was tottering so badly they wanted to support him. The man's face had gone scarlet and his eyes were half closed, but he held himself erect and put one foot in front of another as he trudged straight ahead, towards his mountain pass.

About two hours after they made their stop Thomas started to feel very uneasy.

"Wait a moment." He said. "Unless we've gotten lost there should be a camp around here. I remember those rocks."

Thomas was sitting on top of a boulder. He smoothed the map with his trembling hands and began to trace the outlines in the air with his fingers. Dick said nothing about this; he went ahead a little, hoping to shoot game.

The map had been drawn with ink back when they had still had ink; Oleg remembered the thick paste that had filled the pens. He's seen them, but he'd never written anything with them himself.

"We're here." Thomas pointed. "We're already more than half way there. I hadn't considered that we could go so fast."

"We've had good weather." Oleg said.

"Judging from everything we'll spend the night here." Thomas said. "There should have been tracks, but there aren't."

"It's been so many years..." Oleg said.

"It has." Thomas mumbled. "..a group of cliffs..... three cliffs... no...four. Oh yes, I almost forgot..." The adult turned to Oleg, handing him a small box. "Take this. Don't set foot in the ship without it. You remember?"

"That's... Oh, the radiation detector, isn't it?"

"The radiation counter. You know why we couldn't stop; there was too much radiation there. But the lack of heat made it just as bad... Hard radiation and no heat! Fry and freeze at the same time."

"Perhaps you should get some sleep." Oleg asked. "And then we'll go on...."

"No. We can't stay here. That would be fatal. I'm responsible for you.... Wherever the camp was it will have to be dug in deeper.... We got them buried, but we weren't strong enough to dig very deep, you understand, it should have been deeper..."

Oleg reached to support Thomas, who had begun to slide down from the stone.

Dick had returned; he saw Oleg wrap Thomas in the blanket, while Marianna fanned and blew on the campfire to get enough heat to turn their frozen medicines liquid. Dick was silent, but he seemed to say: Well I told you so!

Oleg unstoppered the flask himself, sniffing the cognac; the smell was sharp, almost inviting, but he didn't want to drink any. It had other uses. He lifted it carefully to Thomas's cracked lips. The man whispered something almost inaudible, swallowed and for some reason said: "Skoal."

They were able to go on only toward twilight when Thomas came to his senses. Oleg carried his pack, Dick took the cross-bow. Coming out of this rest they walked -- and scrambled along a slope dusted with enormous stones that wobbled beneath their feet; an hour or two, no more, than it became too dark to see and they had to search out a place to stay the night.

It had grown cold; the sky held a different color. In the forest it was always gray, but toward evening the sky here acquired a reddish tint that frightened them -- in the sky there was no reliability.

They were starving. Oleg was ready to chew stones. And as soon as they took their packs off and lay them on the ground that impertinent gote ran up to them, trying to open them with her beak, as though people had nothing better to do than hide food from her.

"Get away from me!" Oleg shouted at her. He threw a stone at her.

Exit gote, bleating.

"Don't." Marianna said. Her face had become darker, thinner. The girl was vanishing. "She doesn't understand. She thinks we'll give her something to eat. She needs more food than people do."

That was the evening Dick struck Marianna.

It was their final meal. They were chewing their last scraps of meat, then washing the dry slices down with hot water. It was more self-deception than a meal; human beings need more to eat than three slices to feel satisfied. But Marianna slipped her own food to the unhappy gote, thinking that no one would notice. Other than Thomas who was only half conscious they all did. Oleg said nothing. he decided then to tell Marianna later that it was stupid to feed a gote whey you were soon going to starve to death yourself.

But Dick couldn't shut up. He stretched his hand across the fire and gave Marianna a sharp hard slap on the cheek. Marianna screamed.

"What was that for?"

Oleg threw himself on Dick. Dick brushed him aside easily.

"Idiots." He said "You're a pack of idiots. Do you really want to starve yourselves to death? You're never going to make it to the mountain pass!"

"That was my piece of meat." Marianna said, her eyes were dry and angry. "I don't want to eat."

"Of course you do." Dick said "And we only have two slices of meat left for each of us for tomorrow. That's for all the way to the mountains. Why was I crazy enough to ever come with you?"

Suddenly Dick grabbed his knife and threw it at the gote as hard as he could. It bounced off the mass of greenish fur and fell back against a stone, doing no harm to the gote. Dick jumped up, the gote roared back, pulling on the rope. Dick picked up his knife. The point had broken on the rocks.

"Idiots!" Dick shouted. "Why don't you get it through your heads we're not going to make it back!"

He wasn't looking at the weeping Marianna but at Oleg, who couldn't think of anything better than to give Marianna his last slice of meat, as though she were a little child. She pushed his hand away. Dick quickly unfolded his own blanket and stretched out to his full length on it and closed his eyes. He fell asleep. Or he pretended to sleep.

Thomas was coughing weakly; coughing took more energy than he could muster.

Oleg got to his feet and wrapped the man in the tent. Then he and Marianna lay on either side of Thomas to keep him warm. It started to snow. The snow wasn't cold. It covered them with a tick layer. The gote came over in the darkness and lay beside them; she understood that they would all be warmer together.

Oleg hardly slept that night; it seemed to him he didn't. Something enormous went by not far away, cutting off the blue morning light. Then Oleg suddenly grew colder -- the gote had gotten up and went off in search of forage.

And then the flea bit Oleg. Where it had come from wasn't clear. It might have been hiding in their clothing or in the gote's long fur.

Oleg sensed it first as a cold prick, as though a needle of ice had been injected beneath his skin. Most victims awaken immediately and freeze in terror and helplessness, and know they have an hour of sanity left.

There was nothing he could do. The snow flea's toxins were in his blood. He might shout, call for help, but the results were as unavoidable as death. There was nothing to be done. It would start in an hour.

The course of the illness would be the same for him as for everyone else. The wise, the stupid, the young, the old -- for half an hour or an hour Oleg was going to be quite violently, uncontrollably mad. The Mayor had said if he had even one of the smaller portable medlabs he could have dealt with the illness; he would have understood how the pathogen acted on the nervous system....

Oleg knew he would howl rage, he would run wild. He would recognize no one. He would kill the people he loved most in the world and remember nothing of it later.

The first time it had occurred in the settlement no one had even known what was going on. It was only after several terrible incidents that they had realized the flea sickness couldn't be fought -- you could only bind the victim tightly, lock him or her away and wait for the rage to subside and to reason return. That was all. Sometime, when they learned to treat the fever it would be different. But now there was only one course of action...

When it happened in the settlement the victim would run to people himself and ask them: "Tie me up!" And then the terror really began. The victim was still seemingly healthy, but he knew his sanity was doomed, that he still had some minutes left before his mind was gone and in its place was a raging, unreasoning animal. And everyone saw how it happened in others. And everyone knew it could happen to him.

"Dick?" Oleg called. "I'm sorry. Do you have your rope close by?"

"What?" Dick jumped up, beginning to grope his hands in the darkness. Dawn was a streak of light on the horizon. Thomas was wheezing in his sleep. He didn't awaken.

"Oh not that!" Marianna started to wail. "A flea bit you?"

"Yes."

Dick yawned.

"We don't have to hurry. You have an hour, at a minimum an hour."

"It happened a little while ago." Oleg said. "Everything's going wrong."

"Yes. We can't take any more of this." Dick agreed.

"I'll cover you with a blanket." Marianna said. "I'll sit next to you a while."

"Hell." Dick said, looking around for the rope, "We won't be able to start on time again."

"I'll get over it." Oleg said.

"After the onset you'll have to lie down for two hours at least; I had to." Dick said.

He wasn't angry with Oleg; he was angry at the total disaster this climb had become.

The sensation of cold where the flea had bit him in the thigh remained. Oleg felt the bite and imagined a tiny drop of poison flowing through his blood, pulsing, heading toward his brain to attack him and deprive him of his mind.

Dick took his time checking out the rope. Marianna began to re-light the fire.

The dawn was blue, different from the constant gray of the lowlands.

"Oh well." Dick said finally. "It'll have to do."

"Just so long as he doesn't hurt himself with anything." Marianna said. "Poor Oleg!"

"This won't be the first time I've tied someone up." Dick said. "These fleas are a terrible business. Just relax as much as you can, Oleg. And try to think about something else."

First he tied Oleg's hands behind his back, then wound the rope around the other boy's chest and feet. The rope dug into his body, numbing his arms. Oleg gritted his teeth and said nothing; with the onset the victim became as strong as a baer. If they tried to make him comfortable now it would go so much the worse for them all later.

Thomas started to moan. He stuck his balding head out the tent and squinted, unable to understand where he was. Thomas's eyes were bleeding at the sides, his face was red, inflamed. Finally he looked at Dick who was still tying the ropes around Oleg, Oleg laughed in embarrassment. He was angry at himself for being such a bother to the others.. It reminded him of what the Mayor had once said, how back in the Middle Ages epileptics and abnormal women had been called witches and even burned in bonfires.

"A flea." Thomas said. "There are fleas everywhere... There are critters everywhere...."

"Go back and get some more sleep." Oleg said. "I won't be coming to my senses very soon, you know. Get some rest."

"It's too cold." Thomas said. "I can't sleep. I have to go on watch soon; the computer's been acting up. It was bit by a flea..."

"Why the hell are we here?" Dick said. "They should never have sent this circus to the mountains."

"There was no one else to go." Marianna said. "Something you very well know."

Gradually the cold spread throughout Oleg's body; it wasn't the usual cold, but an itching, tormenting irritation, as though an enormous number of tiny icicles were pricking at his chest, his feet... Thomas's head began to grow bigger...

"That's it." Dick said. "I've trussed you up as good as I can. It's not stretching, is it?"

"Everything's stretching." Oleg tried to laugh, but already there were cramps in his neck and jaw muscles.

"Look...." Dick turned around to Marianna. "Where's the gote?"

"The gote? I heard her during the night."

"I asked you -- where's the gote?" Dick's voice rose, high from anger like a little boy's. "Didn't you tie her down?"

"Of course I tied her down." Marianna said. "She must have gotten undone."

"I asked you where she was?"

The irritation and anger accumulating in Dick had to find an exit, and the gote had become the symbol of all their failure.

"Richard, don't get angry." Marianna said. She had started to cover Oleg with a blanket. "It's just gone off to find something to eat."

"There's nothing to find around here. Why didn't you tie it down?"

Dick had pulled his cross-bow from out of the tent and sheathed his knife in his belt.

"Where are you going?" Marianna asked. She knew perfectly well where.

Dick was carefully examining the snow around their camp, looking for tracks.

"She'll return." Marianna said.

"Yes she will." Dick agreed, "As dressed meat. She'll do. I don't want to die of starvation because of your stupidity."

Oleg saw Dick grow and grow; soon his head reached the sky, but he could knock the clouds to pieces, clouds of glass, solid clouds... Oleg pressed his eyelids tightly shut and then opened them again to drive the hallucination away. Thomas was sitting on the blanket and rocking back and forth, as though he were silently singing.

"Marianna...heat some water..." Oleg's voice seemed to grow strong and loud, but he was only whispering barely enough to be heard. "For Thomas. He's getting worse."

Marianna understood.

"Right away, Oleg. Of course."

But she couldn't tear her eyes from Dick.

"Just like I thought." Dick said. "She's gone back. Down. She could have gone about twelve kilometers during the night."

"Dick, stay here." Thomas suddenly became loud and clear. "Marianna will find the gote herself. It's you the animal's run from."

"There's no doubt of that." Dick said. "We've had enough of this stupidity."

"I'll find her." Marianna forgot about the hot water. "Don't leave here, Dick. Thomas is ill and you have to look after Oleg."

"Nothing's going to happen to them."

Dick ran his fingers in his mat of thick hair, tugged it, shook his head and, not looking back, began to lope after the gote's tracks, down the hill from where they'd come in the morning.

"I'd rather you went." Thomas told the girl. "You'd have brought her back; he'll kill her."

The world around Oleg was shifting and changing dimensions constantly, becoming ever more unsteady and unreliable, but he still retained the capacity to think. He said:

"You can understand Dick... He can't carry us all on his own."

"We only have a short ways left." Thomas said. "I know. I'm sure of it. We're going fast. We'll be there the day after tomorrow. We'll make it there without the gote's meat. Won't we? And there's food on the other side of the mountain pass, Dick, I promise!"

Dick lifted his hand to show that he had heard them -- the sounds carried that far over the snow covered slope -- but he didn't slow his pace.

"We have to catch the gote." Thomas turned to Marianna. "We need her. But she mustn't be killed. There's no sense in that.... Something is burning me. How hot.... Why does my liver hurt so much? It's not right. We're almost there."

"He'll kill her...." Marianna said. "He'll really kill her... Dii-ck!" Marianna turned to Oleg and Thomas: "What can I do? Tell me! You're so wise. You know everything! How can I stop him."

"I can't reach him. I haven't the slightest idea how." Thomas said. "He stopped seeing me an authority long ago."

"Now." Oleg said. "Just you untie me. I might be able to get him before the fit comes on. I might."

Marianna just waved her hands in annoyance. She made two steps after Dick, turned and looked at Thomas and at Oleg:

"I mustn't leave you."

"So run then." Thomas suddenly began to shout. "Run faster than he does."

Marianna rushed down the slope after the vanishing Dick as though her feet were hardly touching the snow.

"Poor girl." Thomas said. "She's gotten fond of that gote."

"Too bad." Oleg said. "It's very strange but you don't have just one shape. For a while you're fat, and then you become real thin like a match."

"Yes." Thomas agreed. "Just lay back and try to make yourself comfortable; that poison starts to work on your vision first. I remember the few times I was bitten. But don't be afraid; there are hardly any side effects. Don't worry."

"I understand. But I'm afraid of losing control of myself. Here I am now, but soon I won't even exist...."

Oleg was sliding down into the blue water, and it was very difficult to stay on the surface of the water, because his feet were entangled in water plants and he had to free them, he had to free them or he'd drown....

***

The blanket covering over Oleg flew off.. The fit took the boy and he twisted out onto the snow. His eyes were closed and his lips shivered. Oleg's face had grown dark from the tension as he strained to break his bonds. Thomas wanted to help him, to cover him or maybe place the boy's head on his knees. That was desirable to do in such situations - support the head. Thomas tried to get up, but his legs wobbled and refused to support him. Oleg arched his back and literally flew into the air, hammered at the ground with his bound fists and slowly worked his way toward the precipice. He turned over a number of times, striking at the rocks and ice that protruded out of the snow and stopped. His jacket had torn open; snow did not melt on his naked chest.

It's no good. Thomas thought. I'll have to get to him somehow. Damn that gote. Damn Dick with his Alpha male personality. Dick's so certain that he's right. He's convinced himself what he's doing is for everyone's good. And with his savage's view point he is right since there really isn't any future any more than there is a past... How could civilized human beings go wild so quickly. We were wrong to let the kids grow up like wolf-cubs even if it did mean they could survive better in the forest. But Dick didn't have any choice. Only sixteen years since we adults were cut off from the mountain pass. And we wouldn't have had the slightest hope of reaching it if Dick and Oleg hadn't managed to grow up. How old am I now? More than forty, must be. Respiration labored and painful -- I don't have to be a doctor to diagnose double pneumonia. If I don't reach the ship I'm done for. No gote-fat's gonna help me. And I have to get here on my own two feet -- the kids can't carry me to the mountain pass... What about Oleg? The snow flea's the worst luck. Maybe fate doesn't want us to return to the human race? It's dragged us here to the mountains, and the forest wants to make us over in its own image, turn us into two-legged zhakals. It's agreed to permit our settlement, but only for its own ends.

I can see a gap on the other side of the broken ice and snow I can see the a break. It's probably only a small cliff but the fall will kill Oleg. Where's the rope? There was another rope... I have to tie him to that stone...

Thomas crawled downslope, thankful it was down, it was easier for him to crawl downslope, even if the snow burned him. For some reason the powdery snow penetrated all the small openings of his clothing and burned his chest terribly. When he coughed, no matter how much he tied to hold back so as not to strain his lungs, the convulsions billowed and burst from his chest, and he doubled up in agony.

Thomas crawled downslope, dragging the rope after him. The rope which seemed unbelievably heavy, leaden; the rope uncoiled like a snake and dragged at him. Oleg beat his head up and down like a pecking bird trying to break his chains asunder, the back of his head dribbling on the stones. Thomas could feel the pain that held Oleg in madness, pain that held him in a nightmare, but which was no less the real for having been transformed into a hallucination. Oleg thought he was at home and the roof of the house had fallen on him. Only about ten meters separated the older man from Oleg, no more. Thomas knew that the boy couldn't hear him, but he called anyway:

"Wait up, I'm coming." But he tried to lift his head to see if Marianna or Dick were returning.

The most important thing was to get there, get there before Oleg tumbled over the edge into to the crevasse, when it would be too late....

"Why is my head spinning now?"

When Thomas reached Oleg he lost consciousness for several seconds; all his strength had gone into the downhill craw. His body refused to obey him any more -- the desire to move wasn't enough to give strength to his arms and legs -- as though it had done all it was capable of doing.

A gust of icy wind carrying a barrage of snow and perhaps the almost inaudible whisper of his and Oleg's hoarse breathing brought Thomas back to his senses. Thomas only wanted to close his eyes; to lay down, to do nothing, to think about nothing, to reside in a warm and comfortable fairy tale, ...a consumption devoutly to be wished...

Oleg had managed to move a meter away, his body twisted and jerked about, trying to tear him free of the rope; he kicked at the clods of ice and snow with his bound feet. Thomas hauled the rope in, trying to figure out how to tie to the rocks so the boy couldn't get away again, but he couldn't figure out how to do it, and then he found his hands empty. He had thrown the rope away, the end lay several meters from him and he didn't have the strength to return to it. Thomas reached out to grab onto Oleg's feet, but the boy twisted and kicked Thomas away. The man's body had ceased to feel pain.

Thomas realized that he couldn't hold on to Oleg: even bound hand and foot the boy's body was the stronger. Thomas resumed his slow advance on the crevasse. He would have to place himself between the crevasse and the boy. to act as a barrier, an unmoving block. Thomas felt he had been crawling for hours; he spoke as he moved, praying, begging Oleg to wait, to lay back peacefully, but by the time he managed to crawl onto the narrow shelf that separated Oleg from the crevasse Oleg had moved so close Thomas had to elbow his way between the boy and the sharp stones that lined the edge.

Certainly Thomas would have been able to drag Oleg back upwards to safety if he himself had been able to remain on the shifting edge of consciousness.

***

Marianna returned to the camp at a run, her chest heaving from exertion and the thin air. It seemed like she'd been gone only a few minutes, although in fact she had been away for more than an hour. She ran straight to the tent, not immediately realizing what had happened. She saw only that the camp was empty, and at first even lifted up the edge of the tent thinking that Thomas and Oleg were huddled there away from the snow, although the tent lay flat on the ground and no one could have hidden beneath it.

Marianna looked around in confusion and found the tracks in the snow leading downslope toward the cliff; it looked like someone had been dragging a heavy weight in the snow and all she could imagine was a terrible scene. The animal that made the circular, barrel sized tracks had dragged both men away and it was all her fault. She had run off to save the gote and had forgotten about her own people, she had abandoned sick people in a snow covered desert and it had all been for naught because she had never reached Dick and hadn't found the gote, had gotten lost among the rocks, terrified that she'd never find the path back to the camp, terrified for Thomas and Oleg who were helpless. She had run back, and was too late.

Marianna picked her way down the slope, sobbing and repeating:

"Mama, mama..."

Why was the rope on the snow? Had Oleg gotten free?

She made her way around gray hillocks of snow and ice and saw Oleg laying tied up at the edge of the precipice; Of Thomas there was no sign.

"Oleg, oh Oleg!" She shouted. "Are you alive?"

Oleg didn't answer. He was sleeping solidly. The fit had passed. He was alone, but the track from his body continued down, toward the drop, and when Marianna glanced over the edge she saw Thomas on the ground about five meters below. He lay so quietly and comfortably Marianna did not immediately guess that he was already dead.

After, when she had gotten down into the crevasse. hurrying and falling and cutting her hands and legs on the icy stones, she pulled at him for a long time trying to awaken him, and suddenly she understood that Thomas had died. The back of his skull was caved in. Above her on the cliff Oleg had come to his senses, heard the noise and her wailing, and asked in a weak voice:

"Marianna, is that you? What's happened?"

Oleg remembered absolutely nothing of how he had pushed Thomas over the edge, and it was only by the tracks and the fragments of Oleg's nightmarish visions they could understand how and why it had all taken place, and guessed how Thomas had died.

***

Dick returned to the camp two hours later. He hadn't caught the gote and had lost her tracks on the great stone field. While returning he had encountered the tracks of an unknown animal and went after it, thinking that at least he would return to camp with at least some game. Then he could say that he left the gote alone on purpose because he was wanted to spare Marianna's feelings. And he had already convinced himself of that ; the idea of failure terrified him.

When he learned what had happened in the camp during his absence he turned more sober and quieter than the others and said to Oleg:

"Don't spout nonsense. You didn't kill anyone and you're not guilty of anything. You of all people know what killed Thomas. You should be thankful he tried to save you. He might not have been able to do anything, most likely he was able to do nothing, but all the same he wanted to save you. Perhaps it was for the best; Thomas was very ill. He could have died at any minute. He wanted to go to the pass so much he would have made us drag him, and we would all have died."

"Are you actually trying to calm Oleg?" Marianna answered; she was rocking back and forth where she sat from pain; she had frozen her hands and gotten them covered with blood when she had tried to revive Thomas. The two of them, Oleg still staggering from weakness, had dragged the older man's corpse up to the tent. "You want to calm Oleg? But it's the two of us who are guilty. If we hadn't run after the gote Thomas would still be alive."

"You're right." Dick said. "You didn't have to run after me. That was stupidity, female stupidity."

"But of course you don't have any responnsibility at all, do you?" Marianna asked.

Thomas lay stretched out silent between them. His head was covered with the blanket, but he was a participant in their conversation none the less.

"I don't know." Dick said. "I went after the gote because we needed the meat. We all need it. Me less than the rest of you because I'm stronger."

"I don't want to talk with him any more." Marianna said to Oleg and the world in general. "He's as cold as the snow."

"I want to be fair." Dick said. "Why are we wasting our time moaning over it. It's not going to get any better. We're wasting time. The daylight's almost half done."

"Oleg's still too weak to walk." Marianna said.

"No. It's nothing." Oleg called out. "I can make it. Only we have to take Thomas's map and radiation detector. He told me that if anything happened we had to take those things."

"Don't bother." Dick said.

"Why?"

"Because we're going back." Dick said quietly.

"And how did you come be the one to decide that?" Oleg asked.

"It's the only chance to save ourselves." Dick said. "In two days we can be back in the forest and I can find game there. I'll get you back to the settlement, I promise."

"No. We're going on." Oleg said.

"That's stupid." Dick said. "It's hopeless."

"We have the map. "

"And why do you believe that thing? The map's old; it all could have changed. And no one knows how long we still have to walk without food in this icy desert."

"Thomas said we were going so fast that there was only a day left."

"Thomas was wrong. He wanted to get there so much he was deceiving us."

"Thomas never deceived us. He said there was food there and that we would be safe."

"He wanted to believe that. He was sick. His judgment was gone. We're still alive, and we'll remain that way only if we go back."

"I'm going on to the mountain pass." Oleg said. He was looking at the blanket covered body; it was his farewell to Thomas.

"I'm going too." Marianna said. "Why don't you understand that?"

"Marianna, the Mayor 's pulled the wool over Oleg's eyes." Dick hit his large fist against a stone, beating in time to his words as he spoke. "The Mayor always kept telling Oleg that he was the smartest, better than you or me, that he was special. Oleg could never be better than us in the settlement or in the forest; he always fell behind. He couldn't even keep up with you in the forest. You've got to understand; Oleg needs this fairy tale about the mountain pass and about the savages that you and I are becoming but he's not. But I'm not a savage. I'm not dumber than he is. Let Oleg go on if he's so sure of himself. But I'm not letting you go on; I'm taking you back down."

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Marianna shouted. "The settlement sent us; they're waiting for us and hoping we'll succeed!"

"We'll be more use to them alive." Dick said.

"I'm going." Oleg reached toward the blanket to get the map and radiation counter from Thomas's body. He said silently: I'm sorry you won't be making it;I'm sorry I have to take your treasures.

He pulled back the edge of the blanket; Thomas lay with his eyes closed, his face ashen. In death his lips had become even thinner. Oleg couldn't force himself to touch to Thomas's chilling body.

"Wait, I'll do it." Marianna said. "Wait."

Dick got to his feet, walked over to the cliff. edge, lifted the flask from the snow and shook it. The cognac swished inside. Dick pulled out the stopper and poured the cognac out onto the snow. The bitter, unfamiliar odor hung in the air. Dick replaced the stopper and hung the flask over his shoulder. No one said anything. Marianna handed Oleg the folded map, the radiation counter, and Thomas's knife.

"We can't bury him." Dick said." We'll have to carry him over the drop and cover him with stones."

"No!" Oleg said.

Dick lifted his eyebrows in surprise.

And it was stupid to answer that Thomas should not be covered with stones. Thomas was dead after all; he wasn't going to object.

Dick did everything. Oleg and Marianna only helped him. They didn't say anything else. Oleg and Marianna silently packed their bundles, picked up the very light packs (only enough wood remained for one or two campfires), and divided the last slices of dried meat into three portions, Marianna handed Dick his share; he put it in his pocket and said nothing. Then Oleg and Marianna started off up the hill, without looking around, toward the mountain pass.

Dick caught up with them after a hundred meters. He caught up, then passed them and insisted on leading the way. Oleg was still staggering from the last effects of the fit. Marianna limped; her legs were bruised from when she had scrambled over the precipice. They managed to make about ten kilometers before they were forced to stop for the night.

Oleg collapsed in the snow and immediately fell asleep. He didn't even awaken to drink the hot water and their dwindling supply of sweet roots. And he didn't see what Dick and Marianna saw when it became dark enough. The clouds broke overhead, splitting to reveal a blackness they had never seen before filled with tiny points of light, the stars, which not one of them had ever seen before. Then the sky closed up again. Marianna soon fell asleep as well, but Dick sat longer by the warmth of the dying fire with his feet almost in it, looking up at the sky and waiting for the clouds to part again. He had heard about stars, but never before had he suspected they would inspire such awe, or guessed the magnitude the tiny colored points nestled in an infinity of dark would reveal. Dick understood why they couldn't return to the settlement.

***

The three got up early, melted snow into hot water to drink, and finished eating the sweet roots which only increased their hunger. That day dragged slower than usual; even Dick was dead on his feet.

They did not know if they were following the correct path or not. There were directions drawn on the map, but they did not correspond to anything they could see. The last time people had come this way had been in winter in the midst of a blinding snow storm, through bitter cold and fog, and now everything looked totally different.

So despair set in; the mountain pass was an abstraction you could not believe in, any more than you could imagine a sky filled with stars if you had never seen them before and knew them only from stories. Oleg mourned that he had fallen asleep and missed the sky; perhaps the phenomenon would recur the next night. The clouds filling the sky had become thinner - sometimes a patch of blue burst through and suddenly the land around them became far brighter than the forest lowlands.

During the day they were all dead on their feet. Dick gave the order to stop and began to wipe snow on Marianna's frozen cheeks; it was then that Oleg noticed a blue patch in the snow off to one side. But it was more than a hundred paces walk further off and Oleg didn't even have the strength to speak.

Finally, when Dick said it was time to move on again, Oleg pointed at the blue patch. They walked toward it, every step quicker now.

It was a short blue jacket from some thin, unwoven material; it was half frozen into the snow; one sleeve was filled with snow and stuck up in the air. Dick was cutting the snow around it away to get it free, but suddenly a painful impatience gripped Oleg.

"Don't bother." He barked. "Why? We'll get there soon; you understand; we're on the right track!"

"It's strong material." Dick said. "And Marianna's almost frozen."

"I don't need it." Marianna said. "Let's just go further."

"Go on; I'll catch up with you." Dick insisted. "Go on."

Dick caught up with them fifteen minutes later, carrying the jacket in one hand, but Marianna refused to put it on, saying it was damp and cold. But mostly it was because the jacket was someone else's. And if it had been brought along and then and thrown away, that meant the owner was dead. They all knew that seventy-six people had come out of the mountain pass, and little more than thirty reached the forest.

They didn't reach the mountain pass on that day, although to Oleg it seemed that the pass must be just ahead -- for now they had to skirt the tongue of a glacier.... and the mountain pass will be just ahead, now they passed a field of broken stones.... and the pass... And the rise of the land became all the more sharper and the air thinner and less substantial in their lungs.

They spent the night -- more precisely, they survived until the darkness ended -- piled together, wrapped in all the blankets and covered by the tent. Despite their exhaustion they could not sleep from the cold, they only dozed off from time to time and woke up to change places. From Marianna who lay in the center there was hardly any warmth -- she had become almost incorporeal and sharp, her bones were showing through her skin. They got up at dawn with stars over their heads fading into a purple sky, but they didn't look at the sky.

Then, gradually, it turned light. The clouds were transparent like mist and through them shone a sun, small, cold, and blinding, which they had never seen before either, but they weren't looking at the sun. They trudged along, walking around the fissures and cracks in the ice and snow, the fields of talus rock and precarious ledges. Dick insisted on taking the lead, choosing their path and falling down more frequently than the others, but not once did he surrender his lead.

So he was the first of them to see the mountain pass, not suspecting they had reached their destination because the declivity along which they clambered had flattened out into a plateau so gradually they hadn't noticed it, and then they saw ahead of them the jagged mountain peaks. Peak after peak, a chain of snow-capped mountains glistening under the sun, and an hour later below them opened a saddle back in the middle of which, even from their kilometer's height, they could see the fat disk of glistening metal. It lay on its side half buried in snow and ice in the very center of the hollow. The captain had aimed the ship for the saddleback after the explosion in the engineering section had cut off the thrusters; he landed it in the middle of a storm, in the night and fog of the terrible local winter.

They stood in a line, three tattered, worn out savages, cross-bows on their shoulders, bags of animal hides on their backs, bruised, frostbitten, black from hunger and exhaustion, three microscopic figures in an enormous, empty, silent world, and looked at the dead ship that had crashed on this planet sixteen years ago and would never again rise into the sky.

Then they began to descend the steep slope, clutching at the stones, trying not to run on the treacherous scree, yet running ever faster as though their feet refused to listen to their pleas of caution.

An hour later they stood in the bottom of the hollow.

Chapter Four

Sixteen years before, Oleg and Dick both had been a year old and Marianna yet to be born, and none of them remembered how the exploratory ship PolarStar had crashed here in the middle of the mountains. Their first recollections were connected with the settlement, with the forest; they had learned about the habits of cunning red muzhrumes and hunting vynes before the Mayor s had told them about the stars and of other worlds. And the forest was much easier to understand than tales of starships or buildings that might each hold a thousand people. The forest's laws, and the rules of the settlement which arose from the necessity to preserve a handful of people who had not evolved for this environment, worked to push the memory of Earth from their minds. In place of that memory arose the abstract hope that someday they would be found and it would all end. But how long could one hope to wait? Ten years? Ten years and more had passed. A hundred years? Then they would find not you but your grandchildren, assuming the settlement survived that long. Hopes still alive in the old, did not exist for the second generation -- they only interfered with the everyday struggle to survive in the forest. But for the adults not to at least try to not transmit that hope on to their children was unthinkable. The adults knew they were going to die, but the species must continue. Death would become final the moment they gave up hope for a future.

Therefore the Mayor and the teachers -- everyone who could -- tried to instill in the young a feeling that they belonged to the Earth, the idea that sooner or later the separation would come to an end. And the greatest single solid fact connecting them with the old world remained the starship crashed beyond the mountain pass. It existed. It could be reached, if not in this local year of a thousand endless cold days, then next year when the children had grown and could go into the pass themselves.

Dick, Oleg and Marianna descended into the hollow, to the ship. It grew. It became as corporeal as it was enormous. But it did not stop being a legend, their Grail, and none of them would have been surprised if it had vanished into smoke the moment they touched it. They were returning to the house of their fathers, which frightened those who had been here only in their dreams or in legends told under dim lamplight in a few stolen moments when a blizzard raged beyond slit windows stretched tight with fishskins.

The fact that the ship existed gave birth to dreams and legends and the young generation had created a Ship of the Mind out of their imaginations that bore little resemblance to the reality of this giant. The Mayor and the other adults found this conflict difficult to understand; for them the story of catastrophic explosion, the failure of light and life support, the flight through the corridors as the lights died, the silence of the drives and the chattering of the radiation counters, the escape to the snowy wastelands, was no mere tale.

For their listeners -- for Oleg and his generation -- only the snow storm had really been understandable. They associated corridors with images of forest thickets or dark caves -- their imaginations were fed by what they had seen and heard themselves.

Now they could understand how people had fled from here, dragging the children and the injured, grabbing the things which should have been immediately useful on the run, at a moment when no one really understood that they would have to live here forever and die on this cold world -- even here the gigantic scale and unbelievable power of interstellar civilization instilled a false sense of confidence that everything that happened, however tragic it might have been, was only a temporary break, an accident that would be fixed as accidents had always been fixed.

In front of them was the airlock.

We shut it when we left, so the Mayor said, and we put the emergency stairway we came down to one side, under an overhang. The spot is marked on the map. They did not have to search for the stairway -- the snow had melted and it lay unmoving, its blue paint weathered over the years. When Dick picked the stairway up the impression the left behind in the snow was blue.

Dick kicked at the metal rungs to test it.

"It's light." He said. "We've got to bring it back."

The others were silent. Marianna and Oleg stood a short distance away, heads thrown back, examining the ship's rounded belly. The ship seemed completely intact, ready to take off and fly further. And Oleg even imagined it blasting off from the hollow, falling ever faster into the blue sky and becoming a dark circle, a point in the heavens....

The exhaustion was gone. Their bodies felt light and obeyed their minds, and the impatience to look inside this marvel as fast as possible became mixed with a terror of becoming lost forever inside the ship's closed sphere.

Oleg cast a glance at the round emergency lock; he could tell what it was because it was outlined in black. Numerous times the Mayor had repeated to Oleg:. "The emergency lock wasn't shut all the way, you understand. We only closed it You get up to it on the stairway and the first order of business is to check the level of radiation. There shouldn't be any now. Sixteen years have passed, but you must check it with the counter. Back then the radiation was just one of the reasons we had to leave so quickly. The cold and the radiation. Forty degrees below zero, the life support systems were all off line and the radiation counters were screaming. It was simply to impossible to remain."

Dick scouted the ground around the ship, extricating bags and cans from the snow, many things people had dragged out of the ship and been forced to leave behind.

"Well?" Oleg asked. "Let's go in."

"Why not?" Dick raised the stairway and placed it against the base of the lock. Then he climbed up the stairs, put Thomas's knife in the thin crack and pushed as hard as he could. The knife broke.

"Could they have locked it?" Marianna asked below.

"There are no more knives like this one left in all the world." Dick said.

"The Mayor said the lock was open." Oleg noted.

"The Mayor 's forgotten everything." Dick said. "You can't believe the old people."

"Nothing happened?" Marianna asked.

Clouds had started to cover the sun; it was quickly becoming darker, more familiar.

"Wait." Oleg said. "Why are we running around in circles. Why push like at home? What if doors into the ship open differently?"

"I'm coming down." Dick said. "I'll get a stone."

"A stone won't do any good." Oleg said.

The hatch was set back a little into the wall of the ship and seemed to extend below the edge of the metal. A thin crack in the hull seemed to run along one edge on the inside of the black circle. What if you tried to push it to one side? He'd never seen such a thing before, but if the ship flew, it would certainly be best if the door didn't flap open itself by accident. Oleg told Dick:

"Give me the knife."

Dick handed Oleg the broken knife, stuffed his hands underneath his armpits and started to stamp: he was frozen. Even he was frozen.

A fine light snow began to drift down. They were alone in the world. They were dying of hunger and the cold. But the ship refused them entry.

Oleg placed what was left of the knife into the thin crack and gently tried to push the metal circle to the side. It slid quickly and effortlessly as though it had been waiting for him, and simply vanished into the wall. All in order. Oleg didn't bother to turn around although the others had seen how smart he was. He had solved the problem. Even if it wasn't a very complicated one, but the others hadn't. Oleg sheathed the knife into his belt and pulled out the radiation counter.

"Hey!" He heard Marianna's voice. "Oleg's opened it."

"That's great." Dick said. "Go on, what are you waiting for?"

The counter indicated no danger. All in order.

"It's dark in there." Oleg said. "Hand up the lamp."

Even when it had been horribly cold the night before they hadn't lit the lamp; it gave off too little warmth but it burned a long time.

"Is it warm in there?" Marianna asked.

"No." Oleg sniffed the air. A strange, dangerous smell remained in the ship. To step inside was frightening. But Oleg understood now he was leading them and not Dick. Dick was afraid. Dick struck his flint and lit the lamp. In the light of day the lamp's flame was nearly invisible. Dick went half way up the stair and passed it to Oleg. but he didn't go any further. Oleg took the lamp and extended his hand inside. Ahead was darkness and a level floor.

Oleg spoke loud enough to drown his terror:

"I'm going in. Get your lamps and come after me! I'll wait inside."

The floor under his feet was springy like the bark of a living tree. But Oleg knew the floor was inanimate and there were no such trees on Earth. He imagined that something lurked in front of him, and he froze. But then he understood it was only the reflection, the echo, of his own breathing. Oleg took another step forward and the lamp flared, illuminating a wall that bent gently upward to become the ceiling as well. A bright and shining wall. He touched it. It was cold.

So I'm home. Oleg thought. I have a home -- the settlement. But there's another home called Space Exploratory Ship PolarStar. I've dreamed of it a thousand times, but the dreams are nothing at all like it turned out to be in reality. But I was here. I was even born here. Somewhere in the dark depths of the ship is the room where I was born.

"Where are you?" Dick called out.

Oleg turned around. Dick's silhouette started to shadow the airlock aperture.

"Come on in." Oleg said. "There's no one here."

"If there were, they'd have frozen." Dick's voice reverberated down the corridor.

Oleg used his own lamp to light Dick's, then waited while Dick made room for Marianna and passed the flame on to her.

With the three lamps burning it immediately became much brighter, but the lamps could do nothing about the cold. Far colder than outside.

The short corridor ahead ended in another door, but Oleg already knew how to open it. A small degree of certainty appeared in Oleg's actions, not very much, but he felt he belonged here on the ship far more than the others. The others still felt the ship was a terrible cave; if not for their hunger they would have remained outside. Had Thomas made it to the ship with them things would have been different. Oleg could not take on himself the role of conductor and interpreter of the mysteries; but Oleg himself knew he was better than nothing.

Beyond the door was a vast circular hall the like of which they had never seen before. The entire settlement could have been moved in there. Despite the light from the three lamps the ceiling vanished into darkness.

"This is the hangar." Oleg said, repeating the word's he had memorized from the Mayor. "This was where they stored the flitter and other tools. 'But the manual launching mechanism was rendered inoperative during the crash. This played a fatal role.'"

"'And compelled the crew and passengers to go through the mountains on foot.'" Marianna added.

At lessons the Mayor had insisted they memorize the history of the settlement by heart, beginning with this series of events to prevent them from forgetting. "If people lack paper, they memorize their histories." The Mayor had said. "Without a history, people stop being...people."

"'With enormous casualties....'" Dick continued for a moment but could not complete it; he couldn't bring himself to speak aloud here.

In front of them, blocking their path, was a cylinder about ten meters long.

"This was the flitter they dragged out of the hanger by hand." Oleg said. "But they weren't able to take advantage of it and were forced to abandon it."

"It's really cold in here." Marianna shivered.

"The ship is retaining the winter's chill." Dick said. "Where to from here?"

Dick had accepted Oleg's leadership.

"There should be an open door over here." Oleg said. "It leads to the drive chambers. Only we can't go there. We have to find a stairway leading upwards."

"It's good you studied everything." Marianna almost laughed.

The three of them started walking along the wall again.

"There must be lots of things here." Dick said. "How will we bring carry them back.."

"The people who died here? Did they just walk away?" Marianna asked.

"You stop that!" Dick said.

"Obvious....." Oleg stopped.

"What? What did you see?"

"I just figured out how we'll do it. If we take the flat metal steps of the stairways, then we can load things on them things and drag them behind us. Like the sledges that Sergeyev made."

"Well I thought you saw a corpse." Marianna said.

"I thought that too." Dick said.

"That first door." Oleg said. "We can't go in there."

"I'll just take a look." Dick said.

"There's radiation for sure in there." Oleg said. "The Mayor was certain of it."

"It won't do anything to me." Dick said. I'm strong."

"You're hardly going to see it, you know that. You studied it too." Oleg went further ahead, holding his lamp close to the wall. The wall was uneven: there were niches in it, open panels with buttons and cold reflecting surfaces he knew were called screens.

Thomas had been an engineer. Thomas had understood what these buttons had meant and what powers they commanded.

"Look at all they built." Dick said. He still hadn't made his peace with the ship. "And it's all broken."

"It was good enough to carry them through the sky." Marianna said.

"Here's the other door." Oleg said. "From here we can get to the living quarters and the astrogation department."

That's how it had always sounded: "Astrogation Department" and "Bridge." Like an invocation. But now he'd see the Astrogation Department for himself.

"Do you remember the number of your own room?" Marianna asked.

"Cabin." Oleg corrected her. "Certainly I remember it. Forty four."

"My father asked me to stop by and see how things were there. We were one hundred ten. You really were born on the ship?"

Oleg didn't answer; the question didn't really demand an answer. But it was odd that Marianna was thinking the same way he was.

Oleg put his hand on the door and moved it to the side. The light came from nowhere and from everywhere.

Oleg jumped back. He had forgotten -- of course this was to be expected. They had paints that gave off light for many years.

The Astrogation Department and some corridors were painted with them. It was bright. Light to let them douse the lamps.

"Oh.." Marianna kept her voice in a whisper. "Does this mean someone is still living here?"

"It's good there's light at least." Oleg said. "We can save the lamps."

"It's gotten warmer." Marianna said.

"It only seems that way." Oleg said. "But we'll certainly find warm things and we can sleep in the rooms."

"No." Dick said. He had stayed back from the others and still hadn't entered the lighted corridor. "There's no way I'm sleeping here."

"Why?"

"I'll be sleeping outside, in the snow; warmer there."

Oleg understood. Dick was afraid to sleep in the ship, but Oleg wanted to remain here. He didn't fear the ship. He had been frightened at first when it was dark, but not now. He was home.

"I won't sleep here either." Marianna said. "There are the shadows of the people who lived here. I'm afraid."

To the right the corridor wall sank away from them but was obstructed by something transparent, like a thin layer of water; a material that Marianna remembered was called plast. And behind it were green plants. With tiny green leaves. There were no such leaves in the local forest.

"Won't they bite?" Oleg asked.

"No." Marianna said. "They're frozen. "And Earth plants don't hunt animals; surely you've forgotten how Aunt Luiza talked about them."

"That's not so important." Dick said. "Let's get going. We can't just walk around in here forever. But what if there's nothing to eat here?"

Odd Oleg thought. I'm really not hungry at all. And I haven't eaten in so long I'm not hungry. Nerves.

Ten steps later they saw yet one more niche; but the plast had been broken. Marianna reached in.

"Don't." Dick said.

"There's no problem. I can feel it. These are all dead."

She reached her hand out. At the touch of her fingers the leaves broke and fell to dust.

"Too bad." Marianna said. "If only there were seeds we could plant them around the settlement."

"There's a store-room to the right." Oleg said. "Let's look for something to eat."

They turned to the right. A broken, half transparent bag lay in the middle of the corridor; a number of white cans had spilled out of it. The bag must have broken while the people were fleeing.

***

It was an odd, wondrous feast they had when they finally opened the cans. Dick tried to open them with his knife and failed; the blade didn't leave a mark, but Oleg found a way to open remove the tops without a blade by pressing at the edge. The containers then heated the contents until they were soft enough to eat. They tried everything the cans and tubes contained, and nearly all of it was as tasty as it was unfamiliar. And of cans there was no lack, for there were entire rooms filled with cases and containers, endless numbers of cans and all kinds of other foods. They drank condensed milk, but there was no Thomas with them to tell them what it was. They gulped down sprats, another unnamed food. They squeezed preserves which seemed too sweet to them out of tubes, they chewed flour. Marianna became upset at the mess they were making on the floor.

After that they dozed off -- they had trouble keeping their eyes open, as though all the weariness of the last days weighed on their shoulders. Despite their exhaustion Oleg was unable to convince his companions to remain and sleep in the ship. The other two left, and Oleg, as soon as their footsteps had died away in the corridor, suddenly became afraid himself and scarcely was able to keep himself from running after them. He lay on the floor, pushed the cans away, and slept soundly for many hours. Time here in the ship was frozen as well; there was no way he could tell its passage.

Oleg slept without dreams, without thoughts, deeply and quietly, far more quietly than Marianna and Dick. Dick even in such weariness awakened and listened for danger several times during the night. He woke Marianna up as well; she had been resting her head on his chest. They were covered with all the blankets and the tent, and it wasn't cold because toward evening a thick snowfall had buried the tent, turning it into a snow drift.

Oleg awakened before the pair sleeping outside; he was freezing. He jumped up and down for a long time to warm himself, then he ate some more. It was a remarkable feeling: not to have to wonder if there was enough food -- he didn't remember when the last time was he hadn't been hungry. His stomach even hurt -- Let it hurt more, Oleg thought. It was almost shameful to look on the remains of their feast, and Oleg removed the empty and half empty cans over to a corner of the room. I've got to go further. he thought. Should I go call the others? No, they must still be sleeping. To Oleg it seemed that his sleep had only lasted a few minutes.

He planned to look around a bit, then go outside to awaken Dick and Marianna. There was no one else in the ship, there hadn't been for a long time, there was nothing to fear. They would have to go back the way they'd come; the mountain pass would soon fill with snow. And they were sleeping here. How dare they waste time sleeping here!

Like a good denizen of the forest Oleg had no trouble finding his way around. Even in a starship. He wasn't afraid of getting lost and therefore quietly went up the metal stairway leading to the living quarters.

He found the cabin with a round metal plate marked "44" after an hour. Not because it was difficult to find, simply because he became distracted and spent too much time looking at what he found on the way. At first he found himself in a passenger lounge where he saw a long table, and there he took an immense fancy to a funny looking salt shaker and pepper grinder set and he even put the pieces in his pack, thinking his mother would be delighted if he brought such things back to her.

Then he examined a chess set for a long time; the box had fallen to the floor and scattered the pieces on the carpet when the ship had crashed. No one had ever told him about chess and he concluded that these were sculptures of unknown terrestrial animals. And finally, the carpet itself was amazing. It was without seams or stitches, which meant it was skinned from the hide of a single animal. How could animals on Earth be so large, and what could cause them to have such strange designs on their hides? Obviously it had to be an pelagic animal. Egli had told the children the largest animals of Earth dwelt in the oceans and were called whales. Oleg saw so many more wondrous and incomprehensible things over he course of the hour it took him to reach cabin Forty Four he was overflowing with impressions, and absolutely desperate with a sense of his own stupidity, from his inability to figure out what the things he found were.

Oleg stood for a long time in front of cabin Forty-Four's door, unable to decide to open it, although there was no reason why he should not look in there. But he did understand why.

Although his mother had said many times that his father had died when the ship had crashed, that he had been in the drive compartment when the converter flared and fused, despite that it seemed to him that his father might be in there.

For some reason Oleg had never really believed in his father's death, and his father had remained among the living, on the ship, waiting, abandoned. Perhaps this had come from his mother's deep conviction that his father was still alive. It was her nightmare, her obsession which she carefully hid from everyone, even from her son. But her son knew all about it.

Finally, Oleg forced himself to push the door to one side. The cabin was dark; the walls were covered with normal paints. He was forced to wait outside, light his lamp, and his eyes did not quickly accustom themselves to the dimness. The cabin consisted of two rooms. In the first stood a table, a divan, where his father spent the night; his mother lived with the infant Oleg in the second, inner room.

The cabin was empty. His father had never returned. His mother was wrong.

But a different surprise awaited Oleg, a different shock, an expression of that side of time, of that period in which the ship had lived from the moment when the people had abandoned her to the day Oleg returned.

In the small room stood a child's crib. Oleg immediately understood that this soft device suspended in the air with undone straps hanging from the sides was intended for a small child. And that for some reason a little while ago the young child had been carried out of here in a hurry, even leaving behind one very small red bootie and multicolored rattle. Oleg, who had yet to finally realize that he was coming face to face with himself, in this preserve of frozen time, lifted the rattle and shook it; the moment he heard the clattering sound however strange it was, the memory came back. He finally came face to face with the reality of the ship, the reality of a world which was deeper and more real than the reality of the settlement and the forest. In everyday life you never come face to face with your past. Things get lost, all that remains is memory, like a souvenir. But here, in the loop attached to the side of the bed hung an unfinished bottle of milk, milk that had frozen, that he could warm and finish drinking.

And, having seen himself, having met with himself, having recognized and survived that meeting, Oleg started to search for the traces of the two other people who had lived on the other side of the frozen time, his father and mother.

Finding his mother was easy; she had fled from here carrying him, her son; so here in the depths of the ship he found a twisted, crumpled dress where she had thrown it on her bed. Soft slippers stuck out from under the bed. A book, his mother's place held by a sheet of paper, lay on the pillow. Oleg picked up the book carefully, fearing that it would shatter like the plants in the corridor. But the book had weathered the frosts well. It was called "Anna Karenina" and someone named Leo Tolstoy had written it. It was a thick book, and mathematical symbols - formulae -- were scribbled on the book mark -- mother had been a theoretical physicist. Oleg had never seen his mother's handwriting before; in the village there had been nothing to write with. He had never seen a book; at the time no one had thought to bring any from the ship. Oleg had heard the writer's name at Aunt Luiza's lessons, but he had never thought that a writer could write such a fat book. Oleg took the book with him. And he knew: however difficult it was to get back, he'd carry the book all the way back. And the sheet of paper with formulae. And then, thinking a little, he put his mother's slippers in the knapsack as well. They seemed very narrow for his mothers worn old feet, but let her have them anyway.

But traces of his father, although they were corporeal and obvious for some reason did not draw themselves so much to Oleg's attention as his encounter with his former self - at the moment the ship crashed his father was already dead. He had died earlier. He had gone on watch and had cleaned up after himself. Oleg's father had been a careful, precise man with no tolerance for disorder. His books stood in a file on their shelf behind plast, his things hung in the wall closet.... Oleg pulled his father's uniform from its place in the closet. Certainly, he hadn't worn it on board the ship -- the uniform was quite new, blue, pressed, with two small stars over the breast over a jacket pocket, with thin gold stripes down the narrow trousers. Oleg pulled the uniform from the closet and held it close -- the uniform was a little too big for him. Then Oleg pulled the jacket on top of his own and it proved to be just right for him. -- all they would have to do was take in the sleeves. Then he pulled on the trousers. If his father lived in the village and walked around in this uniform, he would have let his son put try it on sometimes.

Now the ship finally belonged to Oleg. Even after he had returned to the forest he would always yearn for the ship and try to return here, like the Mayor had tried, like Thomas had tried. This was all to the good, it was a victory for the Mayor who had never wanted those who grew up in the village to be only a part of the forest. Now Oleg finally understood why the Mayor thought that way, and the man's words took on a meaning that could be comprehended only by those who had been here.

Oleg turned to the covered desk and figured out how to open it; the inside turned out to be a mirror. Oleg only had occasion to see himself reflected before in puddles, he had never before seen himself in a large mirror. And, gazing at himself, he felt a split, but this split wasn't unnatural -- after all, it was only him, little Oleg, who hadn't even finished drinking his milk, standing here behind the open door. But now he stood before the mirror in his father's uniform. Of course he didn't look much like his father now; his face was weather worn, wind-burned, the dark skin taut with early wrinkles from malnutrition and the terrible climate, but despite that it was him. He, Oleg, had grown up, returned, donned his uniform and taken his place as a member of the PolarStar's crew

In the desk he found his father's notebook; half the pages were empty, no fewer than a hundred clean white sheets, a treasure in itself for the Mayor who could now teach the children by drawing various things they had never seen before on the paper. And when they grew up they would return to the ship themselves. He also found there a number of volumes of colored pictures, photographs with views of various Earth cities. He packed them away to take also. A number of other things were totally incomprehensible, and Oleg didn't bother to touch them -- he knew the return to the settlement would be difficult enough.

But he took something else with him. He guessed what it was immediately and knew how delighted Sergeyev would be, and Vaitkus who had drawn this thing in wet clay and repeated again and again: "I can never forgive myself that not one of us took a blaster with him."

"You're blaming yourself for nothing." The Mayor had retorted, "You'd have had to go back to the Bridge, and that was flooded with radiation." It turned out that one blaster had been with Oleg's father, in his desk.

The handle fitted comfortably in his palm. To see if the blaster's charge remained Oleg pointed it at the wall and pressed the trigger -- lighting flew from the blaster's mouth and danced over the wall. Oleg blinked and shut his eyes tight, but for a minute more the sparks jumped through his eyes.

Oleg went out the door with the blaster in his hand: now he wasn't just the master of the ship; now he could face the forest as more than just a supplicant. You can't touch us!

Out in the corridor Oleg hesitated; he wanted to head for the Astrogation Department or the Com Center, but it made more sense to return to the storeroom because if Dick and Marianna had gone there they would be worried.

Oleg went back the way he had come quickly, but the store room was empty. No one had come by here. Well then, he would have to awaken them. And besides, although Oleg wasn't willing to admit it to himself, he wanted to appear before them in a spaceman's uniform and say: "You've been sleeping to long. Time to go back to the stars..."

This time he cut straight across the hangar; the way back appeared shorter than yesterday; he was already familiar with the ship's layout. A bright light appeared before him -- the outside lock was still open. They had forgotten to close it. That wasn't really important here; the lock was too high for the animals, so why should they close it?

Oleg stood there for about a minute, squinted and let his eyes grow accustomed to the daylight again. The sun stood high in the heavens; the night had ended long ago. Oleg opened his eyes wide and grew frightened.

There was no trace of Dick or Marianna; during the night the snow had leveled off and smoothed out everything. Snow without a single dark spot on it.

"Hey!" Oleg said. Not too loudly. The silence was so thick it threatened violators.

And then Oleg noticed something was moving back and forth about twelve meters from the side of the ship by a low, rounded hill. It was an animal the like of which Oleg had never seen before; white, nearly blending in with the snow, similar to the lowlands reptiles but fur covered, about four meters from snout to tip of tail. Carefully, as though it feared frightening prey, it was pulling apart that hill. Oleg looked at the animal as though spellbound and waited to see what would happen next; he didn't associate the white snow bank with Dick and Marianna's night time camp. Even when the animals paws had raked the snow aside and revealed the darker color of the tent below he just stood there unmoving.

But at that moment Dick woke up; through his dreams he heard the animal pouncing upon them, and his nose caught the animal's dangerous alien scent. Dick had grabbed for his knife and burst out from underneath the tent, but was caught up in the blankets. When the column of snow shot upwards to Oleg it looked like the snow bank had unexpectedly come to life. The animal wasn't in the least frightened by the explosion; on the contrary, it was now convinced that it had not erred in digging for prey; it grasped the fish hide tent with taloned paws and held its prey down in the snow, growling in triumph.

Oleg the forest dweller groped for the knife in his belt and aimed for a leap to the ground, his eyes already trying to guess where on that white body was the best spot to thrust in his knife. But Oleg the inhabitant of a starship and the son of the ship's engineer grabbed the blaster in place of the knife. It was impossible to fire from where he stood, too high and far away. Oleg jumped down into the snow and rushed for the animal, clutching the weapon in his hands. The animal, seeing him, lifted its muzzle and started to growl to frighten Oleg away; it had taken him for a competitor and now fell on Dick without fear.

Oleg stopped and sent a blaster bolt into the mass of jagged teeth.

***

Dick and Marianna finished eating and started to drag what they would be taking back to the village to the exit. Oleg finally made it to the very top of the ship, to the Astrogation Department. He asked Dick to go with him but the other wouldn't, go up -- the booty was enough for him. Marianna refused to go as well; Oleg had shown her the hospital and she busied herself picking out the medicines and instruments Egli had described for her. But now they had to hurry. Snow was coming again and it was growing colder. It was still day, and they had to get out of the mountains -- the snow would last many days and the temperature would reach fifty below. So Oleg found himself entering the navigation room alone.

He stood for a number of minutes in the joyous company of instruments in the powered center of an otherwise dead ship that was the inconceivable achievement of millions of minds and thousands of years of human civilization. But Oleg felt neither terror nor hopelessness now. He knew that now the settlement, at least for him, had been turned from the center of the universe into a temporary refuge until the ship could become their true home once again, until they understood it enough to find the means to tell Earth about themselves. For this he must -- the old people had told him this at least a thousand times -- repair and activate the emergency beacon.

Oleg went on into the com center; the Mayor had told him where to find the hard copy study guides and manuals he would have to understand before the Mayor died, or Sergeyev -- the only ones who could help him with it. So he could help those who came after him.

The Com Center was dimly lit and it took Oleg a while to search for the hard copy instructions. He pulled out the manuals; there were so many of them, and no way of telling which he would need. But he knew he'd rather part with his mother's slippers than these books. He would have been happy to bring back with him any of the separate pieces of equipment or instruments which might come in handy, but he understood that these would have to wait for the next time he came here, when he could make sense of the screens and displays.

And then Oleg's attention was drawn to a weak flickering in the corner of a display, half hidden by the operator's chair. Oleg walked over to it -- carefully, as though it were a wild animal.

A green fire was flashing on the display. On. Off. On. Off.

Oleg looked the display over, trying to understand why this was happening, but he couldn't. He sat down in the operator's chair and began to touch the contact points in front of him. Nothing happened either. The fire kept flickering. What did it mean? What was it? Who had started it? What did it do? Oleg's hand drifted to one of the knobs which depressed slightly and moved to the right. And then from out of a small grating right next to the fire a thin human voice reached him.

"Earth calling... Earth calling..." After that was the hiss and buzz of a crackling fire, but now there was some uncomprehended thought in the hiss. A minute later the voice repeated: "Earth calling... Earth calling...."

Oleg lost his sense of time. He waited, again and again, until the voice had spoken, a voice he couldn't answer but which connected him with the future, when he would answer.

He was returned to reality by the beeping of a wristwatch -- Dick had found it in his own cabin and given it to him. The watch beeped every fifteen minutes. Perhaps such things were necessary.

Oleg got to his feet and said to the voice from Earth:

"Good bye."

And then he set off toward the ship's exit, dragging the stack of still utterly incomprehensible hard copy manuals. Dick and Marianna were already waiting for him below.

"I was ready to go after you." Dick said. "What do you want to do, stay here forever?"

"I would stay." Oleg said. "I heard a voice from Earth."

"Where?" Marianna was surprised.

"In the Com Center."

"Did you tell them we're here?"

"They're not listening. It's some sort of robot. Com isn't working; have you forgotten?"

"Maybe it's started to work now?"

"No. No it hasn't." Oleg said. "But it will."

"What do you have there?"

"They're called books." Oleg said. "I'm going to learn them."

Dick snorted skeptically.

"Dick, please Dick." Marianna begged. "I'll just run up there and back to hear the voice. Fast. We can go together?"

"And how are you going to get them all back?" Dick asked peevishly. "Don't you know how much snow there is in the pass now?"

Dick already thought of himself as their chief again. The handle of the blaster stuck out from beneath his belt; but he hadn't thrown away his cross-bow.

"I'll get them back." Oleg threw the pack down into the snow. "Go on, Marianna; go hear the voice. And I've forgotten one of the most important things as well. Did you see anything that looked like the Mayor 's small microscope in the hospital? Or a box marked 'JHG-4/H Medical Lab?'"

"Yes." Marianna said. "Several."

"Too bad." Dick said. "Then I'm going with you."

***

Harnessed to the sledges the three of them dragged their load first up the hollow's sharp slope, then along the plateau, then down to the lowlands. It snowed and they stumbled. But it wasn't cold, and there was more than enough to eat. They didn't throw away cans as they emptied them.

On the forth day the canyon through which they had first climbed upward to the plateau lay before them and they suddenly heard a familiar bleating.

The gote sat under the rocky overhang by the edge of the small waterfall.

"She waited for us!" Marianna shouted.

The gote had grown so thin it appeared she might be about to die. Three tiny kids were wedged against her side trying to reach her teats.

Marianna pushed the cover on the sledge aside and started to search in the bags for something to feed the gote.

"Just don't poison her." Dick said.

The gote looked beautiful to him. He was glad she'd gotten away, nearly as much as Marianna.

"You were lucky to get away." Dick told the gote. "I'd have certainly killed you. And now we can harness you."

In fact they were unable to harness the gote. Hooting through her trunk she howled so much she shook the cliffs, and her kids joined in the racket as well in support of their mother.

So they went onward: Dick and Oleg dragging the sled, Marianna supported them from behind, keeping it from toppling, and after them came the gote and her young pestering them for food -- she was always hungry. Even when they made it down into the forest and there were muzhrumes and tubers she still demanded condensed milk, although she had no more idea what this sweet white substance was called than did Dick, or Marianna, or Oleg.

Chapter Five

So far this year the first hints of the spring thaw had stretched over two weeks.

From the calendar records they had so laboriously kept spring was actually early this year, but everyone was hoping they had seen the lasts of the frosts.

The settlement maintained a double calendar. One was local, determined by the passing of the days, the onset of winter and summer as the planet swung in the long orbit around its star. The second was Terrestrial, which they retained as a formality. Like a law that no one obeyed.

Once upon a time, nearly twenty years ago by the terrestrial count and six years by the local, when the survivors from the PolarStar had reached the forest, Sergeyev made his first cut on one of the planks stuck into the edge of one of the huts. One cut was a Terran day. Thirty or thirty-one made up the month.

Gradually the calendar was turned into a forest of notched boards and sticks. They put an awning over them to ward off the rain and snows. The notches were of different sizes and depths. Some were larger, others shorter. Beside a few were commemorative marks. Marks for a birth and marks for a death. Marks for epidemics and marks for the Great Frosts.

When Oleg was little these sticks and their marks had appeared to be alive and all knowing, remembering everything. They remembered when he studied his geography poorly or when he disappointed his mother. Once Marianna had admitted to Oleg that she feared these marks too. Then Dick just laughed and said he had wanted to cut out the record of a poor geography grade but the Mayor had caught him and boxed his ears.

Sergeyev's calendar was deceptive, and they all knew it. It lied twice over. First and foremost the days here on this world were two hours longer than those of Earth. Secondly because there were more than a thousand such days in a local year. A short summer, a long rainy fall, four hundred days of winter and cold, and an equally long spring. The torturous arithmetic had become a watershed between the older generation who remembered the ship and other worlds and their children. The Mayor and other adults pretended they believed the marks beneath the awning really did provide a count of the local years. The younger people accepted the local year for what it was. Otherwise, how else would you deal with a fall that lasted an entire year, and winter was a year as well...

So the thaw this year had stretched out over two weeks. The bands of snow along the ground grew narrower, vanished first in the clearings, then under the trees. The side of the graveyard hill that faced the village became wild, overrun and overgrown with the young tendrils of lichen in the belief that spring had, at last, come. The settlement's only street melted into a single, long, mud puddle.

Beyond the rows of houses the band of mud split in two -- the narrower end finished at the palisade gate, the wider ran to at the workshop and barn. To the right of the workshop, before the new gote shed, an enormous green puddle had formed. In the morning the young gotes smashed the ice surface with their sharp claws and wallowed, hunting for wyrms. Then the kids started to play, howling, splashing gouts of slime everywhere, leaping into the mud, kicking and whirling with their feet -- they too were welcoming the first breath of spring. Only the gote everyone just called Gote, the family matriarch, truly understood that true spring still had yet to put in an appearance. She hung around outside the workshop, in the warmth that seeped through the slats in the walls, but from time to time she grew fed up with waiting and rose up on her hind legs, and then rubbed her shell against the walls of the building. Oleg would run outside and chase Gote away with a stick. On seeing Oleg come out, Gote rose pranced about, coquettishly waving her forelegs over Oleg and bleating with joy. She was convinced she had delighted Oleg with her presence -- why else would he strike her so delightfully with his stick?

Then Oleg called Sergeyev to help him. The gote tumbled down and rolled over on her side on seeing him. "It is time, madam, for you to return to your maternal duties. You are neglecting your children." Sergeyev growled and threatened.

The gote was in no hurry to depart but slowly showed her enormous green rear. Her children remained neglected, however, for she made her way to the palisade walls and planted herself there, hoping that her latest inamorata, a male three meters high at the shoulders, decorated with sharp bony plates, would show himself.

From time to time the male would appear at the edge of the woods and call Gote to come and accompany him on a stroll. Out of fear of the people he never came any closer to the walls. Gote would run to the gates and, if there was no one there, open the bolt herself and vanish for several days. From these amorous encounters she had thrice delivered litters and there were seven young gotes of various ages living in the corral.

So far the herd of gotes had been of little practical utility, but the gotes had become a part of the people's everyday life, proof of the vitality of the settlement, entertainment for the children who rode on their backs despite the evident displeasure of the animals and the propensity of the rides to end in inflicted bruises. In the final analysis the gotes could always be killed and eaten -- the hunters certainly brought back wild gotes. In the middle of winter, when their food stocks had been at their lowest, Dick had offered to do the butchery himself. But Marianna had objected, and the Mayor supported her. Dick shrugged his shoulders, preferring not to have to argue, and went off into the forest in the middle of a snow storm. He returned late in the evening with the tips of his fingers of his left hand frost bitten, but with a medium sized baer over his shoulder.

Gote's continued existence and presence did offer one enormous benefit. She had turned out to be a valuable watchman. And she was teaching her young to guard the settlement as well. The moment anything strange approached the walls Gote's family raised such a ruckus that the entire settlement was awakened. True, then, if the gote determined the danger was serious she rushed to the first available house to hide herself. There she succeeded in overturning anything that was not nailed down and smashing all the clay pots and pans.

Gote, an even tempered and social creature, hated only Spytter. Most likely she had encountered his kind in the past. She would not permit herself to get close to the claws, but from a deferential distance she waited, stamping her six feet, threatening and shaking her enormous bony comb, bleating and demanding that the settlement rid itself of such a disgusting inhabitant.

Kazik, one of Luiza's adopted children, had been first encounter Spytter.

In the spring, shortly after Oleg, Marianna, and Dick and returned from the mountains where the PolarStar had crashed, Kazik and Dick had been together in the forest. They had gone on a long hunt, more than twenty kilometers to the south of the settlement, where the herds of muzdangs flocked in the fall.

Muzdang meat was inedible, even the zhakals would leave them alone, but muzdangs possessed a remarkable air bladder. The animals inflated them when they had to flee from predators. Then the muzdangs changed from a lean, sinewy, somewhat horse-like insect into a brilliant hydrogen-filled sphere and rose into the air. Their aerial bladders were elastic and strong and Sergeyev turned them into window panes, bags, for water and grain and many other useful items. And the girls in the settlement played at fashion, inflating light cloaks and ran about in them like butterflies.

Dick and Kaszik had left the settlement at dawn. They encountered nothing interesting or remarkable in the forest. In those days the memory of the trip to the mountain pass cast shadows over everything, and therefore the normally taciturn Kazik was beside himself with curiosity and was pestering Dick with questions.

That spring Kazik had turned thirteen although to the adults he looked to be no more than ten. He was small and wiry, his dark skin covered in blue scars from willowwasps, his hands gnarled and horny, a long diagonal scar on his forehead. Kazik was at home in the forest, so much they had nicknamed him Mowgli.

Kazik kept up with the older boy easily, without making another sound, not even bothering to looking twice where he was going, jumping over living roots, sometimes bending down for cover and clasp with a quick motion of his hand a sweet muzhrume and pop it into his mouth without stopping, sometimes he'd barge off to the side to sniff at a trail, but he immediately returned to the next question.

"It's all made out of metal."

"From composite compounds." That was easier to say than that the starship used to be as much energy as matter, which would have been more precise, but Dick didn't quite understand all of it.

"And it's bigger than the settlement?"

"Than the palisade. A lot bigger."

"And it's round?"

"Mowgli, you already asked that."

Dick disliked speaking in the forest; you could be heard too far off when you had to be listening for sounds that indicated danger or food. This information never bothered Kazik; he could hear better than any of the animals.

If the other children were able to roam about the forest, and knew how to hide themselves from predators in the soft rootmass of the white payns if forced to spend the night away from the village, Mowgli could live in the forests for weeks. It was as though Kazik owned it. And the boy knew everything. The trees obediently withdrew their leaves from his path, the muzhrumes darted back underground, the hunting vynes lifted their tails and ran. Even the zhakals feared his scent. Mowgli never bothered with a cross-bow in the forest; he could he could pin a fly to a branch from the distance of fifteen meters with his knife.

"So I'll ask you again." Kazik answered right back. "It's fun asking questions. Will you take me with you to the PolarStar next summer?"

"Definitely. So long as you behave yourself."

Kazik snorted. He bobbed his head in mock obedience.

"I want to fly to the stars." Kazik said. "The stars are bigger than our forest, bigger than all the world. You know where I'm going when we return to Earth? I'm going to India."

"Why?" Dick was surprised.

"'Cause..." Kazik was suddenly taken aback. It wasn't something he had ever put into words inside his own head. "I just want to."

For a while both of them were silent.

"I'd rather stay here." Dick said suddenly. He had never spoken about it to anyone else before.

Kazik was silent. Suddenly he ran to one side, jumped on a low, horizontal branch of wood, grabbed for a cluster of squirming nuts and plunked them into his bag.

"We'll cook it in the evening." Kazik said, jumping back down to the ground.

Dick was annoyed. He was displeased with himself. He should have seen that cluster first. Dick had long ago come to view the forest as a field of battle; the forest hid dangers that had to be overcome, or avoided, as well as booty to be taken, predators and deadly monsters which had to be outwitted or killed or they would kill you. Kazik viewed the forest as a home, perhaps, just a bigger home than the settlement, because the existence of the settlement was alien to this world, and the forest grudgingly accepted them only because the people had proven themselves wilier and more dangerous. Kazik understood the forest and had no fear of it. He was not fighting an enemy. If he was stronger, he gave chase. And he avoided what might eat him. But in general he felt no special love for the forest, for the same reason he experienced no such feelings for the air or water. All his dreams, thoughts, hopes were connected with the world that lived on only in the adults' stories, in the memories of Luiza and the Mayor . That world -- the realm of stars and starships, space stations and the Earth -- was waiting for him, he knew in detail better than any of the settlement's other children, although no one in the settlement had ever guessed it. Kazik had listened to everything the Mayor had ever said about the Earth and he remembered everything.

He knew the height of Everest and the principal dates in the life of Alexander the Great, the atomic weights of all the elements and the height of Brahmaputra. His small head was packed with figures and information that had not the slightest connection with the settlement and this permanently clouded, twilit world. History had captivated him; the numberless generations which had each lived, fought, built, one after the other, on the Earth. Billions of people and millions of events connected by a complex network of relationships, had turned the forest and the settlement into some sort of abstraction, much like a boring dream, which simply had to be endured. "I'd spend a year going to museums." He told himself. "The Hermitage. The British Museum. The Prado. The Pergamon...." He'd never mentioned this to anyone. What reason for it?

When Marianna and Dick had gone off with Oleg and Thomas Hind to the mountain pass Kazik had dreamed of going with them and had followed them every step of the way with his thoughts. And long before they had returned he had stopped eating or sleeping -- he had been listening for their return. He had even met the survivors some ten kilometers from the settlement while they were dragging their home made sledges loaded down with the treasures of the ship over muddy ground.

Kazik had exhausted each of them with detailed questions of what they had seen in the ship. He knew he would have to wait for next year before he could go to the PolarStar himself and the three years wait did not seem so long. Winter would pass as it always did, Oleg and Sergeyev would figure out how to fix the com system, they would build a radio, and then Earth would send a rescue ship.

When it became dark -- and it became dark early, at the hour they called four o'clock for convenience sake -- Dick and Kazik holed up for the night in a thicket of stinkweed. The forest animals avoided the stands, but if they had to find a bolt hole for the night they could get used to the stench.

The next morning Dick and Kazik found a herd of muzdangs, crept up to them from downwind, and selectively brought down a few of the older males. Dick shot with his crossbow; the blaster they had taken from the ship was in his belt but he didn't use it to save the charge. Kazik killed only one muzdang. His job was to send the animals toward Dick. He killed it, throwing the knife Sergeyev had forged for him. Sergeyev had made knives for each and every one of them out of the pieces of metal stairway they had brought back from the PolarStar.

Dick stripped to skin the muzdangs, cutting off the bladders without damaging them. The work turned him into a bloody mess and he did it alone. Not wanting to waste time, Kazik headed down along the edge of the stream looking for snails. They turned the shells into useful scrapers and saucers -- the settlement's women would thank him for any he brought back.

Kazik got about three hundred meters. He was thinking of the marvels of India where Luiza had lived as a child; he had come up to the gates of a city with the fairy-tale name of Hyderabad, and suddenly he heard a splash, something flashed in front of his eyes, and the next moment Kazik realized he was standing in the middle of a small pond which, only a moment before, had not been there.

The pond was completely round, about three meters in diameter and about two or three centimeters deep, no more - grass and pebbles stuck out of its surface. It was completely flat and smooth and reflected the a sky stretched with violet clouds. As though an enormous droplet had fallen directly on him.

Kazik froze. Like any denizen of the forest he did not like anything strange.

The forest was alerted to danger and grew silent. Kazik wanted to retreat and carefully began to lift his feet. But the liquid held onto the thick fish hide of his boots, as he watched the substance grew stronger and more glassy.

Kazik finally became alarmed and whistled, calling Dick for help. He didn't realize how far he had gone or that Dick could not hear him. Then the boy froze again, Think! What to do?

As he did the thick wall of leaves shook and parted and a creature similar to a carapace-less crab with a long, thin proboscis fixed in the front of the head crawled out of the woods. The creature was unfamiliar, and nameless, but it exuded menace. Spydeure. Kazik thought. That's what Thomas Hind would have called it.

On either side of the proboscis, lower than the unthinking olivine eyes, the spydeure had openings covered with membranes. The membranes scarcely fluttered, and Kazik intuitively understood that was where the danger he faced lay. So when the membranes opened and two streams of sticky yellow liquid shot from the holes, Kazik was ready; although his feet were immobilized in the hardened puddle he moved to one side and ducked. The liquid struck the puddle and splashed over it, like water over ice.

The critter was very annoyed at missing the boy. It was used to prey behaving in dependable, predictable ways. The critter turned its head, raised its proboscis to the sky, stamped its thin, fragile legs, and howled in rage.

Kazik even laughed, having seen how the critter closed membranes over the openings and started to puff, exerting itself, then it opened the membranes again, but all that shot out were two tiny spurts.

The critter sat back on its hind legs -- evidently it was prepared to wait and think, if that was something it was capable of doing. There was no way Kazik himself was going solve the problem of how to get out of the trap. As the glue dried it gripped his feet all the tighter. It was clear to Kazik he would have to abandon his boots.

Kazik started to ease his feet out of the leather. He would have to jump to the side, a distance of a meter and a half, without touching the glue with the bare soles of his feet. Watching Kazik, the creature started to become excited again. It touched the edge of the glue with the claws of its fore legs and realized that its discharge still hadn't dried out and it could not take the prey with its bare legs, it began, slowly and unsteadily to touch the glue trap with its feet, searching for dry spots from which it could reach out to Kazik with its proboscis.

Kazik made a leap toward the side of the trap away from the critter, trying to land on his hands and pulling up his legs. He almost made it, but the bare heel of his right leg touched the edge of the glue puddle and stuck; there was a sharp pain. Pulling at his leg Kazik screamed so loud he thought he should have been heard in the settlement. The critter, realizing finally that its fly had fled, hurried toward the boy.

Bending down, Kazik pulled his knife out of its sheath and wanted a moment to throw it at. Get myself free first! he thought. And the knife might not do the critter any harm.

Kazik hurriedly tried to slash at the surface of the layer of glue, but his knife just slid uselessly over its surface. The proboscis was almost on him; the boy slashed about his feet, waved his arms and raised the knife to ward off the proboscis which was so close he could catch the cold, bitter, smell....

Then Dick shot the critter with the blaster.

Dick hadn't heard Kazik's earlier whistle, but he heard the cry for help and came running, terrified something had happened to the boy. He shot until the predator's fragile body was a black, smoking pile of ash and the legs scattered like branches knocked from a log. The air stank of ozone.

Kazik looked at surprise at the calcined's remains and said:

"Why'd you do that. You'll drain the charge."

Kazik had never seen the pistol used before; it had always been too important to preserve the charge.

"Idiot." Dick said. "It would have sucked you dry for supper. Weren't you looking where you were going? Or were you already in India....?"

Kazik shut up. He had pulled his heel away from the glue, leaving skin behind. His foot was bleeding. He reached for the small bag with balm.

"I've lost my boots."

Dick covered the boy's foot with medicine and bandaged it with leaves and a piece of cloth, and carried Kazik back to the settlement on his shoulders. The boy was heavy, and Dick was bringing back the bag filled with the muzdang's flotation bladders as well. Kazik was silent, although his foot hurt, and for two weeks thereafter he had to hobble about on one foot.

But in the end, Kazik's adventure proved to be the impetus for the great undertaking. Kazik fired the first shot while he was sitting on a stool and watching his foster mother sew him another set of boots. Earlier in the morning Vaitkus had brought pieces he had cut from a fish hide, and the enormous Luiza was stitching the pieces together. The labor was in fact primitive, although Marianna had brought real needles from the PolarStar. She had been unable to find actual thread, so as before they were using the dried stems of water plants that were thick enough to serve but rather too short for the work. As always Luiza grumbled; she hated sewing -- it simply took too much time that could be spent on other necessary tasks, Kazik was looking at her, then he said.

"As soon as I get better I'm going to the forest to bring you back one of those spydeures."

The woman stopped and looked up at him. "Whatever for?"

"For sewing."

"What are you talking about?" She turned her eyes back to her work.

"You don't understand." Kazik said. "Not for sewing, for gluing."

Luiza paid no attention to what Kazik said, but the boy was insistent. As soon as he could get up from the bed he attached himself to the Mayor and acquired an extra net from him. The Mayor went fishing with nets in the small lakes on the other side of the swamp. The nets were often torn and the Mayor , who considered mending nets the idea tranquilizer and therefore had accumulated a large number of them selected the largest and strongest and even agreed to participate in the expedition to go in search of the critter.

Later Kazik's foster sister Fumiko, and Vaitkus's oldest son Patrick set off on their quest. At the last moment Dick insisted on coming to prevent them all from killing themselves.

They spent three days in the underbrush until they finally came across one of the glue spitting critters. Dick tormented it, running forward to get its attention and then darted out of the way of the stream of spit and the creature soon emptied itself of its store of glue. After that it was easy to net it and lug it back to the settlement. Their chief worry was not to damage any of the legs.

They installed the creature in a cage and fed it worms and snails. Soon the critter's mood brightened, it covered the inside of its cage with a thick web of netting and felt at home. The critter was dull witted and sluggish, and no one gave a second thought to its repulsive appearance -- the people in the settlement were used to monsters and worse.

They called the creature Spytter. It turned out the names spydeure and grabbe had already been awarded to other creatures.

The Mayor had noted the gradual changes in the terrans' language as they adapted themselves to their new environment long before. The font of words the children exhibited was but a small fraction of that utilized by the adults, so much of the remaining world was nameless. Therefore their language had inevitably become the poorer, despite the Mayor 's insistence in school that his students memorize by heart poems he recited to them, or if he didn't remember the poem he summoned the other adults together and they cobbled the forgotten texts together.

"Kids on Earth have it easy." The Mayor said. "Their parents just enroll them in learning centers and what they don't learn there they pick up the street, from the 3V or books. An earth child is logged onto the net and awash with information he doesn't even realize he's getting. And what do we have? Half a dozen adults who keep trying to remember just a few thousand words between them."

Oleg found himself disagreeing with the Mayor . In his view, the younger generation's language was hardly impoverished. The language had simply changed. The children had been forced to find words for new experiences and things unknown or just uninteresting to the adults. They had been forced not merely to think up new words themselves, but to impress meanings onto old words. Once, through the partition that separated their room from the Mayor 's, Oleg had heard six year old Nick Vaitkus explaining to the Mayor why he had been late for school.

"I took three burries on a stamp." He said. "About a nail deeper than Arnis did."

"Go sit down." The Mayor answered, pretending to have understood.

In fact he had not. But the meaning of the phrase was clear to Oleg. You could even use it to explain just how much the village's children knew about their world, about which the Mayor had only a vague understanding.

Sometime during the past summer certain bearies had fallen on the abballs that grew beside the palisade. These bearies were in fact sluggish red grubs which hung on the branches casually working their ways into the bark. Vaitkus had tried to get rid of them, drenching the trees with everything from acid to diluted zhakal venom but nothing had altered their health or slowed their activity. And then one fine day the slugs vanished. The adults had noticed nothing, although Vaitkus had sighed in relief -- the enormous, sweet fruits hanging from the trees were the source of much of their winter vitamins, but the bearies had changed into bluish sharp thorns, which dug into the earth just outside the palisade to wait out the winter. The children had called these thorns 'burries,' the adults could see no genetic relationship between the bearies and the burries. The buried thorns were if anything more active than in their tree dwelling stage; if a warm blooded animal passed by the area outside the fence the thorns worked their way out of the ground, and made for the animal's hide to plant their spores, which dissolved in human blood and were therefore considered harmless by the adults. But the prick of the thorn was painful, and carried the risk of infection.

The children devised a game. They took off their sandals, the soles stitched from the hard and pliable shells of forest cokernuts and which the children all called spoons, and teased the thorns. The thorns thrust themselves at the warm shoes and stuck in them. The winner was the child who gathered the most thorns and whose thorns had dug the deepest into the sole. The game was fun, but certainly not without dangers; the thorn might penetrate a hand. As a result, Nick's curious phrase indicated only that he had been playing with Arnis and had won.

It was Oleg's mother Irina who came up with the name of Spytter and everyone soon accepted it. There was only one minor disparity -- the adults called the creature's glue, glue; the children called it spit.

Spytter's appearance in fact improved everyday life, especially when Vaitkus noticed that Spytter's glue would harden more slowly it was mixed with a saliva which the animal also shot out from its proboscis. Sergeyev soon figured out he could repair broken ceramic dishes and pots on his carpenter's table using the dried glue, and if colored clays taken from the swamp were added to the glue the pottery the colors stayed lacquered to the dishes.

During the winter Spytter hibernated and ate virtually nothing, and produced almost no glue. Before that, however, Vaitkus had stored a supply in sealed containers. With the arrival of the spring Spytter awakened from his slumbers and began to dance about his cage and to spit on everything whether they wanted him to or not.

***

The endless thaw brought with it runny noses, colds, bronchitis, and worsening rheumatism. Oleg's mother lay in bed with arthritis, and Oleg had to fix their meals himself.

Oleg had already convinced himself that medicines operated selectively. Those who believed in their effectiveness grew well, those who disbelieved continued to be sick. In fact he based his conclusions without reference to the real medicines which he had helped bring back from the ship. But those medicines were for the real sicknesses, the ones that had killed so many in years past -- infections, blood parasites, inflamed lungs. The medicines from the ship were few, and Egli Vaitkus guarded them, locking them away in a special chest.

Oleg's mother had a whole store of every kind of dried herb and preparation filling small boxes and containers. At that moment, although Oleg was very cold, the first order of the day was to warm water and pour it into a thick mixture to prepare a lotion. The hut was practically lightless, only the clay pot burned faint red on the small flame, and Oleg's mother lay under a pile of skins. She said.

"You're here finally. I was waiting. I was waiting all day. All I can do is just sit here in pain. I thought you could have come earlier."

"I'm here now, Mother." Oleg said. "It's ready now; I'll rub it on you."

"No, you go eat." His mother answered. "You're the one the settlement needs; everyone depends on you. And you're getting too pale and thin. I can wait; don't you bother. All that's wrong with me is arthritis. No one's ever died from arthritis."

On the other side of the hanging curtain the Mayor started coughing. The Mayor could have moved out of the hut long ago; they could have built a new one or the Mayor could have taken the empty house opposite the Vaitkuses, but they had gotten used to living together. The Mayor , Irina and Oleg were not one family, but they often ate together, and when the Mayor and Irina were alone they spoke for long times. The Mayor had become very voluble; he was chattering constantly now; it had become difficult for him to stay silent. Perhaps that was why he had begun the school, because he loved to talk so much. And Oleg's mother was sick and angry at life in general. All she had left was her fear for her son's safety, that he might be injured, fall sick, or vanish unheralded in the forest.

Oleg would soon be twenty; he was a grown man. He spent whole days with Sergeyev in the workshop where they made things the settlement needed. The rest of the time he spent studying the hard copy manuals they had brought back from the PolarStar. The two of them had but one idea -- fix the communications system so the PolarStar could signal Earth that people were still alive here. The settlement had lived two decades on the hope of returning someday to Earth, but before now hope had been timid and abstract. Now it had a chance of becoming reality. Oleg's mother kept saying over and over again:

"If the specialists and engineers who survived the crash could not fix the subspace radio then what can a boy and an old cripple accomplish?"

In fact she was terrified that Oleg would have to go to the mountain pass where the starship had crashed for a second time. Her son had escaped from there once already; she knew he would not return a second time. But was it really better to live out his life in this stinking mass of hovels among crippled adults and stunted children while outside the monsters howled and rattled at the gates? No, she did not know what was worse, everything was worse.

Oleg brought the box of ointment; despite everything he was a good kid, really the best in the settlement. He had shot up over tho course of the last winter and was now fully grown; his father would have been proud she had raised such a son.

Oleg applied the ointment and rubbed his mother's back. The touch of the burning liquid was pleasant, because the heat meant there was still life in her. Her body still lived and felt, and her son had hard warm palms and fingers and he was able to massage her back. He had done it as frequently as possible over the last year; it was a great joy that there were such hands willing to grasp your old and very tired flesh and knead new life into it. Irina quietly cried from the unexpected pleasure.

From the other side of the partition the Mayor 's voice reached them:

"Want some help, Oleg?"

"No, thanks." Oleg answered. "Come on over. I've warmed the soup; we can have supper."

"Thank you, I'm full." The Mayor answered, and Irina laughed through her tears because she had heard him -- she had sensitive hearing and each sound spelt out every motion the Mayor took as he prepared to cross the partition that separated their sections of the hut and enter their room; he washed his dishes, then started to get dressed. The Mayor treasured the idea of going into someone else's territory as an actual guest and approached the action with all due formality, even if it was only going from one room to another.

The three of them sat at the table; Irina became better because she had improved her mood. She believed in the value of a burning hot broth and therefore it helped her. The Mayor brought fried nuts for the soup; he had picked them himself and cooked them on the brazier. He had put on his new jacket; it had only one sleeve. Oleg was sometimes astonished that someone could manage to do so well with only one hand.

"When you go to the ship the next time you'll have to bring back far more paper." The old man said, watching Oleg ladle the soup into their bowls. "It was a tragedy you brought back so little paper."

"I know." Oleg had heard about it many times before.

"When we had absolutely no paper at all we survived quite well without it.." The Mayor continued to speak. "I'm afraid it went in a... a feeding frenzy, and it's all my fault. I even gave each of the children a sheet to write compositions; can you blame me for that?"

"Certainly not." Irina said. "It was perfectly understandable."

"And Linda Hind wrote that long poem about Thomas." Oleg said.

"People are used to confiding their thoughts to paper; that's why microtapes and videochips never entirely replaced it. Back on Earth I have a whole library of real books, something that would evoke surprise in no one. So you will simply have to bring back far more paper next time. The strength of a white sheet where someone can confide his thoughts or the images overcoming him is unbelievable. We'll have to find something else for teaching the children with."

"We still have to make it through to the end of summer." Oleg's mother said. She was sitting up straight, tense, not moving; if she sat otherwise she knew she would feel the pain. "It astonishes me how all of you grown ups are now running to Oleg saying 'Don't forget to bring this back, or that...'"

"If I could get to the ship I'd recognize what had to be brought back far better than Oleg." The Mayor said. "I have the experience."

"And all I had to go on was intuition and guesswork." Oleg said lazily.

The hot soup made him drowse. Today they had finished hammering out the metallic parts for the mill so as to be ready to place it in the stream once the ice was finally gone. Then they put Oleg to studying electronics again, and just before dozing off he had managed to finish reading the paragraphs in the textbook and in the morning before work Sergeyev would question him on them.

"The next time we'll bring back a whole treasure hoard." Oleg said. "I couldn't believe everything would vanish so fast."

"It didn't vanish. It was simply put to use." The Mayor said.

"And almost half of it went to Egli and Sergeyev." Oleg's mother said. Oleg couldn't tell if his mother was pleased with that or blaming Egli and Sergeyev.

"Of course." The boy answered. "Sergeyev needed most of it in the workshop and Egli has to keep track of the medicines."

"I even gave her the microscope." The Mayor sighed. He was quite proud of his sacrifice.

In the settlement, of necessity, everything was held in common, otherwise they would never have survived. But there were still private things; Marianna had her mirror, the Mayor his microscope, Oleg's mother the copy of Anna Karenina. Not to mention clothing or hand tools. This sometimes led to incidents.

Marianna had the only mirror.

Oleg had found a round pocket mirror on the ship and had given it to Marianna on the way back. The existence of the mirror had produced a profound effect on the life of the settlement. Before that people hadn't had a chance to see themselves as others had seen them, other than in mud puddles and in window panes. But the mirror told people the often, all too painful truth. Certainly the adults remembered themselves from the time when there had been many mirrors. And they were astonished at how much they had changed, grown old, and knew their youth had faded. The young people had never had a chance to see themselves before, and now, suddenly, they had been forced to, as it were, establish relations with themselves.

Marianna's opinion of herself had changed for the worse. When she saw her bony, weather-beaten face with hollow cheeks, her sharp chin and cracked lips in the mirror, all covered over with the tiny scars of willowasps, she knew at once she was monstrously deformed and that no one could ever do anything to restore her beauty. She didn't even notice her large grey eyes, her long black lashes, the ragged cut of her thick straight hair.

Liz, on the other hand, had seen her reflection and decided she was a beauty on a par with Anna Karenina. She started to put on airs and even blackened her eyelashes with ash to make herself more beautiful.

Then Liz stole Marianna's mirror. The other girl simply could not live without it. Marianna had given the mirror around -- there were a lot of people who wanted to look at themselves -- and Liz said the mirror was lost. Everyone was very annoyed, but several days later Kristina, although blind, figured out from the sounds that Liz was looking at herself in the mirror. She started to strike Liz with her dry fist and cry in shame that Liz could be so deceitful, and she forced Liz to return the mirror to Marianna and own up to everything.

Liz returned the mirror and said she had found it in the crevice behind the bed. On the next day Kristina. who was sitting on her porch and recognized Marianna's footsteps passing by.

"Liz returned the mirror to you, didn't she?"

"Yes, thank you."

"She did tell you she didn't want to give it back?"

After a short pause Marianna said,

"Yes, she did."

Kristina understood that Liz had said nothing. But no one spoke about the matter again.

Oleg distributed the brew to everyone, and he brought out sweet syrup; this year the syrup was especially tasty; Vaitkus had added apples to the mix of preserves.

"I'm hoping that we'll be able to make contact." Oleg said. "And then we won't have to lug more things back from the ship. I really don't want to have to drag another sled over the mountain pass if we don't have to."

"We'll have to be prepared for both alternatives." The Mayor said. "Obviously, they'll find us sooner or later. But we'll have to assume the worst and be prepared for it. "

"We've always been prepared for the worst." Irina said. "The worst never ends."

"Don't make promises you can't keep." The Mayor laughed dryly.

"Too bad the flitter was damaged." Oleg said. "But the landsled vehicle would never make it over the mountains even if we could have gotten out of the ship. I was thinking that if we can't fix the subspace radio Sergeyev and I might try to repair the flitter."

"That would be fine." The Mayor said. "But it would demand several trips to the ship."

"Maybe, maybe not." Oleg said. "Sergeyev and I have been discussing it. Two or three people could remain on the ship through the winter."

"No way." Oleg's mother cut in. "I'll never allow it."

"Because there'll be light and heat...."

"The temperature in the mountain pass drops to sixty degrees below zero during the winter." The Mayor said. "Don't waste your time with empty dreams. I have very specific desires. A lot of paper, that's all."

"If we had some means of transport...." Oleg ladled out syrup onto the mixture. "Even a small flitter..."

"Before we learn to fly we're going to have to learn to walk," The Mayor answered seriously, "or at least invent the wheel first."

"We really don't have any need for wheels." Oleg answered. "There are no roads in the forest. Of course if there were two settlements...."

"We already have the wheel, and we have a cart." The Mayor said. "Now you want it steam driven...."

"Sergeyev and I will make a cauldron." Oleg said. "We've already figured out how to do it. From glue."

"And after the steam cauldron comes the aerial balloon." The Mayor laughed.

"And why not a balloon? I've actually considered it a number of times. What's wrong with a balloon?" Oleg asked.

"You are speaking from imagination and ignorance. You have never been involved in the construction of a balloon." The Mayor said. "Even to displace enough air to be able to lift but a

single person the bag of the balloon would have to be enormous."

"How enormous?"

"At least thirty meters high. I can do the calculations. And the balloon would have to be filled with helium or hydrogen. Where would you get that?"

"You yourself told me how the Mongol brothers...."

"Mon-gol-fi-er. With a silent letter, t."

"The Montgolfier brothers flew over Paris in a balloon filled with nothing but hot air."

Oleg went over to the stove and threw some grease onto the fire. Fire flared and shot sparks into the air.

"They had a special burner. And fuel."

"What kind?" Oleg asked.

"Whatever it was, it wasn't wood."

"I'm going to lay down." His mother said. "Help me, Oleg."

The Mayor went over to Irina and helped her to the bed, then covered her with the blankets

"We can work on the fuel." Oleg said, looking at the fire. "And we can make a burner."

"Have you thought this through seriously?"

"Completely." Oleg said. "If we can get up to the mountain pass in a balloon we'll save on time, and our strength. If... But perhaps we'll get down as well. Or make two balloons, or three. One for people, the other for cargo."

"Stop that nonsense!" Irina had become frightened. "It will simply drift on the wind and crash."

"Don't be afraid, Irina, it's only a dream." The Mayor said.

"We'll do it." Oleg said. He turned and hurried from the hut. His mother's "Put on your coat!" drifted after him but he did not hear her.

The street outside had grown cold. Snow had fallen, wet and thick. A fine spray splattered the puddles and rolled along the slippery ground. A wind was rising, from the north and the mountains.

It had grown dark just a moment before; twilight flickered through the chinks in the gate. The lantern rocked back and forth, light falling on Gote's erect comb, shiny and wet.. Oleg could make out Gote's indistinct form by the gate; she was waiting for her cavalier.

Oleg jumped over a puddle and cut across the road toward Sergeyev's hut. The small lamp's weak light broke through the muzdang bladder stretched tightly across the window.

Oleg knocked and went in immediately, quickly shutting the door behind him to keep in the warmth.

"Pardon me, Sergeyev." Oleg said without preamble. "I have an idea."

Sergeyev was sitting at the table, drinking the tea they made from boiling some of the crushed, wild grasses. Opposite him at the table sat Linda Hind, Thomas's widow. Marianna stood mysterious at the corner of the room in the half darkness.

"Sit down."

Linda nodded in greeting, although she must have seen Oleg at least five times that day already, all the more so as it was Linda who brought Sergeyev his lunch in the workshop. She was seeing Sergeyev all the more frequently recently, and this surprised no one. Everyone expected that Linda would soon move in with Sergeyev. Oleg's mother even said the faster the better -- Linda was quite unbearable without her husband, there were two children -- Irina had long experience with feminine loneliness

"I've decided to build an aerial balloon." Oleg said.

"Why?" Sergeyev asked.

Sergeyev was the strongest and most useful of the men in the village, the most Alpha male of their small human pack. "Still strong, and relatively hale." as Oleg's mother said. He was missing two fingers on his right hand. He resembled his daughter Marianna only in the eyes -- both had long gray eyelashes that caught the light and made you notice them. But Sergeyev's face was blocky, heavy, and certainly far from pretty if you looked on him for the first time. But his face bore a stamp of competence, and he could be trusted. Earlier the Mayor had been Oleg's idol, the one who knew everything, who was the Teacher. But after the return from the starship in the mountain pass Oleg found himself going to Sergeyev again and again. He was not a teacher, but he was a craftsman, and what Oleg had to learn Sergeyev knew.

"We can construct a large aerial balloon." Oleg said. "And fly to the ship in it. You understand."

"Well sit down anyway. Marianna, make our guest some tea."

"I've had some already, thank you." Oleg said. But he sat down.

Linda got to her feet and said it was time for her to leave, or else the children would never go to sleep.

To Oleg it always appeared that Linda was cold to him, after all, it was because of him that her husband had died in the mountains. And there was no way she could forgive him for that loss. Oleg wanted to go to her and say that it wasn't his fault, that he remembered absolutely nothing, that a snow flea had bitten him. But the boy had never been able to make himself go to the woman and speak what was in his heart. She had turned grey overnight when she heard of Thomas's death.

Sergeyev followed after Linda with his eyes. Marianna's eyes followed the woman as well, and Oleg imagined Marianna did not want Linda to take the place of the mother Marianna had lost long ago, although everyone knew Linda was quiet and good.

"Continue." Sergeyev's words cut through Oleg's musings.

"If we make a large aerial balloon and wait until we have the right wind we can fly right up to the mountains, perhaps even fly to the PolarStar itself. You can imagine the time and energy that will save."

"Certainly." Sergeyev said. He never argued until he could solve the problem himself. "A large aerial balloon. And if we can catch a wind going the other way, then we can make the return to the lowlands in it as well."

"We could make the flight to the starship in it five times. You understand, five times!"

Sergeyev whistled, or laughed, or did both as though coughing.

"You're certain, five?"

"I'm certain." Oleg was already convinced that he had found an ally, that for all practical intents and purposes they were already airborne.

"You don't mind if I think aloud, do you?" Sergeyev asked.

Oleg wanted to answer: Don't. Everything is going to come crashing down in flame. Sergeyev was not the Mayor to criticize in general terms; Sergeyev would find the weak points in his plan for real.

"If we do construct an aerial balloon," Sergeyev said, "And it does fly, that would be very useful. However, first of all aerial balloons cannot be directed. Let us suppose that we get it aloft, the wind is favorable, and we head toward the mountains. Then the wind changes, and carries us toward the glacier covered heights where none of us has ever been before. We will either crash and be killed or land, but then we will be unable to find our way back home. How can we compel the winds to carry us to precisely to the valley we want?"

Oleg was glancing at Marianna. She had pushed a cup of tea in his direction. Marianna was supporting him.

Oleg suddenly felt that he was sitting down at one of the Mayor 's exams. Over the past year the Mayor had scheduled exams for him, Marianna, and Dick, because they were finally grown and finished with school. The settlement had even been made the centerpiece of a declared public holiday, where everyone, the smallest children, had gathered under the awning that covered the calender posts to watch the public examinations. The Mayor had asked them questions, as had Vaitkus and Luiza, the other members of the Board of Education..

Oleg had thought the questions inflicted upon him had been noticeably harder than those inflicted upon Marianna and Dick, and he had been somewhat annoyed at the Mayor for the apparent unfairness of it all -- and then he had understood the reasons behind it; the Mayor had prepared questions he had expected each of them should be able to answer. Oleg felt now the same as he had felt then; that he was on a hunt facing down a zhakal, and all his thoughts were clear and precise.

"If the wind changes unexpectedly, then we'll have to provide some means for the balloon to deflate and descend rapidly." Oleg answered quickly. "That way it won't be able to carry us far off. We'll simply land en route and continue further on foot or wait for the right wind."

"Reasonable." Sergeyev nodded his head. "Assuming, of course, that we manage to land on level ground and not on a sheer rock face or the top of a peak."

"We would only have to make it to the plateau." Oleg said. "That's where the cliffs end. The ground is fairly level."

"Will you take me with you?" Marianna asked, looking at Oleg steadily.

"I don't know." Oleg said.

"A second aspect to the problem, of course, is how are we to make the balloon." Sergeyev said. "I certainly don't know how."

"I don't either. We'll think of something."

"It will gave to be large. Enormous. Where are we going to find such material."

"But what if we tie together lots of muzdang bladders?" Marianna asked. "Would a bunch of them work as aerial balloon? Like a bunch of grapes."

"No." Her father said. "The balloons will remain on the ground. The muzdangs fill their bladders with hydrogen they generate rapidly from their own bodies; that's how they get into the air."

"Right." Oleg agreed. "That means we'll have to take a great many muzdang bladders and fit them together into one enormous balloon."

"With thread?"

"With glue." Oleg said. "We have Spytter."

"Okay." Sergeyev agreed. "We'll work on this proposal first. But how are we going to suspend the gondola?"

"The what?" Oleg had never heard the word before.

"The cab, the bucket where the people will sit."

"How did they do it on Earth?" Oleg asked. "I suppose we could tie it onto the lower end of the balloon. Doesn't there have to be a hole at the bottom in order to fill the bag with hot air?"

"No. That won't do. That would just tear the muzdang hides. We have to spread the stress, the weight of the gondola, out over the entire envelope of the gas bag." Sergeyev's eyes clouded over in memory. "The way they did it in the illustration in a Jules Verne novel, they covered it with a net, and the box was hung at the bottom from the net."

"So, we'll make an enormous net." Oleg said.

"And how are we to heat the air?"

"Like the Montgolfier brothers." Oleg said, feeling he had already won. "We'll make a stove.... We'll think of something?"

"Maybe, something or other." Sergeyev asked.

Then the Gote started a continuous bellow from the gate; something was happening. If a real danger were threatening the settlement the gote would have shrieked twice as loud, so no one was very alarmed. But whatever it was it would have to be checked. Sergeyev looked at Oleg expectantly. Oleg said,

"I'll take a look."

"All right." Sergeyev said. "And I've done enough thinking for tonight. The two of us will work on plans for the balloon tomorrow."

Oleg said good-bye and headed toward the gates. Marianna went with him.

"That's a good idea." She said

The two of them skirted the edge of the long puddle. The sky was a dim glow and their eyes quickly got used to the darkness. The huts' windows were burning yellow -- small lamps were alight everywhere. No one had gone outside, although the gote had continued to plead for reinforcements. Everyone knew it was nothing dangerous.

Marianna shivered a little and held onto Oleg's hand. She had strong fingers. Oleg glanced at her profile; she had a finely chiseled nose and full lips. Oleg found himself thinking, Is she really beautiful? His mother said that Marianna was an ugly ducking who was not destined to become a swan. An eternal teenager. His mother thought Liz was prettier. Perhaps she said that because Oleg didn't care for Liz, but he did like Marianna. Oleg was unable to explain to himself why he liked her so much -- he found himself feeling that only in negative thoughts. For example, if Marianna went alone with Dick into the forest. Certainly, although he was unable to formulate the thought, it wasn't so much jealousy as envy for Dick. Because Dick was taller, braver, stronger, and so much the better hunter. Oleg envied Dick's ability to shoot a cross-bow and throw a knife, his ability to track and kill even the strongest animals, his cold recklessness and, chiefly, his complete indifference to Oleg's accomplishments and dreams. Dick found Oleg's achievements inaccessible -- he had never even glanced in the communications text books and had only a vague understanding of logarithms. All this was unfair and shameful. It caused the value of Oleg's knowledge and wisdom to fall, and he was forced to convince himself that someday he would show Dick the usefulness of his knowledge, although in reality what he wanted to do was show Dick his non-existent superiority in hunting zhakals.

Sometimes Oleg found himself becoming annoyed and angry whenever he was not near Marianna; he wanted to hear her voice or meet her persistent, grey look. But in the past few months the two of them had almost never been together, because Oleg was constantly busy and at the end of the short, overcast days he was exhausted. Everyone in the village was busy all the time, even the children, and everyone was exhausted, except for blind Kristina, and Liz who had no real liking for work. Oleg found himself having to learn and understand everything that was written in the communications text books they had brought back from the starship. He had to get back up to the crashed starship and inform Earth they were here.

Gote was running back and forth in front of the gates bleating, trying to get at a single zhakal that was sitting on the other side, white coat on end, its black muzzle flaring wide. Gote could have dealt with the zhakal all on its own if someone would have let it out through the fence, she was twice as large and twice as strong, therefore the zhakal just stretched out on the cold ground and groomed itself. But the Gote stamped all six feet in frustration, wanting to sink hooves into the predator's hide. It was an empty gesture.

"Quit making a racket." Oleg told the Gote. "Go to bed."

Marianna chased the Gote off toward the gotery and locked her in. Oleg picked up a stone from the pile they kept ready by the gate and threw it at the zhakal. The zhakal got through its dim brain that it had no business being there and darted off toward the forest.

It was very quiet. Snow drifted down silently, borne on the breeze. Oleg suddenly became very cold.

"Good night." He told Marianna. She had finished latching the gotery's gate "I'll go inside before I freeze."

"Good night." Marianna said. Her voice was sad, but Oleg wasn't listening to the intonation. Slipping in the mud he ran off toward his own hut to invent aeronautics.

Chapter Six

Within the settlement the balloon soon became the cause of arguments and conflict. On the face of it, the idea seemed insane and completely unworkable. To even begin such a project would demand that every man, woman and child sacrifice his or her own time and effort, the work needed for their day-to-day survival, for the sake of a childish speculation which everyone knew would, in the end, come to nothing.

But Oleg had allies.

The first and most important was Sergeyev himself. The man avoided the arguments which flared about them, but he agreed to design and develop a burner. He succeeded. The fuel, in the end, came from the same pieces of wood which heated their houses -- almost half the wood's weight consisted of a fatty resin. The logs burned with a hot violet flame, leaving almost nothing behind in the way of ash,. a fact that had been noted in passing but had never before proven useful otherwise. Sergeyev made a press to extract the oil from the wood at an enormous savings in weight. Then the Mayor , with considerable lamentation and tears, handed over his old and useless microscope. He had the new one that Oleg had brought back from the PolarStar, but he had carried the old one, lenses lost, from the ship himself. The microscope provided the pipe for the stove and valve that would regulate the flame.

Oleg's second ally was Kazik.

The boy saw the aerial balloon as a great adventure. An adventure that linked them with Earth. Only on Earth itself had people flown in aerial balloons. Kazik asked all the adults, one after the other, quietly and politely, but again and again until they spoke to him merely to drive him away, to describe whatever memories or impressions that remained in their minds of the old Jules Verne novel Five Weeks In A Balloon.

Kazik had concluded that all of them had read the novel at one time or another, but long ago, as children, and they had forgotten most of the details. But if he spoke long enough with each of them, having each retell the plot and events of the novel, he was able to piece together a more or less complete picture. He even managed to extract the names of the heroes from the story tellers and had the Mayor draw an aerial balloon.

The Mayor was often drawing pictures of life on Earth for the children, The first cohort of students, Dick, Liz, Marianna and Oleg, had been forced to content themselves with coarse illustrations on the ground or charcoal drawings on the bark of oaks. Over the past year the children had gotten luckier -- paper had made its appearance and the Mayor , overcome with euphoria and, over the course of a single night, like an enriched pauper, wasted much of the hoard on pictures, crude, naive, but the most real pictures. The Eiffel Tower, the Moscow Kremlin, an elephant, the Luna City domes, the first steam ship, a caravel from the time of Columbus. They had collected the pictures into a large folio and they could be looked at and studied after every lesson.

And there were pictures made at Kazik's request of aerial balloons. Some of these pictures carried corrections made by Kazik himself; the boy could hardly draw, but he knew more about balloons than even the Mayor . In one of the pictures the balloon floated above the African savannah and elephants and giraffes chased after it.

This was the picture Kazik brought to Oleg when the older boy decided to build an aerial balloon.

"Try this." Kazik looked up at Oleg. "It has all the details you'll need."

Oleg took the picture and examined it. He noticed that a rope with an anchor at its end hung beneath the bag and realized they would have to make such an anchor.

But for Kazik the fate of the balloon would have been literally up in the air. The spring passed, and the muzdangs, not suspecting what uses Oleg now had for their air bladders, were still hibernating. Finding their nests was difficult and Kazik and his faithful sister Fumiko must have gone twenty times or more into the forest until they found the muzdangs' winter lair, in a large burrow in the Oke forest.. The soft, mobile roots shielded them from the snow and frosts.

After that arose the problem of the net which would enclose the gas bag itself and from which the gondola would hang. Marianna and Thomas's daughter Ruth collected water vines to make the cordage. The hands of both girls grew swollen from the cold, and finally Linda forbade her daughter to go crawling about in the swamp, and Oleg was forced to abandon his other work and spend his time collecting the plants himself. In fact he was helped by the twins who lived with the Mayor , and Vaitkus's children, but they quickly tired of the work and evaporated with the morning dew.

In the mornings, soon after dawn, Oleg and Marianna hurried around the graveyard on the well trodden path toward the swamp. With each passing day they were forced to go even further; they waded out from the marshy shore, up to their knees in icy water that seeped even through their waterproof fish hide pants. The water plants had rooted themselves firmly for the winter, forcing Oleg and Marianna to cut them. The tough white strings of the water hairs twisted and turned and tried to crawl out of their fingers, and they had to cut them almost at the roots to get strands long enough to be of use. Their feet slipped in the mud; greedy but still weak leeches crawled all over their pants' legs. When a many-eyed grabbe approached them unawares they panicked and rushed for shore; it swam up, and they were forced to retreat from the water and wait until the creature went back into the mud.

Oleg tried to do more than Marianna, but all the same found himself gathering less than the girl and it appeared that he could never collect waterplants with such devilish devotion. Then they had to carry their loads all the way back to the barn and lay them out on the floor to be dried, and drying took forever in the cold, damp air.

Oleg's mother was against it from the start. The thought of her son in the air supported by nothing but hot air in a fragile balloon was terrifying.

"This is suicide." Irina kept repeating to Sergeyev. "You're actually permitting this, going along with it. If it were your own child you'd never allow it."

His mother's words made Oleg angry. "I'm almost twenty." He answered tiredly.

Oleg was exhausted, more tired than he had ever been before in his life, because Sergeyev had not cut back on his electronics studies, as though the time he spent working in the foundry were not enough.

That was the day Oleg exploded. Vaitkus had come up to the boy and asked him when something would be finished.

"Am I doing less? I am getting the mill ready, aren't I? You do want the plough, don't you? Am I forcing you to do something you don't want to do? If I have to build that balloon all on my own, I'll get it done anyway. Didn't everyone tell the Montgolfier brothers they were wasting their time? If they hadn't been the first then we'd never have built starships. It had to begin with something."

"If we hadn't built starships we'd be sitting at home nice and warm." Vaitkus started to laugh from out of the middle of his enormous redbeard.

"I'm not joking."

"Too bad. It would be better if you had a sense of humor."

"What good would a sense of humor do me? My mother is crying all the time. Luiza says that 'the flame isn't worth the candle,' whatever that means, the Mayor keeps saying that the risk is too great, and the rest of you seem to think I'm just playing some sort of game. Why don't you understand?"

"But you are playing, in a sense." Vaitkus said. "It's a very good game, but it's still unfamiliar to the rest of us simple mortals."

"Don't you want to get off this planet?"

"Of course I do. A lot more than you do. I know what it that I'm missing, what my kids have never seen. For you it's just a guess. But even in such an odd settlement like ours we seem to keep repeating the same type of social and personal relationships everyone else has developed, over and over again. And they're little different from what goes on in a large city. To walk to the ship, well that's understood, everyone's done it. Kill an animal, that's understood. That's how we survive. But fly to the mountains in a hot air balloon, that's madness. Typical childish risk-taking. That's Kazik's dream, not something we expect from an adult the settlement depends on. We really expected something different from you."

"Getting there on foot has own dangers all its own."

"But your chances of getting there on foot are still ten times greater than by air. You already know the route. We can equip you far better than we could a year ago. You've been through it before and know what to expect. No, I'm for the traditional route, even if it means we have to go back year after year. Too much has already been put on the map."

Oleg didn't bother to reply But with the exception of Sergeyev, who in the very first days had calculated how large the gas bag would have to be and how much heat the stove would have to produce to warm enough air and came to the conclusion that the balloon, might, indeed fly, the others hoped, were even convinced, that nothing would come from the debacle with the balloon.

Dick just ignored Oleg, as he always did. In his own realm he was the unchallenged leader; no one else could even come close to him as a hunter and tracker. He might very well have flown in the balloon, but his destination would not have been north to the starship, but south toward the unknown forests and rivers hidden beyond the small ranges of hills. That was where game and adventure lay. Dick did want to see the world from on high, like a bird, but he never saw any reason to tell anyone of this. So Oleg was surprised when Dick joined the muzdang hunt and brought back whole bags of air bladders to the settlement.

Liz had quite unexpectedly raised her voice against the flight.

Oleg was avoiding her, as much as anyone could avoid anyone else in their tiny settlement. When Liz approached him Oleg sought an excuse to go to the workshop or go visit the Mayor to find a place to study where he didn't have to listen to her. This surprised his mother -- she and Liz began to speak, seemingly with real interest and affection, about trivial things Oleg didn't even think were worth talking about. At first they talked about all kinds of recipes, how to prepare dishes here on this world and how it had been done on earth, and the differences between the two, and did soups taste better with dried nuts or fresh, and it was a harmless waste of time that kept both women occupied and away from him. But then they started to talk about other people. Oleg found himself listening to their conversations as much as he tried to get away from them -- their voices carried through the partition. He knew, for example, that Linda was doing a bad job of raising Ruth, because she was too busy catching Sergeyev, that Luiza was simply starving poor Kazik, he was so small, and that Marianna was getting worse all the time -- poor child, there was something wrong with her metabolism (the world was his mother's; Liz didn't understand it but immediately agreed anyway.) Such a totally undeveloped child! Seventeen years old, but she hardly looked like she'd gone through puberty.

Oleg found himself coughing from time to time, just to let them know that he could hear everything, and for some reason Liz started to laugh in a high voice. And he immediately found himself thinking of Liz although she was the last thing he wanted to think about. Liz was the fattest person among the young generation. Or rather, she was not fat per se, but there were parts of her body that were. Oleg suspected there was a word for it that hadn't been taught to him -- her chest was fat and her hips were fat. Liz often smiled when Oleg or Dick spoke to her, and once Oleg caught sight of Dick's face when he was looking at Liz as if she were a game animal he was going to bring back slung over his shoulder.

Once, after Liz had left, and Oleg returned from the Mayor 's side of their hut had started to get ready for bed, Oleg's mother asked him if it wasn't time he thought about starting a family. Oleg didn't understand what she was talking about at all.

"Get married." she explained.

Oleg broke out laughing. He asked,

"You mean, marry Liz?"

"Life goes on." His mother said. "Even in this wilderness. Look, if you don't catch the girl, she'll go chasing after Dick."

"Then wish him luck." Oleg answered.

"You don't have any choice."

"I can go to Earth and solve all my problems in that."

"Idiot." His mother became angry. "Falling for that starveling will be the death of you!"

"Marianna's thin, but she's not a fool." Oleg turned toward the wall.

***

The slow spring came early and warm. Sergeyev, who kept accounts not only of the calendar but of the weather patterns, said that the summer, too, should be warm.

At first the rains washed away the remains of the snow, which held on for a while only in the depths of the forest, then the rains came less frequently and, day by day, the air grew so hot despite the clouds the children threw off their heavy skin garments and ran about almost naked. The sun lifted so high that it could be distinguished as an unclear if bright point of light through the eternal clouds. Gote had survived her latest romantic escapade and now grew quiet, spending her time pacing back and forth in front of the palisade, waiting for new additions to her family. The zhakals returned from the south where they had wintered, the first birds perched on the palisade, loudly flapping their membranous wings, hoards of midges and flies put in an appearance, and when the women and children worked in the fenced in garden they were forced to light smokey fires. A snow flea bit one of the Mayor 's twins and he bit himself on the tongue so hard during his temporary madness that he drew blood.

Summer had just started, but Oleg all the more felt an inner disquiet, impatience and even fear, that too little time remained. He had accomplished nothing. In fact he had not accomplished everything that was needed if he was to get to the starship and work on the subspace radio. Now he often was freed from common work -- he had just stopped going hunting, and they never called him to work in the garden. Even in the workshop Sergeyev told him not to get underfoot, but in the evenings severely questioned him on what he had studied, learned, understood; as a result of which Oleg saw Sergeyev's annoyance as well, which arose from the fact that Sergeyev himself did not truly understand all of what he was trying to teach the boy.

But the balloon was real now. The opposition had been overcome, point by point, in a continuous battle. It had been turned into objective reality. When the rains came Kazik and Fumiko fed Spytter worms until the animal was almost torpid, and it began to produce so much gluey spit that glassy lakes formed around the cage set under the awnings between the workshop and the apple orchard. Oleg and Marianna started to cut and glue the gas bag out of the air bladders of the muzdangs they had taken.

At first, with Sergeyev's help, they sketched the outline of the gas bag on the ground similar to a flower with sharp petals, and it was so big that Fumiko would have had trouble throwing a stone from one end to the other. One hundred and twenty paces. After that Oleg and Marianna started to glue together segments of the sphere, the petals themselves. The gas bladders, that had seemed so many before, immediately proved too few. Kazik and Dick were forced to go out hunting for muzdangs again.

The attitude in the settlement toward the balloon slowly turned like the coming summer. It was there. It was seen. And people got used to it. Even Oleg's mother stopped her incessant crying. Liz came a few times to help cut and glue together the bladders. And then together with Kristina, who had suddenly found a talent for knotting the nets, - she wove the lines. Vaitkus and his wife Egli constructed the basket, weaving it together out of thin branches.

But no one took the balloon quite as seriously as Oleg. Not even Marianna. That left, of course, Kazik, but he was too small, a wild person, who believed in the depths of his soul the balloon would take him to India, despite everything he had been taught about stars and planets, atmospheric density gradients, vacuum, starships and subspace. A number of times it happened that when everyone else in the settlement was sleeping and the cold black sky had almost started to turn grey and impatient Oleg would leave the hut and go out quietly into the cold and spread shining, petal shaped bladders out on the ground, and Kazik would appear beside him as an unheard shadow, forest Mowgli. He would run to the cage to wake up Spytter and help Oleg without saying a word.

Then they had to glue the petals along their edges in order to produce what in the end would be a sphere, what the Mayor termed a giant pear shape that hung upside down. No matter what care they took the glue fell on their hands, their fingers became glassy and stiff. During the mornings they had to beware of willowwasp globes, which rose in the air in search of baers they could seed with their spores to continue their own life cycle.

In the end the balloon was finished.

At last the net was ready. And even the rope with the anchor they would need to hold it to the ground. Sergeyev finished the burner and the children filled container after container with the thick, fatty resin they would use as fuel. And the basket was made, a strong, flexible basket. It was time to put the pieces together and go to work.

The Mayor demanded that the balloon first be tested without occupants. It should be filled and sent aloft and then allowed to return to the ground. Oleg opposed this plan and Sergeyev supported him. It wasn't only the envelope of the balloon they would have to test, but the burner; they would have to find out if their balloon could be made to obey a person.

"Make the rope a little shorter." Oleg's mother said.

Oleg just laughed. Liz and Kristina had woven the rope. He himself had helped them with it, although he had been short of time for everything else. Oleg understood that Liz was doing it only to please him. He had gone to the house where Liz and Kristina lived, had listened to Kristina always complaining and waiting for her death, and they had woven together that endless rope. Liz kept looking at him, glancing away and back and trying to find an excuse to touch his hand. Oleg endured it, listened to words he found empty, and tried to think of something else, and then he could not stand it any more and ran away to the workshop.

Oleg knew that he would be the first one to go up in the balloon, and no one ever disputed that the balloon was Oleg's creation, that without him on it would come to nothing. Kazik had spent the last few days walking around after Oleg and could not come to terms with the thought that his own ascent in the balloon would had to be put off. He was hoping for some miracle which would force them to let him take the first flight.

Oleg found himself overcome with thoughts of a malicious delight: None of you believed we could build it. We did. It exists. It's mine. We did it together, but it's mine... I'm going to fly....

Perhaps someone might have guessed Oleg's thoughts, but no one spoke it aloud until the morning when the balloon was to be launched, and the Mayor said:

"What does it feel like to be a Napoleon?" The Mayor asked.

"What do you mean?" Oleg asked. "I've never seen Napoleon. I've never even seen pictures of him. And I don't even know what he did."

"You know perfectly well." The Mayor answered, looking his student over.

The Mayor still wanted to tousle the boy's hair, but during the winter Oleg had finished growing, his shoulders had broadened, his hair had darkened. And his face had grown more bony, losing its childish softness. It was an adult's face. Perhaps insufficiently strong, but the straight chin and sharp bones of the skull displayed the internal persistence. A pleasant face.

"Of course I know." Oleg laughed. "He conquered half of Europe."

He pulled on his boots and checked to make certain they covered the cuffs of his pants. Vaitkus said it would be cold higher up. The same as in the morning.

"Are you sure that's enough?" The Mayor asked.

The twins ran in; they were the Mayor 's wards, small creatures who inclined to continual laughter and thoughtless pranks. They, like all of the settlement, felt that today should be a holiday. And Oleg, the very same every day Oleg who lived on the other side of the of the hanging partition and who had a really horrible mother was flying off today into the sky.

"This is all to simple," Oleg said, "As though it were a mathematical formula. Alexander the Great conquered half the known world. Napoleon conquered half of Europe. Hitler tried to conquer all of Europe. Julius Caesar also conquered, Egypt, I think. All those people are dead, gone, buried, and what they did really doesn't mean anything. But you see it otherwise. You've seen their portraits, you've read about them in books. For you they're extraordinary, for me they are ordinary. I've never even seen Europe."

"Well now, they shouldn't be called ordinary." The Mayor spoke up. "They're extraordinary because they've implanted themselves so firmly in human memory. Good, bad, or vile, but always extraordinary."

"For you, yes. But how am I supposed to judge them? I cannot. When I was twelve years old this problem suddenly started to trouble me. What does 'conquer' and 'overcome' mean? I even asked it in class; was there another Napoleon who had conquered not half of Europe, but a quarter of it? And you answered me that the difference between conquerors consisted only in the duration, the lastingness of their successes. There wasn't one of them who achieved all the goals he had sought."

"I remember." The old man said. "And I also told you the names of those who failed at the start are often unknown to us because in every battle there is a losing side. And waiting for every Napoleon is a Waterloo if he doesn't succeed in getting himself killed first. I remember."

"So do I." Oleg said, jumping in place and twisting his body to make certain that his cold weather gear was on tight. Then he took a water flask and slung it across his shoulder. "And all I can say is, from what you've taught us, conquest is the typical activity of conquerors. And they are all unique. And I really don't understand or see what it has to do with us here on this planet. Like business and merchandising and interstellar finance and trade regulations. For me what is unusual is what is done for the first time."

"In the literal sense you're right." The Mayor agreed. "But I called you Napoleon not because I wanted to compare you with the conqueror. The analogy is somewhat different. The whole town has come out into the street, all at once, together, because you're going to launch the balloon today."

"I'm not the only one."

"Don't you understand? What we're doing today, we're doing out of obedience to your will. I've never seen anything like it myself, but unlike you I can picture it. Early morning. Somewhere in Austria or Prussia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Napoleon has spent the night in a small, tidy little hotel that smells of vanilla. He awakens from the noise beneath his window, and still hasn't fully come to his senses. He goes to the window and throws it open. The whole road and the village square is cluttered with carriages, caravans of sutlers and cannons going to the front. People are walking about, horses neigh, there's a babble of voices. And suddenly Napoleon understands the utter madness and futility of this general chaos -- someone is responsible, it has grown out of someone's wishes -- that slowly increases in strength... And these soldiers are waiting for their breakfasts by the field kitchens not because they like eating military rations, and the cannons are not lined up on the road because the cannoneers have nothing better to do, this moment has come about, these lives and fates have converged here, because he, Napoleon Bonaparte, willed it. And because he, Napoleon, had a tooth ache during the night, he suddenly wants to shout at them through the open window: "Go home, all of you!"

"And does he shout it?" Oleg asked.

"You manifest one of the essential qualities of a Great Man." The Mayor clucked with displeasure. "The absolute lack of a sense of humor."

Kazik's head peered in through the door. The scrawny child was tense. He had never been able to reconcile himself with the fact that he wasn't going up in the balloon today. But he wanted the balloon to go up, today, and again and again, even if it was without him. If the balloon went up today, Kazik knew that someday it would take him too. The next time. Perhaps.

"I'm coming." Oleg said. He was ready.

The three of them left the house, the Mayor trailing a little behind. The old man was leaning heavily on his cane. The cane was new and probably harmless. The previous cane had been carved of red wood, with silvery streaks; Dick had cut it from wood he'd found in the whispering grove. But at the start of spring the walking stick had, one fine day, extended a mass of sticky shoots and feelers and started to crawl out of the house while the Mayor was conducting a lesson. The entire class had charged after the walking stick, and then, catching it, let it go. The stick had made its way to the palisade where it had sunk roots and turned itself into a large, leafy bush. The Mayor had sometimes heard how the children had gathered to go fishing and had agreed to meet 'by the stick,' and had guessed what they had in mind.

Oleg, already in the clearing, turned and looked on the stumbling old man, and suddenly felt very sorry for him. And for himself. The Mayor was going to die soon. He was having a great deal of difficulty walking and his body was in enormous pain; it had even become hard for him to conduct classes in school. He was forgetting everything. If the children were going to fly off to Earth it had better be soon. The Mayor had done a great deal. If it were not for his school, none of the other adults could have taught the children all the sciences.

In the field on the other side of the barn the aerial balloon lay like an unpleasant mound, like an Allyfant about to go on its nightly hunt. The burner hissed and warm air was rushing upwards to fill the balloon envelope. But it was only working at a quarter power; Sergeyev, who was in charge of the balloon, wanted to take no risks.

The balloon was slowly taking the shape of an enormous mountain elephant, a formless mass of flesh quivering as it slept. Back at dawn the balloon had simply been a large pile of rags, the bag and the net that covered it separate. Everything had changed. Now the net clutched at the skin of the envelope. The balloon was coming alive.

The Gote was huddled with her young off to the side in fright. She had no liking for allyfants, especially inside the palisade.

Oleg approached. Sergeyev, who was standing by the wicker bag, asked him,

"Should I turn up the flame?"

Sergeyev was treating Oleg as an equal now. He also recognized that the balloon was Oleg's property, like the mirror was Marianna's. But this did not mean that the mirror did not belong to everyone. Would the idea have ever occurred to Marianna to refuse anyone who wanted to look at themselves in the mirror?

"When are you going to take us up?" Ruth called out to them.

All the faces seemed very tiny, as though Oleg was looking at them across a magnifying glass. Suddenly Marianna ran by with a can of glue -- she had noticed a broken seam that letting hot air escape.

Off to the side stood Luiza, an enormous fat woman with an swollen face, checking the anchor rope attached to the cords that gathered the lines of the netting into a knot between the balloon and the basket.

The balloon shuddered. As though it were sighing; suddenly it took on a far rounder shape.

Oleg bent down to check that the balloon was carefully tied to the ground.

The ropes were connected to stakes that had rammed deep into the ground at an angle. Next to the balloon's gondola on the ground was a large bent pin made out of ironwood, forced hard and fast into the ground as well, the anchor. Beside it the rope had been curled into neat spirals.

The balloon shuddered again. Now it had grown nearly round and touched the ground at only on one spot.

"Shall I climb into the basket?" Oleg asked Sergeyev, and his voice unexpectedly broke.

Oleg was frightened that the others would notice his fears and laugh. He thought to himself: I am not Napoleon. I'm doing something very ordinary. I'm not a conqueror. I don't want people eating out of field kitchens and being shot at by cannons because of me. People will move not because I want them to, but if this makes things better for us, then I'll be happy.

"Still too early for it to take off." Sergeyev said. He wasn't laughing.

The balloon suddenly jumped with a gust of wind and just as suddenly sank back down again, shaking the attached basket. The heavy netting seemed to cut into the body of the envelope, like sections of a round fruit.

"It would be better if the material were a little stronger." Vaitkus said. "In the future we can learn from the experience of the dirigible."

"What experience?" Oleg suddenly realized the word 'dirigible' meant nothing to him.

"If we smear the balloon with a thin layer of glue we can strengthen it." Vaitkus stroked his beard.

"Why didn't someone mention this earlier?" Oleg thought the idea was beautiful, and he was angry at Vaitkus for having kept hidden such an elegant idea from him.

"I just thought of it now." Vaitkus said.

"It would increase the weight of the balloon too much!." Sergeyev shook his head.

At that moment the balloon finally eased itself off the ground and rose erect at an angle to the basket.

Oleg couldn't wait any longer. He put his leg over the edge of the basket and stood up inside it, holding onto the sides tightly with his hands.

The basket was small, about a meter and a half in diameter and only about waist high. The supply of fuel and several bags of sand for ballast had been packed in the middle.

The balloon slowly moved back and forth over their heads; you could reach to the lower edge of it with your hand. The burner was still filling it with hot air. Oleg reached up and held onto the ropes above him.

The basket still stood on the ground; you could jump over the side and stand on the soft, new grass but Oleg felt a certain detachment from everything that stood around here, as though all the other people were already far below.

Then the basket was dangling; the balloon pulled at the ropes, trying to lift it up into the air.

"Fly, fly away!" Ruth started to shout.

"Quiet." Sergeyev cut her off. "It's too soon."

Oleg bent his head and looked upward at the balloon. It was so large it covered half the sky. It was an ugly patchwork, the edges uneven, some bladders seemed ready to pop out of the sides, a bloated quilt of muzdang bladders tethered uncomfortably to the ground by ropes. The half transparent whitish envelope reflected the grass and the settlement's tottering little houses. And at the same time this absurd enormity radiated strength in its slow, insistent attempts to rise, to break away from the ground, tugging constantly at the ropes that held the basket. The belly of the balloon above caught the dull hissing of the burner and cast it back at him, increasing the sound tenfold.

Now the balloon was directly over their heads, and the ropes were taunt. Oleg drew back, looking at the balloon, and did not immediately see Sergeyev give the signal or his helpers bend down over the stakes where the ropes were tied.

"All set, Oleg." Sergeyev said. "We're letting go now. Hold on tight; it might jump."

"Let it. Don't worry." Oleg shouted, looking at Vaitkus bent over the line and leaning with all his weight on the line until his back was against the ground, untying the knot.

At that moment Oleg was almost tossed from the balloon.

Sergeyev had tried to ensure his helpers released all the ropes simultaneously, but the strength of his assorted helpers were hardly equal to the task. Vaitkus had already untied his line and was holding onto it tightly. Dick stood up, almost laughing and clearly displaying his view that he was taking part in a less than serious undertaking. He was holding onto his rope rather loosely, as though the balloon, despite its size, presented him with no challenge. On the other side of the basket Luiza and Egli almost got in each others' ways untying the knots. It was as though the balloon had been waiting for this moment. Dick almost cast the rope away from him when he saw that from one side they were still holding tightly to the ground, and from the other side the balloon was already free and waiting for the right gust of wind to carry it away...

Vaitkus felt the rope jerk and, being ready for it, hung all his body weight on the rope, but the other rope flew upwards. torn from Dick's hand and whipped the boy in turn, tossing him back to the ground. Dick was on his feet a moment later, jumping up and clutching at the rope, but it was too late; the basket jerked to the side and almost turned over. Oleg fell, hitting the cans with the fuel and a moment later the bags with ballast fell on him. The basket brushed even enormous Luiza aside, struck Egli; the balloon rocked back and forth as it heaved itself upwards, not forgetting to strike Vaitkus as he tried to free the remaining ropes from the stakes in the ground. It dragged itself into the air and rose upward sharply.

The basket hung below, swinging from the ropes in tune to the balloon's uncertain rhythms.

All this took but a few seconds; the air was filled with shouts, screams, cries of fear and the creaking of ropes.

And then everyone fell silent, except for Fumiko who cried because she was afraid for Oleg.

Everyone else was silent, even Egli, whose arm had been badly bruised by the basket, and Luiza, who still lay on the ground, and Sergeyev, and Vaitkus, and even the children.

Oleg's mother was the only one of them still standing, staring intently at the basket, filled with fears of the body of her son dropping from the basket and falling, arms outstretched to the ground.

For Oleg everything happened far too quickly; in one second he had fallen inside the basket and the bags of ballast had covered him. And the next moment he realized he was flying, that there was nothing beneath him, that the ground was somewhere far below him, because the basket rocked back and forth freely, and through the spaces in the weave he could see the world.

Carefully, almost overcome with fear of the height, he got up on all fours, sensing at the same time that the basket's rocking motions were slowly subsiding and the balloon had stopped its wild gyrations.

As Oleg got to his feet he found his senses coming alive again; the burner whistled, sending a plume of hot air up into the balloon above him, the ropes creaked, they crawled like thin muscles over the envelope, the wattled branches of the basket on which he stood cracked but held firm. And there was a child crying from below.

Finally Oleg was ready to stand. He gripped the edge of the basket tightly and was about to stand up straight, but went down on all fours when the basket jerked upward sharply one last time and almost sent him flying. And he did not immediately guess that all the ropes had been released and they had come to the end of the rope connected the balloon to the anchor.

The upward movement of the balloon had stopped, but it continued its attempts to escape; the basket twisted and reeled about in the air.

To the people on the ground below it appeared that a great deal of time had passed. For almost a minute they all looked upwards and were silent. The balloon had ascended to about three hundred feet -- the last rope would not let it ascend further - and started to move slowly toward the forest, as though attempting to deceive the rope that still clutched it tightly.

They could see nothing at all of Oleg.

On the other hand, he was still in the basket.

Sergeyev came to his senses before the others and was about to shout to Vaitkus and Dick to help him pull the balloon down, when he realized that the burner would have to be closed off first; the buoyancy of the balloon was too great and those on the ground could not overcome it.

And then Irina started to shout.

"Oleg! Boy!" She shouted, disrupting the silent festivity of the flight "Oleg, are you all right? Oleg!"

Oleg heard his mother and became ashamed she was calling to him as though he were a little boy, but then the thought flashed through his head that Napoleon certainly had a mother as well and he stuck his head above the edge of the basket, held onto the ropes for support, and called out below:

"Everything's okay!"

Everyone on the ground saw Oleg's small, dark silhouette, and they all started to shout; the children started to jump up and down, but Irina started to sob and weep bitterly at the top of her lungs.

The balloon slowly moved over their heads -- it had become a real aerial ship that could fly off into the sky.

The Mayor helped Vaitkus get to his feet and said,

"Today balloons, tomorrow air traffic controllers."

Vaitkus laughed.

"Lower the flame in the burner!" Sergeyev shouted up to Oleg.. "You have to cut down on the lift! Can you hear me?"

"I hear you fine!" Oleg called back; his head nodded up and down.

Oleg turned to the burner and carefully lowered the volume of the flame. But not much. Now that everything had turned out so well he had no desire to descend too soon.

He looked over the side of the balloon again and waved his hand:

"Everything's all right!"

And then he looked at the settlement below him. He could see everything at once. The muddy river of street where the tiny huts formed tight banks, the curved roofs of the barns and workshop nestled behind the palisade. The small scatter of humanity, some of them standing directly beneath the balloon, some of them waving their hands, the children jumping up and down in a wild dance.

Oleg saw Kristina sitting on the porch of his own hut. Perhaps she had not wanted to be at the launching, or maybe they had forgotten about her in the excitement.

Then he noticed the Gote's uplifted green snout. She hadn't seen flying allyfants before.

Oleg's view slowly slid further around him; beyond the fence, to the narrow band of the clearing and then the beginning of the forest. He had never seen the forest from on high. The wave and twist of whitish bare branches, the occasional patches and green spots of hunting vynes and kreepers, were a jumble that stretched all the way to the swamp. From on high the swamp, so vast, seemed rather small, and beyond it began the scrub brush, and after that again more forest without a break or a ray of light vanishing into the curling mists.

Oleg carefully moved himself to the other side of the basket. Now he could see the start of the path that led them back to the mountains and the PolarStar. Again more forest, then waste ground and reddish cliffs that rose above the trees.

Two more steps to the right. Again forest. Only it cut off, ended abruptly in the plains where they went to hunt dyr, and the dark wall of an even greater forest where the hunters and gatherers rarely ventured. There were no game animals, and carnivorous flowers and hunting vynes hid in the moist darkness.

The wind came up; it was trying to snatch the balloon away. The basket started to hum.

Oleg realized he would have to lower the flame in the burner even more. The people below were waiting for him to descend. But there was no way he could tear himself away from the vastness that had opened up below him. He had ceased to be a fly crawling along the branches; he had flown up over the world like the birds, and the utterly different scales of this world had infused Oleg with a free and ticklish feeling of power and confidence in himself and in those small human beings who were waiting for him down below. This feeling was somehow akin to that which had taken hold of him when, for the first time, he had looked across the mountain pass at the high valley where the enormous lens of the fallen starship lay in the snow. But the starship was only a memory of the powers that human beings had achieved. This flight was something that he had contrived for himself. And Oleg realized that his greatest desire was to cut the anchor rope once and for all and head toward the clouds, seeing everywhere, soaring over the forests, not cowering in them. Fearing nothing.

Oleg thought for a moment that even the Montgolfier brothers could not compare with him; they had ascended over their native city where nothing was threatening them with death. They had only the winds to fear. Oleg had to overcome an entire planet that wanted to kill him,

His present height wasn't all that great; it was hardly much colder up here than it had been on the ground, but Oleg found himself becoming chilly. Certainly, he was excited. When his hands finally reached up to the burner to close it his fingers were trembling.

The balloon gradually lost strength and its desire to depart for the clouds. It sagged. Below him Sergeyev and Dick had caught at their ropes and had begun to haul the balloon in for landing.

The world around him began to grow smaller; the horizon nearer.

***

At the beginning of summer the preparations for the trip to the starship came to an abrupt halt. The two principals, Oleg and Sergeyev, were constantly being diverted to other tasks. Oleg continued to go up in the balloon whenever he could; having invented it he wanted to master it, and he contrived to take it aloft nearly every day, sometimes twice a day. Sergeyev now had other concerns; despite everything, Linda Hind had married him.

There was no great wedding celebration; the adults all went to visit them, sat, remembered Thomas and Sergeyev's late wife, drank tea, and wished Linda and Sergeyev the good luck of an eventual return to Earth. And they dispersed.

There were very few adults left in the settlement, and some of them were in very bad condition. The Mayor was growing weaker all the time, big Luiza was constantly wracked by pain, and blind Kristina kept saying that she was not long for this planet, and good riddance to it, over and over again. Oleg's mother was suffering from arthritis and spent the better part of the day in bed, with the result that the garden was tended primarily by Vaitkus, Linda and Egli, while Sergeyev was in the workshop. Naturally, more and more of the responsibility for keeping the settlement going fell to the children. That summer hunting had become Dick's responsibility completely; Dick took Kazik with him, and some times Patrick Vaitkus. It was already hard to speak of the last two as children -- teenagers was a better description, competent and quick, awkward. They had stopped going to school; even the Mayor realized he had nothing more to give them. His past was for them the future, they hoped, something imminent, obtainable; now everyone believed in the balloon and were even inclined to overestimate its possibilities. It was as though they could fly to the starship in the balloon whenever they wanted, as often as they liked.

Oleg understood better than the others that his creation was unreliable and capricious. He had already developed a feeling for the airship and realized how easily it could move under the influence of the slightest breeze, how the winds could carry it wherever they wished, beyond the powers of the passengers to control it.

On his second ascent Oleg took Kazik with him. It was only fair. Kazik had exhausted himself gathering wood for fuel and had worked the presses constantly to reduce the wood to oil. Kazik had gone hunting muzdangs to repair and patch up the balloon.

Oleg had noticed how the reactions of the others to the balloon had differed, depending on their own interests, fears and desires. Those who wanted to fly in the balloon had honestly helped launch it, had held onto the ropes, helped empty the inflated bag and then tucked it away beneath the shed when the flight had ended. But after they themselves had gone up into the air their interest in the balloon had fallen. The majority of those who flew with Oleg, were enchanted by the flight. There was a moment of terror when the balloon left the ground, then their interest heightened -- to see the forest and the settlement from on high. That was all.

That was the way with Linda and Liz, who had put off their turn three times because they were fearful, then gathered up the courage to get into the basket, and when the balloon rose squeaked from terror that the children who were looking from below would die from laughing.

Vaitkus, when he went up into the air, carefully looked over the countryside, and then said that they should land on the other side of the swamp; because he saw apple groves in the thicket on the other side.

The Mayor took his flight in silence. For about twenty minutes. Then he said, "Thank you. We can go down now."

Egli looked down at the settlement, then wiped her eyes, perhaps from the wind, perhaps a mote of dust had caught in her eye. And she said, "You could go mad, such squalor."

Oleg's mother refused to go up in the balloon at all. He was relieved. But every time Oleg was getting ready for the next flight she came out into the square and personally checked the balloon's ropes.

Kazik and Fumiko shortened the ropes. A little more than twenty meters. More wasn't necessary. They had turned out to be so heavy that they pulled the balloon downward, and the knots began to tear under the weight of the rope itself, giving the Mayor the chance for a fine lecture on tensile strength and the square cube law.

Dick went up into the air once. For several days after the first flight he had avoided Oleg; he thought it was his fault the flight had almost ended in disaster. Oleg had to hunt him down and ask him if he wanted to go up. Dick agreed.

On the day they ascended a light rain had rolled through; tiny drops splattered as mist against the balloon and made visibility difficult. As the ground fell away Oleg felt Dick grow timid -- the other boy was in a strange situation, but Dick was always lost in a strange situation. Oleg remembered what Dick had been like at the PolarStar. The other boy stood up straight the whole the whole flight, holding onto the ropes on his side of the basket, unwilling to walk around the hanging stove to look around. Dick had taken his cross-bow with him on the flight and even tucked the blaster from the starship in his belt. Oleg pretended he hadn't noticed.

Unexpectedly, Dick said,

"This summer I have to make it to the great plains. I think it must begin right over there."

And he pointed south, where the forest merged with the clouds.

"There should be a lot of dyr."

And Oleg realized that Dick would all the same have remained with his feet on the ground.

But he was wrong. Dick felt uncertain in the fragile, almost transparent wicker of the basket. The cause of Dick's uncertainty was totally different; for the first time in his life Dick envied Oleg.

While Oleg busied himself with work that was necessary for the settlement, but not all that necessary in Dick's point of view, Dick didn't really care. He had his forest and the satisfaction of the hunt. Only now, looking at the forest and watching the zhakals prowling among the branches and legged snakes crawling through the trees, the silvery bodies of the young payns swelling with spring juices, seeing the world for the first time with such a precise and clear view so different from Oleg's, Dick recognized the incomparable power and freedom which the control of the balloon afforded. In Dick it awakened a sharp desire to fly with the winds to new forests, chase herds of animals, descend for the night beside mysterious streams.....

Oleg was surprised to see Dick reach for his blaster.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Quiet." Dick said.

A thread of green light stretched from the balloon to the trees on the edge of the swamp where Oleg had seen nothing a moment before. And suddenly there was movement; an enormous animal roared and thrashed in the thicket and then the heavy body collapsed into a clearing.

"I've never seen anything like it before." Dick said, holstering the blaster. "Let's get down. I want to see what I killed."

Oleg went up with Marianna on a quiet, warm day.

"It's beautiful up here." Marianna said. "You don't really want to go down, do you?"

Oleg looked at her. He was like the generous host showing off his place to a guest, accepting her compliments as were his due. And he was pleased that Marianna, of all people. could appreciate the beauty of the flight.

"And it's so quiet." Marianna said.

"Thank you." Oleg said.

"Why?" Marianna turned to him and looked him over carefully, as though she were looking at him for the first time. Why thanks?

Oleg stretched out his hand and touched her fingers on the basket. The basket almost rocked, but Marianna wasn't frightened.

"You understand everything." Oleg said.

Marianna lifted her hand from the basket rim and placed her fingers in Oleg's hand.

It was so natural, and his palm was already awaiting her touch. The basket jumped again, and Marianna made a step forward so as not to lose her balance. She was so close Oleg kissed her cheek. He had wanted to kiss her on the lips, but he missed and kissed her on the cheek at the edge of her mouth. And Marianna drew close to him and froze, like a baby animal. There was nothing else in the world around them that mattered, not the sky nor the balloon or the hissing and sputtering stove, and that was fine with both of them.

"Hey," Kazik started to shout from below. "You two okay?"

Marianna raised her head to look into Oleg's eyes and laughed.

"What?" Oleg didn't understand.

"Let's come up here every day." She said. And laughed.

"Let's." Oleg laughed as well. "We can come up in the morning and come down at night."

"Only Kazik would mind. Do you think we should take him with us?"

"No way." Oleg said quietly, suddenly fearing that they could be heard on the ground. "No way."

"Hey!" Kazik shouted. "Get down here! Weather's turning!"

Oleg took his time closing off the burner.

While the balloon dawdled downward he held onto Marianna's hand.

They made it to ground only at the last moment - a strong gust of wind caught the balloon and sent it careening toward the line of houses at the end of its tether and almost broke the rope. Kazik was alone at the landing field; after the third flight they had decided it wasn't necessary to attach the balloon to the ground on a line, but this time the landing almost ended in disaster. It was already raining. As the wind blew about them, they jumped up and down on the balloon envelope to deflate it faster so they could carry it beneath the awning. Dick came running to help, then Sergeyev. They were all soaked through, exhausted, and cursing out Oleg for having taken his sweet time with the descent.

"I shouted and shouted at you!" Kazik repeated. "What happened, are you deaf?"

Oleg didn't answer. He wanted -- how could he admit this publicly -- to go up in the air again, as high as the balloon would go, and let the wild wind carry him wherever it might.

Oleg looked at Marianna. There was a feeling of immense satisfaction and importance that she look at him. And once or twice he was able to catch her eye, But suddenly he was struck with a horrible suspicion: what if she had been joking? What if she didn't feel toward him as he felt toward her?

And when they were already in the barn and the balloon was safely tucked away, Marianna glanced at Dick and Sergeyev, who were standing beside the open doors, enduring the rain, and whispered to him,

"It was a great flight, wasn't it?"

Her voice held a degree of uncertainty as well, as though she were thinking the same as he. It was delightful.

Oleg answered,

"It was a great flight. It was."

***

Sergeyev went with Oleg on the day they first decided to go up without the tether.

They had waited forever it seemed, until finally there had come a day almost entirely without wind; as high as they could see the clouds above them were motionless.

The balloon rose confidently. Oleg was already used to the balloon and knew every tiny idiosyncracy. When the balloon rose as high as the former limit Oleg turned back down and waved his hands at the people below. The whole settlement was down there now, the same as on the day of their first flight. Oleg searched for Marianna with his eyes. He waved to her; no one but Marianna would have guessed that.

The balloon rose lazily, but insistently, and faster than ever before, and Oleg felt himself waiting for the basket to tug and for the rope to bring the ascent to a stop.

But the flight continued, and the horizon slowly and imperceptibly widened -- the edges of the world were hidden in mist. The settlement became a mouldy patch in the endless sea of forest.

Suddenly it grew darker; a descending tongue of cloud from above had blocked the horizon. The rise of the balloon slowed.

"Want to descend?" Sergeyev asked.

"No." Oleg said.

Sergeyev's question surprised him, because they had wanted to pierce the clouds and see the sky from the very first. Sergeyev said nothing.

It grew very quiet. Oleg had never experienced such a degree of quiet in his life before.

There was no sensation of lift, but the balloon was indeed rising; they could see clumps of thick cloud slowly descending before their eyes.

It was far colder here than on the ground. The edge of the basket grew wet.

"I'd say we've stopped rising." Sergeyev said.

Oleg went to the burner and increased the flame.

It grew even darker. And terror began to creep into their thoughts. Oleg looked at Sergeyev and thought, He's lucky he's not afraid of anything. But I don't know where we're going and if we'll ever even get out of the clouds. He didn't know that Sergeyev was even more fearful than he was; this was only Sergeyev's second time up in the balloon, but the older man feared an unexpected whirlwind might catch at the balloon and carry it away, perhaps to be dashed against the ground, or into the high mountains.

"Should I throw out the ballast?" Oleg asked.

The question was rhetorical; they had decided long ago on the ground that Oleg would be commander of the balloon in the air. The bags filled with ballast had been brought along to be emptied over the side.

Sergeyev helped Oleg empty the ballast bags over the side. Each time the sand was released the balloon jerked upwards like a tired swimmer desperate to get to the surface of the water to gasp for air.

And suddenly it grew light. The light was odd, alien. And Oleg guessed that they would soon exit the clouds.

They came out of the clouds at the lower cloud layer. Around them was grey cotton, but over their heads were stars. And Oleg saw what an unexpected blow this vision was to Sergeyev, who hadn't seen the stars for decades.

Sergeyev froze looking upward. The balloon circled around, reflecting the clouds, but between its side and the clouds was a band of sky so blue it made the eyes ache, and a multitude of stars. To the right the sun was a fiery cauldron, but at the same time it was freezing cold, the same cold freshness of the infinite sky of the mountains, yet their faces and exposed hands were hot where the sun touched them.

But the balloon continued to rise imperceptibly, leaving the clouds which appeared soft, but so flat and firm one could just step across the side of the basket and walk on them.

Sergeyev came to his senses first and said,

"Close off the burner or the wind will carry us away."

Oleg obeyed.

The two of them looked at the sky and clouds in silence. Neither wanted to go back down again, although they were freezing.

Then Oleg saw something very strange.

A black point was moving quickly across the sky in a straight line.

It appeared first at the periphery of his vision, and what caught Oleg's attention first was not the point itself but the straight white tail it trailed far behind, stretching from the horizon.

"Sergeyev." Oleg pointed. "What type of animal is that?"

Sergeyev had been looking to the other side and turned. The point was approaching the side of the balloon which covered half the sky and was almost hidden from view.

Sergeyev said,

"That can't be?"

"What?" Oleg caught the unbelievable astonishment in Sergeyev's voice.

"It's... an aircraft. Or a rocket. Or... It's man-made."

The black point vanished, and Sergeyev hurried to the other side of the basket. The basket listed to one side.

Ignoring the cold they waited for the black point to emerge from behind the balloon. It did. It sped directly away from them, trailing a long tail behind.

"What man made it?" Oleg asked almost timidly. "There's no one else where. Don't you mean it's a bird?"

"Considering the speed and the height, it can't be anything but a probe." Sergeyev said.

"A what?"

"An atmospheric exploratory scout. It moves at a speed of about two thousand kilometers an hour at a height of ten to fifteen kilometers. Planetary survey expeditions use them all the time."

"You mean, there's someone else here?"

"I mean there is someone else here." Sergeyev said.

The older man looked at the sun, determining the scout's direction.

The scout had started to descend. They could see it dropping down and loosing speed.

The contrail vanished not far from the layer of clouds.

And that was all. All that was left was the trail of torn white mist in the blue sky.

"Let's go down." Sergeyev said.

"Right." Oleg agreed. "I'm almost frozen now."

They landed in the lake. The whole settlement had to come out to drag the balloon back before it grew dark. At the end everyone was filthy and soaking wet. And no one cared.

There were people on the planet. Other people.

Chapter Seven

The planet had no name.

It did have a numerical code. Any library computer in the Galaxy could have provided information about it on that basis, never suspecting that human beings would have been more comfortable if the planet had a name. More familiar.

But that happens with a lot of distant planets when they're discovered; most are so far away all they get is a number in a list of discoveries.

The planet had been found a number of years ago. Then, as is usual, a WorldScout station was sent there. The automated station went into orbit, sent down scouts, photographed the planet's surface, dispatched to the aforementioned surface probes to gather samples of the air and soil. Then the WorldScout station gathered together all its servants and headed off to the nearest space lane where it waited for the next starship. On the starship a junior graduate student named Kirejko scanned the material, made a number of qualified choices, and sent all materials on the planet the archives to await their turn.

The junior graduate student -- a previous era would have termed his post "work study," -- could have noticed that the planet presented special interest because of the existence of autochthonous sophonts, because the non-sapient biota was highly unusual, because there was a marvelous climate and conditions ideal for human colonization, or, finally, because the wealth and diversity of mineral riches the planet exhibited.

The junior graduate student named Kirejko noticed absolutely nothing of the sort.

The planet was lacking in native intelligent life. The higher latitudes were occupied by ice covered mountains, the lower covered by an eternally cloud-shrouded layer of primeval forest, while a burning desert stretched over thousands of kilometers of the equatorial areas. The orbital inclination was negligible, the local year lasted a little longer than a thousand days. Nothing out of the ordinary.

In principle, the middle latitudes, the cloud covered forests and the somewhat hotter prairie were suitable for human beings, but the planet's distance from the established space lanes and a lack of free Ecosurvey teams in this distant sector of the Galaxy condemned the planet to partial oblivion.

In as much as there was no intelligent life on the planet and little chance of it developing for a few geological eras at least, it was honestly felt the planet had no great need for a name.

"At the very least we could baptize the planet at our own discretion." Pavlysh said to no one in particular. He was trying to oversee the erection of his work desk and failing. "Exploration groups do have that right. For example Violet, if for no other reason that there is no other planet named 'violet' in the Galactic Guide to Planets and Bodies already."

The table refused to erect itself. The flat package had opened up all right and the component elements began to seek out their proper positions, but one of the drawers seemed to be a size too large, as though some work-robot had packed it all wrong in the factory. Pavlysh tried to maneuver it into place manually with his field knife and felt like he was working with screws and screw drivers. Finally he worked the waste basket into place.

Claudia was observing the battle and was displeased. Claudia was unable to stand disorder no matter what the source.

Pavlysh arranged the table and lamp so that the grey twilight fell to the left. He preferred not to work with the light shining directly in his face.

Claudia arranged her own work table to ensure she faced the light.

Claudia's own work table was complete in its grey travel case; she had packed it herself after completing her last assignment rather than requisitioning one from ship's stores. When she finished the woman began to lay out her instruments on the table, precisely and neatly, although some of them had already spent time on half a dozen planets far more complicated than this one.

The third work table, belonging to Sally Hoskins, remained for the moment in storage while Sally oversaw the erection of the station. Microbots were indispensable for construction, but a single glitch could cost them lives.

The station's complement was supposed to have been all female.

Claudia Sun's team.

Claudia Sun was the team leader and geologist. Sally Hoskins the technician and cook. Srebrina Taleva the biologist.

Together they had already worked on four planets.

The Center for Space Research preferred not to introduce unnecessary complications into small research parties and tried to find crews that were either single sexed or else married couples. The station domes were small, shower and toilet facilities separated from the common work rooms by plastic curtains, and the barriers between the sleeping cubicles hardly up to human eye level.

But Srebrina Taleva had succeeded in breaking her leg the day before landing.

The captain of the Magellan was Vyacheslav Pavlysh's old friend, Gleb Bauer. He called the doctor to the bridge and gave him a look that begged for sympathy.

"The Sun team is our last drop off, you understand.... The others are already in place."

"Srebrina Taleva will be out of commission for at least a month. A beautifully compounded fracture." Pavlysh, the ship's doctor, answered.

"That's not what I mean. I'd like your opinion on how the absence of a biologist will affect their work."

"Badly." That was evident.

"You understand that we are preparing to land them for a three month stay?"

"Why else are we here?"

"We have a responsibility..." Bauer made it clear that, in his view, the responsibility lay with Pavlysh.

"A leg transplant is certainly possible. but it would be very clumsy because of the size difference. And I'd want my own leg back...."

"Slava, this is no joking matter."

It is remarkable how quickly captains begin to take themselves seriously after promotion. One would have thought that it had been decades since Bauer had stood watch as second navigator on the Seryozha. Pavlysh had been ship's doctor then, and a ship's doctor he remained.

"What, exactly, do you propose?" Pavlysh asked. "The Captain should have all the solutions."

Bauer chose not to acknowledge the irony.

"Look, Slava, you've been after me a thousand times asking for leave to go exploring. 'I'm tired of sitting in this tin can.' Isn't that a direct quote?" Bauer's voice dropped from that of Captain to Friend.

"You actually want me to become Srebrina Taleva?"

"I'm asking you, if you wouldn't want to help out the survey team."

"I don't."

"Why?"

"I can't imagine how I'll work in an all-female team."

"I can guarantee you that if you agree the team's composition will be thirty three and a third percent male."

"Claudia Sun will eat me alive. Don't you know her reputation?"

"I've dealt with Claudia personally. She's one of the most reasonable people this side of the Sol system. I can guarantee..."

"You certainly have a right to your own opinion. I asked you to let me off when we landed the Sato team. That was a rather interesting planet and I knew the people fairly well."

"Are you afraid of a single woman, or are you afraid to work?"

"Of the single woman, thank you. And anyway, she would never agree."

"Then everything's settled. Sun is willing to take the devil himself so long as we can land her team on the planet."

Evidently, Claudia had already agreed to take Pavlysh. Otherwise she would have been forced to return to Earth -- there were no other trained biologists on board. In fact she was rather dubious about the solution, and as often happens, Pavlysh immediately went out of his way to prove her very worst preconceptions. During unloading he managed to break the infrascope, which theoretically should have been dropable from the top of a ten story building without suffering a scratch. But here now, for example, he couldn't accomplish the most simple tasks, such as overseeing microbots as they went about their programmed tasks.

In any herd, including the human kind, a table of ranks arises out of necessity. The biologists call this a dominance hierarchy. Pavlysh, with his entry into the team, had altered a complicated set of arrangements that had taken years to work out. Everything would have been simpler, had but Claudia Sun been a middle aged, masculine woman with a thunderous voice and abrupt mannerisms. But Claudia Sun did not produce the impression of a space wolf and leader of the survey team. She was young and beautiful with the features of a classic porcelain doll, with straight black hair divided into a pair of braids and tied into a tight knot in back.

Claudia Sun was one of those women who wordlessly and immediately take command in any feminine environment, but ordinarily retreat before large men, seeking shelter behind a mask of hostility and impertinence. Worse of all, Claudia's sense of humor had failed her, and she ignored her internal timidity where Pavlysh was concerned and strengthened her external opposition the moment she realized that a male cuckoo had been dropped into her well organized, all-female nest.

Vyacheslav Pavlysh should have inherited the ecological niche formerly occupied by Srebrina Taleva, a woman with a romantic nature inclined toward unexpected mood swings; open, cheerful, but luckless, hardly the sort of person who would ordinarily accomplish the fracturing of her leg in the closed confines and controlled environment of a starship. But Claudia immediately began to contrast, albeit unfairly, the clumsy and inadequate Pavlysh with that "ideal worker, that paragon of productivity, Srebrina." As though he were some sort of anti-Srebrina.

But Pavlysh was able to find advantages in his position. He was going to spend four months on a completely unexplored planet -- a situation for which thousands of scientists could only dream. He now had the opportunity to make his mark in science, discover new families of bacteria or new types of symbiosis. And why not? What could possibly be better than to break free of the overworked routines of shipboard life and throw yourself into an adventure? Had he really asked Bauer to keep him out of the group? Of course he had asked. Read the guide books and instructions and you will convince yourself that a real research station functions routinely, without adventure, that well organized work permits no failures and that any adventure or adversity is no more than a sumptuous failure to think far enough ahead...

In the end, however, Starship Surgeon Vyacheslav Pavlysh, now in his forties, both capable and curious, not excessively vain, had not lost his taste for life; he had jumped ship - if with the Captain's permission -- ploughed the cosmic sea and more or less voluntarily landed on the shores of this uninhabited island in the society of two attractive women. One of them at least, Sally Hoskins, was a damsel now into her second divorce. Now all that remained to be determined was if the uninhabited island held coconut palms, tigers, and Men Fridays to be saved from cannibals.

At that moment in his musings the wobbly body of the half-constructed work table chose to collapse, spilling everything Pavlysh had managed to place on it in a heap on the floor.

Claudia watched her new biologist on his hands and knees searching for his property with a certain annoyance. Sally peeped out from the kitchen compartment; torn between pity for Pavlysh and a superficial caution in dealing with Claudia, and said,

"We can always support the top with crates on the sides, can't we?"

"Evidently he will have to." Claudia answered dryly, not looking at her subordinates, and returned her interest to the view screen that showed the cloud-wrapped forest. "Not worth dragging any of the local microflora into the station."

"'And one little boy dragged home a crocodile that bit off his grandfather's little finger."' Claudia's tone of voice had brought back an old children's rhyme and Pavlysh found himself repeating it aloud and regretting it a moment later.

"My husband..." Claudia Sun said unexpectedly, then pursed her lips and fell silent.

"Don't, Claudia." Sally said.

"Why not. Let him find out."

Claudia looked Pavlysh in the eyes.

Lord, thought Pavlysh. Don't tell me. Her husband died on some godforsaken planet...

"My husband," Claudia repeated, "From whom it has been my privilege to be separated from these seven years now, almost succeeded in wiping out the expedition to the Corrac'h system when he carelessly introduced a local life-form into the station."

And after that we divorced, Pavlysh couldn't help finishing with his thoughts, because I could simply not abide such a scandalous violation of standing orders. Aloud, he said:

"I promise you, Claudia, I will never bring any local life forms into the station."

Claudia sighed with a certain relief, evidently, she had decided to accept this jest as a serious promise.

Pavlysh grabbed one of the crates Sally had already emptied and placed it under the table's short leg.

***

Pavlysh sat down at the table. The chair obediently embraced him. Anything for your comfort sir? He looked to his right. The transparency in front of him had grown dark. Pavlysh wiped it, but was unable to examine the near-by forest because of the barrage of wet snow crawling down the curved side of the dome and the grey trunks of the trees that had started to wave back and forth, surrendering to the wind and the streams of rain.

"We should instruct the computer to grow a wiper for the window." Pavlysh advised Claudia. "Without it well have trouble admiring the landscape."

"I thought about that some time ago." Claudia said. "Back on our last mission. But never had time for it."

Pavlysh sighed. Ill fortune had provided him with a serious leader.

The snow came down all the heavier. Snowflakes danced on the window, and the trees finally vanished in the gloom.

"They never sent the weather report." Pavlysh said.

"They didn't?" Claudia was surprised. Then she thought again: "Don't speak nonsense."

"But I haven't the slightest idea what to wear when I go out for a walk."

"You'll wear a full biosuit with helmet and internal air supply." Claudia saw nothing to joke about. "And you will never, never take it off outside the confines of this station."

"That was why they never sent the weather report." Pavlysh suddenly realized what he was doing but couldn't bring himself to stop. He wanted to annoy Claudia.

Sally broke out laughing and immediately suppressed it. "I'll get milk and cookies, children." She said.

"We have different temperaments." Claudia told Pavlysh. "The impulse to constantly joke leads to bravado and bravado leads to unjustifiable risk taking. Risks, here, are very dangerous. The fate of the entire station may very well hang on one of your unsuccessful jokes."

"I'll be serious." Pavlysh sighed.

A buzzing at the Com station the conversation. Sally asked Claudia to take her place at the stove and she herself hurried to the transmitter. The Magellan was calling. It was far enough away from the system's center of mass that its engines could stress space and make the jump to the next planet. The team was about to go out of contact with the rest of the galaxy, and would remain isolated for at least four months. Subspace communication from the bottom of a planetary gravity well was only possible for large ships and major colonies; the equipment was too massive for survey stations and planetary cutters. There is an element of risk in this. You had to get used to it. The hypergrav generator of a subspace transmitter would have occupied the entire dome.

For emergencies there was the beacon in orbit well beyond the depths of the planetary gravity well. If necessary they could get to it in the lifeboat that now sat outside their dome on the tough green grass.

From this moment on communication was limited to the unhurried, ancient means. In the case of an emergency a signal would be sent at the ordinary speed of radio waves, up to the beacon, and from there through subspace to Earth-14. Any cry for help would take at least six weeks to get a reply.

At the end of the message Bauer sent his regards. "And remember Slava, don't get bored."

"'til we meet again..." In several hours the starship Magellan would vanish from this part of space and emerge elsewhere, several parsecs distant.

Pavlysh listened to Sally acknowledge their call and bid them a fond adieu, noting down the final instructions. He walked closer to the window and looked out at the sky. There was nothing much to see. Just a mixture of gloom and greyness.

Pavlysh knew that the station had been landed where it was the end of spring, in the northern hemisphere, in the temperate zone. That meant one could count on the weather getting better with every day. This spot had been chosen because of data collected by the earlier automated probes. This was the optimal climate for the investigators: to the north began the mountain ranges, empty and bleak, with only naked tundra beyond. To the south were oceans, and on the other side of the waters the land was desert scorched by the type F star. The latitudes chosen for work were the most active biologically and a significant part of their work would be carried out in the neighborhood of the dome itself.

On the other side of the scanner Pavlysh could see the rounded tunnel that lead to the smaller dome of the bioscout lab. There were three auxiliary domes attached by airlocks to the station. One, with the bioscouts, was Pavlysh's domain. The second, with the geological equipment, was Claudia's. The third was the supply shed and garage where the all terrain vehicle was kept. The teardrop shape of the lifeboat stood on three inadequate looking legs some distance off. The legs served it quite well.

"If my help isn't needed now," Pavlysh said, "I'll go off to the store room. I have things to sort out."

"Go." Claudia said. "You can ready the bioscouts after supper. We start the research program tomorrow."

"I know." Pavlysh said.

Pavlysh headed down the tunnel into the supply dome. Containers with tools and instruments and supplies were packed away in precise order. Claudia had supervised the loading herself -- they said she made the robots tremble. The air was stuffy and Pavlysh went to the life support controls and turned them on. The dome began to breath. Pavlysh could hear the machinery drawing in outside air and selectively filtering out the non-terrestrial organisms, turning the cold, living air from outside into the warm, sterile, breathable mixture identical to that found on a starship.

Then the most complicated part of Pavlysh's work began: he had to search out in this ordered mess the crates containing the twenty-three numbers which matched the bioscouts, analyzers, surgical kit, the lab, diagnosticon, field recorders and film packs and who knew what else had been loaded.

Pavlysh sighed, looked over the printout list of tools in his hand, and realized at the very least three of the four months would be spent in searching for his own equipment.

Mostly Pavlysh wanted to find the containers where he'd stowed away his microbooks and reader. Pavlysh was afraid Claudia had discarded his precious hoard of mysteries and old space operas while checking over the loading of their supplies. He knew the microbooks were in container Sixteen, which, as luck would have it, had found its way to the bottom of the pile. But it couldn't wait until Sally activated the servorobots; so the good doctor got some exercise.

Trying not to make too much noise Pavlysh dragged the container with the holy grail into an empty corner. He opened it. His very worst fears were confirmed. And he came to hate Claudia Sun. No doubt she had found the box with pulp fiction and in its place inserted something far more necessary for their research. His annoyance, although it was not unexpected, was deep and painful. Pavlysh realized there was no way he would be able to stand the society of this prig for a month without the mental anesthetic of Hercule Poirot and Kimball Kinnison, Blackie Duquesne and Miss Marple.

Pavlysh sat down on the container and told himself that he was lucky; now he would be able to spend more time on useful work and his chances of making a valuable contribution to science had been sharply increased.

But Pavlysh was unable to convince himself of any such thing, and he began to compose an emotional limerick about the departure of the ship and the sadistic cruelty inflicted by the station head on her crew.

Then the door opened; Sally entered. She was a tall, full bodied woman with light brown hair, with wise green eyes, and a full mouth inclined to grins.

"I think I can assuage your grief." Sally`s smile widened. She went over to the pile of containers and said, "Help me, Slava."

They pulled out the second container from the top marked 57, which indicated that it belonged to the geology section, Sally opened it and pulled out the treasure chest box with the microbooks.

"You did it?" Pavlysh said joyfully, almost having to stop himself from embracing the Faerie Queen, the fair Gloriana. "She pulled it out and you put it back in?"

"No that simple." Sally answered. "Claudia would never have decided to leave something that belonged to someone else, especially if it wasn't broken. We repacked everything and her microborer didn't fit. I had to rearrange things."

"All the same, thanks." Pavlysh said.

"But I prefer classics." Sally said.

"And Claudia prefers geological journals?"

"The journals and Anna Karenina. She carries a hardcopy Anna Karenina with her everywhere. As soon as things start to go bad she starts reading. Look, just don't send her into it today, all right? Think of what she has to deal with?"

"You mean me?"

"She thinks you're laughing at her. All the time."

"No, of course not, certainly not all the time." Pavlysh answered, which caused Sally to start to laugh.

The lighting in the supply section was meager, coming from only one window. When the face covered it the dome darkened. Both Pavlysh and Sally felt this change in illumination.

The face was nearly white, and if it had eyes they were hidden beneath a mass of tangled fur. But it did have long, jagged fangs and when it opened its snout the face tested the strength of the plast window. Pavlysh could see the fangs were brown and thought that the face never brushed them. Between the teeth, like the crenelation of an ancient fortress, sat shining tiny creatures similar to immature worms. The worms also had teeth. The worms burst out of their fortress and clutched somehow at the smooth surface, hunting across the plast window. They moved so fast that they merged into a greenish blur. The face closed its maw.

Pavlysh realized that Sally was holding his hand.

"Frightened?" Pavlysh asked.

Sally took away her hand.

"There go the walks in the woods." She sighed. "And I was hoping to be able to get out and around here."

"Here's my first paper for Annals of the Royal Society of Extraplanetary Zoology." Pavlysh said. "The peculiarities of symbiotic creatures on the planet... what's it called, by the way? The planet."

"You can think of the most irrelevant things." Sally said. "You're very cold blooded. Slava. I nearly died of fright."

"Just think how repulsive we must be to that."

The white, eyeless muzzle vanished. The worms became even more agitated. evidently they were afraid their residence had departed. Sally called Claudia.

Claudia threw only one glance at the worms and immediately reached for her camera. She cast Pavlysh a bitter rebuke.

A black whip struck at the plast, squashing one of the worms; the innards flowed yellow over the clear surface. The remaining worms froze. The whip slowly crawled, expanded, until it turned into a band about ten centimeters in width. The band curled into a tube and the worms began to crawl into it obediently. After a few seconds the plast had become clear, all that remained were a few yellow streaks to remind them to the little tragedy they had just witnessed.

"Up to now we haven't even turned on the outside cameras." Claudia said. "We don't even know what's going on outside."

"Thanks for not forgetting my murder mysteries." Pavlysh said.

"Don't mention it." Claudia said. "Just don't forget about your work."

"I'll remember. I even remember my Latin. I can bestow all of the creatures we've seen outside the window with the appropriate terminology. Deformis, foedus, odiosus, invisus, horrendus, horribilis, will serve excellently in the naming of new genera. The opportunities are endless."

Claudia turned and left.

Sally looked after her and said,

"When you decide to name something after me, I'd rather the fangs were short and not too many eyes, please."

"Your name shall only be bestowed upon the butterflies." Pavlysh said.

The sound of plates rattling came from the living section. Claudia was putting out the dishes.

"Do you think there's intelligent life here?" Sally asked.

"Not very likely. The automated probes didn't observe anything, and the native life forms they did observe weren't all that high on the evolutionary ladder."

"And what if?"

"What if, we can say when we leave."

"I love new planets." Sally said. "At first the new world is completely dark. As though you were only just born. And then you find yourself coming alive in the new world. And it becomes light."

Pavlysh walked over to the window again. Small insects were crawling across the plast around the yellow scraps. The snow had stopped. The forest was empty, watching and waiting.

We're the aliens here. Pavlysh thought. Small bits of protoplasm in a plastic cover. Will this world accept us? Will it reject us? Or won't it even notice our passage.

"The nearest other people are trillions of kilometers away from here." He said aloud.

"What does it matter?" Sally retorted. "And why are you able to read my thoughts."

"But trillions of kilometers isn't that much." Pavlysh said. "Our existence is registered everywhere it has to be. At Space Fleet Headquarters, on Earth 14, in Survey's records, at the Central Institute of Cosmological Studies. In the paymaster's computers where we're earning on-planet bonuses. If something does happen to us, someone will raise such a ruckus we'll have rescue cruisers heading here from all parts of the galaxy."

"And if they're late?"

"They'd better not be." Pavlysh said. "We should behave ourselves and listen to aunt Claudia. And nothing bad will happen. Most importantly we should wash our hands before supper."

"I guessed," Sally said, "You are lonely, and you're already sorry that you came with us."

"Not in the least."

Pavlysh continued to look out on the forest. He was hoping to catch sight of some sort of movement, some sort of life. Just for a second as the light vanished he thought the trees began to waive their branches slowly, like somnambulant dancers, obedient to some common rhythm born of a distant unseen drum.

***

The research station had been landed the edge of an enormous forest.

After the first two days' furious activity, the erection of the dome, the unloading of supplies, there was only silence.

No one had left the station, and the thin double walls dampened any sound that might have come from inside.

Slowly, the forest got used to the aliens that lived beside it. The motionless dome disturbed nothing.

Pavlysh, although he was extremely busy, finally had the satisfaction of observing a research station begin operations on a new world. With the powering on of the external cameras and recorders, the setting up of the meteorological station and the release of borers into the ground beneath Claudia's geosurvey dome which industriously set about to tunnel their way through the soil of the planet, an objective understanding of the forest and forest's world had begun, with the probes' data flowing directly to the computers.

The information being returned would confirm first and foremost what the team knew already: all planets are composed of the same elements which form the same compounds wherever they are in the universe, and evolve into life which obeys common laws of genetics and consists of identical cells, anywhere in the Galaxy.

The differences the team expected to find were not in the biological principles but in the exterior peculiarities. Therefore Pavlysh was continually facing a total lack of satisfaction from the contrast between the accumulation of objective knowledge and his complete sense of ignorance.

Pavlysh understood that it was madness to go outside into the living, unsterilized air, take in his hand a leaf from a tree, or pull up a handful of grass and smell it. He knew that behind the serenity of the surrounding forest were hidden powers hostile to human beings, not because they were directed against human beings per se, but because they were totally alien, did not know him, and fled as soon as attempts were made to contact them.

On the morning of the third day Pavlysh prepared to launch his first bioscout. In all he had three bioscouts -- they were programmed to examine the atmosphere, registering chemical and biological constituents at various heights. Claudia had virtually identical scouts, but they were intended to provide a geological map of the planet. The difference was that in the case of emergency Claudia could land her scouts and use them to carry out long distance coring. Pavlysh's scouts were simple information collectors although he downloaded the information when they returned. Afterwards Pavlysh would search through the data the scout brought back, examine the photographs, and determine which areas he should check in person.

Pavlysh went through the airlock and down the low, oval corridor into his lab.

The scouts were waiting for him, laying on high pedestals. Pavlysh, following the program developed long ago and now standard operating procedure, should have been in the first stage of sending the scouts out in search daisies. Every flight corresponded to a petal of the daisy. The length of a "petal" was five hundred kilometers, the heights varying. The ellipse of the first 'petal' reached the height of thirteen kilometers, all the rest would be carried out lower. This way they would investigate a cylinder of atmosphere to thirteen kilometers in height with a diameter of a thousand kilometers in all directions.

The launch procedure itself was fairly simple. Having fed in the program, Pavlysh just pushed the launch button, and the rest followed without his participation.

The scout gave him a green light; it was ready. The pedestal started to move, carrying the scout to the top of the dome and the overhead lock. Pavlysh, raising his head, saw a grey cloudy sky. A drop of rain fell on his helmet. Pavlysh wiped it with his glove.

The launch trembled. The scout slowly rose from the pedestal and confidently headed toward the hole in the roof. It lifted, lowly humming, like a fat beetle flying out for a hunt.

The opening in the dome's roof closed.

"Why not?" Pavlysh thought aloud. "The work day's begun."

He touched his com button and said,

"Claudia, I just launched the first scout. I'm going outside now."

"That's dangerous." Claudia said; her voice, almost distorted in his helmet phone, seemed like a girl's and almost soft. "You haven't forgotten your hand blaster?"

"No, my angel." Pavlysh said. "What's more I've taken emergency food rations, the sleeping bag and a large stick. Consequently I am informing you that I will be going the enormous distance of approximately ten meters from the dome.

"Slava, stop joking." Claudia said. "This is the first time you've gone outside here."

"In point of fact my second." Pavlysh said. "You might remember that when we were landed here we had to spend about an hour in the open."

"Protected by the ship's forcefield." Claudia corrected him, "With about ten other members of the crew around."

"Thank you." Pavlysh said. "I'll be careful. Don't worry. And anyway I have to test the stunner."

Pavlysh pulled the pistol from the pocket of his overalls. The pistol was small but heavy. The handle fit snugly into his palm. The weapon was designed especially for expeditions; it could immobilize any aggressor, from a snake to an elephant , but the effect was relative, depending both on the mass of the target and the predator's metabolism. What would be enough to make one animal sleep peacefully for a week would make another drowsy, yet might kill a third. Thus part of Pavlysh's reason for going out was to test the weapon on local creatures, to obtain laboratory specimens and determine the action of the anaesthetizer. If, in fact, that would-be lab specimen did not object too much.

The outside lock dilated open.

For a few minutes Pavlysh stood just outside the dome, looking around and waiting to see how the local fauna would react to his presence.

The fauna did not react at all.

Pavlysh sauntered across the sparse grass toward the landing boat, looking up at his reflection in its curved side above his head. Then he looked through the window into the geological lab. As to be expected Claudia was standing by the window and looking as if to make certain her child were about to cross the street only on the green light.

Pavlysh waved to Claudia, who raised her hand in answer, but she didn't leave the window.

"You should have children." Pavlysh said. "Five, at a minimum."

Then he was horrified he might have left his com on. No, it wasn't and she hadn't heard. Otherwise she would have been embarrassed.

Now to take his time looking around.

The station's steep dome with finger-like corridors leading to the small domes of the labs stood about two hundred meters from the edge of the forest. This was the side on which the window on which Pavlysh's desk looked out.

In order to circumnavigate the station Pavlysh had to walk in a broad circle that led him nearer the lake. The slope was covered with grass and sharp rocks.

The lake itself was grey, flat, quiet; in fact the entire world gave the impression of peaceful greyness. Only the impression. Pavlysh realized that this greyness covered passions and tragedies, primitive yes, and because of that all the more cruel as it put on its best face to newcomers.

Pavlysh bent his head back and looked upward. For the last three days the clouds had not once parted, the sun had not shone down for a minute. It was the same grey color as the lake, and so flat and even that he couldn't tell if they were moving or hanging motionless over his head.

Something was shining in front of him.

Pavlysh carefully headed down the slope and stopped a few steps from a shining creature, which was busily digging into the ground. The creature paid no attention to the human whatsoever. Pavlysh walked a little closer, holding the stunner at the ready. The creature's shiny round metallic back was almost entirely hidden below the ground. Pavlysh squatted down and started to carefully pull the dirt away from the hole. Then he clutched the being and, with a jerk, pulled him out of the ground.

It didn't fight back or complain. Something in it cracked. Pavlysh saw a long probe drop to the dirt.

He raised the ball in his hand and realized that he had managed to grab the rarest 'animal' in these parts -- one of Claudia's mobile borers, and now Claudia was going to burn his ears off for this and he deserved it.

Since the borer was going to have to be fixed anyway Pavlysh decided to carry it with him, pulling the thin probe out of the ground and packing it all in his sample container. Then, as much as he did not want to do it, he pressed the com button and called Claudia.

"All your borers working?"

"One just this moment went off line." Claudia said. "I was about to ask you to check to see if something has happened to it?"

"You needn't ask." Pavlysh said. "I went hunting and just caught it. I'll bring it to Sally so she can fix it."

"But the border was metal! Round! How could anyone mistake it...."

"As you can see, terror has great eyes." Pavlysh said. "Ignorance leads to the silliest mistakes."

Pavlysh switched off again. He was angry with himself. No ordinary biologist would have mistaken a test instrument for a living being. And Pavlysh, over the years, had worked on achieving a reputation as a more-or-less normal person and even a scientist.

This was the danger of an alien world and one's own watchfulness. A remarkable coincidence - he was exhibiting an almost paranoid watchfulness together with a complete lack of danger.

The only reason I went after this ball was because I knew that my helmet is strong and no teeth can puncture it, my paralyzer can fell any predator, because I can run back to the dome and even run back to space in the landing boat if worst comes to worst and wait there until they pick us up. I have no reasons to fear this planet, if it doesn't want to inflict some sort of cataclysm on us. And at the same time I don't trust it. I fear it and am taking all measures to avoid coming into contact with itr while studying it. What would happen if I found myself here without the dome, the helmet, naked and without protection? Would I still look on the forest and lake as so picturesque? If the forest hid death for me, and the lake hid death, and the air itself threatened me with death?

These were empty speculations leading him nowhere. The best thing to do was to go down to the lake and take water samples. Of course one of the scouts could have done it for him just as well, but he couldn't surrender all the joys of field research to the automated machinery. The robots had no imaginations, and Pavlysh had one that was very well developed indeed.

Pavlysh avoided the scatterings of bushes, keeping to the open areas.

It was apparent the locality was deficient in fauna, although the plant life throve. It was perfectly reasonable that a world would exist dominated by flowers, storied for its man-eating mushrooms!

Suddenly he saw an insect -- something black and quick darted between his legs, extended gossamer wings and flew off into the bushes.

So, Pavlysh thought satisfied. Our first neighbor.

Pavlysh went down to the edge of the water. He stood a while on the bank. The lake's water was clear, the shore itself was covered with thin ice. The thin hairs of water plants were frozen into the ice below. A thin snake about a finger length long flitted between the stones and went off into the depths.

The lake's long shore vanished into the roiling gray mists; you could only guess that hills rose beyond it if you'd seen them during the landing.

Pavlysh smashed the surface of the ice and gathered some water into a test bottle, then turned over the next stone hoping to see something else alive. But the ground below was unoccupied.

Far off, about a hundred meters from the shore, the water bubbled and foamed. Something dark, like the shell of an enormous turtle, lifted above the surface, then plunged below and the water whirled about and sent ripples toward him.

Pavlysh stood up, holding the test bottle in his hand. The water quieted down, the lake grew silent. It was waiting for Pavlysh to do something. He looked around involuntarily -- it was pretty far to the domes. The water was agitated again, but differently this time; he caught sight of a speeding wake as whatever it was in the water, not wanting to show itself to the human, quickly headed toward the other shore.

And then it was dead quiet around him again -- even the wind had died down.

Pavlysh began to feel an unexplainable, irrational terror that something unseen and unheard was heading for him. He made a step back from the bank, then another, not looking where he was stepping and stumbled on a stone, hardly keeping his balance and unexpectedly found himself running a little ways back up the slope, not turning around, and trying to give the impression that he was merely tired of walking along the shore.

"Pavlysh?" He heard Claudia's voice. "Has anything happened?"

The woman really did have intuition. And, perhaps, experience.

"Nothing. Nothing at all." Pavlysh tried to get control of his breathing.

He quickened his pace, throwing a glance back over his shoulder at the lake.

The lake was undisturbed and quiet again. Idyllic.

From far off the snow storm was an approaching grey wall, and the lake water before it grew pockmarked.

"No bother." Pavlysh said. "I'm coming back now. Rather boring lake."

The dome was a comfortable, welcome vision. Inside it was warm, the monsters that ruled outside were barred entrance.

Sally Hoskins was outside, standing beside the landing boat, her orange biosuit gleaming from the moisture. She waved to Pavlysh.

"I discovered you had gone for a walk." She said. "And decided to tag along. So long as you don't mind."

"But won't Claudia be angry?"

"Certainly not. Standing instructions are that dangerous and unfamiliar areas should be studied only in groups."

"And where's the dangerous place around here?"

"Don't go too far." Claudia's voice came over their coms.

"We're only going to the forest and back." Sally answered.

The sparse grass that covered the fields vanished altogether three steps from the first trees. Here the ground itself was bare except for spots of grey-blue moss.

The boles of the tress were whitish, some with red, others with yellow tints. 'Boles' was a convenient tag; they were more like underground roots which for some reason had decided to come up for light than the trunks of true trees. Along the ground the roots had twisted themselves into complicated knots, as though they feared that someone would drag them back below the ground and had taken measures against that.

The trees had no leaves, in the usual meaning of the term. The roots grew thinner, turning into gray hairs which hung like tassels and hardly moved despite the breezes, giving the forest an ominous, haunted appearance.

The ground beneath their feet was damp, flat cakes of snow lay everywhere, a tossed salad of orange lichens and leaves and blue mounds of moss like ragged mops.

"Out of a nasty fairy tale." Sally said.

She stretched out her hand and carefully touched her fingers to a tree. The seemingly hard surface gave way and pulled back, as though it were made of rubber and the hairs on the tree's head started to shiver. Sally gave a start and pulled back her hand. Pavlysh almost laughed. The ominous atmosphere of the forest was palpable.

"What happened?" Claudia asked sharply.

"Everything's okay." Answered Pavlysh. "We'll get used to it."

They went forward a few more steps; a small hemisphere stuck out from the moss on the ground, like a button mushroom.

Pavlysh bent low pick up one of the mushrooms, but Sally said,

"A moment, I have a probe."

She reached out to the mushroom with the small probe; at the touch of the metal the plant suddenly vanished, darting back beneath the ground.

"Curious." Sally said, and extended her probe toward another.

But at that moment a thin root, sticking out from the tree and laying on the ground, the same color as the tree and therefore obviously safe, approached the probe and grabbed it, twisting the metal; as Sally tried to hold on to the probe the root almost pulled her from her feet such was its strength.

Pavlysh acted almost instinctively. He pulled out the stunner and sent a shot into the plant. The root immediately jerked erect, frozen.

Sally was standing with the probe clutched to her chest, as though she feared something else might try to grab it away from her.

"Sorry." She said.

"They don't like us here." Pavlysh said,

The forest had grown dark. The snow storm, from the direction of the lake, had covered the forest with a greasy layer of snow.

"Lets go home." Sally said.

"I agree."

The snow filled the air and they could see no more than three feet ahead. Because of their brief contra temps with the root they had lost their orientation; they found themselves walking fifteen meters through the forest but the mass of trees never ended. The trees just became thicker, the trunks fatter and whiter.

"Claudia." Pavlysh finally said. "Can you give us directions."

"Got lost, eh?" Claudia said.

The directional beacon began to buzz in their ears.

They made their way back slowly, avoiding the spots of moss and lichens. One time, in fact, Pavlysh stepped on an orange slime and it glued itself to his boots and began to crawl up his leg. Pavlysh bent down to wipe the lichen away but the wort immediately attached itself to his gloves.

"Oh well." Pavlysh said. "You can say we're bringing back a sample."

"What are you carrying?" Claudia asked.

"One very unpleasant forest." Pavlysh said. "I don't want to get lost here."

"I'd put the tea out now." Sally said.

"Superb idea." Pavlysh agreed.

Through the last trees they could see the domes of the station through broken streams of rain and the snow storm. Then they stopped and stood motionless, hoping not to be seen.

There was an animal between the forest and the dome, waiting for them.

Pavlysh had never conceived of such an animal even in his most fevered nightmares. Six thin legs carried a heavy body covered in long greenish fur similar to the water plants; a long line of armored plates decorated his crest. A terrible, fanged muzzle slowly opened and closed as though the monster were already smacking his lips at the thought of tasting them.

On seeing the people the animal gave out a strange, bleating sound, which Pavlysh heard as threat and challenge, and started to prance about so that the plates on his back began to shake and crash together, beating out a fierce war drone.

Still bleating, the monster rushed at them.

Pavlysh pushed Sally aside and shot it with the stunner.

The monster howled and started to circle in place, as though it had lost sight of its quarry, small red eyes burning with anger. Pavlysh shot it again, and again without affect. It simply reminded the monster where they were standing.

It was Claudia who resolved the impasse. The green light of the station's defensive laser reached out from the top of the dome. It struck the grass and moved to the monster, and the creature collapsed to the ground.

"That's it." Pavlysh said, trying to laugh.

He turned to Sally.

Sally was silent. She was trying to extricate herself from the embrace of a tree. In backing away from the monster she had walked into one of the trees and that had spread wide and opened to envelop her, as though it wanted to swallow her whole.

Pavlysh drained the charge of the stunner against the tree. It worked on the tree. The bole shrank away and turned black, and Sally made three steps forward to fall into Pavlysh's hand.

"Why didn't you say something?" Pavlysh asked.

"I didn't want to alarm Claudia." Sally answered quietly.

Supporting Sally, Pavlysh walked over to the fallen monster -- the three meter long body lay stretched out on the ground.

"Everything here wants to have us for dinner." He said.

He took Sally's probe and carefully opened the monster's maw to examine the teeth. In place of jagged canines and the equivalent of shearing carnassials were the flat plates of a herbivore.

Claudia had come out of the dome and joined them.

"First lesson." She said. "The stunner doesn't work against the local large predators. Or the effect remains insufficiently effective."

"This isn't a predator." Pavlysh said. "These type of plates are designed to crush and grind plant food, Although if this had managed to run us down we would never have learned that, and it would hardly have mattered. Thanks, Claudia."

"I was watching you all the time." She said.

"My knees are still shaking." Sally added.

"Just as well it happened now." Claudia continued. "As an object lesson.."

"I don't understand."

"An object lesson in caution. You were walking around this planet like you would back on Earth. You won't do it again."

"Perhaps you're right." Pavlysh sighed. "Can you help me cart the carcass into the lab."

"I'll activate the servos." Claudia said.

As though it had heard her words one of the servos emerged through a lock and began to trudge toward the monster's corpse.

"What do you have on your leg?" Claudia asked.

The orange lichen had covered the overalls of the space suit nearly to his knee with a think crawling layer. Pavlysh scraped some of the moss into a test tube and headed off for disinfection.

Chapter Eight

The rain had turned into a snow squall, as though winter had decided to return, so everyone crowded into the Mayor 's class room. It barely held them all. The children were sitting on the floor; the adults wanted to throw them out, but no one left, not even the youngest.

It seemed to Oleg that all the adults had only one aim - argue with Sergeyev, show him up to be a liar or at least delirious. But they simply didn't pay any attention to Oleg. Oleg did not understand that this resulted from a superstitious fear -- everyone was so desperate to believe Sergeyev really had seen a bioprobe it called forth the most desperate arguments against it. Even stupid ones, from Oleg's point of view.

For example, for some reason Oleg's mother insisted it was only an automatic satellite left behind by old researchers.

"In the atmosphere?" Sergeyev answered. "In atmosphere so dense it left a contrail? On the first such orbit a satellite would just burn up."

But the height? You're certain of the height?" Vaitkus asked. He face had grown redder than his beard.

"Oleg, repeat what you saw."

Oleg repeated for the fifth time, at least, that he had seen a dark object; that object had moved quickly and had left behind it a misty white trail.

"Height up to about ten kilometers." Sergeyev said.

The room was stuffy, but no one bothered to open the door because blind Kristina was sick again and was coughing.

"That's not positive proof." Luiza said. "We do know that there are some very fast birds on this planet. Incredibly fast birds."

"Flying at a thousand kilometers an hour?" Sergeyev asked patiently.

Oleg was astonished at the older man's patience. For what seemed like hours now the younger man had wanted to shout: no, that wasn't a bird, it wasn't a satellite! Why are we sitting here wasting precious time in empty talk?

"You're certain it's too small for an orbit boat?" Vaitkus asked.

"Just your ordinary, everyday bioprobe." Sergeyev answered. "I've seen hundreds of them in my life. I've launched them myself."

"Do you mean it photographed us?" Marianna asked.

"I don't think so." The Mayor said. "The previous expedition would have taken photomaps of the planet when it orbited a WorldeScout satellite. It would be a bioscout or geoprobe."

"Well at least you believe me." Sergeyev said.

"Perhaps I want to believe you." The Mayor answered.

"Does that mean they might not spot us?" Marianna asked.

"They might not." Sergeyev agreed. "But they might."

"Just be careful to avoid this optimism I hear." Kristina said. "No one is going to notice us. For them to notice us, they'd have to be looking for us. Can you imagine what a tiny, insignificant speck we are on the face of this planet. Insignificant because the amount of metal we have in one spot is so small that any sensors will just count us a part of the forest. No one is going to find us."

"Not even by accident?"

"Scouts carry out tests of the biosphere, air, soil, they are not used for producing maps." The Mayor said. "Kristina is right. The chances they will find us are nil. Never forget that we are always beneath the clouds."

"They might find the ship?" Oleg said. "There's no cloud cover there."

"Chances a little better." Sergeyev said. "But not too great either."

That's all, thought Oleg, they're starting to come to an agreement. They're allowing themselves to convince each other. As though they were doing each other a favor. He suddenly wanted to say loud enough for them all to hear him that if it weren't for his balloon they would never have even seen the scout; perhaps the expedition which had launched the scout has been sitting around on the planet for the allotted half a year and is already getting ready to depart. Oleg had the clear image in his mind of a starship so much like the PolarStar, but intact, and people walking around inside who were washed and dressed in fine uniforms or space suits -- they're closing the last of the containers with their specimens now and telling each other: "That's all; there's nothing interesting on this planet except for bleating gotes and zhakals."

The room had suddenly become very quiet.

And then Kazik's voice broke the silence. Kazik was sitting on the floor with the other small children; Fumiko lay across his outstretched legs.

"What if they've already leaving?"

"Who leave?" Kristina asked in a high pitched voice. "Why do you conclude that? They'll never leave."

A gust of wind hurled a blast of snow across the roof; the roof shuddered.

The light that penetrated through the stretched muzdang bladders across the small windows was so wan that the faces of the people scattered in the twilight, becoming individual grey spots, masking the looks on their faces.

"Then we have to go to them." Dick said. "If we just sit here nothing will get done. We have to find them and let them know we're here."

"Good for you, Dick." Marianna said, and put her hand on his shoulder.

Idiot Oleg cursed himself. I should have said that. Why did I wait for Dick to speak up?

"And where are you going to go to find them?" Oleg's mother asked. "What if the scout was moving in a circle or arc? Did if fly to the right or to the left after Sergeyev lost sight of it? It may well have landed in the other hemisphere."

"And what do you propose?" The Mayor asked the boy.

"We have to make some sort of signal."

"And how are we to do that?"

"I thought about it." Sergeyev said. "In my judgement the situation is not nearly as hopeless as it seems. We know the precise direction the scout was headed. And from my own experience I can confirm that scouts rarely move in circles. Bioscouts are sent out from a central location and return there."

"If it was a bioscout." Oleg's mother said,

Oleg realized that his mother was objecting not because she did not in fact believe Sergeyev and considered any attempt to find the expedition senseless. She was simply afraid that they would send Oleg off in search of the explorers. Rather than speak of it she was searching for other reasons.

"It was flying in a very flat arc." Sergeyev said. "And then it descended below the clouds."

"Why didn't you say that before?" The Mayor got angry.

"You didn't want to believe I saw what I did in the first place." Sergeyev answered. "And that's a detail."

"Not just a detail!" Vaitkus started to laugh in a loud, bellowing voice, and Oleg's mother shouted at him to stop.

"But how far is it? Where would it have landed?"

"I can determine the direction of the base." Sergeyev said. He pointed with his hand.

"South-west." The Mayor said.

"The clouds were monotonous and deceptive." Sergeyev continued. Vaitkus stopped laughing. "So I could not tell for how long the scout flew after dropping beneath them."

"But the range! The range!" Luiza said.

"Tens of kilometers." Sergeyev said. "Certainly no more than a hundred."

"That would be pure luck." Vaitkus said.

He's never gone walking in the forest. Oleg thought. He hasn't the slightest idea of what a hundred kilometers here is like. There's none of us who's walked that far. Not even Dick. No, we've only gone to the ship in the mountains. The south-west is all thick forest. And swamp. Dick once made it to the river and back. Before we even get there, there's the swamp.

"One can consider it luck." Sergeyev agreed. "At the very least it is possible to reach it."

"Difficult." Dick said.

"But certainly possible, isn't it." A questioning tone appeared in Vaitkus's voice. Vaitkus understood that it would not be he who went there. It would have to be Dick. And Oleg.

"They've already left." Oleg's mother said. "When you find their camp they'll have already left."

"We can't lose this chance." The Mayor said. "If I have to I'll go myself."

"You'd never make it." Dick told him. "It's too difficult."

"But we can do it." Kazik spoke up. "We'll make a raft."

"What about the swamp?" Dick asked. "I've tried to get through there myself and couldn't."

"We can go around it." Kazik said. "It does have an end."

"In the final analysis," Oleg said, because it had turned out that it would be others going and not him, "We made it to the mountain pass. And this is more difficult."

"Five, six days' travel." Vaitkus said. "I can go with you."

"This will be far more hazardous than going to the mountain pass." Sergeyev said.

Beyond the windows it had grown dark, and the light started to play on their faces, making them impalpable and cruel.

Someone moved beside Oleg, drew near, her soft hand touched his neck. Vaitkus and Sergeyev were arguing about the regions that lay to the south-west, as though they had actually been there. Oleg turned, hoping it was Marianna's hand, but he knew it was not Marianna; her hand was dry and ridged with scars and calluses. It was Liz.

She put her lips close to Oleg's ear and whispered,

"Don't go there. Stay here. I'm afraid for you."

Despite her whisper they were packed too tightly into the cabin leg was afraid everyone would hear her words and laugh. And he turned his head to free himself from her touch and said nothing. The blood was pounding in his ears and he had difficulty understanding what the Mayor was saying about the raft.

"For a raft we'll need logs and logs have to be cut." He said. "We have one axe and the saw is more a nail file these days. And we don't know for certain if the trunks of the trees that grow here will even float."

"If there were no river we could get there in about five days." Dick said.

"We'll need bladders." Oleg said. "Bladders for swimming. The kids always swim on bladders. Like the balloon, only smaller. And we can swim across."

"That's the idea." The Mayor said.

"Wait, wait." Marianna suddenly spoke up, as though she feared that they would cut her off or someone else would guess what she wanted to say before she could herself. "Oleg said that the bladders were like the balloon. But we don't have any reason to swim across the river or walk through the swamp. We have the balloon!"

"The balloon!" Oleg heard his own voice. "And we were talking....."

"How then are we going to fly to the ship?" Sergeyev asked."

"But why?" Oleg was surprised. "Now we don't need the ship."

A general commotion followed; everyone was interrupting each other because the balloon was the solution to their problem of making contact with the previously unknown survey expedition, the launchers of bioscouts; an elegant solution to a decades' long dilemma. To sit in the balloon and fly for one day, perhaps even less. Someone mentioned that the winds here were constant, if it grew warmer toward evening and the barometer dropped, that the winds necessarily blew to the south. Even Oleg's mother suddenly quieted down and started to speak in her son's ear, telling him to be sure he dressed warm.

But then Kristina started to groan and said that it was stuffy in the room, that she was feeling bad, and she asked to be led to her house. And Liz asked Oleg to help her with Kristina, because she could not deal with her alone.

Oleg didn't want to leave; they were now about to discuss what was most important to him.

Fortunately, that was when Sergeyev got to his feet.

"Time for a break." He said. "Kristina's right -- I can't breath in here either. I propose we all have something to eat and then we continue the discussion on full stomachs. Put the kids to bed and we can talk some more. This has gotten to be serious business."

Oleg didn't understand what was so serious about it all, but he was grateful to Sergeyev for cutting off the discussion.

They led Kristina back to her house. Liz hardly helped Oleg at all; she just walked alongside him. Nor did Oleg need her aid. Kristina was light, almost weightless; he could have carried her.

"I'm dreaming I'm stuck in a sweet nightmare." Kristina said. "Will I ever finally see real people again? I suppose they could cure my blindness immediately, perhaps even at their base. It can't be that hard an operation, can it?"

"Of course they can cure you." Oleg agreed. While they spoke he could almost feel Liz looking at him.

"I'm bored without you, Oleg." Liz said. "You never come to visit us."

"Who needs us?" Kristina started to sing her sad refrain again. "Even if they can return my sight there's still no way they can return my youth. Never. And maybe it might be better not to open my eyes again -- what pleasure would it be to see my deformed monstrosity in a mirror?"

But Oleg did not believe that Kristina was really thinking what she said. Really, she's thinking: It's been twenty years; things will have changed enormously out in the Galaxy. People no longer die any longer. They can return my youth. If people have many places to live -- habitable planets seemed to be the statistical norm around main sequence stars -- then there were places for everyone. Nature, as the Mayor had taught Oleg back in school, considers the life of the individual as a defense against the extinction of the species. Every biological species follows the same general law -- the continuation of the life of a single being should be such that he is able to give his posterity as much aid as possible to help them to survive. Fish, which lay eggs, may perish immediately after spawning because the fry are so many, but the young of mammals must be cared for, kept warm, fed, and taught how to avoid predators and what to eat, and how to build starships.

Once upon a time people lived only to twenty or thirty years. And then human beings began to deceive nature, and created civilization, and with modern medicine and regen techniques the individual members of the species was freed from most diseases and lived to a hundred years or more back in civilization. It was not important to the species that individual members could live to a hundred or a hundred fifty, but it was to the individual. And where does this idea lead? The Mayor , when Oleg began to put this idea to him, said that Oleg was a natural determinist. Oleg didn't try to argue. He was already firmly convinced that he was right. He was right that individuals do not live a hundred fifty by accident -- Nature was doing something here as well. Nature wants to seed the Galaxy with mankind, fill all those planets that failed to develop indigenous intelligent life. And old people were needed because they conserve experience and wisdom. And they were needed on the new planets more, perhaps, than on Earth. Without the Mayor and Thomas the village long ago would have died out or gone feral. Perhaps the scientists have discovered eternal youth. And immortality. And in the end human civilization would have to accomplish still one more leap, to other Galaxies.

"Why don't you come visit me." Liz repeated, and Oleg realized she had been speaking all this time, alone and patiently. "I'll wait for you. Wh