Though she had lived with the realization for months, it still shook Joyce to talk about. She clamped fingers around her coffee cup till they hurt, stared out the window at drifting dust, and strove not to cry.

  Van Rijn blew foul clouds of smoke a while in silence. Finally he rumbled almost gently, “But you have a cure program worked out, ja?”

  “Oh…oh, yes. We do. The research is completed and we were about ready to summon engineers.” She found comfort in proceeding:

  “The ultimate solution is to re-introduce nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Our labs have designed an extremely productive strain. It will need a suitable ecology, though, to survive: which means a lot of work with soil chemistry, a microagricultural program. We can hasten everything—begin to show results in a decade—by less subtle methods. In fact, we’ll have to do so, or the death process will outrun anything that bacteria can accomplish.

  “What we’ll do is melt and electrolyze water. The oxygen can be released directly into the air, refreshing it. But some will go to burn local hydrocarbons. T’Kela is rich in petroleum. This burning will generate carbon dioxide, thus strengthening the greenhouse effect. The chemical energy released can also supplement the nuclear power stations we’ll install: to do the electrolysis and to energize the combination of hydrogen from water with nitrogen from the atmosphere, recreating ammonia.”

  “A big expensive job, that,” van Rijn said.

  “Enormous. The biggest thing Esperance has yet undertaken. But the plans and estimates have been drawn up. We know we can do it.”

  “If the natives don’t go potshotting engineers for exercise after lunch.”

  “Yes.” Joyce’s blond head sank low. “That would make it impossible. We have to have the good will of all of them, everywhere. They’ll have to cooperate, work with us and each other, in a planet-wide effort. And Kusulongo the City influences a quarter of the whole world! What have we done? I thought they were our friends—”

  “Maybe we get some warriors and throw sharp things at them till they appreciate us,” van Rijn suggested.

  The car went swiftly, even over irregular ground. An hour or so after it had started again, Uulobu shouted from his seat on top. Through the overhead window the humans saw him lean across his windshield and point. Looking that way, they saw a dust cloud on the northwestern horizon, wider and lower than the one to the south. “Animals being herded,” Uulobu said. “Steer thither, sky-folk.”

  Joyce translated and van Rijn put the control bar over. “I thought you said they were hunters only,” he remarked. “Herds?”

  “The Horde people maintain an economy somewhere between that of ancient Mongol cattlekeepers and Amerind bison chasers,” she explained. “They don’t actually domesticate the irizu or the bambalo. They did once, before the glacial era, but now the land couldn’t support such a concentration of grazers. The Hordes do still exercise some control over the migrations of the herds, though, cull them, and protect them from predators.”

  “Um-m-m. What are these Hordes, anyhows?”

  “That’s hard to describe. No human really understands it. Not that t’Kelan psychology is incomprehensible. But it is nonhuman, and our mission has been so busy gathering planetographical data that we never found time to do psychological studies in depth. Words like ‘pride,’ ‘clan,’ and ‘Horde’ are rough translations of native terms—not very accurate. I’m sure—just as ‘t’Kela’ is an arbitrary name of ours for the whole planet. It means ‘this earth’ in the Kusulongo language.”

  “Hokay, no need beating me over this poor old egg-noggin with the too obvious. I get the idea. But look you, Freelady Davisson…I can call you Joyce?” Van Rijn buttered his tones. “We is in the same boat, sink or swim together, except for having no water to do it in, so let us make friends, ha?” He leaned suggestively against her. “You call me Nicky.”

  She moved aside. “I cannot prevent your addressing me as you wish, Freeman van Rijn,” she said in her frostiest voice.

  “Heigh-ho, to be young and not so globulous again! But a lonely old man must swallow his sorrows.” Van Rijn sighed like a self-pitying tornado. “Apropos swallowing, why is there not so much as one little case beer along? Just one case; one hour or maybe two of sips, to lay the sandstorms in this mummy gullet I got; is that so much to ask, I ask you?”

  “Well, there isn’t.” She pinched her mouth together. They drove on in silence.

  Presently they raised the herd: irizu, humpbacked and spike-tailed, the size of Terran cattle. Those numbered a few thousand, Joyce estimated from previous experience. With vegetation so sparse, they must needs spread across many kilometers.

  A couple of natives had spied the car from a distance and came at a gallop. They rode basai, which looked not unlike large stocky antelope with tapir faces and a single long horn. The t’Kelans wore kilts similar to Uulobu’s, but leather medallions instead of his shell necklace. Van Rijn stopped the car. The natives reined in. They kept weapons ready, a strung bow and a short throwing-spear.

  Uulobo jumped off the top and approached them, hands outspread. “Luck in the kill, strength, health, and offspring!” he wished them in the formal order of importance. “I am Tola’s son Uulobu, Avongo, Rokulela, now a follower of the sky-folk.”

  “So I see,” the older, grizzled warrior answered coldly. The young one grinned and put his bow away with an elaborate flourish. Uulobu clapped hand to tomahawk. The older being made a somewhat conciliatory gesture and Uulobu relaxed a trifle.

  Van Rijn had been watching intently. “Tell me what they say,” he ordered. “Everything. Tell me what this means with their weapon foolishness.”

  “That was an insult the archer offered Uulobu,” Joyce explained unhappily. “Disarming before the ceremonies of peace have been completed. It implies that Uulobu isn’t formidable enough to be worth worrying about.”

  “Ah, so. These is rough peoples, them. Not even inside their own Hordes is peace taken for granted, ha? But why should they make nasty at Uulobu? Has he got no prestige from serving you?”

  “I’m afraid not. I asked him about it once. He’s the only t’Kelan I could ask about such things.”

  “Ja? How come that?”

  “He’s the closest to a native intimate that any of us in the mission have had. We saved him from a pretty horrible death, you see. We’d just worked out a cure for a local equivalent of tetanus when he caught the disease. So he feels gratitude toward us, as well as having an economic motive. All our regular assistants are…were impoverished, for one reason or another. A drought had killed off too much game in their territory, or they’d been dispossessed, or something like that.” Joyce bit her lip. “They…they did swear us fealty…in the traditional manner…and you know how bravely they fought for us. But that was for the sake of their own honor. Uulobu is the only t’Kelan who’s shown anything like real affection for humans.”

  “Odd, when you come here to help them. By damn, but you was a bunch of mackerel heads! You should have begun with depth psychology first of all. That fool planetography could wait…Rotten, stinking mackerel, glows blue in the dark…” Van Rijn’s growl trailed into a mumble. He shook himself and demanded further translation.

  “The old one is called Nyaronga, head of this pride,” Joyce related. “The other is one of his sons, of course. They belong to the Gangu clan, in the same Horde as Uulobu’s Avongo. The formalities have been concluded and we’re invited to share their camp. These people are hospitable enough, in their fashion…after bona fides has been established.”

  The riders dashed off. Uulobu returned. “They must hurry,” he reported through the intercom. “The sun will brighten today, and cover is still a goodly ways off. Best we trail well behind so as not to stampede the animals, sky-female.” He climbed lithely to the cartop. Joyce passed his words on as van Rijn got the vehicle started.

  “One thing at a time, like the fellow said shaking hands with the octopus,” the merchant decided. “You must tell me much, but we begin with going back to why the natives are not so polite to anybody who works for your mission.”

  “Well…as nearly as Uulobu could get it across to me, those who came to us were landless. That is, they’d stopped maintaining themselves in their ancestral hunting grounds. This means a tremendous loss of respectability. Then, too, he confessed—very bashfully—that our helpers’ prestige suffered because we never involved them in any fights. The imputation grew up that they were cowards.”

  “A warlike culture, ha?”

  “N-no. That’s the paradox. They don’t have wars, or even vendettas, in our sense. Fights are very small-scale affairs, though they happen constantly. I suppose that arises from the political organization. Or does it? We’ve noticed the same thing in remote parts of t’Kela, among altogether different societies from the Horde culture.”

  “Explain that, if you will be so kind as to make me a little four-decker sandwich while you talk.”

  Joyce bit back her annoyance and went to the cooker table. “As I said, we never did carry out intensive xenological research, even locally,” she told him. “But we do know that the basic social unit is the same everywhere on this world, what we call the pride. It springs from the fact that the sex ratio is about three females to one male. Living together you have the oldest male, his wives, their offspring of sub-adult age. All males, and females unencumbered with infants, share in hunting, though only males fight over t’Kelans. The small, um, children help out in the work around camp. So do any widows of the leader’s father that he’s taken in. The size of such a pride ranges up to twenty or so. That’s as many as can make a living in an area small enough to cover afoot, on this desert planet.”

  “I see. The t’Kelan pride answers to the human family. It is just as universal, too, right? I suppose larger units get organized in different ways, depending on the culture.”

  “Yes. The most backward savages have no organization larger than the pride. But the Kusulongo society, as we call it—the Horde people—the biggest and most advanced culture, spread over half the northern hemisphere—it has a more elaborate superstructure. Ten or twenty prides form what we call a clan, a co-operative group claiming descent from a common male ancestor, controlling a large territory through which they follow the wild herds. The clans in turn are loosely federated into Hordes, each of which holds an annual get-together in some traditional oasis. That’s when they trade, socialize, arrange marriages—newly adult males get wives and start new prides—yes, and they adjudicate quarrels, by arbitration or combat, at such times. There’s a lot of squabbling among clans, you see, over points of honor or practical matters like ammonia wells. One nearly always marries within one’s own Horde; it has its own dress, customs, gods, and so forth.”

  “No wars between Hordes?” van Rijn asked.

  “No, unless you want to call the terrible things that happen during a Völkerwanderung a war. Normally, although individual units from different Hordes may clash, there isn’t any organized campaigning. I suppose they simply haven’t the economic surplus to maintain armies in the field.”

  “Um-m-m. I suspect, me, the reason goes deeper than that. When humans want to have wars, by damn, they don’t let any little questions of if they can afford it stop them. I doubt t’Kelans would be any different. Um-m-m.” Van Rijn’s free hand tugged his goatee. “Maybe here is a key that goes tick-a-tock and solves our problem, if we know how to stick it in.”

  “Well,” Joyce said, “the Ancients are also a war preventive. They settle most inter-Horde disputes, among other things.”

  “Ah, yes, those fellows on the mountain. Tell me about them.”

  Joyce finished the sandwich and gave it to van Rijn. He wolfed it noisily. She sat down and stared out at the scene: brush and boulders and swirling dust under the surely red light, the dark mass of the herd drifting along, a rider who galloped back to head off some stragglers. Far ahead now could be seen the Lumbambaru, a range of ice, sharp peaks that shimmered against the crepuscular sky. Faintly to her, above the murmur of the engine, came yelps and the lowing of the animals. The car rocked and bumped; she felt the terrain in her bones.

  “The Ancients are survivors of the lost civilization,” she said. “They hung on in their city, and kept the arts that were otherwise forgotten. That kind of life doesn’t come natural to most t’Kelans. I gather that in the course of thousands of years, those who didn’t like it there wandered down to join the nomads, while occasional nomads who thought the city would be congenial went up and were adopted into the group. That would make for some genetic selection. The Ancients are a distinct psychological type. Much more reserved and…intellectual, I guess you’d call it…than anyone else.”

  “How they make their living?” van Rijn asked around a mouthful.

  “They provide services and goods for which they are paid in kind. They are scribes, who keep records; physicians; skilled metallurgists; weavers of fine textiles; makers of gunpowder, though they only sell fireworks and keep a few cannon for themselves. They’re credited with magical powers, of course, especially because they can predict solar flares.”

  “And they was friendly until yesterday?”

  “In their own aloof, secretive fashion. They must have been plotting the attack on us for some time, though, egging on the Shanga and furnishing the power to blow open our dome. I still can’t imagine why. I’m certain they believed us when we explained how we’d come to save their race from extinction.”

  “Ja, no doubt. Only maybe at first they did not see all the implications.” Van Rijn finished eating, belched, picked his teeth with a fingernail, and relapsed into brooding silence. Joyce tried not to be too desperately homesick.

  After a long time, van Rijn smote the control board so that it rang. “It fits together!” he bellowed.

  “What?” Joyce sat straight.

  “But I still can’t see how to use it,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Shut up, Freelady.” He returned to his thoughts. The slow hours passed.

  Late in the afternoon, a forest hove into sight. It covered the foothills of the Lubambaru, where an ammonia river coursed thinly and seepage moistened the soil a little. The trees were low and gnarled, with thorny blue trunks and a dense foliage of small greenish-gray leaves. Tall shrubs sprouted in thickets between them. The riders urged their iziru into the wood, posted a few pickets to keep watch, and started northward in a compact group, fifteen altogether, plus pack animals and a couple of fuzzy infants in arms. The females were stockier than the males and had snouted faces. Though hairy and homeothermic, the t’Kelans were not mammals; mothers regurgitated food for children who had not yet cut their fangs.

  Old Nyaronga led the band, sword rattling at his side, spear in hand and shield on arm, great yellow eyes flickering about the landscape. His half-grown sons flanked the party, arrows nocked to bows. Van Rijn trundled the car in their wake. “They expect trouble?” he asked.

  Joyce started from her glum thoughts. “They always expect trouble,” she said. “I told you, didn’t I, what a quarrelsome race this is—no wars, but so many bloody set-tos. However, their caution is just routine today. Obviously they’re going to pitch camp with the other prides of their clan. A herd this size would require all the Gangu to control it.”

  “You said they was hunters, not herders.”

  “They are, most of the time. But you see, iziru and bambalo stampede when the sun flares, and many are so badly sunburned that they die. That must be because they haven’t developed protection against ultraviolet since the atmosphere began to change. Big animals with long generations evolve more slowly than small ones, as a rule. The clans can’t afford such losses. In a flare season like this, they keep close watch on the herds and force them into areas where there is some shade and where the undergrowth hinders panicky running.”

  Van Rijn’s thumb jerked a scornful gesture at the lowering red disk. “You mean that ember ever puts out enough radiation to hurt a sick butterfly?”

  “Not if the butterfly came from Earth. But you know what type M dwarfs are like. They flare, and when they do, it can increase their luminosity several hundred per cent. These days on t’Kela, the oxygen content of the air has been lowered to a point where the ozone layer doesn’t block out as much ultraviolet as it should. Then, too, a planet like this, with a metal-poor core, has a weak magnetic field. Some of the charged particles from the sun get through also—adding to an already high cosmic ray background. It wouldn’t bother you or me, but mankind evolved to withstand considerably more radiation than is the norm here.”

  “Ja, I see. Maybe also there not being much radioactive minerals locally has been a factor. On Throra, the flares don’t bother them. They make festival then. But like you say, t’Kela is a harder luck world than Throra.”

  Joyce shivered. “This is a cruel cosmos. That’s what we believe in on Esperance—fighting back against the universe, all beings together.”

  “Is a very nice philosophy, except that all beings is not built for it. You is a very sweet child, anyone ever tell you that?” Van Rijn laid an arm lightly across her shoulder. She found that she didn’t mind greatly, with the gloom and the brewing star-storm outside.

  In another hour they reached the campsite. Humpbacked leather tents had been erected around a flat field where there was an ammonia spring. Fires burned before the entrances, tended by the young. Females crouched over cooking pots, males swaggered about with hands on weapon hilts. The arrival of the car brought everyone to watch, not running, but strolling up with an elaborate pretense of indifference.

  Or is it a pretense? Joyce wondered. She looked out at the crowd, a couple of hundred unhuman faces, eyes aglow, spearheads agleam, ruddy crests tossed by the whimpering wind, but scarcely a sound from anyone. They’ve acted the same way, every clan and Horde, everywhere we encountered them: wild fascination at first, with our looks and our machines; then a lapse into this cool formal courtesy, as if we didn’t make any real difference for good or ill. They’ve thanked us, not very warmly, for what favors we could do, and often insisted on making payment, but they’ve never invited us to their merrymaking or their rites, and sometimes the children throw rocks at us.