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upward. Larreka returned her searching gaze. They’d swapped radiograms and sometimes talked directly by phone, but hadn’t met in the flesh for seven years, since the Zera Victrix went to Valennen. He’d been kept too busy by worsening natural conditions and the rise of banditry to take leave, while she’d first been studying hard, then embarking on her own career. When little was yet known about the ecology of Beronnen and the Iren Archipelago to the south, he couldn’t blame her for choosing to do research in their congenial environments. In fact, he would have been distressed had she decided to investigate the greater mysteries of Valennen. That continent wasn’t safe any longer, and Jill was among his loves.
    She’d changed. In a hundred years of close acquaintance with humans, close friendships with several, Larreka had learned to tell them apart as well as they could themselves, person by person or year by year. He had left her a lanky,late-maturing adolescent who had scarcely outgrown a tom-boyishness which, no doubt, he had helped foster. Today she was indeed adult.
    Clad in the usual blouse and slacks of townsfolk, she stood tall, long-legged, barely on the feminine side of leanness. Her head was long too, the face rather narrow though bearing a wide full mouth, nose classically straight, eyes cobalt blue and heavy-lashed under level brows. Sunlight had browned and slightly freckled a fair skin. Dark-blonde and straight, her hair fell to her shoulders, controlled by a silver-and-leather filigree band he had given her. She had stuck a bronzy saru feather in the back of it.
    ‘You’re ready to be bred, all right,’ Larreka agreed. ‘When and who to?’
    He hadn’t expected she would flush and mumble, ‘Not yet,’ then immediately ask: ‘How’s the family? Did Meroa come along?’
    ‘Yes. I left her at the ranch.’
    ‘Shucks, why?’ she challenged. ‘You’ve got a far nicer wife than you deserve, for your information.’
    ‘Don’t tell her.’ His pleasure faded. ‘This is no furlough for me. I’m bound on to Sehala for an assembly, afterward back to Valennen as soon as may be; and Meroa will stay behind.’
    Jill stood quite still for a space before she responded low: ‘Are things getting that bad there?’
    ‘Worse.’
    ‘Oh.’ Another pause. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
    ‘The trouble blew up damn near overnight. I wasn’t sure at first. We could just have been having a run of foul luck. When I knew better, I called to demand an assembly, then took ship.’
    ‘Why didn’t you call us for air transport?’
    ‘What use? You can’t bring in everybody. Even if you had enough aircraft, which I doubt, a lot of speakers wouldn’t ride in them. So we couldn’t get a quorum together sooner than I could arrive by sea and land.’ Larreka gusted a sigh. ‘Meroa and I needed a vacation anyway – it’s been spiky, this past year – and the trip gave us that.’
    Jill nodded. He had no cause to explain the reasons for his route to her. Under better conditions, the fastest way would have been entirely waterborne, from Port Rua in the south of Valennen to Liwas at the mouth of the Jayin and upriver to Sehala. But at present there were too many equinoctial gales, swelled by the red sun. Besides risk of shipwreck, sailors faced the likelihood of a voyage that contrary storms lengthened by weeks. Safest was to island-hop through the Fiery Sea, make harbor on the North Beronnen coast, then hike across the Dalag, the Badlands, the Red Hills, the Middle Forest, and the Thunderhead Range to the Jayin Valley: mostly wilderness and a lot of it pretty barren, but nothing that an old campaigner couldn’t get through at a goodly clip.
    ‘Well, I’ve been out in the field awhile,’ she said. ‘Fossicking around in the Stony Mountains till day before yesterday. Probably I’ve not gotten what news God or Ian Sparling now have.’ Her reference wasn’t theological; Goddard Hanshaw was the