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condition of the sea, a whipped-up frenzy of troughs and peaks, and the clement weather which prevailed along the coastline. At her back, the monotonously flat plain stretched away for thousands of kilometres, above which a blue sky was unmarked by the slightest cloud. The sky over the sea was clear, too, which made the raging waves below all the more odd.
    She knew the ocean’s activity, which initial observers had termed a storm, was nothing of the kind. Storms were the result of weather conditions, and conditions along the coast were fine. The activity of the waves, the surging plunge of grey ocean, was the manifestation of a more fundamental problem. Kranda had her theories, but she was keeping quiet about them until she knew a little more about the situation. There were those in her team, beneath her, who would be eager to capitalise on her slightest error or misjudgement.
    Kranda had recently made the transition from male to female, and was still adjusting to the metabolic and mental changes this entailed. She was still negotiating the subtle changes in relationship between herself and the members of her team; it didn’t help that some of her closest rivals had undergone male-female transformation at around the same time. There was too much rivalry, even hostility, in the air at the moment, and there were times when Kranda wished she could just walk away from it all and return to her homeworld.
    But that was the cowardly residue of male hormones lingering in her system, she knew. The period immediately after transition was always like this, with old ways of thought and feeling laying their treacherous palimpsest over her new psychological persona. In time, male equivocation and uncertainty would fade, usurped by female certitude and strength.
    She could already feel the hormonal aggression at work within her. She had been overly critical of a clerk’s report the other day, and had questioned a colleague’s finding in a way she would never had done as a male. Also, her thoughts of late had been turning with nostalgia and poignancy to her childhood, specifically to the five years of her girlhood, and the long coyti hunts she had undertaken with her hive-mother. She loved the life of an engineer, but always, immediately after undergoing the male-female transition, she longed for the mountains of her homeworld, the familiarity of the hunt, the simple, more aggressive ways of her old female life.
    As she stared out to sea, she detected movement other than the chaotic surge of the waves. Something as grey as the ocean emerged from the morass, a streamlined craft that for a second resembled a teardrop flung from the highest wave-crest. Then the vehicle gained solidity as it approached, and running lights and a delta viewscreen became visible. Kranda glanced at her chronometer and smiled to herself: just on time.
    The submersible flier banked over the cliffs and came to rest beside her own craft, easing itself down with a sigh of ramrod stanchions. Kranda watched it settle and then crossed the veldt towards the craft, marked along its length with the intertwined lettering of the Mahkan Engineering Corps.
    A dropchute fell from its belly and one by one the crew of five emerged.
    Three of her team were female, two male. Two of the women had recently made the transition, or hayanor , and were consequently testing the boundaries of their new-found aggression, resenting Kranda’s superiority and letting her know about it. To make matters worse, one of the men had recently experienced hayanor in reverse, after five years of womanhood. His resentment smouldered, though of course he no longer had the psychological wherewithal to voice his objections to Kranda’s leadership.
    The management of her team was often fraught at the best of times, but even more so after multiple hayanors .
    The men hung back, conversing in low tones. Their sergeant, the woman Farini and Kranda’s greatest rival, stepped forward and presented her