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some obscure reason?”
    “Bakkun?” Kai thought of the heavyworld geologist with whom he had often teamed on field trips. “No, he wouldn’t value it. He already knew where the ore sites were.” Kai looked up at the Thek. “Original compound!”
    Tor rumbled, but Kai was diverted by Varian’s urgent tug on his arm.
    “If he’s going to the compound, Kai, we could take a power pack and go with him. The heavyworlders couldn’t have used the sleds without power. They might still be where they were stashed. If we could have some form of transport . . .”
    “Accompany for search, Tor!” Kai said in loud measured tones, repeating the request as the Thek’s rumbling continued.
    “I wonder where we’d fit,” said Varian, thoughtfully staring at the Thek vehicle.
    The fit, as Kai discovered, was exceedingly close for just one of them. The spare power pack could be secured neatly to one side of Tor’s pointed top but one full-sized human had to cram his body against the curve of the shield canopy, arching over the Thek’s mass. After taking a long look at his flight position, Kai turned to Varian.
    “I think you’d better wake Lunzie and Triv. The others can stay in cold sleep until we need them but I’d rather have the two Disciples awake.”
    “You’re not expecting trouble, are you? Here?” asked Varian, incredulously spreading her arms to include the dim vine-bedecked cave.
    “No.” Kai grinned. “Not here! But I don’t know how long I’ll be with Tor.” He shrugged. “You’d be better off with someone to talk to.
And
they could be useful, if only for the experience they’ve gained on other expeditions.”
    Varian nodded agreement and returned Kai’s grin, then Tor closed the canopy about them. The Thek was warmer than Kai had thought, so he spent most of the mercifully short trip to the original compound site clutching desperately to the grips which Tor had fashioned for him on the shield’s interior. Kai remembered the trip as a series of incredible acrobatics on his part and a green blur, for the Thek sled was capable of considerably more speed than the ones designed for humanoids. Finally Tor braked its forward speed and began an abrupt circling movement.
    “Here?” Tor rumbled. The word reverberated in the enclosed space like a claxon.
    Dazedly Kai looked down and wondered how Tor could have recognized anything at the speed with which it was circling. Kai felt nauseous.
    “Here!” To stop the dizzying motion, Kai would have confirmed any location, but he had recognized the ledge on which the space shuttle had once nested. Tor braked the cone in the same spot and Kai, groggily disengaged himself, then waited until the shield had been lifted and he could step back onto solid ground. It would be a long time before he volunteered to go anywhere in a Thek vehicle.
    He turned and stared, open-mouthed at the compound. All too vivid in his memory was his last sight of it, littered with what the heavyworlders had ruthlessly discarded: the little hyracotherium’s body, neck snapped in a totally unnecessary display of brutality; Terilla’s lovely botanical sketches ground into the dust; discs and shards of records. He heard thunder rolling. His heart skipped as he whirled anxiously toward the slope where he had first seen the bobbing black line of stampeding hadrosaurs which the mutineers had unleashed on the compound. But now the thunder was atmospheric.
    In the midst of the sudden Iretan downpour, Kai now stared at an amphitheater of sand and stone. The only signs that humans had once inhabited the site were two broken stumps where the force veil had formed an opening. How long had it taken the scavengers of Ireta to reduce the mountains of dead hadrosaurs and scour the site clean? Not so much as a horn was left. And the lack of vegetation gave him no clue as to the passage of time. The amphitheater had been only a sandy bowl when they occupied it.
    Of their own anxious accord, his eyes