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this clearing. Their shuttle rested just outside the circle of firelight, beyond the tents that housed their lab and living quarters.
    To some observers it might have seemed incongruous, these three children of a civilization that burned fusing deuterium atoms and sailed between the stars, setting aside that civilization's tools and warming themselves with a wood fire. But scouts were like that. Their bodies had, at the taxpayers' expense, been artificially maximized for the primitive environments where they were the first to set foot. Gene-tailored retroviruses protected them against a broad spectrum of possible infections and diseases. Muscle tissue grafts increased their strength. Implanted monitors paid fussy attention to their physiological state, and in response to certain warning signs, unceremoniously administered injections. Calculators in their heads provided information from their own limited resources, or called it up from nearby big cousins like the shuttle's computer. Tiny interlopers among their optic nerves could make video recordings of whatever their eyes saw. All of which enabled them—and, somehow, made them wish—to live as naturally as possible on worlds innocent of Man.
    "Let's also remember," Natalya resumed after a few moments, "that this isn't really what the expedition is about. It's a great find, but it's almost a distraction . . . an irrelevance. We won't be able to stay here long."
    "Yeah," Sarnac agreed moodily. Picking up a pine cone's functional equivalent, he pitched it onto the fire, where it flared and crackled like a living world in the flames of modern space war. "Piss on this world. Piss on a race that's begun to look up at night and wonder what the little lights are! Piss on all that. Gotta move on to more important things."
    "Hey, Bob," Frank said, frowning, "I know how you feel. But it's as Admiral Entallador said. Our first priority has got to be the war, at least for now. If we're to make any use of worlds like this, or do anything for races like the Danuans, we have to survive."
    "Oh, yeah, I understand all that." Sarnac flashed his piratical smile. "Hey, I come from a long line of people who understood their duty. Did I ever tell you that my family used to have a tradition of supplying naval aviators for the old United States? They even kept doing it in the twenty-first century, when the United States had stopped being worth doing it for."
    Frank's frown intensified, but as usual his good nature triumphed—with the help of the flask Sarnac passed across to him. (Strictly non-regulation, of course; Sarnac was legendary for his ability to get booze aboard ship, and for his generosity with it.) Frank passed it back and he took another swig of the rum that tasted of the islands. Thank God Jamaica had missed all the fallout!
    Natalya, who didn't drink, wore a puzzled look. "Naval aviators?"
    "Right. Wet navy, flying hydrocarbon-burning aircraft off the decks of surface ships—and even coming back and landing there. God, the guts they must have had back then!" He remembered being taken, as a child, to tour the ruins at Pensacola. "Later they went into the Space Force. One of them was slated to go to the asteroids on the Mars Project, before . . ."
    He trailed off, and for a time the silence was broken only by the nocturnal fauna of Danu. None of them spoke aloud the enigma that haunted their era. The fire began to die, but that couldn't account for the sudden chill.
    Finally, Natalya got lithely to her feet. She could have done it under Danu's 0.87 G pull even without her enhancements. A few generations under Martian gravity hadn't robbed the human body of as much of Earth's evolutionary heritage as had once been thought. "Well, if we're to take advantage of whatever time we have here, we'd better get an early start tomorrow. I'm going to turn in."
    Danu's almost Earth- and Mars-like rotation period of 22.9 hours was another of its sterling qualities. They hadn't had to make