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felt the tree shift as if some inner ballast had moved. Then, with a sharp snap, the tree lurched and the roots he’d been concerned about were severed, his blade a hand-width or more from the spot.
    The full weight of tree and remaining roots descended into his hands, and he staggered, nearly pulled down into the pit he’d dug.
    With back-straining effort he gathered the tree to him, feeling the unexpected mass of that head-sized bulb, shaped like some giant onion beneath his hands.
    Now the sounds of ship generators revving came to him, and he wrestled the tree out of the ungiving ground and with a single motion wrapped it in the blanket and stood, moving at a run toward the ship.
    Corporal Kinto stood guard at the last open hatch, eyes studiously on the hatch’s status display, hand on the emergency close button.
    “He’s in!” Kinto said to the air, and then the Chief Pilot’s voice came across the intercom. “We lift on a count of twenty-four.”
    Kinto glared around the branches at Jela then, and smiled an ugly smile.
    “Even a Hero shouldn’t order a Chief Pilot about, Jela. I anticipate your trial!”
    THEY LIFTED. The lander crew had allowed him to strap the tree into the jump seat beside him; and then they ignored him: Ignored his careful dusting of the leaves, his positioning of the plant where it could reap whatever feeble grace the ship’s lights might bring it, ignored his use of camp-cup to dampen the sandy roots . . . and they ignored his talking, for his words were all for the tree. To Corporal Kinto, he had nothing to say. Contado and Tetran being dutifully occupied at their stations, he—a passenger—should not distract them with chatter. So he whispered good tidings and calm words to the tree, which was departing not only its home world and its honorable dead, but the very soil that had nourished it.
    THE TRANSFER to the Trident was awkward. He was left to negotiate himself and the tree through the transfer port, and emerging, arms full of trunk and branches, he’d been unable to properly acknowledge the captain. Then, as a pilot returning without his craft, there were the docking logs to sign, certifying his ship lost due to enemy action, which duty he performed clumsily, tree propped on a hip, log tipped at an unstable angle, while the quartermaster displayed an unlikely degree of interest in his secondary screens.
    None of his wing met him, which he thought a bad sign, and he’d been directed not to his own billet but to the pilot’s lounge, escorted by the assistant quartermaster.
    “I should go to my quarters, change uniforms, clean myself . . .”
    His escort cut him off sharply.
    “Troop, you’re just about at the limit, you ought to know,” she snapped. “Took the pilots a lot of jawing to convince the captain to come back this way long enough to pick up your signal. Besides, there’s no guarantee you’ve got quarters to go back to . . .”
    That last sounded bad—worse than being at the limit of what would be officially tolerated. He was old friends with the limit. No quarters, though—
    With him up ahead in the corridor, there wasn’t a good way to get a look at his escort’s face, to see if she was having some fun with him, and just then they reached a junction in the passageway and had to make way for pilots wearing duty cards. Jela managed to hide his face in the branches, pleased that the youngsters—for they were both rookies—could not see his reaction to the gaudy tattoos they wore on their faces. It was while looking away that he saw two of the hatches in the passage dogged to yellow, and another dogged to red.
    “Took a hit?” he said over his shoulder as they continued. “I thought—”
    “Your boat took most of it.” Her voice was gentler now, as if she gave due respect to duty done, and done well. “But there was still some pretty energetic debris, and a bad shot from one of ours, too.”
    Jela grimaced, partly from the news and partly from the