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“What’s more interesting to me is that the location of the spring Barnato mentioned matches the coordinates for one of the water holes on our maps. That’s the first solid indication that Morgan Ouspel didn’t sell us a bill of goods.”
    “Or set us on a wandering path to a slow death. So long as there’s water and I have my NEM supplements …” He picked up the pace. Several weeks ago the now travel-hardened Ingrid would have been unable to match his gangling stride.
    Pul Barnato watched them until they disappeared. Given the supernal clarity of the air in the Namib that took quite a while. Then he turned and dropped back down into his home. The excavation was also the entrance to his diggings, though as much as he had enjoyed the previous night’s company he had seen no reason to inform his guests of that fact.
    Pulling aside an unprepossessing piece of camo cloth he bent low and started walking. A modest distance later he entered an old volcanic tube. One side of it had been broken down by heavy manual labor. Removing his ragged vest he stretched, took a deep breath, and brought his melded arms forward. Armored osseomeldsalternately slammed into and shoveled aside rock and rubble. Once he had accumulated a decent pile of the latter he sat down and picked up a sifting pan. Like all the rest of his equipment it used no power, required no batteries, and gave off no emissions for a patrolling searcher to lock on to.
    An hour or so of careful sifting produced three glassy pebbles and a number of much smaller stones. These he dumped into an ancient five-gallon jerry can that he had salvaged from a rusting wreck farther to the south and west. The can was about half full of similar pretty rocks. Among them were one or two that were identical in color to the much larger stone he had bequeathed to his courteous red-haired guest.
    Idly, he wondered if either she or her acerbic companion had ever seen a natural red diamond before.

3
    The last thing they expected to have to deal with was rain.
    They had set off from Orangemund equipped with food, water and water extractors, communicators, lightweight sleeping gear, appropriate footwear and outer attire, and everything else they could think of that would enable two travelers on foot to survive in the unfamiliar Namib. They had not considered the possibility of rain. Not with the region they were traversing typically receiving a couple of centimeters of precipitation in a good year.
    It seemed as if all of it was falling on them now.
    Designed to keep off the sun, their wide-brimmed hats soaked up the pelting moisture instead of repelling it. While there was nothing in their packs that could be seriously harmed by getting rained on, including their sealed concentrates and waterproof communicators, Ingrid had no desire to see everything soaked.
    “This is ridiculous!” she declared as she trudged up the dry riverbed alongside Whispr. Contrary to the hoary jokes he had been forced to deal with ever since he had gone through his extensive slimming meld, he was not so thin that he was able to step betweenthe falling drops. Five minutes into the unexpected downpour he was thoroughly drenched and more depressed than usual. If the day had begun hot, the shower would have been welcome. Instead, it simply rendered both of them miserable and clammy. While she couldn’t vouch for her companion’s personal supplies, Ingrid had the foresight to bring along spare underwear. Her single outer set of safari attire would just have to dry out in its own good time.
    “Ridiculous and uncomfortable,” he agreed. Unlike the gully where days earlier they had taken refuge from the patrolling searcher, the current winding channel was smooth-sided and offered no shelflike overhangs capable of sheltering them from the momentary deluge. They had no choice but to tolerate the rain until it ceased. From everything he had read about the Namib prior to leaving Orangemund, that was likely to be