"Let's hope so," Saraidh ni Morgana replied earnestly.

Ross Benden was delighted to be teamed up with the elegant science officer. She was his senior in years but not in Fleet, for she had done her scientific training before applying to the Service. She was also the only woman on board who kept her hair long, though it was generally dressed in intricate arrangements of braids. The effect was somehow regal and very feminine—an effect at variance with her expertise in the various forms of contact sport that were enjoyed in the Amherst's gym complex. If she had made any liaisons on board, they were not general knowledge; he'd overheard speculation about her tastes, but no boasting or claims of personal experience. He had always found her agreeable company and a competent officer, though they hadn't shared more than a watch or two until now.

"Did you see the tape of that thing?" Ross heard the nasal voice of Lieutenant Zane saying later as he passed the wardroom. "There'll be no one left alive down there. Ni Morgana has proved the Oort cloud generated that life-form, so it wasn't Nastie manufacture. There's no rationale for taking a chance and landing on that planet if any of those things are alive down there! And they could be, with an entire planet to eat up."

Benden paused to listen, knowing perfectly well that, despite the dangers involved, Zane would have given a kidney to be in the landing party. Nev was, at least, an improvement on the sour and supercilious Zane. And when the navigation officer added some invidious remarks that Benden had been chosen only because of his relationship to one of the leaders of the colony, Ross passed quickly down the corridor before his temper got the better of his discretion.

As the Amherst's majestic passage through the system approached the point where the shuttle could be launched, Benden called for a final briefing session.

"We'll spiral down to the planetary surface in a cork-screw orbit which will allow us to examine the northern hemisphere on our way to the site of record on the southern continent at longitude thirty degrees," he said, calling up the flight path on the big screen in the conference room. "We've landmarks from the original survey of three volcanic cones that ought to be visible from some distance as we make our final approach. Survey report said the soil there would be viable for hardy Earth and Altairian hybrids, so it is reasonable to assume that the colonists started their agrarian venture there. The Tubberman Mayday came in some nine years after landing, so they should have been well entrenched."

"Not enough to avoid that organism," Nev said flatly.

"Your theory would hold water, Ensign," Saraidh ni Morgana said mildly, "if I could figure out how the organism transported itself from the Oort cloud to Pern's surface."

"Nasties sowed it in Pern's atmosphere," Nev responded with no hesitation.

"Nasties are more direct in their tactics," the science officer replied with a diffident shrug.

"We taught ‘em to be cautious, Lieutenant," Nev went on. "And devious. And—"

"Nev!" Benden called the ensign to order.

Benden kept his expression neutral, but he wondered if Ni Morgana was regretting her choice of the irrepressible Nev and his wild theories. If the science officer hadn't found a transport vector for the organism, the Nasties were unlikely to have discovered it. Their forte was metallurgy, not biology. Nev subsided and the briefing continued.

"Once we have made landfall, we may also have answers to that question and others. It is obvious our search must begin at the site of record. We will also have made a good sweep of the entire planetary surface and can deviate if we find traces of human settlements elsewhere. We board the Erica at 0230 tomorrow morning. Any questions?"

"What do we do if the place is swarming with those things?" Nev asked, swallowing hard.

"What would you do, Nev?" Benden asked.

"Leave!"

"Tut tut, mister," Ni Morgana said. "How will you ever increase your understanding of xenobiological forms unless you examine closely whatever samples come your way?"

Ensign Nev's eyes bugged out. "Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, but you're the science officer."

"Indeed I am." And Ni Morgana rose, the scrape of her chair covering a mutter of gratitude from the end of the table occupied by the four marines assigned to the landing party.

Launched from the Amherst, the gig proceeded at a smart inner-system speed toward the blue pebble in the sky that was Rukbat's third planet. It began to dominate the forward screen, serene and clear, beautiful and innocuous. Benden had plotted the gig's course to intercept the geosynchronous orbit of the three colony ships, to see if the colonists had left a message to be retrieved. But when he opened communications, all he got was the standard identification response, stating the name and designation of the Yokohama.

"That might not mean anything, " Saraidh remarked, seeing Benden's disappointment. "If the colony's up and running, they won't have much use for these hulks. Though I find that sight rather sad," she added as Rukbat suddenly illuminated the deserted vessels.

"Why?" Nev asked, surprised.

Saraidh gave a shrug of her slender, elegant shoulders. "Look up their battle records and you might appreciate their present desuetude more."

"Their what?" Nev looked blank.

"Look up that word, too," she said and, in an almost cloying tone, spelled it for him.

"Old sailors never die, they just fade away," Benden murmured, gazing at the three hulks, feeling a constriction in his throat and a slight wetness in his eyes as the gig drifted away from them, leaving them to continue on their ordained path.

"Soldiers, not sailors," Saraidh said, "but the quotation is apt." Then she frowned at a reading on her board. "We've got two beacons registering. One at the site of record and another much farther south. Enlarge the southern hemisphere for me, will you, Ross? Along seventy degrees longitude and nearly twelve hundred klicks from the stronger one." Ross and Saraidh exchanged looks. "Maybe there are survivors! Pretty far south though, over mountain ranges of respectable height. I read altitudes of from twenty-four hundred rising to more than nine thousand meters above sea level. We'll land at the site of record first."

As the gig slanted in over the northern pole, it was obvious that this hemisphere was enduring a stormy and bitterly cold winter: most of the landmass was covered by snow and ice. Instruments detected no source of power or light, and very little heat radiation in areas where humans usually settled: the river valleys, the plains, the shoreline. There was one hiccup of a blip over the large island, just off the coast of the northern continent. The reading was too faint to suggest any significant congregation of settlers. If they had followed the usual multiplication so characteristic of colonies, the population should now be close to the five-hundred-thousand mark, even allowing for natural disasters and those mortality patterns normal for a primitive economy.

"We'll do another low-level pass if we've time later. The settlers were determined to be agrarian but they might be using fossil fuels," Saraidh said as they plunged toward the equator, leaving the snow-clad continent behind them and slanting down across the tropical sea. "Lots of marine life. Some big ones," she added. "Bigger than the survey team reported."

"They took Terran dolphins with them, " Nev said. "Mentasynth-enhanced dolphins," he elaborated.

"I don't think rescuing dolphins is what Captain Fargoe has in mind, even if we had the facility to do so," Saraidh said. "Have either of you any training in other-species' communications? I don't. So, let's table that notion for now."