Most of all, though, he wanted the Ultra-Light. Like all the equipment they'd brought, it was solar-powered—a tiny two-person airplane with wings sheathed in a photovoltaic polymer film capable of running a fifteen-horsepower electric motor. Cute as a bug's ear and a lot of fun to fly. There hadn't been room for it the first time down, not with a full passenger complement. Now they could really use the little plane to scout the territory. Marc's maps were good, but D.W. wanted to fly out ahead and see with his own eyes what they were up against before the party moved out overland.

He tucked his tablet under his arm and walked across the clearing toward Anne Edwards, who noticed him on his way. She was going over her own records, sitting with her back against a «tree» trunk, knees up to support her notebook, which was on-line to the Stella Maris library.

"Could have been endocarditis," she said quietly when he was close enough to hear. "Bacterial infection of the heart valves. There was a new form of it I heard about just before we left. It could kill a healthy person pretty quickly, and it was a bitch to find in an autopsy, even at home."

He grunted and hunkered down next to her. "Where would he have picked up the bacteria?"

"Beats the shit out of me, D.W.," Anne said, waving her hand in front of her face to clear off a swarm of gnatlike things they called little buggers. "Might have been carrying it all along, until something weakened his immune system to the point that it overwhelmed his body's defenses. Ultraviolet radiation can suppress the immune system, and we are catching a real dose of UV down here."

"But you're not sure it was, whaddyacallit? That endo shit." He picked up a stick and toyed with it, passing it through his hands, bending it little by little into a hoop.

"No. It's just the best guess I've come up with so far." She closed her notebook. "It's hard to believe that he died just yesterday. I'm sorry about last night."

"Same here," D.W. said, glancing at her with one eye and then looking away, staring out at the forest. He tossed the stick aside. "Warn't good judgment, raggin' at a lady's had a real bad day."

She stuck out her hand. "Peace?"

"Peace," he affirmed, taking her hand and holding it a few moments. Then he let it go and stood up, groaning at the protest his knees made. "You may not want to be friends after I tell you what I've decided we're gonna do next." Anne looked up at him, with narrowed eyes. "I'm goin' back up to the Stella Maris and I want George to copilot."

"Oh, my," she said. A blue-green Fast Eddie skittered by her feet and dashed into the leaf litter nearby, and they could hear the Dominicans howling in the forest.

"He was the best of the bunch on the simulator, Anne, and I want him trained on the real thing. And he can check on the life-support systems while I'm loadin' supplies. He ain't had hardly any trouble with space sickness, so there's a good chance he won't get sick this time neither. I knew you'd be pissed, but that's how it parses."

"He'll probably love it, too," Anne said ruefully. "Oh, boy, do I ever hate this idea."

"I ain't askin' permission, Miz Edwards," he said, but his voice was very gentle. He grinned crookedly. "I just thought I'd tell you so's you could cuss me out in private."

"Consider yourself cussed," she said, but she laughed even as she shuddered. "Oh, well. It won't be the first time I've stood around waiting for George to get blown up. Or torn limb from limb. Or smeared across the pavement. Or squashed like a bug. The shit that man does for fun!" She shook her head, remembering the whitewater and the rock climbing and the dirt bikes.

"You ever hear that old joke about the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building?" D.W. asked her.

"Yeah. All the way down, you could hear him say, 'So far, so good. So far, so good. So far, so good. That is George's life story in a nutshell."

"He'll do okay, Anne. It's a good plane and he's got a talent for the job. I'll put him on the simulator again 'fore we go." D.W. scratched his cheek and smiled down at her. "Ain't in no big damn hurry to crash and burn, my own self. I don't get counted as a holy martyr if we just screw up a landing and pancake into the ground. We'll be careful."

"Speak for yourself, D.W. You don't know George Edwards as well as I do," Anne warned.

In the event, the flight went almost without a hitch and George made a beautiful landing, which Anne, hiding behind Emilio and Jimmy with her hands over her eyes, was too scared to watch. When she finally peeked out from behind the two men and between her fingers, George had already climbed out of the lander, yelling and whooping, and was running toward her, sweeping her up to swing her around, talking a mile a minute about how great it had been.

Sofia, smiling at George as they passed, went to help D.W. with the postflight inspection. "You look a little pale," she remarked quietly, moving along the port-side wing.

"He did jes' fine," D.W. muttered, "for a stupid damn sumbitch with more guts than sense."

"A rather more exciting flight than you anticipated," Sofia ventured dryly and smiled with her eyes alone when D.W. grunted and ducked under the fuselage, where he occupied himself with the starboard systems until his heart rate returned to normal.

Anne, still shaking, came over and made a point of congratulating Sofia on the obvious effectiveness of the flight simulator. "I am tempted to say, Thank God!" she said quietly, hugging the younger woman. "But thank you, Sofia."

Sofia was gratified by the acknowledgment. "I must admit I am also relieved to have them back in one piece."

"It is also nice to have the plane back, mes amis," Marc said un-sentimentally as he and Jimmy wrestled a packing crate out of the cargo bay. And everyone who'd waited on the ground silently seconded that. There was only one way off this planet, and everyone knew it.

George, wholly smitten with flying, now wanted to try piloting the Ultra-Light as well but had to be content with simply putting the diaphanous miniature plane together the next day. D.W. had already decided that Marc would go up with him on the first flight so the naturalist could get a feel for how the space images corresponded to the actual terrain and vegetation.

While George and D.W. were off-planet, the ground crew had passed the time preparing a runway for the Ultra-Light, which required a forty-meter strip. There were still two stumps to finish pulling, and then they had to wait for the right amount of rain to pack the loose soil down without turning it into a swamp, so it was nearly a week before D.W. and Marc were able to start their flight down a river gorge that passed through a minor mountain range northeast of their position in the clearing.

There had been no indication yet that anyone knew they were there, despite two noisy trips in and one out of the clearing, and that was to the good. Their flight paths had been chosen to minimize the likelihood of passing over inhabited regions, and evidently no air transportation had been developed locally. While still on the Stella Maris, George had worked out the AM radio frequencies used by the Singers and recommended that the Jesuit party use UHF and virtually undetectable spread-band encryption for radio communication with the shipboard systems and with each other when separated, to avoid attracting attention prematurely. Even so, D.W. and Marc were forced to maintain radio silence during the last part of their first reconnaissance flight. They did not have full coverage from the satellites they used to relay signals and a period of blackout coincided with the time when the runway was usable.

After fifteen hours, the last five of which were incommunicado, Jimmy broke the silence with a shout. Then they all heard the Ultra-Light's motor and everyone stood to scan the sky for the little plane. "There!" Sofia cried and they watched D.W. circle and then drop down for the bumpy landing.