It especially bothered him to have been assigned to remain at Crash Camp, when most failed cadets were sent away to more geographically distant positions. Was someone trying to punish him? Perhaps so. Perhaps he deserved further punishment for overstepping his boundaries in the Trial, for defying the rules. If so, it was all the more reason to want to escape the camp.

Though Aidan felt trapped, his urge to get away might have agitated him for some time, left him smoldering in his bunk with plans unacted on, had a particular incident not prodded him .That day he had been on a real garbage job, hauling new coolant containers to a freight skimmer that was to take them to a 'Mech repair facility on the other side of Crash Camp. Nomad had said that they were scheduled for permanent assignment to that very facility fairly soon. They were only on the Trial site until after a new crop of cadets arrived.

Aidan was thinking of the new crop as he drove a fork-lift loaded with coolant tanks to the skimmer. In his mind, he saw the cadets arriving nervously, then going through all the tests that Aidan and his sibkin had endured, finally facing the Trial itself. Nomad told him that all this would become just so much routine. All the new cadet sibkos would start to look alike, their experiences so repetitious that eventually Aidan would forget he had ever been one of them. Aidan doubted that, but he would have to wait and see, see if he would, after all, adjust.

As cargo Techs unloaded the forklift at the skimmer, he strolled around the general area, noting that there were three freight skimmers being dealt with in various ways. One was obviously being repaired, another was unloading food supplies.

Suddenly he saw Marthe walking toward him, a clipboard in her hand. She was dressed in her crisp new warrior fatigues, a slate gray jumpsuit with dark blue piping. On her chest was the medal given to cadets who had succeeded in their trials. She wore her cloth cap, also gray with blue piping, at a jaunty angle. Whatever was on the clipboard, she was studying it. As she passed near him, he called: "Marthe!" She stopped for a moment without looking at him. The way she held her body, the indifference in it, reminded him of the snubs hed already endured from Falconer Joanna. Then she resumed her walk, her eyes ever intent on her clipboard.

Rage hit him like a cluster round, expanding within him just as quickly. He whirled around and chased after her.

"Marthe!"

She picked up her pace, but that was her only reaction.

"Marthe! Talk to me!"

He started running toward her. She hesitated, then resumed walking at normal pace and did not even look back.

The indifferent set of her shoulders and the fact that she would not look at him enraged Aidan even more. For the last few steps between him and Marthe, he ran even faster. When he reached her, she turned around suddenly and brought up her clipboard. With a backhanded blow, she struck him just in front of his temple. The blow diverted his attack just enough so that he missed grabbing her and fell to the ground next to her, landing on his back.

For a brief moment, he saw her looking down at him, a benign and inscrutable look on her face. The pain in the side of his head made him blink several times. She nodded once, then turned to walk away. Turning over and crawling forward, he seized her ankles and pulled at them. She fell forward, onto her knees. The clipboard dropped out of her hand, its papers curling up beneath it as it skidded along a patch of ground.

He waited for a counterblow of some kind, but she merely stayed on her knees, with his hands around her ankles. She stared forward. Scrambling to his own kneeling position, he released her ankles and quickly grabbed her around the shoulders. He pulled her slightly toward him, realizing that the movement placed her in an extremely uncomfortable position, her legs bent backward, her back curved painfully. For the first few seconds, she made no move to resist his hold. Aidan meanwhile tried to get to his feet without freeing her, but the attempt loosened his grip. She responded almost automatically, thrusting her arms outward and breaking the hold. Putting her hands on the ground, Marthe pushed herself to her feet in one smooth and graceful movement. When he came toward her, she elbowed him in the chest without turning around, then spun about and gave him a high kick to the jaw. Aidan reeled backward, as Marthe merely leaned down to brush dirt from the legs of her jumpsuit, then calmly retrieved her clipboard. With quick but unhurried steps, she walked away. The set of her shoulders was tense now, anticipating another attack, but Aidan merely watched her go.

A resolution to their skirmish no longer mattered. Somewhere between her first and last blows, Aidan had suddenly known he had no other choice but to get away from Crash Camp and even from Ironhold. Marthe had decided that for him.

As he walked back to the skimmer to reclaim his fork-lift, it was not the result of her blows that hurt him. What pained him was that she had not uttered a word, nor even a sound of any kind, neither before, during, nor after the fight.

25

I could not believe my ears, wrote Falconer Commander Ter Roshak, and so I asked Falconer Joanna to say it again. "Astech Aidan is gone," she repeated. "He did not report to duty yesterday morning, but Tech Nomad, who supervises him, said that Aidan had been sick the day before. Having assumed that Aidan had reported to sick bay, he was not worried until Aidan did not show up for duty again today, Nomad checked and found his sleeping cubicle empty. Most of his possessions were missing, too."

I did not look at her, but I sensed Joanna staring at me, incredulous that I could react at all to the desertion of a minor individual, an astech, as I paced, rather nervously I am afraid, around my office.

"There is not trace of him anywhere?"

"My preliminary investigation indicates that he probably took one of the three freight skimmers away from here, though none of them reports a passenger or a discovered stowaway. I suspect that he took the one to Winson Station. A DropShip left there this morning. He could have concealed himself or been engaged as crew, though he would have had to act fast to come up with credentials, forged or real. Then he—"

"Yes, yes, Falconer," I said, agitated by her meticulous report. I expect my officers to confine themselves to the facts, leaving speculations to me. "What do you expect we should do about Astech Aidan?"

"Do, sir? Why do anything? We never usually—"

"I want him back here."

Falconer Joanna looked puzzled, but she had enough acuity not to question a superior officer's decision.

"Do you wish, sir, to go through channels to locate him?"

From the question, I saw that she apprehended more than I would have given her credit for. She knew that, whatever my reason for wanting the return of this particular Clansman, it was a devious one.

"You may use channels cautiously, but, no, Falconer Joanna, I want this Aidan actively pursued and then returned here."

"I will assign some—"

"You will assign no one. You will do the job yourself. I will detach you from your duties and get you interworld travel credentials, with freedom to go anywhere."

"You want me to undertake this mission alone, quiaff?"

"Neg. You may choose an aide."

"I choose Aidan's superior, this Tech Nomad."

I am sure my eyebrows rose. All the way to my hairline, it felt like. "You wish a Tech as your companion?"

"Yes. He seems competent. And he knows this Aidan as well, and perhaps better, than I do. They were more closely associated, if only for a short time."