He walked with them, beside Beaumont, gave a desultory wave at workers who had come out with a transport to carry the baggage to camp. He walked, electing not to use the transport…inhaled the dust and the strangeness and the unfamiliar smell of sea not far distant. In some respects it was like Cyteen. There was a feeling of insulation about him, a sense of unreality; he shook it off and looked about him for plant life that might prove to his senses that he was on an alien world–but the earthmovers had scraped all that away. There were only the azi tents, all of them in neat lines stretching away into the dust; and finally the camp center, where earthmovers dug the foundations for more plastic foam construction, where dome after dome had already sprung up like white fungus among the tents, one bubbled onto the next.

They were thirty six hours into the construction.

“You’ve done a good job,” he said to Ada Beaumont, loudly, amends for the scene at the ramp, in which he had embarrassed himself. “A good job.”

“Thank you, sir.”

There was caution there. In all of them. He looked about him again, at the entourage of department heads who had begun to follow them, at others who had joined them in their walk into the center of the camp. “I’ll be meeting with you,” he said. “But it’s all automatic, isn’t it? Meetings aren’t as important as your building and your job schedules. So I’ll postpone all of the formalities. I think it’s more important to get everyone under shelter.”

There were nods, murmurs, excuses finally as one and another of them found reason to move off.

“I’d like to find my own quarters,” Conn said. “I’m tired.”

“Yes, sir,” Beaumont said quietly. “This way. We’ve made them as comfortable as possible.”

He was grateful. He squared his shoulders out of the slump they had acquired, walked with her and with Bob and Gallin in that direction. She opened the door of a smallish dome bubbled onto the main one, with a plastic paned window and a door sawed out of the foam and refitted on hinges. There was a bed inside, already made up; and a real desk, and a packing mat for a rug on the foamset flooring.

“That’s good,” he said, “that’s real good.” And when the company made to leave: “Captain. Can I talk to you a moment?”

“Sir.” She stayed. Bob Davies and Pete Gallin discretely withdrew, and the reg who had brought some of the luggage in deposited it near the door and closed the door on his way out.

“I think you know,” he said, “that something’s wrong. I imagine it bothered you–my not being down here.”

“I understand the procedure calls for the ranking officer to stay on the ship in case–”

“Don’t put me off.”

“I’ve had some concern.”

“All right. You’ve had some concern.” He took a breath, jammed his hands into his belt behind him. “I’ll be honest with you. I reckoned you could handle the landing, the whole setup if you had to.–I’m feeling a bit of strain, Ada. A bit of strain. I’m getting a little arthritis. You understand me? The back’s hurting me a bit.”

“You think there’s a problem with the rejuv?”

“I know I’m taking more pills than I used to. You use more when you’re under stress. Maybe it’s that. I’ve thought about resigning, going back to Cyteen on a medical. I’ve thought about that. I don’t like the thought. I’ve never run from anything.”

“If your health–”

“Just listen to me. What I’m going to do–I’m going to take the command for a few weeks; and then I’m going to step down and retire to an advisory position.”

“Sir–”

“Don’t sir me. Not here. Not after this long. I just wanted to tell you the stuffs failing on me. That’s why we have redundancies in the system, isn’t it? You’re the real choice, you. I’m just lending my experience. That’s all.”

“If you want it that way.”

“I just want to rest, Ada. It wasn’t why I came. It’s what I want now.”

“There’s still that ship up there.”

“No.”

“I’ll take care of things, then.” She put her hands in her hip pockets, blinked at him with pale eyes in a naked‑skulled face, showing age. “I think then–begging your pardon…it might be a wise, thing under the circumstances–to take a joint command and ease the moment when it comes.”

“Eager for it, are you?”

“Jim–”

“You’ve already started doing things your way. That’s all right.”

“The staff has wondered, you know–your absence. And I think if you talked to them frankly, made it clear, your health, your reasons–you really are a figure they respect; I think they’d be glad to know why you’ve suddenly gone less visible, that it’s a personal thing and not some upperlevel friction in command.”

“Is that the rumor?”

“One’s never sure just what the rumors are, but I think that’s some of it. There’s a little bit of strain.”

“Troopers and civs?”

“No. Us and Them. The visible distinction–” She rubbed her shaved scalp, selfconsciously returned the hand to her pocket. “Well, it solved an immediate problem. People get tired and they get touchy; and I went and did that on the spot, that being the way I knew how to say it. And the rest of the staff followed suit. Maybe it was wrong.”

“If it solved the problem it was right. I’ll talk to them. I’ll make everything clear in my own way.”

“Yes, sir.” Soft and quiet.

“Don’t respect me into an early grave, Beaumont. I’m not there yet.”

“I don’t expect you to be. I expect you’ll be around handing out the orders. I’m your legs, that’s the way I see it.”

“Oh, you see further than that. You’ll be governor. I think that’ll suit you.”

She was silent a moment. “I considered it a matter of friendship. I’d like to keep it on that basis.”

“I’ll rest a bit,” he said.

“All right.” She tended to the door, stopped and looked back. “I’ll warn you about the door–you have to keep the door closed. Lizards have discovered the camp. They’ll get into tents, anything. And the window–they come in windows if you have the lights on and the windows open. We try not to carry any of the flitters back to the camp, but a few have made it in, and they’ll make a nuisance of themselves.”

He nodded. Loathed the thought.

“Sir,” she said quietly, left and softly tugged the thick door shut. He lay down on the bed, his head pounding in a suspended silence–the absence of the ventilation noises and the rotation of the ship and the thousand other subtle noises of the machinery. Outside the earthmovers growled and whined and beeped, and human voices shouted, but it was all far away.

The arthritis story was real. He felt it, wanted a drink; and tried to put it off–not wanting that to start, not yet, when someone else might want to call.

He had to hold off the panic, the desire to call the ship and ask to be lifted off. He had to do it until it was too late. He had never yet run; and he was determined it would not be this time, this last, hardest time.

ii

Day 03, CR

That evening (one had to think in terms of evening again, not main‑day and alterday, had to learn that things shut down at night, and everyone slept and ate on the same schedules)…that evening in the main dome, Conn stood up at the staff mess and announced the changes. “Not so bad, really,” he said, “since there’s really a need for a governing board and not a military command here. Headquarters and the Colonial Office left that to our discretion, what sort of authority to set up, whether military or council form; and I think that there’s a level of staff participation here that lends itself to council government. All department heads will sit on the board. Capt. Beaumont and I will share the governorship and preside jointly when we’re both present. Maj. Gallin will take vicechairman’s rank. And for the rest, there’s the structural precedence in various areas of responsibility as the charter outlines them.” He looked down the table at faces that showed the stress of long hours and primitive conditions. At Bilas, with a bandage on his shaven temple. That had been bothering him: the thoughts wandered. “Bilas–you had an accident?”