Meanwhile, if dad and mom arrived, they'd never be able to bring the cutter down through the tiny gap Deneen had coaxed the floater through. Correction, I told myself-not if, when. When they arrived. I might as well cultivate a positive attitude, But it didn't feel very real to me. When, if, whatever, I thought. Be prepared. I needed to fell a couple or three trees, but not where they could fall on the shelter or where the debris would be a problem. Or where our camp could be spotted through the little hole they'd leave.

It wasn't as if I had any reason to expect someone to scrutinize this tiny islet in the middle of the Entrilias, but time was one thing it looked like we had lots of, and it made no sense to skip simple precautions.

So with the beam saw I lopped off a couple of stout saplings and sharpened an end on each, for pushing with. Then I picked trees to cut down-three of them in a row that would leave a thin, inconspicuous gap long enough for the cutter. The forest was thick enough that a tree cut from the stump would tend to hang up in other trees instead of falling, so I had had to shop around a little for one that looked as if it would go all the way down. After seeing which way it leaned, I had Tarel and Jenoor put their push poles against it on the

16

opposite side, digging the points through the mass of tough vines that coated the bark. Then I cut it with the beam saw, and when it started to fail, they both pushed as hard as they could. Brushing through surrounding branches, it picked up momentum and smashed to the ground.

The second and third trees were simpler. Each leaned toward the opening made by felling the one before, so there was a good place for them to fall. When all three were down, I cut them into pieces small enough that we could move them. They weren't what you'd think of as big trees; the soil here was too sandy and infertile, But before we were done dragging and throwing the pieces out of the way, all three of us were soaked with sweat, and I knew we'd be stiff in the morning.

It helped that Tarel was as strong as he was. He wasn't much more than average height, but he was broad and chunky. Overweight, actually-even after three weeks of survival training had melted off maybe twelve or fifteen pounds. He was one of those people who tend to be naturally, genetically fat. I knew for sure he wasn't a big eater. But he was one of the strongest kids I've ever seen-quite a lot stronger than me-and I'd been one of the strongest guys in school when I'd graduated this past spring.

After we'd gotten a landing place ready, I set up the geogravitic power tap for our insect repellent field and, if necessary, our water still. When Deneen and Piet came back, an hour after we were done, I showed them what we'd accomplished. Meanwhile they hadn't had a lot of luck fishing, but the two edible fish they'd caught were big enough to feed all of us, including Bubba.

It looked to me as if our problem on Lizard Island was going to be mostly a matter of coping with monotony.

THREE

I was right about the monotony, but somehow it wasn't that unpleasant. Two of us would go out in the skiff each day to fish, and stay out till we had enough. It could take most of the day, or only a few minutes, but commonly it took less than an hour. A couple of times, early on, we got nothing, but as we learned the fishes' feeding habits, it went a lot better.

Besides fishing, there were just two other jobs: Every hour or two, someone had to fetch a pail of sea water and pour it in the still. Yes, this was the dry season, The other job was gathering what fruit there was. Most of the time, there was nothing that needed doing.

The food was the worst part, and even that we got used to. We ate our fish raw to get the maximum vitamins from them, because there wasn't much edible fruit in the dry season. Most of the plants timed their fruiting to take advantage of the rains. Bubba at least got a little variety by eating lizards. The rest of us left the lizards alone. They were too small and bony, and too hard to skin, to be worth it for humans. Bubba, on the other hand, ate skin and all. I suppose his stomach acid dissolved the bones.

Somehow or other, it wasn't as bad as it sounds-not the boredom or the food.

To pass time, we drilled hand-foot art-both the combat and gymnastic parts of it. Piet wasn't willing to be the drill instructor-he said Deneen should be, that her technique was amazingly good, I'd known she was good, I just hadn't realized how good. We'd been trained in it since we were little kids, one reason we're both such good all-round athletes.

Tarel and Jenoor had never heard of hand-foot art till they'd come to live with us. It's been illegal, and pretty much a secret practice, most of the time for a thousand years or more. As a result, on most worlds, people didn't know there was such a thing, Jenoor had picked it up fast; like Deneen, she was a natural athlete. Tarel was slower at learning things that took coordination, and the necessary flexibility had come slowly for him too. Now, though, with more time to work on it, he was starting to get good enough to really feel some mastery, and with confidence, his movements became surprisingly quick. Combine that with his strength, and he was turning into someone you'd do best not to fight with. He was actually getting lean, too, partly from the food.

He was still very mild-mannered. I wasn't sure what it would take to make him violent, but there was bound to be something.

You couldn't practice hand-foot art all day, of course; it was too strenuous. Two sessions a day, about an hour each, was plenty, so the first month was about the longest, slowest one I'd ever experienced till then. The closest thing to it had been traveling to Fanglith two years earlier. That had been fifty-seven days of reading and sleeping. Here we didn't dare use the floater's computer for recreational reading because we needed to conserve the fuel cell. For some reason known only to Consolidated Floaters Corporation, computer operation required that the whole system be on-at least on idle. And, of course, floaters don't have the kind of fuel slugs that cutters do.

We got so we slept a lot.

I thought about Jenoor more than I should have. Not that I got fixated on her or anything, but I couldn't help thinking, now and then. We fished together a lot, we were always around one another, and no one wore much in the way of clothes. It was generally hot, and a great chance to get a tan. A couple of times I was pretty close to making a pass at her, but managed not to.

Partly, I was afraid she'd say yes. And if we got something going, no way could we keep it secret, which Tarel might resent, and maybe Deneen-just what we didn't need in exile on a tiny little island. And I was going on nineteen, with responsibility to more than my own druthers.

But partly, maybe I was afraid she'd say no. From what I'd read about Tris Gebleu in social geography, people there took a lot of things more seriously than we did, including sex, and I didn't want her to think I was some kind of horny creep.

Anyway I kept it cool.

It helped that she'd told me once I was like an older brother to her. She and I had gotten along really well from the time they'd come to live with us; I'd always enjoyed having her in the family.

Generally the five of us would sit around in the evening and talk while it was getting dark. One of the topics was what we'd do when dad and mom arrived and we left Evdash. That was always the stated situation-when mom and dad arrived. But beneath it was the unspoken if-if they arrived.

We'd all listened in on discussions between mom and dad and Piet about what they might do when, someday, the Empire started taking over the colony worlds. They would check out the more remote of the so-called "lost" colonies, in what was referred to as "the deep outback" -worlds scattered thinly around the fringes of known space. The idea was to find the best ones to establish hidden rebel bases on. And there was always the implication that the rest of us would be part of it if we wanted to.