It wasn’t a person, but it could think. It wasn’t a machine, but it was out of order. It was practically everlasting, but a single touch from a heatbeam might destroy it. It provided their food, but it also hatched out things to plague them in the night. To Nestamay as a little girl it had seemed rather like Grandfather on a vaster scale-capricious, often bad-tempered for no discernible reason, but a kind of rock in the turmoil of their lives, to which one must turn for support because there was nothing else available.

Now she was nominally an adult, she recognised that Grandfather must one day die, and when that happened it would be up to her and others of her age-group to apply the knowledge Grandfather had passed on from his father and his father’s father. And that knowledge was designed to overcome the arbitrary power of the not-a-person thinking there in the stinking green swelter under the dome.

There was no stability in this life, except the bareness of the desert ringing the Station. That didn’t change. It was disturbed occasionally, by footprints. But the wind wiped them in the night, and the next day the desert was the same as before.

For that reason, when Nestamay turned from contemplating the hideous tangle of the miniature jungle beneath the dome, she looked long at the unalterable desert-just as inhospitable, but not actively hostile. It was there, and it was a fact, and it was.

Oddly comforted, she hurried to complete her rounds with the canister of broth and the bag of bread.

It was at the next call but one that she found Jasper, cursing and sweating over the removal of a large pile of scrap metal which the terrified thing had overset last night as it howled away from the torture of the electrofence. Tightening her lips, Nestamay left him till last of the party to receive his rations. He noticed the fact; he was meant to.

“Not looking very cheerful this morning, Nestamay!” he taunted. “Grandfather been scolding you-hey?”

“No,” Nestamay contradicted with a toss of her head. “As a matter of fact, he’s been praising me for a change. No thanks to you, you-!”

“Ho-o-o-o!” Jasper raised his eyebrows. “I suppose it’s my fault now, is it? I’m responsible for hatching out things, and I do it during your watch to make trouble for you!”

“You do your best to make trouble for me, and you can’t deny it!” Nestamay retorted. “Suppose I’d been taken in by your wheedling last night, and skipped my watch-what would have happened then?”

Jasper laughed. It wasn’t a friendly sound. He said, “You were the one supposed to be on watch, my dear, not me. I didn’t know. After all, you didn’t tell me that was where you were going!”

The barefaced audacity of the lie shocked Nestamay into paleness. Stamping her foot, she snapped, “Jasper, you make me sick to my guts!”

“Too bad,” Jasper said with a shrug, turning away. “A time will come when I make you literally sick for a much better reason-because my kid’s kicking you in the belly. And you don’t have much choice in the matter, do you? Not even if you go weeping to your precious grandfather. He doesn’t think tears are constructive.”

Unconstructive tears blurred Nestamay’s sight as she moved away. For, like it or not, what Jasper said was undeniable.

X

Yanderman ducked under the door flap of the Duke’s tent and saluted. The Duke leaned back so that his chair-as always-creaked with his weight, and smiled in the depths of his enormous beard.

“Well, Yan? What do you think of our progress so far?”

Yanderman ignored the question. He said curtly, “Ampier died in the night-did you know?”

“Of course. I was informed directly it happened; I’d given instructions.”

“Have you seen the body?”

“No.”

Yanderman shuddered. “I saw it. They were carrying it out for burning as I came by. He looked as though he’d simply rotted to death. He was completely covered in that filthy green mould.”

Duke Paul nodded. “So they told me. Obviously the beak of the thing he killed was infected, and poisoned his wound. The medics said they could find nothing that would stop the mould growing without killing the sufferer, so I ordered the burning of everything Ampier had touched-his bandages, the blanket he was wrapped in, his clothes, even the tent where he lay dying. And told all his attendants to burn their clothes and scrub themselves from head to foot with good strong soap. Does that answer what you were going to say?”

Yanderman took a chair. “I guess so,” he agreed, feeling conscious relief that the Duke had been so thorough. “But I’m afraid the death is having a bad effect on the men.”

“We mustn’t let it,” the Duke countered briskly. “We must keep them busy.”

“They’re busy already,” Yanderman pointed out. “With reconnaissance parties surveying the boundary of the barrenland, the fact-finding teams compiling data on the things that have been killed over the years by the people of Lagwich, and arms practice-in fact, I ought to be out-drilling my company right now, but I told Stadham to look after it.”

“Why?”

“So I could come and warn you about the way the men are being affected by Ampier’s death,” Yanderman explained with forced patience.

“Go on.”

“It’s probably contact with the townsfolk that’s doing it,” Yanderman said. “That, and the latrine rumours that were on their rounds even before we got here. Granny Jassy is doing a roaring trade in charms, too, despite all I can do to make the purchasers look foolish.”

“I don’t see much help for that.” The Duke frowned. “But contact with the townsfolk could be cut off if necessary. What strikes you as so bad about it?”

“They have small minds in Lagwich. They feel it necessary to brag about themselves to counter the natural boasting of our men about Esberg. So they magnify the danger of the things from the barrenland beyond all measure. You’ve heard them-you’ve talked to Malling and Rost and their other ‘wise men’.” Yanderman put a fine ring of sarcasm into the last words. “But you can’t cut off contact now, I’m afraid. It would be very bad for the men who’ve been too occupied so far to take time off and go into the town. The townsfolk seem to be treating our arrival as something like the visit of a marrying expedition, and they’re showing our men the best time they can and positively urging them to court the local girls.”

Duke Paul grunted. “Yes, I’d realised that,” he said. “I’ve been hoping that something pretty savage and large might come out of the barrenland so we could deal with it. It was a good idea of your lieutenant’s to bring that carcass into camp and peg it up for the men to look at. But there’s a psychological difference between just seeing a carcass, which could have been killed by an accident, and actually vanquishing a dangerous monster.”

“Especially since Ampier died of the encounter he had with a thing,” Yanderman agreed.

“Ye-es.” The Duke ran his fingers through his beard. A fat, buzzing fly which had somehow got in through the door-flap soared lazily past him. He swiped at it, but missed. “By the way, how was that thing killed-the one Stadham found?”

“I don’t know.” Yanderman shrugged. “One of the townsfolk must have tackled it, I guess. I didn’t think to inquire. I suppose I could ask around if you think it’s important.”

“Not really.” Duke Paul stared at the swinging canvas of the tent wall. “It just put me in mind of a possible way of-ah-arranging for a suitably savage beast to be killed in plain sight of some of the men. What would you say the chances are of going secretly to some of the more venturesome people in Lagwich and persuading them to guide a few picked men into the barrenland to find a thing and drive it towards the camp to be killed?”