Abruptly, at his touch, a flood of rage and loathing boiled up in Nestamay. She had tumbled with all the other children of her age-group, boys and girls alike, in their crude wrestling games, and had often overcome opponents older and heavier than herself. On becoming a nominal adult she was supposed to have put all that behind her, but the grip of Jasper’s hand seemed to trigger a reflex response. She hardly knew what she was doing, she was so furious, but seconds later Jasper was cartwheeling over her back, taken totally by surprise, and sliding on his face in the dust.

Panicking, she jumped away, thinking he would fling himself on her and seek revenge. But he didn’t do so. Panting, getting slowly to hands and knees with a huge graze-mark bleeding down his cheek, he fixed her with coldly cruel eyes.

“You’ll be sorry for that, Nestamay,” he whispered. “I warn you! You’ll wish you were dead before I finish getting even with you for this!”

There was something in his look and his voice which made him seem suddenly inhuman. Nestamay repressed a desire to scream, spun on the spot and took to her heels.

XVIII

She was still too shaken to think clearly when she found herself outside her home a few minutes later. She had never seen such a savage look on anyone’s face in all her young life. It was as though a newly-hatched thing had taken human form. The shock had made her physically giddy.

Little by little she forced herself back to a state of comparative calm. She grew aware that Grandfather’s irascible voice could be heard from within the hovel, ordering Danianel to hurry with her sketching and get out to join the search party under Keefe.

Taking a firm grip on herself, she thrust open the door and blurted out her news.

“Grandfather, Jasper refuses to report for the search party! He said he wouldn’t admit that I’d found him and told him your instructions unless I–I went with him for an hour first.”

Danianel, a slight, quite pretty girl a little older than Nestamay, looked up startled from the eyepiece of the microscope. Several sheets of neatly executed drawings were piled up alongside the instrument.

“Go with you?” Grandfather said frostily. “Where to? I suppose I don’t have to ask what for!”

“I don’t know where exactly,” Nestamay muttered. “He has this hideaway inside the dome. Ask Danianel-she’s been there!”

“What do you mean?” Danianel demanded indignantly, cheeks colouring. Nestamay ignored her.

“Please, Grandfather, you must help me!” she exclaimed. “I had to beat him off, and I hurt him, I guess, and he said I’d wish I was dead before he finished getting even.”

Grandfather pulled himself to his feet. “You stay here and finish that drawing, Danianel,” he rapped. Tm getting tired of young Jasper, and I think it’s about time he was told to behave himself.”

Immensely relieved, Nestamay fell in behind him as he set off with long strides to the place where Keefe was assembling the search party.

But as they rounded the dome he checked and put up a hand to shade his eyes. “I thought you said Jasper had refused to join the party!” he snapped. “Look there!” He flung out an arm.

It was definitely Jasper, meekly listening with everyone else to Keefe’s exposition.

“I swear he told me he wouldn’t do it on his free-day,” Nestamay gulped. “Please go and ask him how he came by the graze on his face, at least!”

“Now see here, child,” Grandfather said, turning to face her. “I know you dislike Jasper. I know you hate the idea of having him as a mate. But we’ve been over all that, and I’ve explained why it’s got to be that way and there’s no alternative. Are you deliberately trying to incite me against him?”

Nestamay went slowly white. Between clenched teeth she forced out, “Go and ask him how he hurt his face!”

“He’s turned out for the search,” Grandfather answered curtly. “That’s as I ordered. Leave it at that.”

“Don’t you care about him trying to rape me?” Nestamay blazed. “Doesn’t it matter to you? Doesn’t it matter any more than sending my father out to his death in the desert? You and your talk about being able to show pride when we finally meet other people again-oh, how I hope you’ll be dead before then so I won’t weep with shame to hear you say you’re human too! You’re not! You’re a machine-you’re a thing!”

With all her force she slapped him stingingly across the face, and turned to flee.

Terror at what she had done haunted her the rest of the day. She dared not go home when she should have done-at noon, to try and sleep before keeping the night watch. Instead, she cowered alone in a concealed nook on the far side of the dome, shivering uncontrollably and sometimes giving way to dry-eyed sobs.

Only one coherent thought filled her mind during the slow-passing hours. She hadn’t reached the decision consciously, but rather by an instinctive leap.

She was not going to stay and endure Jasper’s revenge, whatever form it took. If he caught up with her and tried to attack her physically-which she thought unlikely, for he had always seemed a coward-she would use her knife on him this time. But in the more probable case that he resorted to some subtler and crueller indirect attack, she was going to leave the Station as her father had: walk away into the desert and take her chance of dying of thirst or hunger.

There was no one to whom she could turn. If even Grandfather thought she was slandering Jasper to get out of living with him, she might as well be dead already.

And there was nothing she could do to forestall Jasper, either. How he would go about getting even with her she could not guess, but the most likely way was simply by a series of petty persecutions kept up over months, becoming intolerable as they accumulated. If the community had liked her family, such a plan would not have worked, but Grandfather had been overbearing and domineering for years, and while everyone had to respect his vast knowledge nobody actually liked him. And this reaction extended now to include herself.

By late afternoon she was immensely thirsty. Wondering if she could get to water without anyone seeing her, she peered out of her refuge. A group of weary searchers returning from their hunt around the Station was passing, heading southwards around the dome. She ducked back out of sight, but not before she had recognised Jasper among them. He was too far distant for her to see his expression, but a mere glimpse of him was enough to make her tremble again.

She was glad he hadn’t been looking in her direction. In a little while now Grandfather would be calling for her-it was after all her night to keep watch in the office; that hadn’t changed. But people would hardly take to the idea of being sent out to hunt for her in the dark.

And there were footsteps close by.

She froze, wondering what she would do if she was discovered by chance; the possibility had scarcely crossed her mind. But whoever the footsteps belonged to wasn’t looking for anybody. The angle of the sound changed constantly, approaching the side of the dome, then entering it and continuing, blurred now, inside.

It couldn’t be Jasper. Could it?

Yet who else would venture so confidently into the Station from this side with darkness near?

With extreme caution Nestamay craned past a large rusty machine at the back of her own hiding-place and tried to confirm her suspicion. But it was useless; in the long-shadowed evening gloom under the dome all details blended.

Then the footsteps were returning, and she ducked again. Straining her ears, she heard a muttered sentence.

“That’ll fix the bitch!”

Beyond any doubt, that was Jasper. She let her hand fall to the handle of her hatchet. Where was he going now? Out of the dome to rejoin the returning search party, or straight to the north, back to the clustered hovels?