"Are they dead?" Pologne asked, prodding the lumps disdainfully.

"No, just stunned," Jinetta assured her. As she spoke, the mess began to stir.

"It's alive!" Tolk barked.

"Of course it's alive, you silly canid," Freezia said. "Pervects don't eat dead food. Did you bring anything to put on them?"

"No," Jinetta sighed. "They were out of sweet and sour sauce at the camping store."

"Oh, Crom," Pologne said. "We have to eat them with no sauce?"

They divided up the dish and began to pick at their shares without enthusiasm.

Bee produced hard bacon and biscuit from the depths of his pack and set them simmering over the fire. I had a crock of stew that Bunny had cooked for us. I took the preservative spell off it and set it to heat up. Tolk tried bites of each. I thought it smelled pretty good, but he was unimpressed.

"No flavor," he said. "I mean, maybe it's nourishing, but bland!"

Melvine wouldn't eat anything at all. "I can't believe you didn't bring any mush for me," he said. "That's all right! First you try to drown me, and now you starve me! What's that?"

A fly the size of my fingertip zipped past the campfire. A few more circled around, and zoomed out of the light.

"Bugs!" he wailed. "I hate bugs!" He pointed a finger at them.

"Melvine, no!"

"Why," I asked again, as we sheltered underneath a rocky overhang with a huge dung fire going at the entrance to our makeshift cave, clutching our food to us in the tight quarters, "why didn't you just use a repelling spell? Why did you try to blow them up?"

"You have to admit, he succeeded," Tolk said, with a touch of humor. "He blew them up, all right."

Beyond the fire we could see and hear the giant stinging wasps buzzing furiously as they tried to get in at us. I strengthened the repellent spell I had placed on the cave mouth. I had conserved most of my power, knowing I would need it for many minor emergencies. Like this one.

"And our dinner burned because we had to get away from the killer bugs he created," Bee added.

"You're eating it anyway. The smell is making us sick," Pologne said. Again.

I shook my head. I knew that Pervects could eat anything, but these three had never been exposed to other kinds of food. They were very young.

"It's cold," Jinetta said. "How is it that it was so hot all day, and now it is freezing?" She huddled as near the fire as she dared, shivering in her thin clothes. I cast a light warming spell in the cave. Everyone relaxed visibly and finished their dinner without too many more complaints.

"Look," I said, after Bee had shown the rest of the group how to scrub the dishes out with sand in lieu of a handy water supply. "You didn't do too well today. You only managed to secure three items off the list. You forgot everything I told you, and you let your tempers get in the way of being effective in the field. It is not that hard to deal with the natives. I told you what is important to them. None of you exploited those traits at all. You've already found out that brute force doesn't get you anywhere. When you found yourself with two courses of action you could take, you usually fell back on the one that related to you personally, not to the mission at hand. I wanted you to operate in a practical and simple fashion, and all of you got fancy. You didn't have to."

"What has chasing red dots around the landscape got to do with anything practical and simple?" Pologne asked.

"Well, what do you think I meant you to learn in today's exercise?" I countered.

"I don't know."

"Not to waste power?"

"That's one of the lessons I hope you absorbed," I said. "What else?"

"How to get ripped off by little monsters who sneak up when you're not looking?" Freezia asked.

"It's to teach you to make quick decisions," I said. "The right decisions. When you're faced with a dangerous situation, the last thing you can do is waste time, or I guarantee it will be. the last thing you do."

"We'll be working in offices in six months," Jinetta said. "Making a slow and carefully considered decision is hardly going to prove fatal."

"You'll be at the top of your game if you can assess a situation coolly and take action before anyone else does," I countered. "Believe me, I've spent plenty of time in my office, talking to potential clients. The best solution is usually the one I hit on first. Let me tell you how well that's worked out for me: I don't need your tuition to get by. It's a lot of money, but it's bupkis" I used a term I'd heard Aahz use once— I assumed it was Pervish, "to what I saved from my share of M.Y.T.H., Inc.'s take, and I had a LOT of partners. I'm on hiatus for as long as I want to be, and if I felt like doing my research in the middle of the biggest city in the busiest dimension you could think of with room service, gold-plated doorknobs and hot-and-cold running entertainment, I could afford to do it. Sorry," I said to the others. "I don't like to brag about wealth, but if that's the only thing you understand, then I've got to do it. I want you to understand."

Looking thoughtful, they huddled together to go to sleep.

"So, what was it Skeeve said about the natives?" Tolk asked, in his friendly way, while the students were clearing up from breakfast. The flies had gone. Melvine looked relieved. As a means of atonement I made him take down all three tents. He was much better at striking them than erecting them.

"Too bad you weren't paying attention," Pologne said, holding up her research globe.

Melvine brightened. "You took notes!" He stuck out a hand, and the globe went flying to him.

"Give that back!"

"How does it work?" Melvine asked. He invoked the orb, and high-pitched babbling issued from it. "There."

My voice rang out tinnily. "…They prize shade and water above anything else."

"Trying to keep information for yourself?" Tolk asked suspiciously.

Pologne looked sulky. "I'm the only one who went to the trouble of taking notes. Why should you get the benefit of my work?"

"Teamwork," I said. "You'll get this done much faster if you work together."

None of them paid attention. They went off in six different directions, each with his or her eyes on the ground.

"Got one!" Tolk yelped.

He had spotted a long purple pole. Red spots began to bubble up out of the earth, preparing to drag it under. Tolk turned and lifted a leg over a piece of dry ground. The dots converged upon the area he had watered and began to burrow into it with a pleased noise. Happily, Tolk picked up the pole in his teeth and trotted down the hill toward the headland.

"Did you see what he just did?" Pologne asked Jinetta in horror.

"Well, I'm certainly not going to—you know."

"No," Pologne said thoughtfully. "But we have a canteen."

I leaned back against my tree and smiled.