The westward-jutting finger of the northern continent pointed directly at the big island, which loomed lavender above the gray of the morning sea. Avril had lifted off from the desert camp well before dawn, leaving a message that she was taking a day off. The others would not mind, and she was as tired of Ozzie Munson and Cobber Alhinwa as they were of her.

Yesterday, the two miners had found some really good turquoise and refused to tell her where, tantalizing her with brief glimpses of the very fine sky-blue-banded rock. She had known when they came into camp the previous evening that they were excited about the hunk that they were tossing back and forth. She had merely asked to see it, and had allowed herself to become irritated when the two miners had responded with secrecy. She would have to be very cautious with those two, she thought. They thought themselves so clever. Anyhow, turquoise, though valued for its rarity on Earth, was not really worth the trouble of ingratiating herself to those two jerks.

Then, at supper, when they were still whispering between themselves and glancing at her with sly smiles, she began to wonder if they had heard something in particular to make them react as they had to her polite and diffident query.

She tried to remember if they had ever teamed up with Bart Lemos. But he was at Andiyar’s ore mountain. He must, for once, have kept quiet about the gold nuggets that he had been panning out of a mountain stream above the camp. Obedient to the pact they had made on the Yoko, he had given them to her to hide in her cache at Landing. She had not confided much of her scheme to him, for, given a few mugs of quikal, Bart Lemos would give anyone his life history.

Maybe Stev Kimmer was not as good a choice of ally as she had initially thought, hearing his sly and witty complaints during the last year of that interminable journey to this godforsaken planet. He was more attractive than the others; in fact, he was extremely attractive and, more importantly, lusty, with a willingness to experiment that the much vaunted Admiral Benden had never displayed. A bit of a bore in bed, our dear admiral. Damn Paul Benden. Why had he turned so cool toward her? After all those protestations of admiration and devotion. She had been so certain that she had felt the marriage contract in her hand. Then, a scant year away from their destination, when Rukbat had grown from a spark to a gleam in the blackness of space, Benden had altered. He suddenly had had no time for her at all. Well, he would find out what Avril Bitra was made of. And then it would be too late.