Sorka threw her head back to the fresh breeze which rippled across the plateau. It smelled of marvelous things, new and exciting. She wanted to dance, free once more under a sky, without ceiling or walls to constrict her.

“Are you Hanrahan or Jepson?” the woman asked, a recorder in her hand.

“Hanrahan,” Red replied. “Mairi, Peter, Sorka, and Brian.”

“Welcome to Pern,” she said, smiling graciously before she made a tick on her sheet. “You’re House Fourteen on Asian Square. Here’s your map. All the important facilities are clearly marked. Now, if you’ll just lend a hand to unload and clear the shuttle …” She handed him a sheet, gestured toward the float that was backing up to the open cargo hatch, then moved on to the Jepsons, who had just emerged.

“We made it, Mairi love,” Red said, embracing his wife. Sorka was surprised to see tears in her parents’ eyes.

There was more to be unloaded than just the personal luggage of the passengers. Cartons of stores still had to be checked off the supercargo’s lists.

“Tell the dispatcher that more furnishings are required,” Sallah was told once the shuttle’s hold had been emptied. “Or some people won’t have beds tonight.”

“That’s efficiency for you,” Sallah remarked to Barr. She waved to the Hanrahans as she closed the hatch to prepare for the return flight. “Soon there won’t be anyone above and precious little left of the ships but the hulls.”

“I know,” Barr replied. “I half expect to find our bunks already gone.”

The two began their take-off check and Sallah grinned as she made her notations. She had the glide down to perfection, which meant that she was saving nearly twenty liters every journey. The wind was veering to stern, and she warned Barr to speed up her checklist.

“Want to take advantage of that tail wind. Saves fuel.”

“Good God, Sal, you’re as bad as Fussy Fusi.” But Barr completed her list with a flourish. “What I want to know is why are we busting ass saving fuel? We can’t go anyplace useful with what we’d be saving. And once the ships are gutted, there isn’t any use for space shuttles, now is there?”

Sallah gave her a searching stare and then chuckled drolly. “A very good point, my friend. A very good point. I think,” she added after a moment’s thought, “I’ll check the tanks while Fussy’s dropping.”

But when she had done that, she was not that much wiser. If they were saving so much fuel, then the level in the tanks should have been higher. Barr, who was enjoying a flirtation with one of the resource engineers, forgot her idle observation. But Sallah did not. During one of Kenjo’s drops, she did a bit of checking in the mainframe’s banks.