“That’s going to take a couple of years, you know,” she said earnestly. Once again he nodded solemnly. “But we’ve started. My dad’s a vet and he said they’d woken up some horse and donkey mares, cows, goats, and sheep and made ’em pregnant with our kinds of animals.”

“Woken up?” Sean’s eyes protruded.

“Sure, who could muck livestock out for fifteen years? But it’ll still take eleven months for the horses to be born, if that’s what you’re waiting for.”

“Horses, always. We were promised horses.” Sean sounded wistful as well as emphatic, and she experienced a moment of kindliness toward him.

“You’ll get them, too. My father said so,” she added mendaciously. “He said that the ti—the traveling folk were first on the list.”

“We’d better be.” Sean glowered darkly. “Or there’ll be trouble.”

“You see me before you make any trouble here. My da always got on well with your people in Clonmel. Believe me, you’ll get your horses.” She could see that he was skeptical. “Now, mind, I hear that you’ve harmed our creature and I’ll see you don’t, Sean Connell!” She held up a warning hand, the flat edge in an offensive position. “Not that you could catch her. She’s smart, that one. She understands what you’re thinking.”

Sean eyed her, more scornful than skeptical. “You know so much about her?”

“I’m good with animals.” She paused, then grinned. “Just like you are. See you ’round. And remember about requisitioning!”

She turned and started back down the beach to catch up with Jacob and Chung—just in time to help carry the samples back to the hatchery.

When Sallah Telgar heard the call for volunteers to make up a skeleton crew so that those who had not yet been down to the surface would have a weekend break on Pern, she hesitated until she saw the names of the first three volunteers: Avril, Bart, and Nabhi. That trio did nothing that did not further themselves. Why would they volunteer? Suspicious, she scrawled her name down immediately. Also, she was still curious about what Kenjo had been up to with his fuel economies. The Eujisan had drawn its quota regularly, yet her private calculations indicated a growing balance that had neither been burned up by the Eujisan nor was in the Yoko’s fuel tanks. Very strange. Soon there would be no place on the old Yoko to hide a thimbleful of fuel, much less the volume of the shortfall she had calculated. But Kenjo was not among the volunteers.