By the time the mining party returned to Landing, the fire was well started in Bonfire Square and the party was gathering momentum. From her high vantage point as she swung the sled to the perimeter and down to the strip, Sallah almost did not recognize the utilitarian settlement. Lights were on in almost every window, and every lamp standard glowed. A dais had been erected across one side of Bonfire Square, and colored spotlights strung on a frame about it. Drake had said that there was a call out for anyone who could play an instrument to take a turn that evening. The white cubes of old plastic packers dotted the dais to serve as stools for the musicians.

Tables and chairs had been brought from residences and set up in a freshly mowed space beyond the square. Firepits had been dug to roast huge wherries; on smaller spits the last of the frozen meats brought from Earth browned along with several other carcasses. The aroma of roasting meat and grilling fish was mouth-watering. The colonists were all dressed in their best clothes. Everyone was bustling around, helping, toting, arranging, and fixing the last of the delicacies brought from the old worlds and saved for one last gorge on the new.

Sallah parked her sled crosswise on the landing grid, thinking that if more were set down at random along the straightaway, the Mariposa parked at the other end of the field would not have sufficient space for takeoff. But how long would there be that many sleds at Landing?

“Hey, hurry up, Sallah,” Ozzie called as he and Cobber jumped out of the sled.

“Gotta check in at the tower,” she said, waving cheerfully at them to go on.

“Oh, leave it the once,” Cobber suggested, but she waved them on again.

Ongola was just leaving the meteorology tower as she reached it. He gave her a resigned nod and opened the door again, noticing as he did so the position of her sled. “Wise to leave it like that, Sallah?”

“Yes. A precautionary measure, Commander,” she said in a tone intended to warn him that she had come on a serious errand.

He did not seat himself until she was halfway-through her suspicions, and then he lowered himself into the chair with such weariness that she hated herself for speaking out.

“Forewarned is forearmed, sir,” she said in conclusion.

“It is, indeed, Mister Telgar.” His deep sigh stressed the return of doubt. He motioned her to be seated. “How much fuel?”

When she reluctantly gave him the precise figures, he was surprised and concerned.

“Could Avril know of Kenjo’s hoard?” Ongola sat up so quickly that she realized he found her suspicions of the astrogator far more worrying than Kenjo’s theft. “No, no,” he corrected himself with a quick wave of his hand. “Their dislike of each other is genuine. I will inform the admiral and the governor.”