“Hey, where is everyone?” Drake demanded the moment he entered, well laden with bundles. “There’s more in the sled, too.”

Sallah dropped her head to hide her expression. “We’re celebrating, Drake,” Valli said, taking him a glass of quikal. “Two new finds, both of them rich and easily worked. We’re in business.”

“So, the Drake’s Lake Mining and Refinery is in business?”

Everyone laughed and, when he raised his glass in a toast, no one refuted the title.

“And I’ve news for you,” he said after he drank. “We’re all to go back to Landing three days from now.”

His announcement was met with great consternation. Grinning with anticipated pleasure, Drake raised his free hand for silence. “For a Thanksgiving.”

“For this? How’d they know?” Valli asked.

“That should be in the fall, after harvest,” Sallah said.

“Why?” was Tarvi’s simple response.

“For this auspicious start to our new life. The last load from the starships has reached Landing. We are officially landed.”

“Why make a fuss over that?” Sallah asked.

“Not everyone is a workaholic like you, my lovely Sallah,” Drake said, pinching her chin affectionately. Seeing that he meant to kiss her, Sallah ducked away, grinning to take away the sting of her rejection. He pouted. “Our gracious leaders have so decided, and it is to be the occasion of many marvelous announcements. All the exploratory teams are being called back, and a grand time will be had by all.”

Sallah was almost resentful. “We only got here last week!”

As an escape from several unpalatable but unprovable conclusions, she had taken on the assignment of flying the geologists and miners to the immense inland lake where the EEC survey had reported ore concentrations. She had hoped that distance might provide some objective answers to the events she had witnessed.

A week before, returning one evening to the Mariposa to look for a tape she had left on board during one of her early stints as Admiral Benden’s pilot, she had seen Kenjo emerging from the small rear service hatch, a brace of sacks in each hand. Curious, she had followed him as he hurried off into the shadows. Then he had seemed to disappear. She hid behind a bush and waited until he had reemerged empty-handed. Then she retraced his steps, and tried to find out where he had put his burden.

After some scrambling about, a couple of bruised shins, and a scraped hand, she had stumbled into a cave—and she was appalled to see the amount of fuel he had purloined. Tons of it, she judged, checking a tag for the quantity, all stashed in easily handled plasacks. The rock fissure was well hidden at the extreme end of the landing grid behind a clump of the tough thorny bushes that the farmers were clearing from the arable acres.