Sorka inhaled happily. Just then Bay Harkenon emerged from the cabin, looking much better than she had when she had hastily descended to be nauseated in private.

“Ah, the pill worked?” Jim Tillek inquired solicitously.

“I cannot thank you enough,” the microbiologist said with a tremulous but grateful smile. “I’d no idea I was susceptible to motion sickness.”

“Had you ever sailed?”

Bay shook her head, the clusters of gray curls bobbing on her shoulders.

“Then how would you know?” he asked affably. He squinted into the distance, where the peninsula and the mouth of the Jordan River were already visible. Portside, the towering Mount Garben—named after the senator who had done so much to smooth the expedition’s way through the intricacies of the Federated Sentient Planets’ bureaucracy—dominated the landscape, its cone suitably framed against the bright morning sky. There had been some lobbying to name its three small companions after Shavva, Liu, and Turnien, the original EEC landing party, but no decision had yet been made at the monthly naming sessions held around the evening campfire after the more formal official sittings of the council.

Captain Tillek dropped his gaze to the charts and, using his dividers, measured the distance from the jetty to the river mouth, and again to the land beyond.

“Why do the colors stop here?” Sorka asked, noticing that the bulk of the chart was uncolored.

Grinning in approval, he tapped the chart. “Fremlich did this for me from the probe pics, and they’ve been accurate to the last centimeter so far, but as we ourselves walk across the land and sail the coast, I color it in appropriately. A good way of knowing where we’ve been and where we’ve yet to go. I’ve also added notations that a sailor might need, about prevalent winds and current speeds.”

It was only then that Sorka noticed those additional marks. “It’s one thing to see, and another to know, isn’t it?”

He tweaked one of her titian braids. “Indeed, it is being there that matters.”

“And we’ll really be the first people—here?” She laid the tip of her forefinger on the peninsula.

“Indeed we shall,” Tillek said with heartfelt satisfaction.