Days of wandering on the hunter’s loosp cart through frozen forest eventually brought them to a place where the last tree shrank to a stunted embarrassment and the land stretched into the windswept horizon, white and completely barren.

It looked like a moonscape to Ryo. He’d never been anywhere plants didn’t flourish the year ’round. To find such a blasted landscape here, atop the mother world itself, was shocking.

Before long they could see the familiar silhouettes of ventilators ahead, misty in the cold fog. A fence seemed to spring from the ground before them. It was three meters high and ran to east and west as far as the eye could see. No signs hung from the fence, no identification.

Ryo forgot the cold, the dry, and the desolation as he struggled to recall the cover story that Tor had tried to drill into them during the frigid days of travel from Sed-Clee.

I am a hunter-trapper, he told himself slowly: I’ve marched over from the western bulge of the Jezra-Jerg to visit my old friend Torplublasmet. My old associate and I usually sell our pelts and rare meats in Levqumu because it lies in warmer territory than Sed-Clee.

We have a few exceptionally fine mossmel skins with us and we might sell them at the base. Our old friend Tor is escorting us over so we can check out the prospects ourselves, as is only right and proper.

Such was the tale that Tor strove to impress on the hapless guard who emerged with great reluctance from the angular entryway. Moist, warm air roared from the opening like the breath of a gleast. After more than a quarter month of dry cold, Ryo nearly swooned when the blast reached him. He was careful, however, to control his reactions lest the guard notice something not in character for a back-country trapper.

After some polite exchanges and minor formalities between Tor and the guard, they were waved inward. “Enough talk of this miserable weather, friends,” the guard said disgustedly as they strolled in. “Come inside and moisten your spicules.”

As they entered, the door closed quickly behind them, the three triangular sections meeting tightly in the center. The whisper of the outside vanished.

Following Tor’s example, Ryo kept his furs on but unstrapped the belly latches and shoved the hollowed-out skull and clith goggles back off his head. He wiggled his newly erect antennae gratefully, glad to faz and smell once again.

The hunter led them down a winding ramp. Before long they exited into a modest, busy avenue. Not far above them lay the frozen, clith-coated wastes of Hivehom’s hostile arctic. For the moment, though, it was as if they were back in Daret.

Military personnel scurried everywhere, emerald and crimson insignia sparkling from shoulders and foreheads. Only rarely did they espy a civil worker. The three oddly garbed strangers drew only occasional stares, testament to Tor’s frequent visits.

Their guide knew precisely where they were headed. From time to time he stopped to chat briefly with passersby he knew. Soon they stopped for a drink at a concession. From his observation of the crowd and the size of the corridors they’d already traversed, Ryo guessed that the base was much larger than Sed-Clee itself.