The heat of burning stayed in the smoke, so the fire didn't need to be large. Gavving and Jiovan stayed well back. A shift in the breeze could smother an incautious citizen.

The meat should be rotated soon. It was Gavving's turn, but it didn't have to be done instantly.

"Jiovan?"

"What?"

Even Gavving wouldn't ask Jiovan how he lost his leg-nobody would; but one thing about that tale had bothered him for years. And he asked.

"Why were you hunting alone, that day? Nobody hunts alone."

"I did."

"Okay." Topic closed. Gavving drew his harpoon. He pulled air into his lungs, then lunged into the smoke. Half-blind, he reached over the

coals with the harpoon butt to turn the nose-arm legs-one, two, three. He yanked hard on his line to pull himself into open air. Smoke came

with him, and he took an instant to fan it away before he drew breath.

Jiovan was looking in, past the small green tuft that had once enclosed his life, into the bluish white spark that was Voy. His head came up, and Gavving faced a murderous glare. "This L~n't something I'd

want told around."

Gavving waited.

"All right. I've got . . . I had a real gift for sarcasm, they tell me.

When I was leading a hunt . . . well, the boys were there to learn, of

course, and I was there to teach. If someone made a mistake, I left him

in no doubt."

Gavving nodded.

"Pretty soon they were giving me nothing but the fumblers. I couldn't stand it, so I started hunting alone."

"I shouldn't have asked. It used to bother me."

"Forget it."

Gavving was trying to forget something else entirely. This last sleep period he had wakened to find three citizens missing. He'd followed a sound . . . and watched Clave and Jayan and Jinny moor lines to the bark, and leap outward, and make babies while they drifted.

What lived in his head now was lust and envy balanced by fear of Clave's wrath or Jinny's scorn (for he had fixed on Jinny as marginally lovelier.) He might as well dream. Any serious potential mate was back in Quinn Tuft, and Gavving couldn't offer anyway; he hadn't the wealth

or the years.

That would change, of course. He would return (of course) as a hero (of course!). As for the Chairman's wrath . . . he hadn't been able to send Harp. Possibly Clave could have resisted him too. If they could end the famine, the Chairman could do nothing; they would be heroes.

Gavving could have his choice of mates- "So I was hunting alone," Jiovan said, "the day Glory busted open

the turkey pen."

For an instant Gavving couldn't imagine what Jiovan was talking about. Then he smiled. "Harp's told that tale."