"YOU SEE THE PROBLEM? TOO MUCH OF IT IS GIBBERISH," Jeffer told the children. Rather and Carlot were nodding, but their eyes were glassy. "You can look up some of the words. You can guess a little. Goldblatt's World is Gold. There's a file on Earth and Neptune and the rest of the solar system, but it's hard going. Roche tides, Roche Limit-that seems to be a balance point between tide and some other force, maybe the same force that changes your orbit if you pass too close to Gold. Fusion is power: it makes the Sun bum, and Discipline ran on fusion. Oort cloud, magnetic field, supernova-Lawri and I never figured those out."

He turned to Booce. "The kids need this, but I hate to make you sit through it again at your age-"

Booce's eyes were glassy too. "No, no, no. This is all new to me."

"Didn't you have classes? There's the Library-"

"For officer's kids only," Booce said brusquely. "Go on with this. What's eccentric?"

"That's a round path that isn't a circle. It goes out and in. Booce, am I committing a crime if I teach you and Carlot these things?"

"But I want to learn!"

"Shush, Carlot. It's never come up before," Booce said. "You're not showing us the Library, after all."

Carlot demanded, "Scientist, what's the point in stopping nowT'

Jeffer laughed. He tapped, and the window was restored. The Clump was nearer now, and a score of parallel dashes lay across the CARM's path. "You're right. Carlot, but the lesson's over anyway. We're getting too close."

Debby answered with a raspberry.

"Booce?" Jeffer said. "Any special favorites?"

"The smallest, I'd think, but let's have a better look." Booce disengaged his seat tethers and moved aft. "Jeffer, would you open those doors?"

"Will do." He did. "Booce, don't you trust the windows?"

"I prefer my eyes. Swing us around, will you?" He braced himself in the airlock. Others of the crew had followed him.

Jeffer began the maneuver. In the forward view, now moving into the port view, one of the trees had begun blinking: a green halo going on, off, on, off.

Nobody was near. Jeffer whispered, "Why?"

Now a point far in along the trunk was doing the blinking. Then that stopped-

An arm stabbed past Jeffer's ear, and he had to repress a shriek. "There," Booce said, pointing at one of the trees. "Thirty klomters, and it seems healthy."

"What about this one, Booce?" Jeffer tapped the tree that had blinked at him.

"Nothing wrong with it. It's bigger, twice the mass. Take us longer to get it to the Market, but of course there'd be more wood too, and there's the CARM . . . Why that one?"

"A hunch. You've got no objection?"

Now Clave was behind him too. "Jeffer, are you playing dominance games?"

"I'm the Chairman, you captain the CARM, Booce is the logger. Booce chooses the tree."