Chapter Six

On the Planet with no Name

Tankar returned to the cave and gently shook Anaena. She mumbled, curled into herself and went back to sleep. He watched her lying on her hard bed of sand, her clothes in tatters, her red hair in tangles and her face streaked with dry blood. This Anaena bore no resemblance to the proud young woman he had met on the Tilsin.

War and dangerous adventures are not for most women, he thought. He shook her more forcefully this time. She struggled to open her eyes. “Oh, yes, right. We’re shipwrecked,” she recalled. “I forgot.”

“Let me look at your wound.” He gently pushed aside the hairs stuck to her forehead. “This is better. No sign of infection. Your biogenol works really well.”

She noticed a change in Tankar. “You’ve taken off your helmet?”

“No air left, so I removed it about the time you fell asleep. We’re going to trek over to that mountain.” He pointed. “We must, at all costs, set up a signal if we want to have a chance of getting out of here, and we can’t do that on the volcano. When was your crew due to return to the Tilsin?”

“Today at noon.”

“I’m not due back until tonight. They may worry about the lack of communication, but we can’t count on any rescue mission setting off before nightfall.”

“Tan will dispatch every launch we have.”

“Anaena, a planet’s a very big thing, even this one that’s smaller than Earth. I’m going to take the lead carrying the bag of provisions and the first aid kit. You know how to use a fulgurator? Here you go. I wish I had a hunting rifle just in case we come across any potentially edible fauna.”

They walked down the gently declining slope of the volcano and cut through the brush. In a short time they found themselves at the entrance to the forest. The trees were very tall, their smooth trunks a poisonous shade of green. Secondary vegetation grew in thickets and vines.

Tankar stopped to consider their next move. “I don’t like this. Anybody could be hiding in there, and we know nothing about the animal life of this planet. I don’t need to remind you that our own lives will depend on our being cautious every second.”

He belted his fulgurator and grasped the molecular saw before moving forward. In the distance, under the shade of the trees, they heard a shattering cry followed by bloodcurdling cackles. Tankar hesitated, debating whether to continue through the trees or pick a different entry point to the forest. He shrugged. His fulgurator was potent enough to deter a Cretaceous tyrannosaurus. He raised the saw and set it to section molecular mass. Branches tumbled to the ground. Once they had penetrated beyond the outer circle, the vegetation in the forest grew sparser, smaller trees were smothered by shadows. The temperature grew hotter and became increasingly intolerable as the sun rose. Drops of water slid off the foliage, and the soil under their feet grew soft and spongy. To their right, a swamp gleamed in the half-light.

Tankar used his compass. There were no landmarks to guide them. At times the trees seemed like columns propping up the temple of some unknown deity, a humid and ferocious god. He and Anaena slithered around the tree trunks enveloped in disgusting, slimy moss. Tankar always led, shielded by his waterproof clothing, although the pines and brush he’d walked through had shredded the suit some time ago. Already a rash had begun to spread across one of Anaena’s arms, so he used a knife to scrape the tree trunks to prevent her having contact with the mosses.

They arrived at the site of a massacre. The burned skeleton of a decimated tree rose at the center of a clearing where the earth was covered in grasslike vegetation that had for some years escaped the darkness but now showed signs of frantic trampling. A long body lay in pieces in a pool of pinkish blood. The quadruped must have been 10 meters high with a sinewy body elongated by a slender tail. The short protruding head was split and revealed two sharp antennae. The skull had been smashed. Part of the animal’s intestines and its front legs had been eaten.

“Not a mammal, not a reptile,” Anaena observed.

“I can’t imagine this animal is a friendly one, but whatever killed it was even more terrifying.”

“Tankar, do you see footprints anywhere?”

He kneeled. The prints were about a half meter long, shaped like a star with four points: one forward, two oblique, and a short one at the back. At the end of each point an enormous claw had left its mark.

“This thing must weigh several tons. Judging from the distance between steps, it must be several meters high. Also, look up at those broken branches. Looks like a biped, maybe one of those carnivorous dinosaurs from long ago on Earth. On terra firma there really can be only two types of predator: lion or tyrannosaurus. Or it could be a pack-style animal such as wolves,” Tankar concluded.

“I didn’t know you were a zoologist,” Anaena mocked.

“This isn’t my first wild planet,” he replied, then paused. “Of course, we’d better include a third type of predator: man. If it’s still in the area, I’d rather not meet it. I wonder how it survives in this dense forest?”

They found the answer not long after. A new belt of brush allowed light to filter through the tree trunks, indicating the forest was giving way. They emerged into a reddish-brown savannah broken up by groves of trees and bushes.

“From my initial perspective, I’d thought we’d see only trees until we reached the extinct volcano. I was wrong. This is much better…or perhaps much worse.”

“I prefer this plain,” Anaena replied. “At least you can see the enemy coming at you.”

“He can see us as well and set his ambush in motion,” Tankar countered. “From now on, we need to be even more cautious.”

The volcanic cone was too far away for them to expect to reach it in daylight. They proceeded cautiously, wasting some time crossing a brook by using a tree trunk as a bridge. The water teemed with carnivorous, ferocious fishlike beings. The many skeletons they spotted at the ford’s basin bore witness to the fishes’ voracious appetite.

At midday the two trekkers stopped at the crest of a hill. Up until then they had spotted only small animals except for one herd of enormous creatures a long distance away to their left. They ate their concentrates sparingly and drank water from the stream that they sterilized first. Anaena had grown feverish and weary, and this worried Tankar. Her head wound was healing well, but he feared possible infection from some other source.

They had not reached their goal by nightfall. Tankar stopped near a ravine and sought shelter but found none, so he built one, interlacing the branches of five intertwined trees. He hesitated to light a fire. In the end, he stacked a large number of twigs and branches at the entrance to the shelter that he could set alight with his fulgurator if need arose. He made a bed for Anaena but lay down first, asking her to wake him as soon as night fell. He quickly fell sound asleep.

When she shook him awake, the night was black. Neither of the two moons had risen yet.

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long!” Tankar scolded.

“You needed to sleep. I kept watch.”

Nothing had happened, after all, and he had to admit she had been brave if not skilled. He asked her how she was feeling.

“Light-headed. I think I’m still feverish.”

He took her pulse at the wrist. He put his other hand on her forehead. He whistled. “Feverish? You’re at least at 39 degrees!” He fumbled through his first aid kit and pulled out a box of syringes. “The label says this should work for you. Give me your arm.”

“I’ll do it myself.”

“Don’t you trust me?” He handed her the syringe.

“I want to see exactly what it is. General antitoxin C-126. That’s all right, then. I was concerned it might be Z-3.”

“The last-chance hoorah drug? We’re not at that point. Try to sleep; you’ll feel better in the morning.”

He kept watch by the enclosure’s opening, his hololight in hand, his fulgurator at the ready. A pearly light from the east filtered through as the silver moon rose from behind the hills. He stared at the moon for a long time while maintaining his vigilance, noting that its face was marked by shadows different from those he knew from the Moon back home. Above the horizon he saw a second, smaller moon chase the first. That satellite was a reddish hue and very far away. The landscape, lit by both sources, was clearly visible: staggered plains, shadowed valleys, slopes and brush that shone in the moonlight like one big wave. A sound came from behind him as Anaena emerged from the shelter. “My fever has gone down.”

Tankar did not reply. He was both troubled and happy to have her at his side. She remained silent for a while. Finally she said, “It’s so beautiful.”

“Yes, but I’d enjoy it more if my launch were nearby, or if I had a few Guard colleagues at my side.”

“May I ask you something?”

“Okay…no!” He rose, gripping the fulgurator tightly in his fist. “Go back inside!”

“What is it? What have you seen?”

“Over there. Behind the trees.”

She squinted out into the night. In the paltry light of the two moons, shadows shifted and moved. There was no doubt something stirred about three hundred meters away. One of the trees trembled as if hit by an enormous bulk.

“Tankar?”

“Yes?”

“What is it?”

“How the hell should I know? Is your fulgurator ready? Be brave. If something attacks, please let me shoot first.”

“I’ll try.”

“Stay here on your own, then. I’m going to hide behind that rock. If the thing comes at me, fire. If it comes for you, don’t shoot unless I shout Fire! I’ll try to get it from the flank.”

He disappeared into the tall grasses. She waited, but nothing moved in the distance. She could not see Tankar, but she was sure he was glued to the rock in order to display a single shadow. She focused on the grove. That’s when the beast appeared.

Several meters high, it resembled a kangaroo. She remembered what Tankar had said: On terra firma there really can be only two types of predator: lion or tyrannosaurus.

The animal closed in taking long strides. It moved without haste but with deliberate speed. The animal’s movements quickly ate up the space between itself and her. She saw a fierce-looking head, a thick neck and a long tail that slapped the grasses rhythmically like a pendulum. Frozen in terror but determined to defend herself, Anaea noticed strange hyper-details such as the reflection of the two moons off the creature’s skin, its paws, now in light, now in the dark. At times the monster would lean forward to sniff the ground. Then it stood to its full six-meter height, its head swiveling from left to right. The moonlight shone on its sharp white fangs. Then the head stopped swinging and the thing looked straight at the enclosure. The animal bounded, its size increasing with each jump as it closed the distance in a rush. Clutching her weapon, the young woman waited to shoot, expecting to be crushed under tons of live flesh.

“Ana, come to me! Now!”

She froze for what seemed like forever before her brain conveyed the message to her legs. She raced to join Tankar behind the rock and felt the earth shudder under the monster’s weight. The beast saw her, emitted a terrifying scream, and then stopped abruptly. A slender blue beam crossed the sky and settled on the beast as it poised to leap forward. The beast’s fall crushed the trees that created their shelter. Trunks collapsed, and the monster’s tail slapped the air over and over again, sending clumps of soil and broken branches flying. Finally, all movement stopped.

Tankar stood at Anaena’s side. “Not too frightened?”

“No,” she lied.

“Well, I was scared for you,” he admitted “If I hadn’t shot he would have killed you. If I had taken a shot he would have crushed you in the fall. We’ll be safer on the mountain tomorrow night.”

They leaned against the rock and waited for dawn. When daylight broke, they were able to examine the beast’s cadaver. “A tyranossauroid. But a hot-blooded one, which means it can move more swiftly, and it has a larger brain, yet I reduced the monster to dust in a stream of ions. It was unlucky to come across the third type of predator: man. The bad news for us is our bag is under its carcass. Do you remember where I left it?”

“That tree over there.” She pointed.

Tankar leaned in. The trunk had shattered about a half meter from the ground and created a corridor where he spotted the bag, still intact. He used a branch to snag it and pull it to him. “That was lucky!”

He used the molecular saw to extract the beast’s two largest fangs. He handed them to Anaena. “A souvenir.”

She shook her head sadly. “Keep them, Tankar. I’m not entitled; they belong to Iolia.”

He offered them to her once again. “I’m not giving them to a woman. I’m giving them to a comrade-in-arms.”

Anaena didn’t understand her sadness at that remark. After all, what did this arrogant planetary mean to her? He wasn’t one of her people. When the Tilsin rescued him, she’d felt the same way about him as the other Stellarans had: why add another useless refugee to their ranks?

She had followed the Teknor’s orders with disgust. She was to gain his trust and get him talking with a view to discovering if the Empire had tracers. As she had done so, she had become aware that Tankar was human like herself, like other planetary types. He had shown himself to be a fearsome, mysterious, harsh and tragically solitary man. Out of human kindness, she had asked him to her home; he might well have tried to take advantage of her, but he did not. He also had spared her life at a time when even the Teknor could not have prevented the punishment she had earned for intervening in a duel.

She remembered the night of the conjunction. Tankar had been so kind, so generous, so well-intentioned. When they danced, she had felt his muscular arms around her. She had gone home that night, her feelings all tangled. For the first time ever, she wondered if she had not been caught in her own trap and fallen in love.

Fall in love with a planetary! It had happened to Orena’s mother, but that case was not a good example. The planetary had not assimilated and, in the end, he had silently, secretly slipped away during a stopover on a human world. As a mixed-race woman, Orena had suffered the consequences and never gained full acceptance. Anaena was disgusted at the notion that her children…whoa! Had she come that far already? Tankar was too much of a man to abandon her, even if he was a planetary….

And then that idiotic burglary. She had searched relentlessly but never discovered who had done it. Orena? Why? For her advantists? If those guys had the plans, they would have used them immediately and to their advantage. Anaena decided the thief – or thieves – might have come from a small gang of malcontents playing out a pointless plot. The Teknor had worked ceaselessly to find out what had happened, but the blueprints had vanished without a trace. They might well be on the Frank with the thieves.

And so, Tankar had sought asylum with the Pilgrims. At first she had awaited his inevitable return, but he never showed up. She had written him but received no reply. Then people told her he was spending time with Iolia, that sorry-looking nobody in a gray dress, and she had begun to worry. Tankar’s affair with Orena or with any other Stellaran woman did not bother her. She knew them and knew how much more interesting she was. Those women would get bored quickly with this strong foreigner, but Iolia was a different story altogether.

Anaena considered the young Pilgrim pale and lacking attractive features, but she knew the girl had qualities that would appeal to a man untethered, in turmoil. She was patient, kind, maternal even. Ana had tried to visit Tankar, but he had refused to see her. Now Anaena had him all to herself, and she knew their moment had come and gone. If he had promised himself to Iolia, he would never leave her. And Anaena was fairly sure he had made a commitment.

If we get out of here alive and he marries Iolia, I will have to go to another city-state. It would be too painful to know that Tankar is behind only a few sheets of metal, but I can’t get to him.

She watched him. He was unshaven with a three-days shadow, torn clothes and messy hair. She could see him in the half-light of the pink horizon. He was both massive and slim. She wanted to run to him, to snuggle up against him, to confess her love and to tell him nothing else mattered. Instead, she spoke in a clear and neutral voice. “When do we leave here?”

“Right now.”

It took them a long time to cross the entire plain only to arrive at a chaotic terrain covered in ravines and shattered blocks of stone. They would have to cross it to reach the extinct volcano. Tankar was ever more cautious. Anything might be lurking behind those rocks, but initially they saw only small, tame herbivores. Still, they nearly died.

Tankar had remained behind to tighten the straps of his bag. Anaena took a few steps alone and stopped to examine an interesting section of land, a few square meters peppered with foot-high cones. The cones, all the same size and the same shade of pale brown as the clay beneath, were truncated with a circular opening at the top. She kicked one, and found it to be as hard as metal. It rang hollow.

“Don’t touch those!” Tankar’s yell came too late. By kicking the cone she had busted the thin shell. Buzzing loudly, garbed in a flutter of see-through wings, an insect shot straight up. The other cones began to vomit out distended shapes flying too quickly to be seen clearly. Anaena ran to Tankar and suddenly felt her shoulder burn. She squashed the thing that stung her. Tankar leaped to her side with his fulgurator at its highest setting. His hand frantically swept the air. In the blueish hue of the new day’s light, little red stars danced.

“Let me see your shoulder! Now!”

He yanked at her shirt, which she pulled over her breast. A red mark had spread quickly within an inflamed, swollen circle on her tender skin. He pulled out an antitoxin syringe and injected her.

“Damn, I hope this works. You played a dangerous game!”

“Tankar!” Ana warned.

He turned around. As the insects emerged from a giant nest hidden behind an enormous boulder, they blackened the sky. Tankar handed Anaena the second fulgurator.

“Keep watch on the right. I’ll take the left.”

For several long minutes, they fought off the droves of the winged enemy. One stung Tankar and two more struck Anaena.

When the insects gave up the fight, Tankar saw there were only two anti-poison syringes left in the first aid kit. He pricked her with both and, his back turned, pretended to inject himself.

“What demon possessed you? Don’t they teach you anything on the Tilsin?” he demanded furiously. “We have similar things on Earth. We call them hornets, and a few stings will kill a person as easily as a bullet. Didn’t you know not to touch anything you’ve not seen before?”

Her body ached all over. And all she could think was that he had picked a really lousy time for the health and safety lecture.

“Let’s go,” he ordered. “We need to keep going while we still can. Heaven knows if we’ll even be able to move in a few minutes.”

He stopped and collected one dead insect that was not fully burned. It was about four centimeters long with four wings, eight legs and a barbed pin jutting out from a pointy stomach.

Anaena spoke as if to explain her actions. “We’ve never seen anything that looks like this.”

“And we’ve never seen anything on the Tilsin that looks like a snake, but anything can happen in a new world.” He bit his lips as, all of a sudden, a sharp pain caused him to cry out. “Run!”

They aimed for the slope of the dormant volcano, now within their line of sight. Anaena was surprised to find herself sometimes in the lead. Tankar, in agony, was struggling, hunched forward as he moved. But he was stung only once, she thought. She looked closely and saw that his face was red and bathed in sweat.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, Anaena. Keep moving.”

He was in agony all over. Through a reddish fog, he could see the young woman walking ahead of him. His own legs were slack and slow to respond because he could not feel the ground. His head buzzed, he was dizzy, and he suspected his death was imminent. He stopped and crumpled to the ground. With a shout, Anaena tried to pick him up.

“It’s over for me, I think.” He spoke with difficulty. “Take the bag. Climb onto the volcano, light a fire as a signal. Maybe they….”

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

“Maybe I’ll feel better later. I’ll catch up with you. Leave the red fulgurator with me.” He knew it was low on ammunition.

“Tankar, this is all my fault.”

“It’s nothing.” He spoke softly. “Comes with the job….” His head rolled onto his chest, and he stopped moving.

She hesitated for a time in a whirlwind of anguish and guilt. She had killed him through sheer stupidity. In desperation, she rifled through the first aid kit and blanched at the sight of the empty antivenom compartment: all three doses were gone.

He gave me all three, she realized. Deeply shaken, she looked at him. His staccato breathing came heavily. What could she do? she asked herself. What could she do? She rummaged through the bag again and found some stimulol.

She injected Tankar with two doses and huddled next to him in despair. She wondered what effect the insect poison might have and looked at her own body for clues. There was phantom pain in all of her muscles that made her move awkwardly and out of synch. Did the insects carry a poison that attacked the whole nervous system?

Far away, she saw an unusual dark stain in the sky near the horizon that glittered for a moment as it moved in the sunlight. A launch? A rescue vehicle? She stripped off her clothing and waved it at the sky. Whatever it was continued moving in the same direction and disappeared behind the mountaintops.

They didn’t see me.

She waited, but Tankar did not move at all. She fashioned a roof from pieces of her clothing and branches to shield them from the sun. The day slipped away. Tankar was not worse, but he had not regained consciousness. His pulse alternated between fast and slow while his mouth moved at times but emitted only unintelligible mumbles. She built a low wall around Tankar by rolling some large stones together, after checking nothing lay under them. She considered adding flat stones on top, but superstition got the better of her. It would have looked too much like a tomb.

The sun set in the west, and that brought cooler air. She collected dry wood and arranged a circle of small fires. She heard a very soft sound. Tankar was speaking haltingly. She felt a burst of joy. He was getting better! But then despair took hold again. He was delirious.

His mumblings were audible. “No, don’t kill him…. I will never…. I could never do that, sergeant…. I can’t jump that far…. Where are you, Mommy? …I didn’t know how hard it was to kill a man who’s looking at you…. The sole survivor is just a cat…. Come here, kitty…. We are poised for the greatest glory of the Empire…. Iolia, Iolia, I’m not worthy of you…. I have blood on my hands, Iolia…. It’s blood on my hands…. Red, red like Anaena’s hair…. Iolia, she stole my blueprints…. I love her…but there’s blood on her head…. Where are you Anaena? …I gave you the syringes….”

She touched his burning-hot forehead. “I’m here, Tankar, I’m right here with you.”

He shook his head. “Don’t stay. Climb the mountain, send signals. No, don’t, they might come and bomb everything. The Empire! …I killed everything…. They’re here but their faces are gone….”

He shuddered and tried to stand but fell heavily to the ground. She wrung her hands, powerless to help him.

He sank into a torpid state. Night fell, and she thought back to the previous evening as a sort of paradise lost. At that time, Tankar stood tall and strong as both her shield and her source of hope. Cold and sick with exhaustion and worry she put her clothing back on and forced herself to eat.

The early part of the night remained calm. She and Tankar were on high ground next to rich savannah sparsely dotted with tufts of grass and shrubs that would have no appeal for herbivores and, by extension, carnivores. But after the two moons rose, she heard the sounds of predators. The noise filtered through the darkness as it grew closer. She sat up, one fulgurator in her fist, the other on her belt.

With a sound of rustling branches, an animal burst through the shrubbery. She had time to see a graceful shape moving in agile bounds.

The prey, she thought. The hunters will follow soon.

They came shortly after, appearing as fast-moving, shallow shadows, their movement a combination of crawling and running. She counted 20, all of which ignored her. She sat down with a sigh of relief and struggled to stay awake. She wondered if she should not just take a stimulol but opted instead to save the drug for Tankar and began to pace back and forth in the humid evening.

The screeching started up again, not far away. The prey must have escaped, so the hunters were returning to the form they’d spotted earlier. Anaena started a fire with the fulgurator.

The beasts stopped at a respectful distance, and she got a good look at them. They were about two meters long, low on their paws, rocket-shaped, covered in black fur with thick tails. Their round heads ended in a slender muzzle similar to those of a species of crocodile on Earth, split in half by a mouth with long reptilian fangs.

The leader, also the largest of the pack, slowly approached Anaena, and she stood ready to shoot. Revealing its white throat, the animal stopped a few meters from the flames and howled for a long time. From a distance, sounds echoed in response. The beast howled again, and Anaena shot. No sooner had the beast fallen to the ground than the others jumped in and devoured it in an orgy of claws and jaws. To hold them off, she shot twice again and hit two of the others, but reinforcements, hot on the heels of the first arrivals, poured in from the bushes. Before she knew it, more than a hundred animals had formed a circle around her. Their fangs shone in the reddish reflections, and their tails slapped the ground as they gained courage. The pack teased her by moving backward, forward, and sideways, taking little jumps. As long as the flames clearly burned, she was relatively safe. After that…. The irony was that the animals’ victory might prove short-lived as the proteins in her and Tankar’s bodies would likely kill them anyway.

She picked bits from her meager supply of firewood – silently scolding herself for not collecting more – and fueled the dying fire with a big branch. Sparks flew as the fire crackled and grew. The beast closest to pouncing held off. She could have shot at them until she ran out of ammunition but opted not to. What would happen if she did not kill them all? And what would happen the next day, if there were to be a next day? She would still have a chance to kill them when the wood ran out. If she could just hang on until dawn, the beasts might well be nocturnal as she and Tankar had spotted only herbivores during daylight.

She thought long and hard and eventually came up with an idea. The bushes were dry, and she might be able to chase the enemy away with fire. She picked up a brand and threw it, but it didn’t go far enough before dying out. But, with a second try, she rejoiced as she saw the fire crawl the length of a tuft of grass and then snake its way up the branches. Very soon the fire blazed like a torch, but her success almost caused her downfall.

Caught between the two blazes, the beasts chose the smaller one, and 10 or so animals rushed to attack. She killed several of them, but two bounded over the hearth at the entrance to the enclosure. She stepped back, stumbled on the stone wall, and fell. One of the beasts jumped over her head, just missing her, and landed in the flames before fleeing, howling. She stood right back up and shot the other one.

Little by little, her stock of flammables dwindled, and dawn still lay many hours away. Save for a miracle, she was out of luck. Even more painful than the thought of her own imminent demise was the knowledge that she had failed to protect Tankar.

Two of the fires had dimmed to collections of embers, and soon the beasts would breach the protective circle. White dust built up to cover the firebrands; the fires no longer roared. The impatient animals approached and, in a gesture of defiance, lay down right next to the embers as if enjoying the warmth. One animal yawned, opening the big gash of its black mouth in stages.

“Anaena, the grenades!”

She jumped at the sound of Tankar’s voice and turned around. He was leaning against the stone wall. Why had she not thought of the grenades? She had seen them at the bottom of their bag!

“Come here,” he urged. “Throw one into the pack. I’m not strong enough. As soon as you’re done, flatten your body against the wall.”

She took the item and weighed it in her hand, yanked off the pin and threw it, then buried herself in Tankar’s arms. The violence of the explosion surprised her as sods of dirt and pebbles flew around their heads. Something landed with a thud at her feet, a handful of flesh stuck to a clump of fur. She bounded upright.

The beasts fled in a rout. The ground where the grenade had landed lay covered in mangled black shapes, some of which still moved a little. She took a second grenade and threw it as far as she could. This time she simply squatted and watched the purple flame. Tankar gently pulled her back.

“You idiot, do you want the shrapnel to kill you?” As if to make the young man’s point, a metal fragment ricocheted, making a whining sound before bouncing off into the distance.

“They’re leaving!” She danced to celebrate her victory and Tankar’s return to life. Then she crumpled onto a large boulder and burst into loud sobs. She wept violently but briefly and soon turned her attention back to her companion.

“How do you feel?”

“Weak,” he admitted. “Aside from that, I’m fine, just a bit of cramping in my legs. What about you?”

“Me? I feel great! Oh, Tankar…if you had died…and you gave me all the serum, as well. Why did you do that?”

“When you’re in the Guards and a comrade is wounded, he comes first. In jeopardy such as this, a woman is like an injured person.”

“Noble of you,” she acknowledged, annoyed, “but you know I’ve already explored several planets, even if I did mess up last night. Do you think your little Iolia—” She sounded hurt.

“She’s not my Iolia, and I have no doubt about your abilities. I’m very grateful to you for defending me, even though it was risky. Iolia would have done the same thing, perhaps less enthusiastically. Help me stand, I’m hungry.”

“Here’s what’s left of the provisions. Don’t worry about me, I’ve eaten. What are we going to do when we run out of food, Tankar?”

“Well, we can try the local meat dishes, or fruit, if we find any. Not sure what the outcome will be.”

“When I think of all the analytics stuff on our launch vessel… I think I spotted one flying low far away. I signaled, but they didn’t see me.”

“They’ll come back, I’m sure. The sooner we set up a flare or something like it on this mountain, the better. Help me walk, please.”

He took a few baby steps, leaning on her, then stopped, exhausted. “You go on ahead.”

“I can’t leave you alone!”

“I won’t be in much danger in daylight. I’ll follow you in stages. I don’t know what kind of nasty poison those insects secreted, but I feel as if I’ve lost half my blood.” He turned and asked, “Where are the weapons?”

She handed him the fulgurators, which he examined in the light of the dying fire. He made a face. “One still has two charges, the other has six. We really need help, or I’m going to have to craft a bow and arrows.”

They set out together at first light. Walking was painful for Tankar but, to his surprise and delight, the exhaustion seemed to ebb rather than increase as they made tracks. He did, however, send Anaena ahead. He did not catch up to her until the afternoon. The slopes on the old volcano were gentle, but they were covered in boulders and brush.

They set up camp for the night in a cave-like shelter within an eroded boulder. Its roof was a slab of hardened lava. Here and there they saw shiny debris of glassy volcanic rock. “Well, I have plenty of time to make arrows if we don’t get rescued soon enough,” he joked. “Once night falls, light a fire.”

They had already gathered a big stack of brush and small trees. The flames danced gaily into the night.

“I’m feeling positive now, Anaena. I remember telling the Patriarch that I’d start exploring directly beneath the position of the Tilsin. That means that the surface to be combed is fairly small, and your sighting of a launch suggests that they’re surveilling close to where we are.”

Anaena asked quietly, “Are you in love with Iolia?”

Tankar paused. “I don’t know. I think so.”

“Have you pledged yourself to her?” Anaena persisted.

“No, why?”

“Nothing, just curious. What about Orena?”

“I don’t think I ever loved her, but I needed someone…a friend. I amused her, and she gave me moral support. We made our peace.”

They didn’t speak for a while. “I’ll stand watch first,” Tankar announced. “Get some sleep.”

“No,” Anaena refused. “It’s my turn. Besides, I’m not as exhausted as you are.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I feel weary.” He sat down, his back against a boulder. Suddenly a flash of light took him by surprise. It scrolled down from the sky and swept across the slope, then settled on him. “Anaena! The launch! Look! They’re here!”

She was by his side within seconds. She jumped into his arms on impulse and kissed him passionately. He pulled away gently. A small black launch landed on the platform. “It’s your buddies, the Pilgrims,” she murmured.

The door opened and a petite figure hopped out and ran toward them, face lit by the fire. Iolia raced to Tankar.

“I prayed and prayed we would find you. I was just about to return to camp when I spotted your fire.” Tears rolled down Iolia’s face, and she looked ready to faint. She continued, “I have looked and looked for you. I couldn’t find a trace of wreckage.”

“The eruption must have swallowed up the crash site,” Tankar explained.

“How did two expedition vehicles have accidents at the exact same place?”

He gave her the short version.

Iolia turned to Anaena, her eyes flashing with fury. “So he almost died because of you?”

“Iolia, she’s the one who saved my life,” Tankar intervened.

“Right. And how many times did you save hers?”

He stood between the two women. He had no intention of losing either woman’s friendship.

“Let’s not start this. It’ll only cause us to fight. Take Anaena on board your ship, drop her at the camp and come back for me.”

“No, you first. She can wait.”

“This is a dangerous place for a young woman.”

“You’ve barely gotten over being ill,” Iolia objected.

“All right,” Tankar sighed. “I’m familiar with this type of vessel. If we sit snugly it can carry all three of us especially if the camp is not too far.”

“Three hundred kilometers.”

“Let’s go.”

“We’re not going anywhere until she and I set things straight,” Iolia declared. She turned to Anaena. “Thank you for helping Tankar. That said, I want you to know that he will be marrying me. Soon.”

Anaena turned to Tankar. “You told me you hadn’t pledged yourself to her….”

“I haven’t officially, Ana, but….” He was too embarrassed to speak further.

The Stellaran filled the silence. “Tankar was convinced that I’d stolen the tracer blueprints, so he came to you by default. Now that he knows he was wrong, everything changes. Get it? He doesn’t love you.” She tossed her tangled red hair. “He told me so.”

Iolia moaned like a wounded animal. “Is that true, Tankar? You don’t love me?”

“Enough,” he roared. “No, I said nothing of the kind to Anaena. I did tell her we were going to get married.”

“You didn’t sound happy about it,” she reminded him. “You said it was too late to….”

“May the Devil toss you both into space! I refuse to let you fight over me. Does my opinion matter in all of this? Maybe I love you both or maybe neither one of you. I’m not sure. I’m exhausted, and if this continues there will nothing left for you two to fight over.” He slipped to the ground.

“Please forgive me, Tankar,” Iolia begged. “Come. Let me help you into the launch.”

Supported by both women, he tumbled into the vessel and immediately fell asleep.

He woke up stretched out on a bed. The curved pale green plastic arc of the ceiling looked like metal. Curious, he sat up halfway in the large tent and, through the open flap, saw trees, a slope, a clear space, and monitors at work. Men passed in front of the opening without stopping. Tankar dressed and went outside where he realized it was still early in the day as the sun was barely rising over the eastern hills.

“Did I sleep for only a short time? I feel so rested.”

A man approached and Tankar realized he was a medic from the Tilsin. “How are you feeling? You were asleep for three days.”

“Three days!”

“You were worn out, but we did help you out with hypnosis. Sleep was what you needed most.”

“Anaena?”

“She’s not awake yet.”

Still feeling weak, he took a seat on a tree trunk. Aside from the doctor, the only people he could see were dressed in standard severe Pilgrim clothing. So even on the planet surface the people remained in voluntary separation, he wondered. If so, why was the doctor here? The Menians had plenty of competent doctors of their own.

The man seemed to guess his thoughts. “I’m here at the request of the Teknor and the Patriarch, but I’m not here to treat you; my colleagues took good care of you. I’m here to find out how you are. Tan Ekator wants to see you as soon as possible.”

“Where is he?”

“At our camp, about two hundred kilometers from here, near the volcano.”

The doctor left, and Tankar lost himself in his thoughts. He was troubled and did not know what to do. The future looked complicated. Did he love Anaena? Iolia? Or, as he’d said at the shelter, did he love them both? He didn’t know. During his long stay in the Pilgrim compound, the redheaded Stellaran had slowly faded from his memory, or so he’d thought. But the past few days in her company, facing a perilous unknown world together, had shown him he’d not forgotten her at all. And yet, there was Iolia.

Guards were not encouraged to think introspectively. While he had done some soul-searching since taking shelter among the Pilgrims, what he really wanted remained unclear. Part of him wished for a quiet life with Iolia that would, of course, be broken up by adventures. He knew she would be a dependable, fresh and tender companion.

And yet, the other part of him, the part his former Guard comrades had nicknamed Tankar the Devil, leaned toward Anaena. Life with her would be an eternal battleground; clashes of will every day, but what a life it would be! Still in the habit of making quick, irreversible decisions, he suffered and blamed both women.

The ideal would be to have Anaena for the rough times and Iolia for the peaceful times, but he knew that was a self-serving fantasy. His mind focused on practical matters.

What would he do on his return to the Tilsin? He could, of course, stay on with the Pilgrims. In that case, he would have to marry Iolia as he had more or less sworn to do. Or he could return to his small apartment, which Anaena told him was still his. His anger over the blueprint business had subsided. After his sojourn among the Pilgrims, he would be welcome once again. If worse came to worst, he could redraft the blueprints and hand them directly to the Teknor.

But had he ever really been accepted? During the conjunction, maybe. On the other hand, were he to marry Anaena…. He had made no decision by the time the woman in question appeared. Aside from a faint scar on her forehead, she bore no traces of the hardships they had shared. She was once again herself: the Teknor’s niece, the anti-Mpfifi boss. She came to him smiling, and he rose to greet her.

“So, Tankar, how are you?”

“Good, how about you?”

“Perfect. I’m even ready to begin all over again.”

Her boasting annoyed him. “So…ready to start kicking the nests…?” he teased.

“How many times are you going to remind me about that?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Ana. Everybody makes mistakes; the key is not to make the same one twice.”

She smiled again, looking reassured. “It was my first mistake on a planet.”

“It’s tricky to make the same mistake twice. Enough. You’re returning to camp, I imagine?”

“Yes. And so will you.”

“I haven’t made up my mind about that.”

Anaena scoffed. “Oh, come on! This self-imposed exile is ridiculous. I promise you nobody on our end will bother you again; I’ll make sure of it. And I want you by my side at all times.”

“As to the first part of your plan, I can defend myself. As to the second, I haven’t made up my mind about that either.”

“We need you,” she insisted. “Tan wants to put you in charge of defense.”

“Would I have to leave the compound to do that?” he asked.

“Our men will struggle to take orders from a Pilgrim,” she replied impatiently.

“I’m not a Pilgrim. And I suspect they’d struggle even more with orders from a planetary.”

“You won’t be a planetary once you hand over the blueprints!”

“Don’t you already have them?” he demanded sarcastically.

“I told you we didn’t steal the blueprints! I said that when I thought we were staring death in the face and had no reason to lie. For the last time, I’m telling you that we didn’t take them.” Her voice dropped as she turned red with fury.

“So be it. But none of that means I have to leave the compound. I feel more comfortable there than I do among your people, Ana. Your society is alien to me.”

“And the society of half monks isn’t alien? Tankar of the Guards with the Pilgrims, ha! Just say out loud you’re not in love with me.”

“I don’t know. I did love you, the evening of the conjunction. But so much has happened since….”

“Yes. The thing in the gray dress happened. Too-perfect-to-be-real Iolia. The filthy little Pilgrim. Tankar the hero seduced by a girl who knows only her prayers!”

“Shut up!” he hissed. “You’re in no position to judge her. Don’t forget she saved our lives.”

“From a comfortable seat on a launch.”

“After 30 hours of uninterrupted searching. Thirty hours with no sleep, almost going blind, hunting through bushes, mountains and clearings.”

“I would’ve done the same thing! And I watched over you when the beasts surrounded us.”

“I know that!”

“You saved me twice,” she said in a gentler tone. “I know that, and I’ll never forget it. Don’t you see that all of this has created unbreakable bonds between us? Imagine all the things we could accomplish together. The war against the Mpfifis will heat up, and you can provide invaluable assistance. You might become Teknor in a few years. The city-states will have to co-operate closely among themselves, and we’ll need a leader who’s a man of resolve and of skill, one who is used to giving orders. You could be that man, Tankar. You could command all of the People of the Stars.”

“Have you ever asked yourself if I might want such a thing?” He also spoke quietly. “I don’t hold you all in contempt by any means. But I’m a planetary. I love space, but I was born on the Earth, not among the stars. Sometimes I need to feel earth under my feet, the sky over my head, the wind, the clouds, the grass between my toes.”

“I didn’t know you could be so lyrical,” she sneered. “What do you have under your feet right now? No grass, of course, since the Pilgrims razed it all to land their craft, but it is earth. What would stop you from coming here when the mood took you? There are a lot of planets out there.”

“What do you see in me, Ana?” He paused and waited for an answer that didn’t come. “A man as he really is? An image that you created of someone larger than life? I was trained to be a soldier, but I’m no strategic mastermind. Do you see me as someone who can achieve your dream of power? What am I to you, really? A possible life partner? Or a tool to gain power for yourself? I’m sick and tired of all this back and forth. Give us the tracers, Tankar. Train the militias, Tankar. Use me as your pedestal, Tankar. I’ve had enough.”

“We rescued you!”

“When I was falling through space, yes. But that’s not really how it was. You picked me up as a means to an end. The only people who have asked absolutely nothing of me are the Pilgrims who haven’t even tried to convert me.”

“Oh, no, no, no. They’re far more subtle than that. Let’s marry him off to one of our girls, and after that….”

“Stop it! I really don’t want to fight with you. Let me think. But know that if I come back to you, I won’t come as a tool. Not for you. Not for anyone.”

Anaena’s tone turned cold. “Got it. Go back to your little imbecile. You may be right, after all. I’d really like to see what happens when a planetary mates with a Pilgrim girl.”

He grabbed her arm. “You don’t even know what you’re saying. If you were a man….”

“Let go of me!” Her eyes sparkled and narrowed with malice. “Your girlfriend’s here. Go to her.”

She escaped his grip and walked to Iolia, blocking her path. Tankar froze. He knew they briefly exchanged words before he heard a dry slap. Anaena turned on her heel and strode off toward a waiting copter. He ran to Iolia who stood in a daze massaging her reddened cheek.

“Why did she do that, Tankar?”

“It’s nothing, Iolia, nothing at all.” He took her in his arms, feeling her young body under the rough gray tunic, and a wave of tenderness overtook him. “Will you marry me, Iolia?”

She trembled. “Yes, Tankar,” she whispered.