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  Meanwhile, living in the same house with her hadn't always been the most comfortable thing in the world. She was too good-looking.

  Deneen considered her pretty special too-had even asked me once if I'd ever thought of Jenoor as a future wife. When I admitted I had, she said she was glad to see her brother showing good taste. Deneen was more critical than our parents about whom I took out. She didn't issue her seal of approval very often, even though they were just dates. And as for getting serious-she said that considering the kind of future I could expect, I needed "a wife of similar purposes and comparable ability."

  She was right, of course. But how could we know for sure what someone's purpose was-one of our friends at school for example. I was sure no one there knew ours.

  At the floater we sat around or napped for a couple of hours, until it got dark. I thought a little about Lizard Island. That was our family name for it; all the chart said was "Great Central Shoal," and showed a string of dots along it to indicate little islands. Lizard was inconspicuous, all right. I wondered what it would be like in a hurricane; hopefully I'd never find out.

  I was in the pilot's seat. Piet sat in the seat next to mine. He was like dad-ready to let me handle things myself if it was something I could.

  "Let's go," I said. I keyed the Lizard Island coordinates into the computer, and we took off. At 3,000 feet, I put her on automatic pilot and we headed southeast for the broad, shallow Entrilias Sea, keeping track of the radio and the traffic monitor, which was on high sensitivity.

  The knot was gone from my gut. For whatever reason, I felt as if everything was going to come out all right.

  TWO

  The floater didn't have an infrascanner-it wasn't intended for anything more than family-type use-but the stars give more than enough light to see Lizard Island when you're right above it at 200 feet. It appeared to be about two hundred yards long and half as wide, but it wasn't really, because part of what looked like island was a fringe of mangrove trees that stood in the water around its edges.

  "It's little, isn't it," Jenoor said.

  "Small enough that no one pays any attention to it," I answered. "Small and out of the way. It's one of the biggest in a string of low islands like this, and they're a navigation hazard-the high points of a long shoal-so ships stay well away."

  "How do we land?" asked Tarel.

  "Carefully and by daylight. There's no clearing, so we'll have to slip down between trees."

  I could feel that Tarel and Jenoor had more questions but were holding off, hoping someone else would ask them. Questions like, how do we live down there? Deneen knew, of course. Our family had been here once before, not long after we'd gotten back from Fanglith, establishing a refuge in case we ever needed one. We'd stayed for several days, getting a feel for what it would take to live there.

  We definitely hadn't set up a vacation home or anything like that, but we'd hidden a plastite chest with a shovel, hammocks, fishing Sines, hooks and spears, a pair of books on edible fish and plants of the Entrih'as region, a little water still and a good-sized pail, a couple of insect repellent-field generators, a pint-size geogravitic power tap (very expensive), and Rigidite plastic sheeting that was highly flexible to start with but would get semi-stiff once it was wetted. There was also a small beam saw.

  Nearby we'd buried a lightweight skiff about eight feet long and three feet wide, for fishing.

  Meanwhile we had an hour or so before dawn-longer than that before it would be light enough to land-so I got in back to catch a nap. I hadn't been sleepy, so I'd stood pilot watch most of the way. I still didn't feel sleepy, but I was willing to bet I'd go to sleep, once I lay down.

  I was right. I lay down and closed my eyes, and it seemed like only a minute later when I woke up. We were moving, settling downward. It was already light, almost sunup, and Deneen was at the controls. Tree-tops were rising past the windows. A couple of light thumps and brushing sounds marked our passage through their branches; then there was one last little bump and we were on the ground. Everyone else piled out, but I closed my eyes again, "just for a few minutes." When I opened them next time, the chest had been uncovered and the shelter built. I got out of the floater all sleepy-eyed, and Deneen looked at me.

  "Well, brother mine," she said, and handed me the shovel. "You're just in time to dig up the boat for us."

  After I'd dug the boat up, I took the beam saw and cut a little canal through the mangrove prop roots so she could be floated out to open water. The beam saw wouldn't cut under more than a quarter inch of water, so Piet and Tarel and I had to use our heavy survival knives for a lot of it. It was slow hard work, and I was disgusted before we were even close to finished. Then Deneen and Piet went fishing. Fishing was going to be very important. The only food we'd brought with us was the remains of the burrow pig, and all we'd find on the island, I knew, was a little fruit, a lot of little lizards, and insects that were mostly too small for food.

  With Piet and Deneen off in the boat, that left me to finish setting up camp with Tarel and Jenoor. Deneen had done well as far as she'd gone. The shelter was a large lean-to, and she'd laid a pole on its sloping roof to form a sort of groove before splashing water on the Rigidite to harden it. This would gather the rain, which would run into the plastite chest-our cistern-which we could cover when it wasn't raining, to keep out the bugs. If it rained. By the looks of things, this was the dry season.

  Meanwhile, if dad and mom arrived, they'd never be able to bring the cutter down through the tiny gap Deneen had coaxed the floater through. Correction, I told myself-not if, when. When they arrived. I might as well cultivate a positive attitude, But it didn't feel very real to me. When, if, whatever, I thought. Be prepared. I needed to fell a couple or three trees, but not where they could fall on the shelter or where the debris would be a problem. Or where our camp could be spotted through the little hole they'd leave.

  It wasn't as if I had any reason to expect someone to scrutinize this tiny islet in the middle of the Entrilias, but time was one thing it looked like we had lots of, and it made no sense to skip simple precautions.

  So with the beam saw I lopped off a couple of stout saplings and sharpened an end on each, for pushing with. Then I picked trees to cut down-three of them in a row that would leave a thin, inconspicuous gap long enough for the cutter. The forest was thick enough that a tree cut from the stump would tend to hang up in other trees instead of falling, so I had had to shop around a little for one that looked as if it would go all the way down. After seeing which way it leaned, I had Tarel and Jenoor put their push poles against it on the

  16

  opposite side, digging the points through the mass of tough vines that coated the bark. Then I cut it with the beam saw, and when it started to fail, they both pushed as hard as they could. Brushing through surrounding branches, it picked up momentum and smashed to the ground.

  The second and third trees were simpler. Each leaned toward the opening made by felling the one before, so there was a good place for them to fall. When all three were down, I cut them into pieces small enough that we could move them. They weren't what you'd think of as big trees; the soil here was too sandy and infertile, But before we were done dragging and throwing the pieces out of the way, all three of us were soaked with sweat, and I knew we'd be stiff in the morning.

  It helped that Tarel was as strong as he was. He wasn't much more than average height, but he was broad and chunky. Overweight, actually-even after three weeks of survival training had melted off maybe twelve or fifteen pounds. He was one of those people who tend to be naturally, genetically fat. I knew for sure he wasn't a big eater. But he was one of the strongest kids I've ever seen-quite a lot stronger than me-and I'd been one of the strongest guys in school when I'd graduated this past spring.

  After we'd gotten a landing place ready, I set up the geogravitic power tap for our insect repellent field and, if necessary, our water still. When Deneen and Piet came back, an hour after we were done, I showe
d them what we'd accomplished. Meanwhile they hadn't had a lot of luck fishing, but the two edible fish they'd caught were big enough to feed all of us, including Bubba.

  It looked to me as if our problem on Lizard Island was going to be mostly a matter of coping with monotony.

  THREE

  I was right about the monotony, but somehow it wasn't that unpleasant. Two of us would go out in the skiff each day to fish, and stay out till we had enough. It could take most of the day, or only a few minutes, but commonly it took less than an hour. A couple of times, early on, we got nothing, but as we learned the fishes' feeding habits, it went a lot better.

  Besides fishing, there were just two other jobs: Every hour or two, someone had to fetch a pail of sea water and pour it in the still. Yes, this was the dry season, The other job was gathering what fruit there was. Most of the time, there was nothing that needed doing.

  The food was the worst part, and even that we got used to. We ate our fish raw to get the maximum vitamins from them, because there wasn't much edible fruit in the dry season. Most of the plants timed their fruiting to take advantage of the rains. Bubba at least got a little variety by eating lizards. The rest of us left the lizards alone. They were too small and bony, and too hard to skin, to be worth it for humans. Bubba, on the other hand, ate skin and all. I suppose his stomach acid dissolved the bones.

  Somehow or other, it wasn't as bad as it sounds-not the boredom or the food.

  To pass time, we drilled hand-foot art-both the combat and gymnastic parts of it. Piet wasn't willing to be the drill instructor-he said Deneen should be, that her technique was amazingly good, I'd known she was good, I just hadn't realized how good. We'd been trained in it since we were little kids, one reason we're both such good all-round athletes.

  Tarel and Jenoor had never heard of hand-foot art till they'd come to live with us. It's been illegal, and pretty much a secret practice, most of the time for a thousand years or more. As a result, on most worlds, people didn't know there was such a thing, Jenoor had picked it up fast; like Deneen, she was a natural athlete. Tarel was slower at learning things that took coordination, and the necessary flexibility had come slowly for him too. Now, though, with more time to work on it, he was starting to get good enough to really feel some mastery, and with confidence, his movements became surprisingly quick. Combine that with his strength, and he was turning into someone you'd do best not to fight with. He was actually getting lean, too, partly from the food.

  He was still very mild-mannered. I wasn't sure what it would take to make him violent, but there was bound to be something.

  You couldn't practice hand-foot art all day, of course; it was too strenuous. Two sessions a day, about an hour each, was plenty, so the first month was about the longest, slowest one I'd ever experienced till then. The closest thing to it had been traveling to Fanglith two years earlier. That had been fifty-seven days of reading and sleeping. Here we didn't dare use the floater's computer for recreational reading because we needed to conserve the fuel cell. For some reason known only to Consolidated Floaters Corporation, computer operation required that the whole system be on-at least on idle. And, of course, floaters don't have the kind of fuel slugs that cutters do.

  We got so we slept a lot.

  I thought about Jenoor more than I should have. Not that I got fixated on her or anything, but I couldn't help thinking, now and then. We fished together a lot, we were always around one another, and no one wore much in the way of clothes. It was generally hot, and a great chance to get a tan. A couple of times I was pretty close to making a pass at her, but managed not to.

  Partly, I was afraid she'd say yes. And if we got something going, no way could we keep it secret, which Tarel might resent, and maybe Deneen-just what we didn't need in exile on a tiny little island. And I was going on nineteen, with responsibility to more than my own druthers.

  But partly, maybe I was afraid she'd say no. From what I'd read about Tris Gebleu in social geography, people there took a lot of things more seriously than we did, including sex, and I didn't want her to think I was some kind of horny creep.

  Anyway I kept it cool.

  It helped that she'd told me once I was like an older brother to her. She and I had gotten along really well from the time they'd come to live with us; I'd always enjoyed having her in the family.

  Generally the five of us would sit around in the evening and talk while it was getting dark. One of the topics was what we'd do when dad and mom arrived and we left Evdash. That was always the stated situation-when mom and dad arrived. But beneath it was the unspoken if-if they arrived.

  We'd all listened in on discussions between mom and dad and Piet about what they might do when, someday, the Empire started taking over the colony worlds. They would check out the more remote of the so-called "lost" colonies, in what was referred to as "the deep outback" -worlds scattered thinly around the fringes of known space. The idea was to find the best ones to establish hidden rebel bases on. And there was always the implication that the rest of us would be part of it if we wanted to.

  One of the problems would be to get the lost-world locals interested. Generally they wanted nothing to do with off-worlders, beyond maybe getting replacements or parts for some equipment they couldn't make locally. In the deep outback, people were self-reliant and not much interested in off-world problems-Until maybe those problems became theirs, too.

  They were referred to as "lost" colonies because ships seldom went there, and mostly they had no ships of their own. Some of them may not have been visited more than once a generation. They were so poor economically, and so far from civilization and trade routes, that the Federation had been no more interested in them than they were in the Federation.

  So they'd have little to contribute to the Imperial treasury or trade, and hopefully the Empire would decide to ignore them. Or some of them, anyway. The cost/benefit ratio of taking them over and controlling them would be high, and the Empire was bound to have troubles closer to home.

  Of course, we couldn't be sure that that's how the Empire would look at it.

  On Lizard Island, about the first thing we did each evening was listen to a newscast on the floater radio- the only time we turned it on. It was always in Standard. After a couple of weeks, a local announcer was used-we could tell by his accent. Apparently, the occupation administration was phasing in Evdashians they felt they could trust. By the end of a month, judging by the news, things had settled into a new routine on Evdash. The mass trials were over, the public executions had taken place, and thousands of political prisoners had been shipped off-world to forced-labor camps on mining planets and the like.

  We didn't hear Klentis and Aven kel Deroop mentioned among the names of people executed or arrested. They'd been prominent in the old days, in the resistance back on Morn Gebleu, and we agreed that they'd be mentioned if captured.

  So for things had gone about the way we'd expect, with the Glondis Party in charge. Their idea was to make everyone too scared to resist. But you could pretty much depend on it that a majority now hated them, and in time the Empire would explode-as soon as anyone got a good strong revolt rolling somewhere.

  Of course, that might take a long time to happen.

  We all agreed that our function would be either to help brew the revoit inside the Empire, or build a base outside-in one way or another to help bring it down. The only alternative acceptable to any of us was that the Empire might somehow evolve into a decent place to live. History said it wouldn't, especially under something like the Glondis Party. We'd see what happened, and meanwhile we'd prepare for the revolution.

  After six weeks I began to fret about my parents. Not many of the things I could think of that might be keeping them were very cheering, given how things were now on Evdash. So I brought it up one evening while we digested our raw fish. Actually, the way I put it was: "Piet, how long do you think it'll be before dad and room show up?"

  His eyes turned to me without telling me anyt
hing. "How long do you think?" he answered. I should have known he'd say that.

  "Things take as long as they take," I said. "But knowing mom and dad, they won't take any longer than they have to. I guess what I was really asking was, how long should we wait before we leave without them?"

  "Leave for where?" Deneen asked. "This isn't my favorite place, but I can stay here a year if I need to. Or anyway as long as the floater's fuel cells have power enough to take us where we decide to go."

  "Right," I answered. "But if dad and mom don't show, we'll have to make some kind of move on our own, sooner or later."

  I glanced around at the others. Piet was interested in what I'd do with the subject. Tarel looked solemn, his eyes shadowed in the dusk. Jenoor looked serious and neutral. Neither of the two had ever shown any tendency to get involved in decisions. They were young, though no younger than Deneen, and in a sense "outsiders" because they were latecomers in our family.

  "Have you got any thoughts about this, Tarel?" I asked.

  I hadn't really expected a positive answer, but he surprised me. "Unless your parents get here," he said, "the only way we'll get a space cutler is to steal one-a naval cutter of some kind. The occupation forces probably confiscated all the private cutters they could find out about."

  "There might still be some private cutters around," Jenoor put in, "belonging to Evdashians who are part of the Imperial spy network. And private cutters ought to be easier to steal than, say, a patrol scout on the ground for servicing."

  I couldn't feel optimistic about the prospects. It was one thing to talk about going out and establishing rebel bases, but doing it, or even getting out there, would be something else. I looked at Piet, who'd been sitting there listening and saying nothing. "What do you think?" I asked him. I could swear he laughed behind those quiet eyes.