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“It gets hotter at sunset,” Ri said nervously.

“The breeze dies down.”

“It’s screwy. I didn’t think farn beasts had this wide a range. There must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this.”

“There may be a pass,” Mia said, pushing a vine away.

Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. “I guess that’s it. If there were a lot of them, we’d have heard something before we did. But even so, it’s damned funny, when you think about it.”

Mia looked up at the darkening sky. “We better hurry,” he said.

When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low, obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over Extrone’s tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its blasts.

Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.