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"I've been a spaceship officer since I was seventeen. How could I get along with claustrophobia?" In

the dark he imagined her smile. "On the contrary."

Neither of them had much to say after that. Once she asked into the darkness, "I wonder how Marco is?" but MacAran had no answer for her, and there was no point in thinking how much better thistrip would have been with Marco Zabal's knowledge of the high Himalaya. He did ask, once, just beforehe dropped off to sleep, "Do you want to get up and try for some star-sights before dawn?"

"No. I'll wait for the peak, I guess, if we get that far:" Her breathing quieted into soft exhausted sighs and he knew she slept. He lay awake a little, wondering what lay ahead. Outside, the sleet lashed the branches of the trees and there was a rushing sound which might have been wind or some animal making a rush through the

40

undergrowth. He slept lightly, alert for unexpected sounds. Once or twice Camilla cried out in .her sleep and he woke, alert and listening. Had she a touch of altitude sickness? Oxygen content or no oxygen content, the peaks were pretty high and each successive one left their general altitude a little higher. Well, she'd get acclimated, or else she wouldn't. Briefly, on the edge of sleep, MacAran reflected that it was the stuff of entertainment---media, a man alone with a beautiful woman on a strange planet full of dangers. He was conscious of wanting her--hell, he was human and male--but in their present circumstances nothing was further from his mind than sex.
 
Maybe I'm just too civilized
 
. In the very thought, exhausted by the day's climbing, he fell asleep.

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The next three days were replays of that day, except that on the third night they reached a high passat dusk and the night's rain had not yet begun. Camilla set up her telescope and made a few observations. He could not forbear, as he set up the shelter-tent in the dark, to ask, "Any luck? Where are we, do youknow?"

"Not sure. I knew already that this sun is none of the charted ones, and the only constellations I can spot, from central co-ordinates, are all skewed to the left. I suspect we're right out of the Spiral Arm of the Galaxy--note how few stars there are, compared even to Earth, let alone any centrally located colony planet! Oh, we're a good long way from where we were supposed to be going!" Her voice sounded taut and drawn, and as he moved closer he saw in the darkness that there were tears on her cheeks.

He felt a painful urge to comfort her. "Well, at least when we're on our way again, we'll have

discovered a new habitable planet. Maybe you'll even get part of the finder's fee."

"But it's so far--" she broke off. "Can we signal the ship?,.

"We can try. We're at least eight thousand feet higher than they are; maybe we're in a line-of-sight. Here, take the glasses, see if you can find any sign of a flash. But of course they could be behind some fold of the hills."

He put his arm around her, steadying the glasses. She did not draw away. She said, "Do you have

the bearing for the ship?"

He gave it to her; she moved the glasses slightly, compass in hand.

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"I see a light--no, I think it's lightning. Oh, what difference does it make?" Impatiently she put the glasses

aside. He could feel her trembling. "You like these wide open spaces, don't you?"

"Why, yes," he said, slowly, "I've always loved the mountains. Don't you?"

In the darkness she shook her head. Above them the pale violet light of one of the four small moons

gave a faint tremulous quality to the dimness. She said, faintly, "No. I'm afraid of them."

"Afraid?"

"I've been either on a satellite or training ship since I was picked for space at fifteen. "You" her voice

wavered, "you get kind of agoraphobic."

"And you volunteered to come on this trip!" MacAran said, but she mistook his surprise and

admiration for criticism. "Who else was there?" she said harshly, turned away and went into the tiny tent.

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Once again, after they had swallowed their food--hot tonight, since there was no rain to put out theirfire--MacAran lay awake long after the girl slept. Usually at eight there was only the sound of blowingrain and creak lag, lashing branches: tonight the forest seemed alive with strange sounds and noises, as if,on the rare snowless night, all its unknown life came alive. Once there wan a faraway howling thatsounded like a tape he had heard, once, on Earth, of the extinct timber wolf; once an almost feline snarl,low and hoarse, and the terrified cry of some small animal, and then silence. And then, toward midnight,there was a high, eerie scream, a long wailing cry that seemed to freeze the very marrow of his bones. Itsounded so uncannily like the scream Marco had given when attacked by the scorpion-ants that for adreaming moment MacAran, shocked awake, started to leap to his feet; then as Camilla, roused by hismovement, sat up is fright, it came again, and he realized nothing human could possibly have made it. Itwas a shrill, ululating cry that went on, higher and higher, into what seemed like ultrasonic; he seemed tohear it long after it had died away.

"What is it?" Camilla whispered, shaking.

"God knows. Some kind of bird or animal, I suppose."

They listened in silence to the ear-shattering scream again. She moved a little closer to him, and

murmured, "It sounds as if it were in agony."

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"Don't be imaginative. That may be its normal voice, for all we know."

"
 
Nothing
has a normal voice like that," she said firmly.

"How can we possibly know that?"

"How can you be so matter of fact? Oooh--" she flinched as the long shrilling sound came again. "It

seems to freeze the marrow of my bones'!'

"Maybe it uses that sound to paralyze its prey," MacAran said. "It scares me too, damn it! If I were

on Earth--well, my people were Irish, and I'd imagine the old Arran banshee had come to carry me off!"

"We'll have to name it
 
banshee
 
, when we find out what it is," Camilla said, and she wasn't laughing.

The hideous sound came again, and she clapped her hands over her ears, screaming, "Stop it!
 
stop it!
 
"

MacAran slapped her, not very hard. "Stop it yourself, damn you! For all we know it might beprowling around outside and big enough to eat up both of us and the tent too! Let's keep quiet and justlie low until it goes away!"

"That's easier said than done," Camilla murmured, and flinched as the eerie banshee cry came again. She crept closer to him in the crowded quarters of the tent and said, in a very small voice, "Would you--hold my hand?"

He searched for her fingers in the dark. They felt cold and stiff, and he began to chafe them softly

between his own. She leaned against him, and he bent down and kissed her softly on the temple. "Don't

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be afraid. The tent's plastic and I doubt if we smell edible. Let's just hope

whatever-it-is, the banshee if you like, catches itself a nice dinner soon and shuts up."

The howling scream sounded again, further away this time and without the ghastly bone-chillingquality. He felt the girl sag against his shoulder and eased her down again, letting her head rest againsthim. "You'd better get some sleep," he said gently.

Her whisper was almost inaudible. "Thanks, Rafe."

After he knew, by the sound of her steady breathing, that she slept again, he leaned over and kissedher softly. This was one hell of a time to start something like that, he told himself, angry at his ownreactions, they had a job to do and there was nothing personal about it. Or shouldn't be. But still it was along time until he slept.

They came out of the tent in the morning to a world

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transformed. The sky was clear and unstained by cloud or fog, and underfoot the hardy colorless grass had been suddenly carpeted by quick-opening, quick-spreading colored flowers. No biologist, MacAran had seen something like this in deserts and other barren areas and he knew that places with violent climates often developed forms of life which could take advantage of tiny favorable changes in temperature or humidity, however brief. Camilla was enchanted with the multicolored low-growing flowers and with the bee-like creatures who buzzed among them, although she was careful not to disturb them.

MacAran stood surveying the land ahead. Across one more narrow valley, crossed by a small

running stream, lay the last slopes of the high peak which was their destination.

"With any luck we should be near the peak tonight, and tomorrow, just at noon, we can take our survey readings. You know the theory--triangulate the distance between here and the ship, calculate the angle of the shadow, we can estimate the size of the planet. Archimedes or somebody like that did it for Earth, thousands of years before anyone ever invented higher mathematics. And if it doesn't rain tonight you may be able to get some clearer sightings from the heights."

She was smiling. "Isn't it wonderful what just a little change in the weather can do? Will it be much of

a climb?"

"I don't think so. It looks from here as if we could walk straight up the slope--evidently the timberline on this planet is higher than most worlds. There's bare rock and no trees near the peak, but only a couple of thousand feet below there's vegetation. We haven't reached the snowline yet."

On the higher slopes, in spite of everything, MacAran recovered his old enthusiasm. A strange worldperhaps, but still, a mountain beneath him, the challenge of a climb. An easy climb it was true, withoutrocks or icefalls, but that simply freed him to enjoy the mountain panorama, the high clear air. It was only Camilla's presence, the knowledge that she feared the open heights, that kept him in touch with reality at

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all. He had expected to resent this, the need to help an amateur over easy stretches which he could have

climbed with one leg in a cast, the waiting for her to find footing on the stretches of steep

44

rocky scree, but instead he found himself curiously in rapport with her fear, her slow conquest of each

new height. A few feet below the high peak he stopped.

"Here. We can run a perfectly good line of sight from here, and there's a flat spot to set up your

equipment. We'll wait here for noon."

He had expected her to show relief; instead she looked at him, with a certain shyness, and said, "I

thought you'd like to climb the peak, Rafe. Go ahead, if you want to, I don't mind."

He started to snap at her that it would be no fun at all with a frightened amateur, then realized thiswas no longer true. He pulled his pack off his shoulder and smiled at her, laying a hand on her arm. "Thatcan wait," he said gently, "this isn't a pleasure trip, Camilla. This is the best spot for what we want to do. Did you adjust your chronometer so that we can catch noon?"

They rested side by side on the slope, looking down across the panorama of forests and hills spread

out below them.
 
Beautiful
 
, he thought,
 
a world to love, a world to live in
 
.

He asked idly, "Do you suppose the Coronis colony is this beautiful?"

"How would I know? I've never been there. Anyway, I don't know all that much about planets. But this one is beautiful. I've never seen a sun quite this color, and the shadows--" she fell silent, staring down at the pattern of greens and dark-violet shade in the valleys.

"It would be easy to get used to a sky this color," MacAran said, and was silent again.

It was not long until the shortening shadows marked the approach of the meridian. After all thepreparation, it seemed a curious anticlimax; to unfold the hundred-foot-high aluminum rod, to measurethe shadows exactly, to the millimeter. When it was finished and he was refolding the rod, he said asmuch, wryly:

"Forty miles and an eighteen-thousand-foot climb for a hundred and twenty seconds of

measurements."

Camilla shrugged. "And God-knows-how-many light-years to come here. Science is all like that,

Rafe."

"Nothing to do now but wait for the night, so you can take your observations." Rafe folded the rod and sat down on the rocks, enjoying the rare warmth of the sunlight. Camilla went on moving around their campsite for a little,

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then came back and joined him. He asked, "Do you really think you can chart this planet's position,

Camilla?"

"I hope so. I'm going to try and observe known Cepheid variables, take observations over a period of time, and if I can find as many as three that I can absolutely identify, I can compute where we are in relation to the central drift of the Galaxy."

"Let's pray for a few more clear nights, then," Rafe said, and was silent.

After some time, watching him study the rocks less than a hundred feet above them, she said, "Go