And shows the thing much better than it is,

did? You know you did. Killashandra hung on to her patience. You never forget anything. And the impression I got from your cryptic comment was that someone, and the inference was me she pressed her thumb into her chest would have to go there. Am I correct? He regarded her steadily, his expression unreadable. Not long ago you gave me to understand that you would not undertake another off-world assignment That was before Id been stuck on this fardling planet She noticed the wicked gleam in his eyes. So, Im right. A crystal singer does have to make the installation! It was a shocking incident, Lanzecki said diffidently as he served himself more Malva beans. The performer who damaged the organ was killed by the flying shards. He was also the only person on the planet who could handle such a major repair. As is so often the case with such sensitive and expensive equipment, it is a matter of planetary urgency to repair the instrument. Its the largest on the planet and is essential to the observances of Optherias prestigious Summer Festival. We are contracted to supply technicians as well as crystal. He paused for a mouthful of the crisp white beans. He was definitely baiting her, Killashandra knew. She held her tongue. While the list of those qualified does include your name The catch cant be the crystal this time, she said as he purposefully let his sentence dangle unfinished. She watched his face for any reaction. White crystals active, reflecting sound Among other things, Lanzecki added when she paused. If it isnt the crystal, whats the matter with the Optherians, then? My dear Killashandra, the assignment has not yet been awarded. Awarded? I like the sound of that. Or do I? I wouldnt put it past you, Lanzecki, to sucker me into another job like that Trundomoux installation. He caught the finger she was indignantly shaking at him, pulling her hand across the laden table to his lips. The familiar caress evoked familiar responses deep in her groin and she tried to use her irritation with his methods to neutralize its effect on her. Just then a communit bleep startled her. With a fleeting expression of annoyance, Lanzecki lifted his wrist unit to acknowledge the summons. A tinny version of Trags bass voice issued from the device. I was to inform you when the preliminary testing stations reported, the Administration Officer said. Any camera digital still usb interesting applicants? Although Lanzecki sounded diffident, even slightly bored, the curious tension about his lips and eyes alerted Killashandra. She pretended to continue eating in a courteous disregard of the exchange, but she didnt lose a syllable of Trags reply. Four agronomists, an endocrinologist from Theta, two xenobiologists, an atmospheric physicist, three former spacers Killashandra noted the slight widening of Lanzeckis eyes which she interpreted as satisfaction and the usual flotsam who have no recommendations from Testing. Thank you, Trag. Lanzecki nodded his head at Killashandra to indicate the interruption was concluded and finished off the dish of fried Malva beans. So what is the glitch in the Optherian assignment? A lousy fee? On the contrary, such an installation is set at twenty thousand credits. And Id be off-world as well. Killashandra was quite impressed with the latitude such a credit balance would give her to forget crystal. You have not been awarded the contract, Killa. I appreciate your willingness to entertain the assignment but there are certain aspects which must be considered by the Guild as well as the individual. Dont commit yourself rashly. Lanzecki was being sincere. His eyes held hers steadily and a worried crease to his brows emphasized his warning. Its a long haul to the Optherian system. Youd be gone from Ballybran nearly a full year All the better You say that now when youre full of crystal resonance. You cant have forgotten Carrik yet. His reminder conjured flashing scenes of the first crystal singer she had met: Carrik laughing as they swam in Fuertes seas, then Carrik wracked by withdrawal fever and finally the passive hulk of the man, shattered by sonic resonance. You will in time, Ive no doubt, experience that phenomenon, Lanzecki said. Ive never known a singer who didnt try to push himself and his symbiont to their limits. A major disadvantage to the Optherian contract is that you would lose any resonance to your existing claims. As if I had a decent claim among the lot. Killashandra snorted in disgust. Rose is no good to anyone and the blue petered out after two days cutting. Even the white vein skips and jumps. I cut the best of the

Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they My deir son I tell thee O. imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

Then Robin he turns him round about,

heavy snowfalls, strangely enough, are all but unknown on the Greenland ice-capbut the air was full of millions of driving, needle-pointed ice spicules that swept towards us out of the impenetrable darkness to the east, clogging up our goggles in a matter of seconds and stinging the narrow exposed area of my face between mask and goggles like a thousand infuriated hornets. A sharp, exquisite pain, a pain that vanished almost in the moment of arrival as the countless sub-zero spicules dug deep with their anaesthetising needles and drove out all sensation from the skin. But I knew this ominous absence of feeling all too well. Once again I turned my back to the wind, kneaded the deadened flesh with mittened hands till the blood came throbbing back, then pulled my snow-mask higher still. The plane was flying in an anti-clockwise direction, following, it seemed, the path of an irregular oval, for the sound of its motors faded slightly as it curved round to north and west. But within thirty seconds it was approaching again, in a swelling thunder of sound, to the south-westto the leeward of us, that wasand I could tell from Jackstraw's explosive ejaculation of sound, muffled behind his mask, that he had seen it at the same moment as myself. It was less than half a mile distant, no more than five hundred feet above the ice-cap, and during the five seconds it remained inside my line of vision I felt my mouth go dry and my heart begin to thud heavily in my chest. No SAC bomber this, nor a Thule met. plane, both with crews highly trained in the grim craft of Arctic survival. That long row of brightly illuminated cabin windows could belong to only one thinga trans-Atlantic or trans-polar airliner. "You saw it, Dr Mason?" Jackstraw's snow-mask was close to my ear. "I saw it." It was all I could think to say. But what I was seeing then was not the plane, now again vanished into the flying ice and drift, but the inside of the plane, with the passengersGod, how many passengers, fifty, seventy?sitting in the cosy security of their pressurised cabin with an air-conditioned temperature of 70 F, then the crash, the tearing, jagged screeching that set the teeth on edge as the thin metal shell ripped along its length and the tidal wave of that dreadful cold, 110 degrees below cabin temperature, swept in and engulfed the survivors, the dazed, the injured, the unconscious and the dying as they sat or lay crumpled in the wreckage of the seats, clad only in thin suits and dresses. . . . The plane had fuji 10mp digital camera completed a full circuit and was coming round again. If anything, it was even closer this time, at least a hundred feet lower, and it seemed to have lost some speed. It might have been doing 120, perhaps 130 miles an hour, I was no expert in these things, but for that size of plane, so close to the ground, it seemed a dangerously low speed. I wondered just how effective the pilot's windscreen wipers would be against these flying ice spicules. And then I forgot all about that, forgot all about everything except the desperate, urgent need for speed. Just before the plane had turned round to the east again and so out of the line of our blinded vision, it had seemed to dip and at the same instant two powerful lights stabbed out into the darkness, the one lancing straight ahead, a narrow powerful beam glittering and gleaming with millions of sparkling diamond points of flame as the ice-crystals in the air flashed across its path, the other, a broader fan of light, pointing downwards and only slightly ahead, its oval outline flitting across the frozen snow like some flickering will o' the wisp. I grabbed Jackstraw's arm and put my head close to his. "He's going to land! He's looking for a place to put down. Get the dogs, harness them up." We had a tractor, but heaven only knew how long it would have taken to start it on a night like this. "I'll give you a hand as soon as I can." He nodded, turned and was lost to sight in a moment. I turned too, cursed as my face collided with the slatted sides of the instrument shelter, then jumped for the hatch, sliding down to the floor of the cabin on back and arms without bothering to use the steps. Joss, already completely clad in his furs but with the hood of his parka hanging over his shoulders, was just emerging from the food and fuel tunnel which led off from the other end of the cabin, his arms loaded with equipment. "Grab all the warm clothing you can find, Joss," I told him quickly. I was trying to think as quickly and coherently as I was talking, to figure out everything that we might require, but it wasn't easy, that intense cold numbed the mind almost as much as it did the body. "Sleeping-bags, blankets, spare coats, shirts, it doesn't matter whose they are. Shove them into a couple of gunny sacks." "You think they're going to land, sir?" Curiosity, anticipation, horroreach struggled for supremacy in the thin, dark intelligent face. "You really think so?" "I think