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speed with which winter had slammed down had prevented a second expedition being dispatched to the plateau; moreover, weakened by carrying a huge burden of ice, their main antenna had collapsed in a gale months ago. But directly it had become possible to re-rig it, they had powered the radio again. Ornelle—to whom the presence of other human beings on this world signified something; she couldn’t have described it—had waited feverishly to learn how they had fared.
    When intermittent calls had been made for some days,most people were resigned to giving the others up for lost. But Ornelle had insisted on being allowed to continue, and since she had no specially valuable skills they had let her go on. Now she had spent three long days and most of three nights calling, calling, calling—and hearing nothing. She might have thought that the radio was unserviceable, but she could hear her own voice from a monitoring receiver across the room.
    This wasn’t life she had secured, then—so it appeared to her. It was mere illusion. The strange planet must already have killed half the intruders from space. It was only a matter of time before it ground the rest of them down.
    She had tried to convince herself that if her parents had been able to emigrate from Earth, she could live on this alien ground. But her parents had come to a place prepared for them. There were already fifty million people settled on Zarathustra. First one island, then a chain, had been sterilized and terraformed by experts, assessing the risk from native life-forms, whether they were useful, neutral, or dangerous. A complete new ecology had been designed to include domestic creatures, plants, even bacteria brought from Earth, and only after half a century’s careful organization were immigrants invited, with one of the fabulous human computers called “polymaths” to supervise and protect them.
    What chance did a few hundred refugees, with hardly any tools or weapons, a handful of scientists, and no experience of existence at such a primitive level, stand in face of a hostile and unpredictable world?
    “Ornelle! Ornelle!”
    With a guilty start she raised her head. Standing in the rough doorway, one hand holding aside the curtain and the other carrying his medikit, was Doc Jerode. His white shirt and overfoot breeches were yellowing and frayed, and since being out of reach of tricholene treatments his mass of shining gray hair had thinned to a crescent on the back of his head. But he was picking up a healthy-looking tan.
    “I’m sorry, Doc. Didn’t hear you come in.” Ornelle licked her lips. Her throat was stiff after her fit of sobbing, and the words came painfully. “I’m all right. Just a bit tired.”
    “Tired!” the doctor said. “Exhausted is more the word.”
    He strode forward, his feet noisy on the crude planks of the floor, and set his medikit on the table. “Here, I’m going to make sure you haven’t picked up an infection, Get your clothes off.”
    “Oh—oh, very well.” Ornelle rose to her feet and unfastened her shirt Like everyone else, she had been stifled throughout the winter by the sensation of having all possible clothing on against the cold, that daily grew greasier and fouler-smelling, and now was wearing only outer garments. She stood slackly as Jerode ran his diagnoser over her.
    “Nothing on the culture slide except bugs I recognize,” he said at last. He surveyed her curiously. “So you’re right. You’re simply worn out. But… how long have you been at that radio?”
    “Uh… most of the past three days,” she admitted.
    “Have you slept properly? Don’t answer that—I can tell you haven’t. And I’ve watched you gulping your meals in your hurry to get back here. Take one of these.” Jerode selected a tube of small white pills from his kit, giving a rueful glance at how few of them remained. “Blast you, woman! Why do you have to let me down?”
    “What?” Ornelle had a mug of water on the table;