"Good idea. Now here's my plan: I've got ten hours of daylight left, so I'm heading out into the bush. Figure departure in five minutes. Weather has obscured signs, but I don't think I can go wrong by following my nose and taking the shortest route. I'm traveling light, just the bug rig, the W&R, belt kit, and a minicomm. I'm going to set up this transceiver to record and transmit on command-response. I suggest you interrogate every hour on the hour from now on. Catchum?" I broke off, made the necessary adjustments, strapped the minicomm on my wrist, and exited the shuttler. The antiseptic air that I drew into my lungs was beginning to seem inadequate, I felt slippery all over, and there was a cottony taste in my mouth. * * * * * I made it to the start of the bush in fifteen minutes. Don't be misled into picturing jungle. There was a variety of vegetation, including trees, but none of it was what you'd call heavy going. Beyond somewhere was a stream, significant enough to be noted on the chart as "First Water." And several miles from the camp was the start of a series of rolling hills. Blue in the distance was a chain of mountains--"The Guardians." The over-all impression was of peaceful, virgin wilderness. The original survey team had made its camp in the relative frankness of the plain, then, after preliminary tests, had moved to higher ground, specifically, the lee side of one of the nearer hills. They had cleared an area, using heat sweepers to destroy encroaching vegetation, and R-F beams to disenchant the local insect population. Insects there were: a regular cacophony of buzzings, chirpings and monotonous mutterings. By the time I'd reached the bank of the stream, I'd lost track of individual varieties. The stream was a bare trickle; the bed was spongy and dotted with tall, spare plants that resembled horse tails; I negotiated the fifty feet to the opposite bank without difficulty. I threaded through a thicket and came out into a brief expanse of savannah. There I found the first evidence of the fate of 231's people. It was a small object, oval, flattened, the color of old ivory. Although I hadn't been walking along with my head under my arm, it took me a moment to tumble to what I'd discovered. Then my hair tried to stand on end. I rid myself of it and used the minicomm for the first time. Speaking to a recorder was altogether too impersonal for what I had to report. "I've just found a patella; a human knee-cap. I'm about a hundred feet beyond the far bank of the stream in almost a straight line from the camp. I'm in grass about two feet tall. I'm casting about now, looking--Hold it. Yes, it's scraps of a gray uniform. More remains. Here's a femur; here's a radius-ulna. The bones are clean, scattered. Evidence of scavengers. No chance for a P-M on this one." I got out the chart from its case on the suit's belt, x'd the location, and went on, feeling more lonely all the time.