He pulled the cart into the room and helped her set the things on his table. Pia _was_ lovely, he decided, wanting to caress the smooth roundness of her shoulders and dimpled arms. When she sat across the small table from him he could not help responding to the swell of her round breasts barely below the neckline. But her manner seemed forced and she looked more frightened than ever. "You look like a little rabbit that knows it's strayed too far from the woods, Pia. What _are_ you always afraid of?" Her smile faded. "Not because I'm too far from the woods," she said. "What's a rabbit? But let's not talk about fear." They talked of food and weather through a more than usually elaborate dinner. There was a bottle of Tristanian _kresch_ to follow it. Cole splashed the blue wine into the two crystal goblets, gave her one and held up his own. "Here's to the richest little girl on Tristan someday," he said, half mockingly. Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't want to be rich. I just want a home away from New Cornwall, just anywhere. I was born on Tristan. Oh Flinter, what you must think--" She began crying in earnest. He patted her shoulder. "Forgive me for a fool, Pia. Tell me about Tristan. I had only one day there, waiting for _Gorbals'_ tender." She spoke of her childhood on Tristan, and the tension eased in both. Finally she proposed a picnic for the next day, the two of them to take a sports flyer into the forest top. He agreed with pleasure and squeezed her hand in saying good night. She squeezed back a little. But she still looked frightened. * * * * * Next day Pia wore a brief yellow playsuit, and Cole could not keep his eyes off her. When he was loading the picnic hamper into the small flyer before the main hangar, she suddenly pressed close to him. He followed her wide-eyed gaze over his right shoulder and saw Morgan bulking darkly ten feet away. "Hello there, Mr. Morgan," Cole said into the impassive face under the black bar of eyebrow. Morgan rumbled in vernacular and walked on. His lips did not move. "You're afraid of Morgan," Cole said when he had the flyer aloft and heading east. "He's a bard. He has a power," she said. "Today, let's forget him." Cole looked back at the bulk of Lundy Peninsula, swelling lost into blue-green distance from the narrow isthmus. The straight slash of Bidgrass Station from sea to sea looked puny beside the mighty forest towering on either side. Then Pia had his arm and wanted him to land. He grounded on a pinkish-green mass of lichen several acres in area. Pia assured him it would support the flyer, reminding him of the planet's low gravity.