"Two women on Lucifer: valuable livestock." Wright smiled with his mouth full. "I'm boss, remember? For guinea-pig work, the men draw lots." She was grave. "I won't argue. It so happens----" She peeked into the nest. "Poor little fuzzies lined it with fur. Their own, I'll bet." "It so happens what, dear?" "Ah.... This eleven-year-old gookum claims to be coffee. Can we make a fire? Looks like dead wood over there." The branches burned aromatically; the morning was growing into deep warmth, but still with freshness. Wright said, "Coffee my shirt." Dorothy tasted it. "Brr...! I was about to say when I interrupted myself, it so happens I'm six or seven weeks pregnant, I think." "Six----" Wright set his aluminum cup carefully upside down. Paul mumbled, "That's what's been on your mind." Behind her eyes he glimpsed the primitive thing, deeper than thought, not like a part of her but a force that sustained her, himself, all others: the three billion of Earth, the small grieving spirit now flown away into the trees. "Yes, Adam. I would have told you sooner, but we all had a lot on our minds." "Even before we got in orbit, you saw us settling--staying----" Dorothy grinned then. "No-o, Paul. I just wanted the baby. Could have been born on the ship. The Federation said no, but...." Gradually Paul began to realize it. "But you said yes." She leaned to him, no longer smiling. "I said yes...." The forest floor hushed footsteps; some coolness lingered. Paul walked in front, then Dorothy, and Wright marked blazes on the tree trunks. Paul glanced backward often, to capture the receding patterns. At the third such pause the lifeboat was no longer visible--only a sameness of trees and sparse young life groping through shadow for the food of the sun. In this depth of forest there was no brush; the going was easy except for the nuisance of purple vines that sometimes looped from tree to tree. Paul searched for any change of light ahead. The boat held all but what they wore, the two rifles, the three pistols holstered at their hips, the three knives, three sealed ration packages. Damage had prevented locking the door of the boat: to rob, an inhabitant of Lucifer would need only intelligence enough to solve the sliding mechanism. They had seen no life but that huge nocturnal leaf eater, the small fliers, a white worm, and now a few timid ten-legged scuttlers on the warm ground and midge-like specks dancing in shafts of sunlight. Too quietly, Wright said, "Stop." Paul raised his rifle as he turned. Only untroubled forest. Wright's warning hand lowered. "Almost saw it. Heard nothing, just felt a--watching. Might be in my head. Let's go on. And don't hurry." It would have been possible to hurry, even with an eye on the compass. It would have been possible, Paul thought, to run in panic, fall whimpering and waiting. But you wouldn't do it....