Regs

Come to think of it, I've always been partial to those flowers, too.

Down by the stream at the meadow's edge, I could see clumps of something scarlet. Cardinal flower, or bee balm? The forest in this temperate latitude was part conifer, part deciduous; and the rhododendrons setting buds for the next spring's far-off blooms made me slightly homesick for my native Rigel 5.

"The people are why Cranshaw's in trouble," I said to Tasker, as we started the short hike from this concealed landing site to a traveled road and - hopefully, soon after that - civilization as the locals knew it. "Damn all anthropologists for idiots, anyway! What did he think he was going to learn, that was worth risking getting caught on the wrong side of a shifting border?"

I was blandly ignoring, of course, the obvious reality that Tasker and I were taking the same risk. And that when Marcus Cranshaw obtained clearance for his ill-advised one-man recon, he at least got that approval properly (something he must have damned well known wouldn't have happened if I'd been on board the Ishtar, but that's another story!).

I was on my own now, and Tasker with me. Of which reality my tech spec didn't know better than to remind me out loud. "Ms. Falconi, it's been twice that long since Dr. Cranshaw disappeared. And we'll be in Ast territory if we're still here in twelve more hours," the kid said, looking at me again with those innocent eyes of his. "The border shifts at 1700, Standard Shipboard Time."

I knew that, and he knew I knew it, and telling him so was only going to make it hard for me not to yell at him. Which he didn't deserve, not when he was risking a life he'd only just started to live by staying here with me - on top of risking the career he was also just beginning, even if we did get out of here alive. Even if we did succeed in finding our team mate; and if, when we'd found Marc Cranshaw, we were able to rescue him.

That was assuming a hell of a lot, and I couldn't afford to get excited during my first hour on the ground. Not when a single tech spec, one almost as green as the moss of the forest through which we were now padding, was all the backup I either had or could hope to have until this mission was over.

Mission? Well, I couldn't think of anything better to call it, even though certainly no one had assigned it to me.

Instead of shouting at Tasker I said in my mildest tone, "Rudy, I told you when you first got assigned to me that I don't mind ?Falconi' and I don't mind ?Nora.' But anyone who calls me ?ma'am' or ?Ms.' or ?team leader' on the ground like this, is apt to get my ass shot off for me. Don't do it again. Okay?"

I guess he hadn't thought I was serious, back when I told him that originally; and on board ship, I don't mind a bit of formality. He looked at me just before we had to step out of the sheltering trees, onto the shoulder of the macadam road that was our immediate destination, and he nodded as if he'd only just grasped that I meant what I'd been saying to him. "Okay," he responded, in a light baritone that no longer seemed like too much voice for someone his age. "Nora."

We soon left the forest behind us, and before we'd been squinting against the day's now brilliant early sunlight for more than a few seconds' time one of Class M Planet 8055's internal combustion powered vehicles (stinking appallingly of the fossil fuel that it burned) pulled to a stop just after passing us. An elderly man leaned out of an open window and shouted, in words that thanks to proper preparation of my brain's language center actually made good sense to me, "Where are you two tryin' to go? Ya want a lift?"

We did. We crawled into the cramped cockpit (no, it was properly called a cab!) of his vehicle with him, and the old man opened the throttle again and we were on our way.

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