brink was remembering that easy promise, a month later, as he bound the last raggedly split shake atop the cabin roof. the cabin was but ten feet wide and twice as long, and built of smallish logs, but its cost in blistered flesh and exhaustion had been terrific....

six days had passed after their arrival here in middle park before his unfamiliar, lead-propelling rifle finally had brought down a small deerlike creature ... the hunting wasn't easy—nothing here on sulle ii was easy.

he slid off the roof and down the trunk of a small tree that he had left here atop this grassy knoll. he straightened his hunched shoulders and heard the muscles grate and snap across the cartilage. he looked down over the grassy parkland, where a meandering stream watered the soil, and counted, for the hundredth time, the five young spotted ruminants that carby, tzal, and he had captured from a herd of wild creatures.

"cows," carby, and tzal, his partner, called these giant cattle-like creatures, and he followed suit. it was easier to apply the familiar names to creatures that resembled those of earth than to use the names supplied them at the reception center.

"dorav!" he heard the voice and then the pressure of two rounded soft arms were around him.

"rea!" he grunted, facing her. he pushed her arms aside, all too conscious of the shielded breast that brushed the back of his hand.

"why are you here?" he demanded. "you have work at your cabin. the walls are only half finished."

the girl smiled at him. she was very attractive in a slim boyish sort of way. the palm of her sun-tanned hand, as she laid it upon his wrist, was not calloused as were tzal's and his own.

"my partner and yours are cutting logs above us," she said. "we can be alone for several hours...."

brink pushed her soft palm from his arm. for the past three weeks physical exhaustion and unwonted exercise had driven any desire for her from his thoughts. she was carby's partner for a year—and carby was his friend.

"don't get me wrong, dorav!" her eyes flashed. they were blue and very dark and clear. "i want to go back to the earth—to york dome, to sippi dome or one of the other two domes in north america."

"i think we all do at times," brink said coldly. "but it's not possible. earth is forty or fifty light years away."

"i know a way." rea smyt's eyes were bright. "but i need a partner. bryt won't go—he likes it here. and your blonde cow of a partner...."

"tzal is okay," brink said angrily. "shut your mouth and go back to your own cabin before i—"

"we could go across the plains to the old ruins," rea cried hastily, "and then journey down...."

brink's work-roughened fingers spun her about facing toward carby's cabin and the round gray tent beside it at the opposite end of the knoll.

rea was sobbing angrily.

"i'll go by myself," she cried. "you fools can stay here and live like beasts—it's so simple if you only...."

brink gave her a shove.

"if you worked as you should, you wouldn't find time to be discontented. and next year you can draw a new partner from the unattached pool."

the girl's eyes were hot as she turned and raced off along the path bisecting the knoll's green-swarded crown.

and dorav brink set to work building the huge stone-and-clay chimney that was to warm them in the winter ahead. the memory of rea's words and the softness of her, kept intruding. suddenly, he found himself longing for the comforts and the security of york dome—he had been a peace guard, serving two hours every month—life had been soft and easy....

savagely brink swung his stone hammer, trying to smash his memories of mechanized, pleasant sloth as well as the harsh substance of the rocks.