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Show her long-gone ancestors, and a child among them whimpers. "No," she cries, "no...it is MidWinter !" Aye, it had been MidWinter, and the newly landed EarthColonists had reckoned not with the severity of such a thing on BauerWorlde. "If they be intelligent...!" whispered the plant pathologist among the newly arrived colonists to her partner, Francis. It had been the range science pair; Francis and Jenny Wosniak, standing on the rocky rise overlooking the Zettian city of caves, who were charged with the task of dumping the smoke bombs. "For a surety they be intelligent, and we cannot do this thing...we cannot!" They stood irresolute under the naked limbs of the ice covered trees, holding their near frozen fingers on the triggers that would unleash the smoke bombs. The sleet-filled wind whistled and screamed around their heads. Their quilted jackets-laughably flimsy in a climate so outrageous, so underestimated by their Earthski planners-were as nothing in the teeth of such a storm. "If only; pray God, we hadn't aliented them in such a fashion. . .the devil take us !" "Aye," said Francis. "We could have stayed in the City of Caves together. So friendly they'd been, so gentle and k i n d . . ." But the small band of Colonists had treated with a shade too much levity their several Zettian friends' DreamingStones. Those pictures that the Stones had projected for the Colonists, the Zettian leaders sitting in a circle in the clearing before the main caves, the 90 |
