"Oh, I have some of that," she told him.

"Well, it doesn't do you any good in the jar, you know."

"Yes, I know," she said, ducking her head, her tone low and apologetic.

""Hey, I'm not scolding, he said gently, putting one finger under her chin and lifting her head. "What'd I do wrong?"

"Oh, nothing," she replied and pushed his finger away, giving him a too-bright smile. "I get silly notions sometimes. Don't pay me any mind."

"Oh, I don't," he replied so blithely that she gave him a startled look. "Just go on with lathering up that beast of yours He turned to a new page and removed the pencil from behind his ear. Go on."

"Iantine's gone on you, Debera," Grasella said, eyeing her barrack mate shrewdly.

"Iantine? He's sketch-mad. He'd do his big toe if he had nothing else to pose for him," Debera replied. "Besides, he'll leave soon for Benden."

"Will you miss him?" Jule asked, a sly look on her face.

"Miss him?" Debera echoed, surprised at the question.

I will miss him, Morath said in such a mournful tone that the other dragonets turned towards her, their eyes whirling in minor distress.

"What did she say that's got them all upset?" Jule demanded.

"That she'd miss him. But, love, he's not Weyrbred," Debera told her dragon, stroking her cheek and then her head-k.n.o.b. "He can't stay here indefinitely."

"If anyone asked me, I'd say Iantine would like to," Sarra put in.

""No-one's asked you," Angie replied tartly.

Has he ever done anything, I mean, beyond sketching you, Deb?" Jule asked with an avid glint in her eyes.

"No, of course not. Why would he?" responded Debera, and fl.u.s.tered. That was the trouble with having to sleep with the others. They could be terribly nosy, even if they weren't as mean as her stepmother and sisters had been. She t pry into where they were when they were late in at "I give up on her," said Jule, raising her hands skyward in asperahon. "The handsomest unattached man in the Weyr and she's blind."

"She's Morath-besotted," Sarra put in. "Not that any of us is much better."

"Most of us..." and Jule paused significantly, "know that, dragons may now be a significant factor in our lives, are not everything, you know. Even old T'dam-d.a.m.n has a weyrmate, after all."

"We don't have weyrs yet," said Mesla, speaking for the first. She took everything literally. "Couldn't have anyone in here with you gawking."

Debera knew she was blushing: her cheeks felt hot.

"That hasn't held you back, I noticed," Sarra said to Jule, ducking her head knowingly.

Jule smiled mysteriously. "From the only Weyrbred resident this barracks, let me a.s.sure you that our wishes can influence our dragons' choices."

"They won't rise for another eight or ten months," said though she had obviously taken heed of Jule's remark.

"Jule, suppose your dragon fancies a dragon whose rider can't stand?"

"You mean, O'ney?" and she grinned at Angie's discomfort.

The girl overcame her embarra.s.sment and snapped back y enough.

"He's impossible, even for a bronze rider. you ever heard him go on about how his wing is always in compet.i.tions! As if that was all that mattered!"

"To him it probably is," Grasella said, but, "Jule, I'm more worried about the blue riders. I mean, some of them are very nice guys and I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings, but they don't like girls."

"Oh," and Jule shrugged indolently, "that's easier still. You make an arrangement with another rider to be on hand when your green gets proddy. Then the blue rider gets his mate, if he's got one, or anyone else who's willing - and you'd better believe that anyone's willing when dragons are going to partic.i.p.ate. So you bed the one you like, and the blue rider his choice, and you ALL enjoy!" The girls absorbed this information with varying degrees of enthusiasm or distaste.

"Well, it's up to yourselves what you do, you know," Jule went on. "And we're not limited to this Weyr, either.

"Oh!" and she let out a gusty sigh. "I'll be so glad when we can fly out of here anytime we want."

"But I thought you were arranging matters with T'red?" Mesla said, her eyes wide with consternation.

"Well, so I am, but that doesn't mean I might not find someone I like better at another Weyr. Greens like it, you know".

"Ah, but can we go to other Weyrs?" Sarra asked, waggling a finger at Jule. "In four-five months, we'll have Fall and then we'll really work hard, ferrying firestone sacks to the fighters." Her eyes gleamed brightly in antic.i.p.ation and she hugged herself. "We'll be doing something a lot more exciting than having just one mate and plenty of kids."

Debera averted her face, not wanting to take part in such a ridiculous discussion.

Something bothers you, Morath said and slowly lowered her head to her rider's lap. I love you. I think you re wonderful.

Iantine does, too.

That confidence startled Debera. He does?

He does! And Morath's tone was emphatic. He likes your green eyes, the way you walk, and the finny crackle in your voice. How do you do that?

Debera's hand went to her throat and she felt really silly now.

Can you talk to him, too? Or just listen to what he's thinking?

He thinks very loud. Especially near you. I don t hear him too good far away. He thinks loud about you a lot.

"DEBRA?" Sarra's loud call severed that most interesting conversation.

"What? I was talking to Morath. What did you say?"

"Never mind," and Sarra grinned broadly. "Have you got your Turn's End dresses finished yet?"

"I've one more fitting," Debera said, although that subject, too, caused her embarra.s.sment. She tried to argue with Tisha that the beautiful green dress was quite enough: she didn't need more.

Tisha had ignored that and demanded that she'll choose two colors from the samples available: one for the evening and another good one for daytime wear. Everyone in the Weyr, it seemed, had new clothes for Turn's End. And yet, something in Debera had delighted in knowing she'd have two completely new dresses that no-one had ever worn before her. She had, she admitted very very quietly to herself, hoped that Iantine would notice her in them. Now, with Morath's information, she wondered if he'd notice at all that she was wearing new clothes.

"Speaking of weyrs," Mesla said.

"That was half an hour ago, Mesla," Angie protested.

"Well?"

"There aren't that many left and the bigger dragons would have first choice, wouldn't they?" she went on.

"Don't worry," Jule told her, "some'll come free by the time we need them." Then she covered her mouth, aware of what she had just implied. I didn't mean that. I really didn't. I mean, I wouldn't think of moving in."

"Just shut up, Jule," Sarra said in a quiet but firm voice.

There was a long moment of silence, with no-one daring to look at anyone.

"Say, who has the salve?" Grasella asked softly from the bunk beyond her, breaking the almost intolerable silence. "My fingers are itching again. No-one told me I'd have to cope with chilblains while dealing with dragons."

Angie found it in her furs and pa.s.sed it on.

"After you," Debera said softly as she gave it to Grasella.

The easy laughing chatter was over for the night.

"I haven't had much time," Jemmy told Clisser in his most uncooperative tone of voice when Clisser asked how he was coming on the last of the History Ballads. "Had to look up all that law stuff."

"Why'd you have to take so much trouble with those fragging guards? They shoulda all been dropped on the islands, right away. None of this trial farce."

"The trials were not farces, Jemmy," said Clisser, so uncharacteristically reproving that Jemmy looked up in a state of amazement. "The trials were necessary. To prove that we would not act in an arbitrary fashion.

"You mean, the way Chalkin would have," and Jemmy grinned, his uneven teeth looking more vulpine than ever in his long face.

"Exactly."

"You're wasting too much time on him." Jemmy turned back to reading.

"What are you looking up?"

"I don't know. I'm looking because I know there's something we can use to check on the Red Planet's position, something so simple I'm disgusted I can't call it to mind. I know I've seen it somewhere." Irritably he pushed the volume away from him.

"It'd help a great deal if the people who copied for us had had decent handwriting. I spend too much time trying to decipher it." Abruptly he reached across the cluttered work-top to the windowsill and plonked down in front of him a curious apparatus. "Here's your new computer." He grinned up at Clisser who regarded the object - bright coloured beads strung on ten narrow rods, divided into two unequal portions.

"What is it?" Clisser exclaimed, picking it up and finding that the beads moved stiffly up and down on the rods.

"An abacus, they called it. A counter. Ancient and still functional." Jemmy took the device from Clisser and demonstrated.

"It'll take the place of a calculator. Most are down now. Oh, and I found the designs for this, too." He fumbled around his papers and withdrew an instrument consisting of a ruler with a central sliding piece, both marked with logarithmic scales. "You can do quite complicated mathematical calculations on this slide-rule, as they called it. Almost as fast as you could type into a digital pad." Clisser looked from one to the other. "So that's what a slide rule looks like. I saw one mentioned in a treatise on early calculators but I never thought we'd have to resort to ancient devices. And mention of an abacus, too, actually. You have been busy reinventing alternatives."

"And I'll find that other device, too, if you'll leave me alone and don't dump more vitally important, urgent research on me."

"I'm hoping," Clisser said at his most diplomatic, "that you can give me something to show before the Winter Solstice and Turn's End."

Jemmy shot straight up in his chair. c.o.c.ked his head and stared at Clisser so that Clisser leaned forward hopefully, holding his breath lest he disrupt Jemmy's concentration.

"Fraggit," and Jemmy collapsed again, beating his fists on the table. "It has to DO with Solstices."

"Well, if you've gone back to abacii and slide-rules, why not a sun-dial clock?" Clisser asked facetiously.

Jemmy sat up again, even straighter. "Not a sun-dial," he said slowly, "but a cosmic clock - a star dial like... stone stone SOMETHING."

"Stonehenge?"

"What was that?"

"A prehistoric structure back on Earth. Sallisha can tell you more about it if you'd care to ask her," Clisser said slyly and was rewarded by Jemmy's rude dismissal of the suggestion. "It turned out to be rather an astonishing calendar since it accurately predicted eclipses as well as verifying Solstices dawn." Clisser stopped, looking wide-eyed at Jemmy whose mouth had dropped open to form a soundless 'O' as what he said astounded them both.

"Only that was a stone circle... on a plain..." Clisser stammered, gesturing dolmens and cross-beams. Muttering under his breath, he strode across to the shelves, trying to find the text he wanted. "We must have copied it. We had to have copied it."

"Not necessarily since you've been on these relevant only historical entries," Jemmy contradicted him.

"I remember accessing it once. It's only that we'll have to adapt it to fit our needs, which is framing the Red Planet when the conjunction is right." He was scrabbling amongst the litter on his desk for a clean sheet of paper and a pencil.

"The first three he found were either stubs or broken. That's another thing we've got to re-invent... fountain pens."

"Fountain pens?" Clisser echoed. "Never heard of fountain pens."

"I'll do them tomorrow. Leave me to work this out but," and Jemmy paused long enough to grin diabolically up at Clisser's befuddlement, "I think I'll have something by Turn's End. Maybe even a model... but only if you leave now." Clisser left, closing the door quietly behind him and pausing a moment.

"I do believe I've been kicked out of my own office," he said, pivoting to regard the door. His name, which had recently been repainted, was centered in the upper panel.

"Hmm." He turned the sign hung there on a nail to DO NOT DISTURB" and walked away whistling the chorus from the 'Duty Song'. He'd catch Sallisha before she climbed up the stairs to his office. That would please her. Well, it might.

He hurried down the steps and met her coming in the door.

"I'm not late," she said, at her most caustic, her arm tightening convulsively on the bulging notebook she carried.

He was in for it.

"I didn't say you were. Let's take the more comfortable option of the teachers' lounge."

"My conclusions are not something you'll wish to discuss in public," she said, recoiling. She might be one of his best teachers though the rumor was that children learned their lessons to get out of her clutches - but her att.i.tude towards him, and his proposed revitalization program, was totally hostile.

Clisser smiled as graciously as he could. "It's empty right now and will be for at least two hours."

She sniffed but, when he courteously gestured for her to precede him, she tramped on in an implacable fashion. Like a Morinst to his Clisser shuddered and hurriedly followed her.

The lounge was empty, a good fire crackling on the hearth.

The klah pitcher rested on the warmer and there were, for a change, clean cups. He wondered if Bethany had done the housekeeping.