The pain was gone. Sweat dripped into her eyes. She felt almost lifeless, certainly weightless but... serene, strangely enough. Her legs were spread wide, the thigh muscles ached, her vagina throbbed, and all pain was replaced by the languor of exhaustion. She became conscious of movement within the room, of a harsh breathing, a wet splat, and then the tiny gasp as infant lungs sucked in air and complained mewlingly.

She raised herself on her elbow, one hand reaching for the sound.

"Roy?" She dashed sweat and damp hair from her eyes.

Roy's back was to her. When he turned, she was startled to see a surgical mask across his face, the translucence of plastic gloves high up his muscled forearms. And, dangling from his left hand, a tiny, armwaving inverted form, the cord still attaching it to her.

"Oh, God, Roy, give him to me."

Roy's eyes were full of tears as he laid the child on her belly.

"I have delivered my son," Roy said in the gentlest voice. "Don't touch him," he added, knicking her hand away with the bare part of his forearm. "You're not sterile."

"He's mine, too," she protested, but did not reach out.

She watched as Roy deftly tied on the umbilical cord, swabbed the child's mouth, painted his eyes. As he tenderly oiled the reddish skin, Claire craned her neck to glimpse with greedy eyes at the perfection of the tiny form.

And the baby was perfect, from the delicate kicking feet to the twitching fists. His head bones were still pointed, but there was a fineness about the angrily screwed features. Despite the unconventionality of his birth, he was alive and obviously healthy. She did not protest when Roy swathed the child in a receiving blanket and laid him in the portable crib that he pushed gently to one side of the bed.

"Now, you." Again all emotion was leached from his voice.

With the heel of his hand, he pressed into her flattened belly. She screamed for the pain of it and was seized, to her horror, with another contraction that brought a flood of tears to her eyes. 114 "You leave me alone!" she cried, feebly batting at his arms.

"The afterbirth!"

And it was delivered.

Utterly exhausted, she lay back. She felt but did not move as he sewed the torn skin of her, only vaguely wondering that he knew how. She was too weary to help as he cleaned her, changed the soiled sheets. She was only grateful that the pain and the shame were over as he covered her tightly bound body with a light blanket. She could hear the baby snuffling somewhere in the room and his continuing vigor was more reassuring than anything else. She felt herself drifting off into sleep and tried to fight it. She must stay awake. She couldn't afford to sleep. He might try to leave her now he had the child he had wanted so desperately.

And that thought stuck in her mind. The child Roy wanted so desperately was born. That was why he had acted so rashly. His child. His child! She had, after all, and however deviously, become the mother of his child.

A tiny voice, insistent and undeniable for all its lack of volume, roused her. She felt hands turn back the covers that lay so comfortingly around her. She felt her upper body lifted, supported with pillows. Drowsily, she evaded full consciousness until she felt her arm crooked, felt the scrape of linen against her skin, the warmth of a small rounded form, hands against her right nipple, the coolness of a wet sponge, then the fumbling of small wet lips and the incredible pleasurable pain caused by a suckling child.

She opened her eyes to the dim light. Roy was sitting on the edge of her bed, his hand securing her lax hold on the child. She was fully aware in that instant, aware and awake. She glanced down at the tiny face, eyes tight, lips working instinctively for the nourishment she could feel it drawing from her breast.

Roy did not remove his hand, yet it was not as if he did not trust Claire. And suddenly she understood all that must have been driving him since she had blithely announced her desire to have his child first. She had taken him, of them all, by surprise. She had astounded and startled him. She had given him a hope, II? a promise that Roy Beach had never even considered, given the circumstances of his sexuality. She had given him the child of his own flesh, yet she had not soiled him with her femininity.

She understood now why he had been unwilling to trust anyone but himself with the responsibility of delivering his child.

The pressure in her other breast was painful. She disengaged the nipple from the searching, protesting mouth and quickly shifted the babe, taking a sensuous delight in the tug and pull of the eager lips as they fastened on the new food source.

Then she looked up at Roy. She smiled at him as their eyes met. She felt that she saw directly into his heart and soul for the first time in their long association. With her free hand, she reached for his and placed it on their son.

"I called Chess, and told him where you are. He said Ellyot made him understand."

Claire tried to tell him with her eyes that she did, too, but all she could say was, "Does he plan to come here?"

There was a quick start in Roy's body and his eyes plowed deep into hers as if he, too, had to know her heart, at least this once.

"It would be more peaceful," she added, holding onto his gaze, "to have the first few days alone, if you can stand it."

"I can stand it..."

Claire had to close her eyes against the look of intense joy, of almost painful jubilation in Roy's face. She felt him lean toward her, across the child, so that the baby kicked against the constriction. She felt his lips on hers, her body responding unreasonably to his benediction.

When she opened her eyes again, he was smiling down at the babe with untroubled pride and affection.

And that was how it must be forever, Claire reflected and deliberately put aside that brief, tantalizing glimpse of the forbidden paradise.

"Weather on Welladay" stands alone. Judy Lynn del Rey when she was Galaxy Magazine's energetic Gal Friday'MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursday, gave me a future cover for the magazine around which to write a story. Not as easy as it might seem. A helicopter and a tall man stood among what looked like Christmas tree decorations on the deck of a great whaleboat. Surrounded by lots of water! So pick up the ball and throw it, because you have to account for every element in that cover somewhere in your story.

It was a mystery to me how to do it, so I made the story a mystery.

Weather on Welladay

WELLADAY WAS INDEED A WATERY WORLD, Shahanna thought as the day side of the planet turned under her ship. Good thing that explorers were obstinate creatures; otherwise the hidden riches of this stormy world would have gone unnoticed.

She checked her location visually as the ship's computer began to print landing instructions.

"I'm not that stupid," she murmured, noticing the turbulence of several storm centers that blossomed in the northern hemisphere of Welladay. She tapped out Locate for the Rib Reefs, the rocky spine of the planet that stretched from north to south and broadened into the Blade, the one permanent installation on the watery world. "At sunrise, hmmm? Wouldn't you know. And right in the path of one storm. Well, let's beat it in." She began to punch out landing coordinates.

At that moment, the proximity alarm rang. She hit the Enlarge toggle of the screen control just in time to see two telltale blips-the small satellite that ought to be in orbit near her, and the larger one that certainly ought not to be in Welladan skies. Suddenly her ship rocked with the violence of a direct hit. Shahanna remained conscious just long enough to hit the survival button on the armrest.

Odis planted his flippered foot on the young whale's blunt snout and shoved.

"This is no time for nuzzling, nuisance," he roared, as the force of his thrust sent the baby backfinning. Whales liked to be talked to-roared at-though there was little chance they understood more than the tone '118 of voice. Some fishmen denied even that much comprehension. "Almost finished now, Mother," Odis bellowed reassuringly at the massive creature whose thyroid glands he was tapping.

The indicator dial of the longbeaked suction pump reached the red area, whereupon, with more deftness than others gave him credit for, Odis broke the connection and sealed the beaker. He closed the tap mouth and noted the date of this tap in paintpen above the metal insert. Old tapdates had faded but the new paint would glow for the three months necessary for a mature whale to generate more vital radioactive iodine in its thyroid gland.

Odis touched the zoom button on the drone's remote control, then scrawled the whale's registry number beside the luminous date on the beaker before holding it for the drone to record. That formality observed, he scratched the female's rubbery upper lip where the scales had been torn. What kind of a fight had she been in? Well, at least the wound had healed.

Once again her child tried to nose Odis' fishboat out of the way. Chuckling over the creature's antics, Odis climbed up the boat's ventral fin and over the back to the hatch. Ducking below, he stored the precious beaker of radioactive iodine in the chemfoamprotected carrier.

Back on the fishboat's snubnosed brow, Odis frowned at the sight of the school of whales beginning to melt away from the neighborhood. He had been out since early morning, tracking them down, and spent a good hour easing into the herd before he had tried to tap one. First, he'd pounded affectionately on the snouts of the mammals he knew as well by scar marks as by registration code. Two had shied away from him so wildly that he began to worry that this group had already been milked by that fardling pirate. When he was finally able to draw alongside the old bluescarred cow and do a light tap, he had decided that their weathersense was all that was making them skittish.

Between the freakish storms of Welladay and the fardling pirates, Odis growled to himself as he squinted toward the darkening horizon, they might as well pull the plug on operations here. He frowned. Where else would he find a world more to his liking? A task more suited to him, a man born and bred on a highgravity planet? Or creatures big enough not to suffer from his inordinate strength?

Pleased with himself, he stepped on the release for the outboard panel and began to beam toward Shoulder Blade for a weather report.

The instrumentation was on a pole that looked like a colorful Christmas tree when it was lit up-which was now. It was recording various local indications of the weather. But when he tried to reach Okker in his harbormaster's lookout at the Eye of the lagoon, the beam crackled with interference. So the easterly storm had hit them. Even with a band of weather satellites, one couldn't always be sure of weather on Welladay.

Odis tagged the playback in case Okker had broadcast while he was tapping the whale. He whistled as he listened to Okker's sour report of machstorm warnings, the advice that all vessels return to Shoulder at cruising depth and hold at shelflevel until recall- the local storm over Shoulder seemed to be only a squall. The warning was repeated twice with additional ominous details on the machstorm's wind velocity, estimated drift, and duration.

Odis grunted. He could just imagine Okker's disgust at relaying such a message. Tallav, the maggoty Planetary Administrator, had probably been at Okker's elbow. With the exercise of tolerance, Odis could understand the reasons for Tallav's ineffectualness. A meek man, he was not suited to a blustery, stormy world like Welladay, even if affairs proceeded normally. But Tallav was caught in a fladding bind. Someone was pirating the main source of Welladan wealth so that no substantial revenue had been garnered from the whales in months. Result: Supplies could not be paid for, and credit had been suspended. What with the depredations caused by pirates and various natural catastrophes, only three fishboats were operable. Requests from legitimate sources for the priceless radioactive iodine had become demands: Urgent! Top Priority. Gray phage was endemic and periodically epidemic. The only specific vaccine was a dilute suspension of the radioactive iodine. In addition to the risk of tapping to death the few whales they could now find, Welladan fishmen were constricted by lack of operable craft.

The two best fishmen, Odis and Murv-a newcomer on a DebtContract-had been sent out in an attempt to find and tap enough of the valuable substance to make up at least one critically needed shipment. Whatever Odis and Murv could get today, therefore, was crucial. Fleetingly, Odis wished they could charge a hardship premium, but the price of the iodine had been fixed by Federation officials who evidently were too concerned with other crises to pay attention to repeated Welladan requests to investigate piracy.

So here was timid Tallav, calling the fishmen back because there was a machstorm brewing in the west. Odis ran a quick check of the instrumentation on the approaching storm, now boiling black and ochre on the horizon.

As he evaluated the readings, he maneuvered his ship toward the nearest adult whale. He could get one more tap completed before he would have to duck and run home. Fishboats were sturdily designed for Welladan waters, to race on hydrofoils with the scaly spawn of her seas, to plunge trenchward with the whales, to endure the savagery of a sudden squall, to wallow, whalelike, within the school itself without being attacked by a nervous male.

He coasted along the port side of the mammal, rather pleased that the creature was not shying off as did its schoolmates. The painted code above the tapvent had faded completely, so Odis toyed with the idea of getting at least a beaker and a half, as he made his preparations to tap.

It was then that he noticed the strange color of the scales. At first, he thought it was caused by the light -the sky had already changed with the approach of the storm. As he looked around, there wasn't another whale in sight; they'd all raced away, north and south, deep from the storm center. This whale wasn't moving because it was close to death.

Cursing with pentup anger, Odis stomped below, retrieved the beaker he had just drawn, and prepared to pump the contents into the sick mammal. Would it be enough? Was the gesture merely a waste of fluid now-fluid as precious to the life of Welladay as to this mammal? Odis refused to consider this a waste. In an angry scrawl he painted the date and the circumstances on the whale, adding a crude skull and crossbones.

He stepped back then, clenching his teeth, railing against the brutality of the pirates. He wondered bitterly just how many more beasts had been tapped dry, just how many more black, bloated corpses would roll in on the fresh tides after the storm?

He waited, hoping for some sign of change in the creature. There was no way of knowing how long ago the tap had occurred-hours, days? Or how swiftly the infusion would correct the whale's deficiency.

A fresh wind came up, and the outboard panel chattered metallically, then began to crackle with an authoritative noise. A craft approaching? Odis scanned the clouds. Suddenly a second drone broke into view, higher and north of him. He glanced down at the seaviewer, waiting for the indication that another fishboat approached. The drone whistled overhead, but the seaviewer remained empty.

Murv was the only other fishman out! Where was he that he would send his drone back alone? Had he been caught by machviolence? A wilder shriek tore the air; and the whale reacted with a nervous bobbing, then pulled away from the fishboat.

Odis swung the Christmas tree, got a fix on the sound, and followed it. The intruder was high up but lancing downward, downward and right into the machstorm. He nipped the track toggle, keeping the outboard panel lined up with the visual trace of the spaceship until it disappeared into the clouds.

That boiling trail had come from nothing based on Welladay. And it was heading away from the only settlement on the water world. Odis retracted the outboard panel. As he climbed down the ladder, he shot a final look at the whale, now moving slowly in a northerly direction. No, the iodine had not been a waste. If the creature could just make it out of the storm's path, it could feed itself back to strength on the plankton in the northern waters. 122 Odis slammed the hatch down and searched the pilot's couch just as the computer printed out the intruder's course: straight into the storm, directly in line with the only other permanent landfall. Crown Lagoon. The realization was particularly bitter to Odis, for that was the direction from which Murv's drone had just come, Slowly, Odis tapped out a new course for the fishboat. Not back to the safety of Shoulder Blade, but straight into the storm, directly on the intruder's tail. Then he fed into the computer the details that Okker had transmitted on the roachstorm. As the printout chattered, Odis sank back into the padded couch, his suspicions confirmed. In approximately five hours, the eye of the machstorm would be centered over the gigantic old volcano whose mouth formed a twentykilowide lagoon. The shards and lava plateaus of its slopes were like a galacticsized crown, thrown down just above the equator of Welladay in the shallow meadows of the western seas.

Murv could hold up in the deep beyond the island's shores-safe enough even with a machstorm lashing deep into the ocean-until the eye of the storm covered Crown. Murv could then surface, deliver the stolen iodine to the ship which had sneaked in under cover of the storm. Well, Murv would do well to leave with that pirate. Once the Investigator got here-and the planet was registered as bankrupt and taken over by the Federation, Welladay would be no place for any freedomloving man. Finds! Murv must have enough of the iodine on him to buy a planet. He sure had sold out Welladay!

Grimly Odis settled down for the long run. He'd stay on the surface and run on the hydrofoil as long as he could, at least until the storm's violence forced him to the relatively quieter, but slower depths. He had to intercept Murv before the traitor got the iodine offplanet.

But where had the man hidden the valuable substance all this time? Every possible crevice on Shoulder Blade had been searched repeatedly once the fishermen realized what was happening. Hadn't Tallav initiated the droneescort to prevent any fishman from tapping too deeply? How the flads had Murv managed?

True, he had sent his drone back. But you couldn't tap a whale in the midst of a storm and he was within his rights. Indeed, Tallav would have screamed if Murv had kept the drone.

Odis leaned forward, tapped his own drone's controls. He printed out a message for it to transmit once the squall lifted over Shoulder Blade, then sent it to track him miles above the coming storm. He might just find it useful to have a drone in the eye. He would risk Tallav's tantrums. As there was nothing more he could do now, Odis settled down to a short nap.

The old survey charts had better be right about that underwater channel into the lagoon, Murv thought as he listened to the stress noises of the fishboat and grimly watched the danger lights blink warnings. The fathometer marked the unsteady ascent as the craft bucked tidal pulls and storm rips. He must be nearing the archipelago.

The straps that held Murv firmly to the pilot's seat cut into his flesh and he cursed absently as he began to match the chart to seaviewer.

Blighted planet! The whole thing had appeared so fardling simple. He was used to risks, trained to surmount them. So he had opted to contract as a fishman, to look around for a while, spot the trouble, and then back out again, ready for more demanding work. On a watery planet, with only one permanent settlement, and only one product that was in great demand throughout the galaxy, what could have been simpler? He had not, however, counted on such a trivial detail as weather. Nor had he counted on the mimsypimsy fardling parasite of a Planetary Administrator coming up with a drone escort to prove his fishmen were not the murdering pirates. That wrinkle had restricted Murv's investigations, but it didn't make him trust Tallav. Murv knew better than to trust anyone.

Furthermore, Murv had not counted on sympathizing with the great whales. After he had been taught to milk them, after he had been assigned a school, it had annoyed the hell out of him to see the rotting carcasses of whales that had trustingly let humans tap them to death. They even lined up to get milked. No, the waste-the fladding waste of it-galled Murv the most.

He must be nearing the tunnel mouth; he could feel the fishboat being sucked relentlessly toward the basaltic shelf. His fingers flew over the pitch and yaw controls, decreased the play in the helm, and ignored the neckjarring rolls. On the fathometer and on the roiled viewscreen in front of him, the bottom of the ocean met the ramparts of the old volcano in a solid wall of tortured lava!

Shahanna was roused by the shrieking hiss of the insistent wind. She opened her eyes to grayness, to the realization that the crash foam was dissipating, to the knowledge that she was still alive and breathing. In spite of the cushioning foam and the padding of her seat, she felt thoroughly wrung out. Motion was painful. She turned her head, groaning as stiff muscles protested. A solitary yellow light gleamed on the control panel, then blinked off as she watched. The ship had sent out its death knell, the last thing this type of spacecraft was programmed to do before all its systems failed.

Shahanna reached with an enfeebled hand to her side pouch, fumbled for a stimulant and a pain depressor. Clumsily, she jabbed the drugs into her arm and then, gasping at the discomfort even that slight motion caused, lay back. The drugs worked swiftly. She staggered to her feet and worked her muscles, relieved that nothing had broken or split. Her wrist chrono showed that some eight hours had elapsed since the unexpected attack. Automatically, she reached toward the log recorder.

"All systems dead, gal," she reminded herself, and looked out the plastight window.

Jagged black rock surrounded the nose of the scout and sheets of water scudded across the window.

How lucky can a gal get? She thought. I cracked up on land? Shahanna frowned. "Shoulder?" The Rib Reefs had been half a planet away when she had been shot down. There was no possible entry she could have made that would land her on Shoulder. But she remembered some other semipermanent land masses on the charts, if one could dignify a wayward archipelago or a transient volcano as land mass.

The lock was jammed solid, Shahanna discovered, but the escape hatch was clear. The little scoutship rocked under her feet, and she realized it had been rocking ever since she had come to. The pitch of the wind had risen a few notes, too, and water sloshed across the viewpane in a constant fall. If she were on an island in one of those archipelagos, she was on a very precarious one.

Shahanna wasted no further time on speculation. She quicksealed her orders onto her ribs, slapped additional supplies to her belt, shrugged into an allpurpose suit. That done, she harnessed on a lifesupport tank and donned her headgear and the wateraids, then punched the destruct on her ship's instrumentation and threw open the escape hatch. She got a face full of wave and drew back sputtering and choking. Undaunted, she rearranged her mask and took a second look.

Gaunt black fingers of stone held the ship. But the rising tides, windlashed and moonchurned, rocked the boat resting in its impromptu dry dock, grabbed it with a greedy urgency. What remained of the aft section of the ship was rocking slowly down into the water.

"That guy was a good shot-cleared off my engine. But I'm a live one." Another wave slapped across her face. She ducked instinctively and then, with a deft movement, was over the side of the ship, its bulk protecting her from a worse battering.

She could see beyond her ship, through the spaces of the finger rocks. It wasn't a comforting view, for the huge expanse of water was equally wild. A grinding sound reminded her that she had little time for deliberation. The ship slipped further down the rocky palm. Shahanna saluted it, promising retribution, and clambered up through the rock fingers. She didn't see that an outcropping of rock caught and held the forward section of her sliding ship above the water.

"This is the damnedest terrain" Shahanna said aloud as she scrambled higher, grateful for the tough fabric of her gloves as she found handholds on the razoredged shards of rock. The rain was coming down in such heavy torrents that she could barely see a few feet in front of her. The wind pounded her with hammer blows. She would not last long in this maelstrom, Shahanna decided, peering around for some sort of shelter against a rocky ledge. Instinct directing her, she climbed doggedly to such a height as she could manage on rockpile. The absence of water pouring over her and the slackening of the wind indicated a sanctuary, and she was inside the little cave before she even realized it existed. With an inarticulate moan, she crawled far enough inside to be out of the reach of the elements. Sighing, she rolled onto her back as exhaustion claimed a battered mind and body.

Planetary Adminstrator Tallav watched anxiously as the nets drew the battered space craft into the safety of the Broken Rib Hangars. Almost on cue, rain in blinding sheets plummeted until the dome over the living quarters beyond the hangars looked like a waterfall and the storm drains began to fill with alarming speed. Tallav shuddered at the ferocity of the floods.

You'd think twelvefootdeep dikes would be ample anywhere-except on Welladay, he thought as he started down the ramp to welcome the eagerly awaited Investigator.

It wouldn't do to appear nervous, Tallev thought. Might cause suspicion. Nor should he appear irritated that it had taken Federation such an unconscionably long time to dispatch an Investigator. Didn't they realize the consequences of letting this outandout piracy of the vital radioactive iodine go on for so long? Surely his messages had been explicit, his reports detailed. But to wait until Central Credit actually suspended all shipments to Welladay-that was disgraceful. Disgraceful and unjust.

Tallav slid back the portal and stepped out into the rockhewn chamber that housed the drones and visitors' shuttles. Such noise as the crewmen made in securing the ship was lost in the vast room. Tallav was a little surprised at the Investigator's physical appearance.

Not that he expected a fulluniform for a minor planet like Welladay, but an Investigator ought to appear in something more than a faded onepiece shipsuit.

"I'm Tallav, Planetary Administrator, Grade 3B," he said in a firm voice, saluting the new arrival with what he felt was the proper deference. Investigators were not exactly equal in status to Planetary Administrators but they had superplenary powers which they could invoke if circumstances warranted. "And you are Investigator..."

"Brack's the name.

Tallav was a little annoyed by the very casual return of his salute.

"Your arrival couldn't be more opportune," Tallav went on, indicating the exit to Brack. "We haven't so much as a drop of the radioactive iodine left, and two toppriority emergency capsules came in just before you got here. The tone was rather highhanded. You timed that a mite close, if I may say so."

The Investigator shot him an odd look as he ducked under the portal. Tallav dogged the lock wondering if the Investigator thought he was being critical.

"Storms on Welladay are unusually violent," he continued. "That's why we net down all craft."

Brack snorted and let Tallav lead the way to the office.

"If you'll just come this way. Investigator, my tapes and personnel are entirely at your disposal. We want this piracy stopped immediately-"

"In that storm?"

"Well, no, of course not. I mean, that is... surely my communications gave you ample facts from which to draw some conclusions? After all, there aren't very many places on Welladay from which a pirate could operate."

"No, there aren't."

"Now, here we are. May I offer you some refreshment? Or would you permit yourself to try some offworld stimulant? I'm afraid the commissary is a little low-tedious, this business of being boycotted until these pirates are ^apprehended and the iodine is collected properly."