The first night was hell, I guess because I'm not used to having the
lights out. That's when you really start to feel lonely, being alone in
the dark. When the sun disappears, somehow you wonder in your stomach
if it's really going to come back. But I lived through it--one day in
thirty gone.
I rode in a spiral search pattern during the next two days. I had three
things in mind--stay alive, find people and find some of the others.
The first was automatic. The second was to find out if there was a slot
I could fit into for a month. If not, I would have to find a place to
camp out, as nasty as that would be. The third was to join forces,
though not with that meatball Jimmy D.
No, he isn't really a meatball. The trouble is that I don't take
nothing from nobody, especially him, and he doesn't take nothing from
nobody, especially me. So we do a lot of fighting.
I had a good month for Trial. My birthday is in November--too close to
Year End Holiday for my taste, but this year it was all right. It was
spring on Tintera, but it was December in the Ship, and after we got
back we had five days of Holiday to celebrate. It gave me something to
look forward to.
In two days of riding, I ran onto nothing but a few odd-looking
animals. I shot one small one and ate it. It turned out to taste pretty
good, though not as good as a slice from Hambone No. 4, to my mind the
best meat vat on the Ship. I've eaten things so gruey-looking that I
wondered that anybody had the guts to try them in the first place and
they've turned out to taste good. And I've seen things that looked good
that I couldn't keep on my stomach. So I guess I was lucky.
On the third day, I found the road. I brought Ninc down off the
hillside, losing sight of the road in the trees, and then reaching
it in the level below. It was narrow and made of sand spread over a
hard base. Out of the marks in the sand, I could pick out the tracks
of horses and both narrow and wide wheels. Other tracks I couldn't
identify.
One of the smartest moves in history was to include horses when
they dropped the colonies. I say "they" because, while we did the
actual dropping, the idea originated with the whole evac plan back on
Earth. Considering how short a time it was in which the colonies were
established, there was not time to set up industry, so they had to have
draft animals.
The first of the Great Ships was finished in 2025. One of the eight,
as well as the two that were being built then, went up with everything
else in the Solar System in 2041. In that sixteen years 112 colonies
were planted. I don't know how many of those planets had animals that
_could_ have been substituted but, even if they had, they would have
had to be domesticated from scratch. That would have been stupid. I'll
bet that half the colonies would have failed if they hadn't had horses.
* * * * *
We'd come in from the west over the ocean, so I traveled east on the
road. That much water makes me nervous, and roads have to go somewhere.
I came on my first travelers three hours later. I rounded a tree-lined
bend, ducking an overhanging branch, and pulled Ninc to a stop. There
were five men on horseback herding a bunch of the ugliest creatures
alive.
They were green and grotesque. They had squat bodies, long limbs and
knobby bulges at their joints. They had square, flat animal masks for
faces. But they walked on their hind legs and they had paws that were
almost hands, and that was enough to make them seem almost human. They
made a wordless, chilling, lowing sound as they milled and plodded
along.
I started Ninc up again and moved slowly to catch up with them. All the
men on horseback had guns in saddle boots. They looked as nervous as
cats with kittens. One of them had a string of packhorses on a line
and he saw me and called to another who seemed to be the leader. That
one wheeled his black horse and rode back toward me.
He was a middle-aged man, maybe as old as my Daddy. He was large and he
had a hard face. Normal enough, but hard. He pulled to a halt when we
reached each other, but I kept going. He had to come around and follow
me. I believe in judging a person by his face. A man can't help the
face he owns, but he can help the expression he wears on it. If a man
looks mean, I generally believe that he is. This one looked mean. That
was why I kept riding.
He said, "What be you doing out here, boy? Be you out of your head?
There be escaped Losels in these woods."
I told you I hadn't finished filling out yet, but I hadn't thought it
was that bad. I wasn't ready to make a fight over the point, though.
Generally, I can't keep my bloody mouth shut, but now I didn't say
anything. It seemed smart.
"Where be you from?" he asked.