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do?”
    â€œYou can keep out of the way.” It was the first thing that came to mind.
    She nodded once and left the cabin.
    Hang on, Mac, Hayes thought.
    Yambuku didn’t need another tutelary death. Isis had claimed too many lives already.
    Isis’s day averaged three hours longer than Earth’s, and its axial tilt was less acute, the seasons milder. The sun hovered above the Copper Mountains as Hayes, encased in an impossibly bulky mass of bioarmor, left Yambuku. The surrounding forest was already dense with shadow; the long Isian nightfall was about an hour away.
    A vast swath of vegetation had been cleared around the ground station, the soil burned and salted with long-lasting herbicides. Yambuku, its core and its four coaxial rings, sat embedded in this blackened wasteland like a lost pearl. The burn zone prevented native plants from overgrowing the station’s pressed-aggregate walls, fouling the exits and weakening the seals. But it reminded Hayes of something else: the empty space between a fortress and a bailey; a field of fire.
    It did nothing to deter airborne microorganisms—probable cause of the continuing seal failures—and already the weeds were beginning to make advances, green creepers twining out of the forest canopy like tentative fingers.
    Hayes, sweating inside his isolation suit, felt the familiar sensation of being
in
the landscape but not
of
it. Every sensation—the crackle of scorched soil under his feet, the whisper of wind-tossedleaves—was relayed by suit sensors. His touch was blunted by the armor’s fat gloves, sensitive and versatile though they were; his field of vision was blinkered, his sense of smell nonexistent. This river valley was as lush and wild as a summer garden, but he could never enter it except as proxy, robot, half-man.
    It would, of course, kill him at the first opportunity.
    He passed the curved wall of the station, rising like a limestone cliff in the slanting sunlight, and reached the area outside the tractible port where Macabie Feya was trapped in his malfunctioning armor.
    The problem was instantly obvious. Mac’s right leg had burned out below the hip, leaving a flaring, blackened gap in the outer shield. Primary and secondary hydraulics were hopelessly damaged below the waist. He was locked in place, frozen in an awkward crouch.
    The accident had happened almost eight hours ago. The suit itself had tourniqueted the leg and would even, if necessary, provide CPR and cardiostimulants; it was a good machine, even with its torso systems terminally cooked. But eight hours was a long time to be injured and alone. And the suit’s modest reservoir of analgesics and narcotics was close to exhaustion.
    Hayes approached his injured friend cautiously. The suit’s legs might be locked down, but the powerful arms remained mobile. If Mac panicked, he could inflict serious damage.
    Two land-duty tractibles rolled out of the way as Hayes came closer, cams glancing between Hayes and Macabie. Their eyes, of course, were Yambuku’s eyes. Elam’s eyes, in fact: Elam Mather was working the remotes. And how calm it all seemed in the late afternoon quiet, aviants chattering high in the trees, a black noonbug ambling across the ash-dark clearance like some tiny Victorian banker. Hayes cleared his throat. “Mac? Can you hear me?”
    His voice was relayed by radio to Mac’s headset. We hear the insects more clearly than we hear each other, Hayes thought. Two solitudes, semaphores across a microbiotic ocean.
    There was no answer beyond the low hum of the carrier. Mac must have slipped back into unconsciousness.
    Hayes was close enough now to examine the suit breach. The suit was multilayered, its hydraulics and motors normally operating in isolation from both their moist human cargo and the abrasive Isian biosphere. The overheat had peeled back the outer layer of flexarmor like foil, exposing a tangle of burned insulation and