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medical people of their own and we hope sense enough to leave the area while the sky is falling.” His tone was snappish but he smiled, remembering to whom he was speaking.
    “Yes, well,” Marmie said, her accent more pronounced, drawled with a pursing of her mouth and a narrowing of her eyes that somehow conveyed that she was exercising great tolerance, “my ship has excellent shields and sensors for deflecting projectiles. I shall see to it at the next council meeting that we discuss having similar ones installed on the military vessels so you can take a more active role in this sort of emergency. If you would care to transfer some of your personnel to my vessel, we will be happy to give you safe transport to the planet’s surface so you may carry out your mission with greater safety and so that Ke-ola’s people will receive help as soon as possible.”
    Bright patches of red appeared on the colonel’s close-shaven cheeks and traveled down his neck. “I’m afraid I cannot allow—”
    “Mr. Guthe,” she said to her own com officer, “do patch me through to the High Command so they can provide authorization for the colonel to make use of our resources.”
    The colonel turned away for a moment. Murel and Ronan were certain it was to get control of his temper. When he turned back to face them, he did seem to have regained a measure of composure.
    “That won’t be necessary, ma’am,” he said smoothly. “It’s very good of you to offer your help. However, I’ve just received word from our link to the surface that the meteor bombardment seems to have stopped for the moment so we can all proceed.”
    He had his navigation officer provide landing coordinates for Johnny, and communications terminated while the
Custer
darted toward the pockmarked planet, the
Piaf
following.
    As they neared the surface, the landscape before them looked even less habitable than it had from the air. Murel had done some computer research on volcanoes while aboard ship, wanting to learn more about the one forming Petaybee’s newest landmass. One of the pictures of the field inside the volcanic crater had looked something like Halau’s surface. There were large craters pocked with emberous pimples of meteor rock. The comparatively level bits of ground looked back at them with thousands upon thousands of bloodshot eyes, and the air was still spangled with fiery rain.
    Ke-ola, his finger trembling, pointed out what had been New Puna.
    “You see that big hole there? That is where we had the gardens. And that one over there? That is where the pool was that held the Honu’s relatives.”
    “And your relatives, Ke-ola? Where are they?”
    He scanned the viewport in a slow, deliberate way then shrugged. “I don’t see the home dome, where the people lived. Not even a splinter. That big hole with the m-melted edges? That’s where it used to be.”
    Johnny quietly placed a hand on Ke-ola’s shoulder.
    As soon as it was humanly possible they suited up and prepared to leave the ship. The soldiers and Johnny at first wanted Ronan and Murel to stay aboard but the twins were adamant.
    “Since we
are
Petaybee’s ambassadors,” Murel said, “I think we really do have to be in on everything.”
    “You are only ten years old,” Marmion said. “It could be very upsetting out there.”
    “We won’t be any more upset than Ke-ola or his bruthahs and sistahs,” Murel said, pronouncing the words the way Ke-ola did, out of respect for what seemed to be a colloquial language mutation, rather than ignorance of the way everyone else said it. “We’re here to help and that’s that.”
    “Perhaps we should use the
Piaf
as a base camp, ma’am, and take flitters out to reconnoiter. It would be faster and we’d be less vulnerable in case the rocks started banging about again,” Johnny suggested. “Also, if we needed to collect the wounded, we’d have something to carry them in.”
    “I’m not sure your flitters will work here,” Ke-ola