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pillow, she closed her eyes. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof, she quoted to herself, and turned loose the future to handle its own affairs. Two minutes later she was fast asleep.

Chapter 2
    â€œâ€¦ A ND HERE ARE THE inventory lists from Crosse,” Major Thomas Brown said, laying one last thickness of printout on Colonel Meredith’s desk. “Everything’s out of the Aurora now, and the Pathfinder’s last load is on its way down. Most of the stuff waiting to be sorted is bulk food, clothing, and fertilizer.”
    Meredith nodded, glancing over the first page of the printout. His eyeballs ached their continual reminder that three hours of sleep was inadequate for a man his age. “How’s the landing strip holding out?” he asked.
    â€œPretty well, actually. Those repulsers the Ctencri sell are pretty hot, but because the shuttles use a smaller chunk of runway for both land and lift there’s actually less overall wear and tear on the permcrete. It’ll need some patching, of course, but we’ve got three weeks before the Celeritas arrives on its supply run.”
    â€œGood. Do we have enough room to let the flyers lift?”
    â€œOh, sure. They don’t need much more than their own length if you crank the repulsers up full.”
    â€œI know, but I’d rather not run them any higher than necessary. You never know what the half-life of a chunk of technology is going to be.”
    â€œThe Ctencri numbers—”
    â€œWere provided by the Ctencri equivalent of a sales rep. Need I say more?”
    Brown harumphed. “Well, they should still have no trouble. It’s mostly the center of the runway that’s torn up, and the flyers can easily fit on either side.”
    â€œFine.” Meredith raised his wrist phone and keyed a number.
    â€œMartello hangar; Greenburg,” the device responded.
    â€œColonel Meredith. Have the flyers been checked out yet?”
    â€œTwo are ready to go, sir. The third’ll be another hour or so.”
    â€œOkay. Have the first two teams head out—alert the tower to monitor and record all data.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Meredith disconnected and returned his attention to Brown. “Planting get started on schedule?”
    â€œMostly. The fields at Crosse were still too low in zinc and manganese this morning, and Dr. Haversham ordered another layer of fertilizer laid down. His guess was that the rivers bordering the fields cause a faster than normal ground water exchange that siphons off the extra minerals. Or something like that.”
    â€œGreat. Well, if that’s the worst goof the engineers made when they laid out this place, I guess we can live with it.”
    â€œAt least we’ve got the fertilizer to spare.” Brown was looking curious. “You expecting to find Captain Kidd’s treasure or something hidden in the hinterlands?”
    â€œWhat? Oh—the flyers? No, I just thought we should do some low-level surveys of the territory around the settlement.”
    Brown shrugged. “We’ve got cartography-quality photos for about a hundred kilometers around us. What more are we likely to need?”
    There was a faint whistling noise, and Meredith looked out the window in time to see the two sleek flyers shoot by and head east toward the cone of Mt. Olympus in the distance. He’d fought the budgeteers tooth and claw to get a half dozen of the Ctencri-built craft assigned to Astra, and considered himself fortunate they’d only whittled the number down to three. Though primarily for blue-sky use—their plasma jets utilized atmospheric oxygen in burning the fuel to preplasma temperatures—the flyers were equipped with a self-contained oxygen supply that enabled them to reach low orbit, which meant they could serve as extra shuttles in an emergency. “Suppose,” he said to Brown, “that there are colonies of spores or something out