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Nile sighed.
Well we ll still have to convince Parrol it isn t suicide. But you re hired,
Ticos. Make it a very high salary and nail down your terms, including your
interests in anything that could classify as a longevity serum. After we ve
settled that, I ll start briefing you on the kind of difficulties you re
likely to run into on your island. That can t be done in a matter of days.
It s going to take weeks of cramming and on-the-spot demonstrations.
Ticos winked at her. That s why I m here.
She made it a very stiff cramming course. And Ticos turned out to be as good a
student as he d been an instructor. He had an alert, curious mind, an
extraordinarily retentive memory. Physically he proved to be tough and
resilient. Nile kept uprating his survival outlook, though she didn t mention
it. Some things, of course, she couldn t teach him. His gunmanship was only
fair. He learned to use a climb-belt well enough to get around safely; but to
develop anything resembling real proficiency with the device required long
practice. She didn t even attempt to instruct him in water skills. The less
swimming he did around floatwood the better.
They moved about the Meral from one floatwood drift to another, finally
selected a major island complex which seemed to meet all requirements. A
shelter, combining Ticos living quarters, laboratory and storerooms, was
constructed and his equipment moved in. A breeding group of eight-inch
protohoms and cultures of gigacells would provide him with his principal test
material; almost every known human reaction could be duplicated in them,
usually with a vast advantage in elapsed time. The structure was completely
camouflaged. Sledmen harvesting parties probably would be about the island
from time to time, and Ticos didn t want too many contacts with them. If he
stayed inside until such visitors left again, he wouldn t be noticed.
He had a communicator with a coded call symbol. Unless he got in touch with
her, Nile was to drop by at eight week intervals to pick up what he had
accumulated for the Giard lab and leave supplies. He wished to see no one
else. Parrol
shook his head at the arrangement; but Nile made no objections. She realized
that by degrees she d become fiercely partisan in the matter. If Ticos Cay
wanted to take a swing at living forever, on his feet and looking around,
instead of fading out or sliding off into longsleep, she d back him up,
however he went about it. Up to this point he hadn t done badly.
And somewhat against general expectations then, he lasted. He made no serious
mistakes in his adopted environment, seemed thoroughly satisfied with his life
as a hermit, wholly immersed in his work. The home office purred over his bi-
monthly reports. Assorted items went directly to the university colleagues who
had taken over his longevity project there.
They also purred. When Nile had seen him last, he d been floating along the
Meral for eighteen months, looked hale and hearty and ready to go on for at
least the same length of time. His mind exercises, he informed Nile, were
progressing well. . . .
Chapter 3
There were three men waiting in the central cabin of the Sotira sled to which
Jath presently conducted Nile. She knew two of them from previous meetings,
Fiam and Pelad. Both were Venn, members of the Fleet Venntar, the sledman
center of authority: old men and former sled captains. Their wrinkled
sun-blackened faces were placid; but they were in charge.
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On a sled a Venn s word overrode that of the captain.
Doncar, the sled captain, was the third. Quite young for his rank, intense,
with a look of controlled anger about him.
Bone-tired at the moment. But controlling that too.
Jath drew the door shut behind Nile and the otter, took a seat near Doncar.
She held a degree of authority not far below that of the others here, having
spent four years at a Hub university, acquiring technical skills of value to
her people. Few other sledmen ever had left Nandy-Cline. Their forebears had
been independent space rovers who settled on the water world several
generations before the first Federation colonists. By agreement with the
Federation, they retained their inde-
pendence and primary sea rights. But there had been open conflict between the
fleets and mainland groups in the past, and the sleds remained traditionally
suspicious of the mainland and its ways.
Impatience tingled in Nile, but she knew better than to hurry this group. She
answered Pelad s questions, repeating essentially what she had told Jath.
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