communicator. We each had one of those kits, but two
times sparse is only double sparse.
"Nothing there," I muttered. I rolled the Feinberger
in one hand, then plucked the electronic match. "Un-
less these mechanical components could be altered
somehow. Could you build a communicator?"
"Without tools?" he answered. "Without a transta-
tor/capacitor? Withouta"
"Think in terms of 'withs,' not 'withouts,'" I de-
manded. "What's here that could be used to build any
kind of communications device, anything that could
allow us to separate and still keep in touch? Maybe
the Feinberger sensors could be readjusted or some-
thing. Use your imagination."
Sarda glared rather corrosively at the useless collec-
tion of gadgets, fingered them, contemplated them,
then continued staring them down. One by one he
raised them for an individual 1ookwthe mediscanner,
the match, the beacon--and put them down again.
Eventually he shook his head and pressed his lips
together. "I can see no provision here that would lend
itself to the creation of any kind of sophisticated
communications circuit."
I slumped down, shaking my head. "It doesn't have
107
to be sophisticated. All it has to do is relay and
receive. Or even just relay. It doesn't have to be able
to signal a starship, for crying out loud."
He frowned at my unfamiliar phrase, glowered se-
verely, and tried once again to envision the impossible
thing I demanded. After watching his battle, I plugged
myself into the same circuits and tried to help. "This
planetold has the same basic geological makeup and
energy fields as Earth, say, before the Industrial Age.
What was on Earth then that we could use now?"
I really hoped he wouldn't start explaining it to me,
but just apply whatever came up. Maybe if I tossed
enough questions his way, one of the answers would
strike a chord, preferably before we tore each other to
bits. I'd never worked closely with a Vulcan before,
yet I still got the idea that Sarda wasn't displaying the
usual Vulcan level of patience. Instead of that elegant
control, his was more of an induced frigidity. I kept
sensing movement under the icy surface, a movement
that frustrated him even more than my wild aspirations
did. Sitting only inches from him, I now watched the
internal fight tug at his stern expression and realized
suddenly that, no matter what he said, victory in this
Outlast meant as much to him as it did to me. I
couldn't have substantiated that in a thousand years,
but I felt it as surely as if he had engraved it on the skin
of my hand. His lips tightened again, his amber eyes
tinted green with the reflection of ferns, and his hand
tightened on the Feinberger again.
Then the ferns flickered. No... the flicker was in
his eyes. He gazed tensely at nothing, his lips parting
in perception. He stared, no longer at the kit, but now
into the ferns, yet not seeing them. He was listening.
I tensed. "What?"
Still longer he stared, now tilting his head slightly,
raising his eyes until the amber in them was corrupted
by the cloud-strung sky. "An approach," he said.
"Very faint."
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"Sure?"
"Yes."
The kits rolled into our hands as if by some strange
kinetic force, and we sank into the dewy ferns. I drew
my mock phaser and set it for close range. My shoul-
der shook, a giveaway of rookie tension as my fist
closed around the weapon. If I was this nervous during
Academy games, what would it be like some day on a
real mission, when the phaser was set to kill?
Ignoring the nagging signal of my own inadequacies,
I pushed Sarda behind me and listened. Now I too
could hear the rustle of approach. One of the teams
was near, growing nearer.
"Any hints?" I whispered. "Who is it?"
"No way to tell yet," Sarda responded quietly.
"Could be any of them."
"I'm not ready to move on Vesco, but if it's the
Norwegian or--"
The jungle parted.
Two people crept into view, weapons drawn. My
heart sunk when I saw that they were wrapped in vines
and leaves for camouflage. Should've thought of that,
too. Everyone was getting the drop on me, and I was
letting it go on. Something had to break, something...
there had to be a way.
I aimed my mock phaser, carefully. The enemy team
was moving toward us. They sensed our eyes and
paused, then moved forward again, ready for us,
somehow knowing we were here. Both were human,
both male, one tall and wiry, the other stocky but light
on his feet. The vines covering them made it difficult
for me to take aim in the jungle's dimness, but I tried
anyway. Somewhere between those heavy leaves
were human forms to hit. I tried to estimate down from
the filtered blobs of faces in the overgrowth, and fired.
A dye dart lanced away from me, swishing through
the ferns. One of the faces dodged fast, and bright blue
dye sprayed all over a palmetto.
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We scrambled. Sarda went one way, and I the other,
while the enemy team raced through the ferns trying to
get to us before we got another clear shot at them. The
jungle burst into pandemonium. Vines tangled around
our legs as we plunged behind thick bushes and
avoided stinger plants while trying to keep our heads
down.
"Circle!" I hissed at Sarda. Just then, a dye dart
whizzed by, just over my ear. I turned in time to see
yellow dye smatter across a lichen-covered stump, and
lost precious seconds staring at it and absorbing the
horrible fact that I had almost been disqualified from
the Outlast. In the same thought as my vow that they
wouldn't come that close again came the awareness
that I was entirely vulnerable to those dye darts. I took
a broad dive for a wall of ferns just as another dart
sang by.
I'd lost track of Sarda. Frantic, I risked standing up
straight and trying to get a bearing on him. If he went
down, that was it. Half the purpose of the Outlast was
teamwork. We had to work together, protect each
other, and jointly survive. Separating might not have
been the best idea. Where was he?
The ground took a sharp dip without warning, and I
slid down a bristly bank, just managing to keep control
of my descent and land on my feet at the bottom.
There, I paused and listened, crouching warily. Every
muscle in my body quivered with anticipation, and I
began to wonder if I could handle an actual survival
episode, where lives really were at stake. After all, this
was only a game. What would reality be like?
I shook off that thought and put my mind back in the
present, where it belonged, remembering what o
ne of
my Academy professors had said about distraction
being deadly. Sarda . . . I had to find him. If we
couldn't communicate, separation could also be
deadly. What if he'd already been hit? We could
already be disqualified and I wouldn't even know it.
110
What if that happened? What if I'd been eliminated
from the Outlast before I'd even made a single kill?
What if--
Sounds... rustling... over there.
I crouched deeper into the ferns and crawled in the
direction of the sounds. My legs ached as I moved
forward, keeping my hand tightly around the mock
phaser. Thorns caught my hair and pulled it, but I kept
moving forward, letting them tear at me rather than
adjust my position and give myself away. Only when I
heard the voices, hissing at each other from deep
within the steamy overgrowth, did I pause and realign
my approach. They seemed to be moving away from
me, but that could easily be an illusion of the jungle. I
didn't trust it.
Good thing, too, because in seconds I was almost
beside the rustling. With a howl I hoped was ferocious,
I plunged from the protection of the rough cycads,
aimed at the noise, and fired.
Instantly, a dye dart buzzed toward me and I
plunged to one side. The ground came up to meet me,
but the dye dart missed, splattering instead over the
twisted roots and vines behind me. Blue paint flecked
the shoulder of my uniform--blue? Blue!
"Sarda!" I burst out of the cycads again.
He was wide-eyed and waist-deep in some kind of
brown and yellow cane growth, his mock phaser aimed
squarely at me.
"What about the others?" I gasped.
"I thought--evidently I was mistaken," he said,
brows drawn.
"They've got to be here somewhere! Get behind
me!"
We joined forces and hunted. We found our prey, all
right, and they found us. Dye darts flew, but none
scored hits before one of us ran afoul of a trip wire
strung across an open space, and down came a string
of giant leaves brimming with stagnant water.
111
"Yuuuuuuuuck !" blurted one of our enemies. Gasp-
ing and sputtering, we split off in different directions,
drenched in the most ghastly rank stuff a jungle could
offer.
Sarda and I staggered back up our escarpment and
rolled onto the moss, choking and definitely reeking.
"What the--what the--what is this stuff?" I gasped.
"A trap, obviously," he murmured, shaking drop-
lets of stagnancy from his sleeves.
"Oh, gaaack," I choked, my nose shriveling. "This
is... underhanded!"
"And obviously not set by that team."
"Somebody's playing practical jokes!"
As the echo of my words looped down through the
ravine, Sarda cautiously advised, "Keep control of
yourself, Lieutenant."
"But this isn't the time or place for practical jokes!
The Outlast just isn't the time for jokes !"
Sarda grasped my arm to calm me down, only to let
go when the sleeve squished and let loose a new waft
of stink.
I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists tight, glaring
off down the escarpment with an acid scowl. 'Wesco!
That slug. It could only be him. He used to do the
same things to his dormmates at the Academy!"
Sarda sighed and looked at his drenched uniform. "I
believe he has turned that particular epithet back upon
us," he commented.
"Come on. We're going to take him out."
I struck off down the ravine.
"Piper! Wait!" Sarda chased me down the incline,
catching desperately at my uniform parka. "Piper,
stop before you give our position away."
Somewhere down very deep, I realized that I was
losing control, letting anger get the better of me. Vesco
and his tricks had prevented me from conquering the
other team, and for no apparent reason. Why would he
rig such a booby trap? Only when I started wondering
112
how he'd known where we were clustered did I re-
member that his teammate was a Skorr and could fly.
All this time, Vesco had had aerial reconnaissance at
his disposal and we'd forgotten all about it. Anger hit
me again. In my rage, I plowed right down the clearest
areas of the jungle, just ahead of Sarda as he tried to
force me to stop. Only when my feet sank into an
unseen hole and I stumbled forward was he able to
catch me.
I clawed at the ferns and pulled myself up. Honey.
My boots were dripping with honey. I looked around,
down. Yes, there it was... a neatly dug hole brimming
with raw honey, covered with dead bugs. Now the
honey, and the bugs, were all over my legs.
"That's it," I growled. "He's mine." The contami-
nated honey sucked at my boots as I pushed myself up
and turned once again down the incline, but Sarda
caught me and, this time, held fast.
He yanked me around. "Lieutenant," he began
firmly, his pale eyes boring deep, "you must control
yourself!"
"Vesco's not playing fair," I insisted, then accused,
"You're not human. You don't understand."
Sarda grasped my shoulders and forced me to face
walking into his trap. We can beat him as you desire,
but not if you let him conquer you even before there is
a confrontation. If I can try to think like a human for a
few hours," he said with quiet punctuation, "I ask you
to think like a Vulcan."
Until he saw the fury fade from my face, he refused
to let go of my arms. Determination narrowed his
eyes. And in those moments of fire and ice, the trial
that forged our relationship found its power of crea-
tion.
The moment drew itself out. How much real time
passed, I've no idea. We read each other, communi-
cated more deeply than words can manage, and made
113
not a move until we both knew I had completely
absorbed and accepted his pact. Think like a human;
think like a Vulcan. The ultimate empathy--trade
minds.
I nodded.
"You're right," I said. "You're right."
Sarda took a deep breath. Relief layered the deter-
mination in his eyes. For a few uncomfortable seconds
he struggled to regain the stiff composure of his race.
"I would estimate that Vesco has littered this area with
such traps."
"I should've remembered. Vesco's specialties are
reactology and reflexology," I told him. "He's out to
rattle us."
"And very nearly succeeding," he said, his scowl
putting me in my place.
I held my foot up so the insect-laden honey could
drip off, then moved aside as carnivorous plants
slinked out to lick at the vibrations of drops they
hoped were blood. "Yeah . . . sorry. Well, Vesco's a
psych
ologist. I should have expected he'd use it. Let's
start using our own specialties."
Immediately, Sarda unrolled the kit and began prov-
ing that he hadn't been entirely unaffected by my
earlier insults either. Evidently he had found his way
through my bitterness to that faint ring of truth at its
core. He'd opened his mind as I'd dared him to and
discovered that he could readjust the receiving mecha-
nisms on the mediscanners to read old-style carrier
waves. A couple of hours work and pop, communica-
tion. Of course, it wasn't as easy as it sounded, but we
did manage to arrange a rough kind of transceiver.
"It's called a radio," Sarda explained. "Very low
gain vibrations, not very efficient."
"Efficient enough," I said, fondling the mangled
Feinberger, now removed from its shell and hooked up
with about a dozen spidery additions from pieces of
114
uniform, parts of the electric match, and anything else
we could jury-rig to our purpose. It wouldn't work
very well, but it would work.
We put it to use almost immediately. Sarda took a
place in a tree high on the escarpment, and I made my
way down into the ravine, hoping against hope that the
three other tea ms still remained for me to beat. If there
was only one team left, I had already forfeited the
Outlast.
From his high vantage point, Sarda was able to
pinpoint the positions of the two-man team we'd just
missed, and with his superior ability to judge distance
he helped me zero in on them. In minutes, their
uniforms were stained a satisfying bright blue. Defeat
rose in their faces---I empathized, believe me--but
they weren't allowed to utter a sound, They were
"dead." According to the rules, they sat down right
where they were and the leader engaged his locator
beam. I watched, probably out of paranoia, as they
were unceremoniously beamed up to the monitor ship.
Now... the Norwegian. And Vesco.
I had to wait, straining my patience, not to mention
my courage, while Sarda tried to locate the two most
dangerous teams. While on the bottom of the ravine, I
ran into two more of Vesco's unfriendly little traps--
one involving a sizable spider and the other layering
my right arm with needleplants--but my promise to