I squinted at the dust, wondering if I should ask for a verify. I could see now it was moving fast, which meant it wasn’t a gate, or a pony, and the dust was too low for the heli. “Looks like the rover,” I said. “Maybe the new loaner—what was her name? Ernestine?—is as jumped for you as you are for her, and she’s coming out here to meet you. You better comb your mustache.”

He wasn’t paying any attention. He was still rummaging in his pack, looking for the binocs. “I laid ’em right next to your bedroll when you were loading the ponies.”

“Well, I didn’t see ’em,” I said, watching the dust. It was a good thing it wasn’t a stampede, it would have run us over while we stood there arguing about the binocs. “Maybe Bult took ’em.”

“Why on hell would Bult take ’em?” Carson bellowed. “His are a hell of a lot fancier than ours.”

They were, with selective scans and programmed polarizers, and Bult had hung them around the second joint of his neck and was peering through them at the dust. I rode up next to him. “Can you see what’s making the dust?” I asked.

He didn’t take the binocs down from his eyes. “Disturbance of land surface,” he said severely. “Fine of one hundred.”

I should’ve known it. Bult could’ve cared less about what was making the dust so long as he could get a fine out of it. “You can’t fine us for dust unless we make it,” I said. “Give me the binocs.”

He bent his neck double, took the binocs off, and handed them to me, and then hunched over his log again. “Forcible confiscation of property,” he said into his log. “Twenty-five.”

“Confiscation!” I said. “You’re not going to fine me with confiscating anything. I asked if I could borrow them.”