“She didn’t,” I said. Swinging north to Sector 248-76, she wouldn’t have gotten any pictures of where we were going.

“Dammit,” he said, taking his hat off, looking like he was going to throw it on the ground and then thinking the better of it. He looked at me and then stomped back toward the Tongue.

“You stay here,” I said to Ev. I dismounted and caught up to Carson. “You think Bult’s got it figured out?” I asked him as soon as we were out of Ev’s earshot.

“Maybe,” he said. “So what do we do?”

I shrugged. “Go south to the next break. It’s no farther from the northern tributaries, and by that time we’ll know if we have to check 248-76. I sent C.J. up there to do an aerial.” I looked at Bult, who was still talking into his log. “Maybe he doesn’t have it figured out. Maybe there are just more fines this way.”

“Which is just what we need,” he said glumly.

He was right. Our departure fines came to nine hundred, and it took a half hour to tally them up. Then it took Bult another half hour to get his pony loaded, decide he wanted his umbrella, unload everything to find it and load it again, and by that time Carson had used inappropriate manner and tone and thrown his hat on the ground, and we had to wait while Bult added those on.

It was ten o’clock before we finally got started, Bult leading off under his lighted umbrella, which he’d tied to his pony’s pommelbone, Ev and I side by side, and Carson in the rear where he couldn’t swear at Bult.

C.J.’d landed us at the top end of a little valley, and we followed it south, keeping close to the Tongue.

“You can’t see much from here,” I told Ev. “This really only goes another klom or so, and then you should get a better view of the Wall. And five kloms down it comes right up next to the Tongue.”

“Why is it called the Tongue? Is that a translation of the Boohteri name for it?”