Magda snorted. "God deliver me from that kind of academic. I delivered myself, by getting into fieldwork as fast as I could once I had my degree."

She bent over the photomosaic map of Bilbeis IV's main continent. The settlement pattern was peculiar. Not surprisingly, the Margush valley was still the most densely populated area. Several other river systems also had good-sized cities, which they hadn't before. And it was reasonable for towns to have arisen along the eastern coast, where only a narrow sea separated the main continent from a lesser neighbor.

But the western coastline also boasted some large towns. That was strange. High, rugged mountains separated it from the rest of the continent, and the ocean to the west stretched for several thousand empty kilometers. The data they had showed no minerals to draw settlers.

"Puzzling." Magda must have said that aloud, for Irfan Kawar gave a questioning grunt. She explained.

"Maybe it is an independent civilization," the geologist suggested.

Magda brushed auburn curls back from her face. "I hope so. Comparing it to the one that diffused out of the Margush would tell us a lot." She scribbled a note to herself. "I have to talk to Hideko. I need high-resolution photos of a western town to compare to some east of the mountains."

"I hate interrupting the mapping program I've set up," the engineering officer said when Magda called, "but I'll see what I can do." Coming from Hideko, that was better than Pedroza's solemn vow of aid.

All the same, the picture series was not done till late afternoon, ship's time. Magda popped a shot of a west-coast town, one from the Margush valley, and one from another valley into a viewer.

She whistled softly. That all three cities were built around large central squares was not surprising. The neat grid pattern of the surrounding streets was. And it was stretching the odds to find the same sort of hexagonal building in a prominent place in each square.