* * *

The sea breeze blew the stench from the city into the faces of Irfan Kawar and Magda as they hiked down from their hidden ship. The geologist coughed. "Plumbing often gets invented surprisingly late," Magda murmured.

"I knew I should have worn nose filters," Kawar said. "If I'd really wanted to experience the primitive at first hand, I'd've gone into anthropology the way you did."

She made a face at him. Their hiking boots scrunched over gravel. They were on their own, linked to their crewmates only by the little transceivers implanted behind their ears. Both wore khaki denim coveralls, standard Service issue. Traders in a variety of costumes plied their wares in the town's marketplace; one more drab style of clothing should not seem too out of place there.

The first native to spot them was a woman picking berries by the side of the path. She looked up warily, as if wondering whether to flee into the bushes. Magda and Irfan Kawar slowly approached, their hands clasped in front of them in the local greeting gesture.

"The peace of the eternal goddess on you," Magda said, hoping her accent was not too foul to understand.

She must have made herself clear, for the woman's eyes lit. "And on you," the woman replied. She stared at them with frank curiosity. Magda's red-brown curls and smooth cheeks, Kawar's swarthy skin and bald head, were unlike anything she knew. "What distant land are you from?" she asked.

"The far northwest," Kawar replied. The dominant culture had not reached that part of the continent, so the answer seemed safe enough.

The woman accepted it without blinking. Her next question, though, made the two Terrans look at each other in confusion for a moment. It sounded like, "What will you be doing in search?"

Magda was trying to twist the grammar to make the sentence mean "What are you searching for?" when she remembered that the literal meaning of Hotofras?the name of the town ahead?was "Search." She said, "We have jewels to sell or trade. Here, would you like to see?"