cared, he would have tried to argue, and if he’d argued I might have changed my mind.
That crack of his continued to rankle. He had to bring Daddy into it, but Daddy never convinced me. People who live on planets can’t be people. They don’t have any chance to learn how to be, so they grow up to be like those characters I met the first time I was on a planet. And I heard lots of other stories at home. If both you and your father come to an inevitable conclusion based on facts, that doesn’t mean he convinced you. I’d made up my own mind. And tell me, is it being a snob not to like people who aren’t people?
The planet that we were being dropped on was called Tintera. Daddy told me that one thing at breakfast, sailing a little close to the edge of the rules. But it was hardly much of an admission on his part since he well knew that I had never heard of the place. Our last contact with the planet, and we were aware of none recently, had been almost 150 years before. We knew the colony was still extant, but that was all. The Council always discusses Trial drops before they are made, and this much time out of contact had given them something to talk about. But the planet was conveniently at hand, so in the end they went ahead. Actually, for them not to, Daddy would have had to make some objection, and speaking practically, he couldn’t object because of me.
When we reached Tintera, George began dropping us. We swung over the sea from the morning side and then dropped low over gray-green forested hills. George spotted a clear area and swung down to it. When we came to a stop, he lowered the ramp.
“Okay,” he said over the speaker. “First one out.”
The order in leaving the scoutship is purely personal. As long as somebody goes, they don’t care who it is. Jimmy had all his gear together before we set down. As soon as the ramp was lowered, he signaled to Mr. Pizarro that he was going, and led his horse down the ramp. It was what you would expect Jimmy to do. Mr. Pizarro checked him off, and in a minute we were airborne again.
I began to check my gear out then, making sure I had everything. I’d checked it all before and I had no way to replace anything missing, but I couldn’t help myself.
At the next landing, I said to Mr. Pizarro, “I’ll go now,” cutting out Venie, who sat down again. I grabbed Ninc’s reins. I didn’t lash my gear on, but just slung it over the saddle, and then walked down the ramp with Ninc. It had nothing to do with Jimmy. I just wanted to go. I didn’t want to wait any longer.
I waved at George to show him I was clear, and that I was going, and he waved back as he lifted the ramp. Then the scout rose impersonally away as I held Ninc tightly to keep him from doing something foolish. In just a moment it was gone. Its gray-blue color was almost the color of the overcast sky, so I was never sure when I saw it last.
It left me there, the Compleat Young Girl, Hell on Wheels. I could build one-fifteenth of a log cabin, kill one-thirty-first of a tiger, kiss, do needlepoint, pass through an obstacle course, and come pretty close (in theory) to killing somebody with my bare hands. What did I have to worry about?
I lived through that first day—the first of my thirty. It was cool, so the very first thing I did was put on my colored coat. Then I slung Ninc’s saddlebags, strapped my bedroll on, and swung aboard. I didn’t push things, but just rode easily through the forest making a list of priorities in my mind, the things I had to do and the order I should do them in. My list ran like this:
The first thing was to stay alive. Find food beyond the little supply I had. Any shelter better than a bubble tent—locate, or if necessary, build.
Second—look over the territory. See what the scenery and people looked like.
Third—see some of the other kids if things should happen to go that way. I hadn’t been dropped a great distance from Jimmy, after all, and Venie or somebody wouldn’t be terribly far the other way.
The gravity of