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and up to Bult and Carson again. It rounded the bend, and Bult shot his umbrella open. The shuttlewren fell in midflap, and Bult stabbed it with the tip of the umbrella a couple of times.
    “I knew I should have put umbrellas on the weapons list,” I said.
    “Can I have it?” Ev said. To see if it’s a male?”
    Bult unfolded his arm, picked up the shuttlewren, and rode on, plucking the feathers off it When he had half of them off, he stuck the shuttlewren in his mouth and bit it in half. He offered Carson half. Carson shook his head, and Bult crammed the whole thing in.
    “Guess not,” I said. I leaned down and got a feather and handed it to him.
    He was watching Bult chew. “Shouldn’t there be a fine for that?” he said.
    “All members of the expedition shall refrain from making value judgments regarding the indigenous sentients’ ancient and noble culture,’” I said.
    I picked up the pieces Bult spit out, which didn’t amount to much, and gave ‘em to Ev. And looked off at the horizon.
    The Wall curved back away from the Tongue and out across the plain in a straight line. Beyond it there was a scattering of scourbrush and trees. There wasn’t any wind, the leaves were hanging limp. What we needed was a good dust storm to throw C.J. off, but there wasn’t so much as a breeze.
    It wasn’t C.J.’s figuring the dust storms out that worried me. She’d try to blackmail us into naming something after her, but she’d been doing that for years. But I didn’t want her talking about it over the transmitter for Big Brother to hear. If they started looking at the log, they’d be able to see for themselves. There was no way there’d been a dust tantrum in this weather. There wasn’t even any air. The feathers Bult was spitting out up ahead fell straight down.
    Half a klom later we ran into a dust tantrum that was more like a full-blown rage. It got in the transmitter (but not before we’d gotten a full five minutes of it on the log), and up our noses and down our throats, and made it so dark we had to navigate by following the lights on Bult’s umbrella.
    By the time we got clear of it, it was getting dark for real, and Bult started looking for a good place to camp, which meant someplace knee-deep in flora so he could get the maximum in fines out of us. Carson wanted to get across the Tongue first, but Bult peered solemnly into the water and pronounced tssi mitsse, and while Carson was yelling, “Where? I don’t see a damn thing!” the ponies started to sway, so we camped where we were.
    We set up camp in a hurry, first because we didn’t want to have to unload the ponies after they were down, and then because we didn’t want to be stumbling around in the dark, but all three of Boohte’s moons were up before we got the transmitter unloaded.
    Carson went off to tie the ponies up downwind, and Ev helped me spread out the bedrolls.
    “Are we in uncharted territory?” he asked.
    “Nope,” I said, shaking the dust out of my bedroll. “Unless you count what’s on us.” I spread the bedroll out, making sure it wasn’t on any flora. “Speaking of which, I’d better go call C.J. and tell her where we are.” I handed Carson’s bedroll to him and started over to the transmitter.
    “Wait,” he said.
    I stopped and turned back to look at him.
    “When I talked to C.J., she wanted to know why the dust tantrum hadn’t shown up on the log.”
    “And what did you tell her?”
    “I said it came in at an angle and blindsided us. I said it blew up so fast I didn’t even see it till you shouted, and by that time we were in the middle of it.”
    I told Carson he was smarter than he looked, I thought.
    “How come you did that?” I said. “C.J.’d probably give you a free jump for telling her we blew up that storm ourselves.”
    “Are you kidding?” he said, looking so surprised I was sorry I’d said it. Of course he wouldn’t betray us. We were Findriddy and Carson, the famous explorers who could do