 What is the name of the first person to talk to Mia on Tintera?
The ancient rule was sink or swim—swim in the miasma of a planet without spaceflight, or sink to utter destruction! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1963. I The horses and packs were loaded before we went aboard the scoutship. I was feeling lost and just beginning to enjoy it when Jimmy Dentremont came over to me. My name is Mia Havero. After we were all settled, George Fuhonin, the pilot, raised the ramps. We didn't have to leave that way, but George thinks it's fun to be a hot pilot. The planet chosen for our Trial was called Tintera. The last contact the Ship had had with it—and we were the ones who dropped them—was almost 150 years ago. Either your arches and calves ache or every time you step you think you're going to trip on a piece of fluff and break your neck. We have a place in the Ship like that—the Third Level—but it's only a thousand square miles and any time it gets on your nerves you can go up a level or down a level and be back in civilization. When we reached Tintera, they started dropping us. It means that everybody on the Ship is a person who can take care of himself if he has to. I began to check my gear out—sonic pistol, pickup signal so I could be found at the end of the month, saddle and cinches, food and clothes. At our next landing, I grabbed Ninc's reins and cut Venie out smoothly. The ship lifted impersonally away from Ninc and me like a rising bird, and in just a moment it was gone. When the sun disappears, somehow you wonder in your stomach if it's really going to come back. It was spring on Tintera, but it was December in the Ship, and after we got back we had five days of Holiday to celebrate. I say "they" because, while we did the actual dropping, the idea originated with the whole evac plan back on Earth. Considering how short a time it was in which the colonies were established, there was not time to set up industry, so they had to have draft animals. One of the eight, as well as the two that were being built then, went up with everything else in the Solar System in 2041. I don't know how many of those planets had animals that could have been substituted but, even if they had, they would have had to be domesticated from scratch.
 Horst
 Jimmy  Ninc  Horst  Losel