 What DIDN'T Mia learn at the campsite she located?
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. My name is Mia Havero. 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. We swung over the sea from the morning side and then dropped low over gray-green forested hills. When we turn fourteen, they drop us on the nearest colonized planet and come back one month later. They don't let us grow for fourteen years and then kick us out to die. 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. 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. In two days of riding, I ran onto nothing but a few odd-looking animals. It was narrow and made of sand spread over a hard base. One of the smartest moves in history was to include horses when they dropped the colonies. 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. I rounded a tree-lined bend, ducking an overhanging branch, and pulled Ninc to a stop.
 Why the ship flew over her head
 Why the ship flew over her head  People grow old and gray on this planet  The Trial kids weren't welcome on Tintera  Horst keeps his animals in the pen