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“And ruthlessly, I would think,” she suggested.

“Well, I didn’t stand back and say ‘You first'. There’s a team of two on every haul, and they’re changed at a prescribed time. It’s not an easy livelihood, road bossing, far from it. For instance you have to stop every fifty miles and charge up any fallen cattle, otherwise they’d die by being trampled on.”

“How do you mean charge?” she asked.

“A charger is used.”

“Not a—”

“Yes, an electric charger. Something to get him or her on their feet in a hurry, otherwise they’re history. It’s the only way. If you did it with a stick it would be cruel.”

“It would also,” said Gemma distastefully, “bruise the meat for the abattoirs.”

There was a silence for a while. The Territorian broke it. “Well, you did ask me,” he reminded her.

“Yes. I’m sorry, it isn’t your fault. Do any of your men have hallucinations? I mean, one often reads about that, reads how they work so hard they imagine things and often finish up on the other side of the road.”

“If they do, if
mine
do,” he said grimly, “it’s their own damn fault. I pay them a top wage.”

“Yet you keep no timetable, you tell them to be as quick as they can.” Gemma remembered that from Bruce, though Bruce, she recalled, had added a significant “regardless”.

“No, I don’t keep a timetable, but no, also, I don’t tell them to be as quick as they can. Some might... and do. The Territorian doesn’t. It pays well, very well, but it doesn’t pay extra for fast returns. Next question, please.”

“Are tourists ‘terrorists’?”

“Yes. They’re also fiends. They forget we’re twice their size, sometimes three times, and even reverse it by taking twice and three times their due themselves.”

“Are mobs better moved quicker ? I mean, travelling leisurely surely is still the better way.”

" I he nicer way, but not better.”

“Docs a man have to be a different sort of man to be a road boss?”

“Any man would have to be different driving a thing of that size through the middle of nowhere sometimes for five months at a stretch.”

“But how different?” she persisted.

“Just a little case of being born with a steering wheel in his hand.” He smiled across at her, his teeth very white in his leather brown face. “Coffee is served in the vestibule. Miss Interrogator. As you sip it you can see what the tourist shop has to offer. Ready, Future Mrs. Mannering?”

“You do go on ridiculously.” Gemma rose, a little annoyed. She had been miles away in a world of star shadows, and she didn’t like coming to earth.

“But accurately?” He had taken it that she referred to his “Future Mrs. Mannering”. He added : “You
are
marrying the guy?”

“We’re engaged,” she said stiffly.

“That’s
not
an answer. Incidentally, I see no ring.”

“Bruce has the ring.”

“Handy,” he grinned.

“Handy?” Gemma queried.

“You could do what our Bush Betty did, or tried to do—win yourself a second ring.”

“One is enough, thank you,” she said coldly.

“If you have it.”

“Oh. I have it.”

He had come behind her to help her up. “I’ll take your word for that.”

There were quite a few people in the vestibule; hidden in the corner of the dining room Gemma had not seen the number of patrons. Balancing their coffee, the guests were all absorbed now in what offered in the tourist display.

Gemma joined them, Tim Torrance close behind her, and she expressed interest in nulla-nullas, waddies, didgeridoos, tribal paintings.

But most of all the opals. You simply could not look away from the opals.

“There are black opals and white opals,” Tim Torrance was saying over her shoulder, “and both are misnomers. Black are really fire, flame, sunrise and sunset mixed together, and white are maidens’ dreams. Are you a maiden, Harriet’s rescuer?”

“I’m twenty-six, so I could scarcely be categorized as a maiden any longer,” Gemma said, annoyed. Really, this man!

“Then it’s a black for you.” Before Gemma knew what he was doing, he was prompting her into the boutique.

She tried to protest. She tried to turn away.

“I’ll take it back afterwards,” he whispered in her ear, “but right now Betty is watching us. Accept it, for heaven’s sake, then reward me with a kiss.”

“I can’t!”

“It’s a beauty.” He nodded to the display.

“I still can’t. Mr. Torrance . . . Territorian ... I’m
engaged
.”

“I said I’d take it back afterwards.”

“But—”

“We both like this one,” said the man to the attendant, and a magnificent ring was being persuaded down Gemma’s finger. The third finger of her left hand.

“I can’t,” she tried again.

‘Be quiet, our friend is hanging on every word. If you let me down I’m a doomed man.”

“But—”

“With all my love, darling.” The Territorian had raised his voice a decibel, he could not help being heard. He was coming close to Gemma again, kissing her again since she had not stepped forward, as ordered, to kiss him. Only there was something different about his kiss now. Or—or was it
her
? Gemma thought.

For, in spite of herself, she was leaning forward to be kissed again, leaning forward intentionally, and the things that she had said were past twenty-six were happening. It was impossible, but they still were happening. Rainbows. Tiptoe. Cloud nine. Being “swept”.

“You never said,” he whispered, still breath-close to her, “what your name was, Future Mrs. Mannering.”

“Glasson,” she told him.

“Before that?”

“Gemma.” He repeated
^:
t after her. Then he said :

“And how long does Bruce Mannering think he can keep this gem in a box ?”

A MAID wakened Gemma the next moaning with a breakfast tray with a note propped against the coffee pot. When she had left, Gemma opened the envelope and saw that the message was from the Territorian.

“Good morning, Future Mrs. Mannering. By the time you read this I’ll have been on the road for hours, but not in your direction, so don’t think you can catch me.”—Catch him, indeed!—“I’ve instructed the hotel yard man to install Harriet when you’re ready to leave. You should be all right now until you reach the Establishment”—The Establishment!— “since it’s clear going and a safe run.

“A happy wedding, a comfortable honeymoon, certainly not one in a cabin behind the wheel of a truck looking at star shadows”—star shadows!—“and then in due time the patter of little feet—two, not four like Harriet’s.”

Really, he
was
a savage!

But at the end there crept in a different note, cryptic yet somehow reassuring . . . that is if she had needed reassuring.

“If the gem should ever leave its box, call up the Territorian.”

“The fellow is quite mad,” said Gemma, and began munching toast.

When she came down to the garages she found that the yard man had put a length of waterproof in the back seat of her car and some old blankets.

"She should be quite comfortable,” he told Gemma, “and anyway, you haven’t all that far to go now. The Mannerings’, isn’t it?”

“No, I'm going first to the Rudhill Scientific Block.” The Territorian must have been talking with the yard man about her; Gemma had a feeling that everything would be aired and discussed up here.

“Well, that's nearer still,” nodded the man, “it’s the first of the two turn-offs after Come Again. Goodbye, miss. Goodbye, little girl.”

Harriet looked blankly at him, looked just as blankly at Gemma, aid Gemma set off.

One mile out of The Alice, the country took over again, only now with a subtle difference. Instead of only-showing the finer sides of the Wet in resultant green grass, thicker foliage and new springing trees, several lakes, prompted no doubt by the rains, began to appear, quite a few creeks. Then, without, warning, the Lucy River, that was usually only a trickle, came flowing strongly, reaching at some places, it was said, a width of forty miles.

With a girth like that it looked more like an inland sea than a swollen river, and many people were already calling, it an inland sea. Only it wasn’t, it was the same Lucy River, and in a few years it could be back to its trickle again, even not there at all. Fortunately the road, even after the river’s sudden rise, ran safely and well identified beside the new stretch of water. But if the Lucy had grown any bigger, Gemma thought, it would have enveloped it entirely, a new road would have had to be built. But the dark blue tar had escaped such a fate, and the only effect had been to make it quite a scenic drive, particularly so when you realized where you were, and that was north of the centre of a vast continent, where there had been no rivers, only trickles, and no seas and no lakes . . . until now.

But
now .
. . now it was all changed, and instinctively Gemma halted the car. It was unbelievable, she thought.

There had always been colour to spare in this centre, but it had been from sun on rocks turning them into slabs of violet, or from the heat haze like blue smoke on the ochre horizon, but now the colour came from previously unknown flowers, as far as the eye could see everything, apart from the rippling blue stretch of river, sea or lake, whatever you wished to call it, was pulsing with scarlet, orange and magenta petals.

Gemma caught her breath, then let it go sharply. Here in this once and waste, this waterless place, actually stood an ibis. Tall, motionless, looking as if it was sculptured out of shining wood, it stared back at her. And not just an ibis but other water birds. Instead of the previous hawks and harriers and a few ground birds there were swans, there were pelicans. There were gulls. In this once-desert, hundreds of miles from any coast, there were gulls.

There were tears in Gemma’s eyes as she started off again, a lump in her throat.

The Rudhill Scientific Block proved clearly marked, and in the afternoon after Come Again, which was nothing, and to. which, as far as anyone knew, no one had ever come, Gemma left the tar.

As it was not a missiles station, not entailing anything secret or nationalistic, only scientific and exploratory research, there were no guards to pass at the front gate.

Gemma began the long drive to the block.

It was a narrow track, un-tarred, and very little different from the day when it had been laid down. At several spots twigs brushed the car window, rousing the reclining Harriet and sending her plum eyes wide open. But only for seconds; in a few moments she was sleeping again.

Gemma had no fears as to Harriet’s reception. She knew the dear Brains, as she called them. They were amiable almost to a bovine state themselves; everything to do with the outer world found them amicably abstracted. It was only when they dealt with their own particular thing, be it mica, wolfram, cosmic rays, permian rock, that they seemed to come really alive. No, they would just pat Harriet on the head, promptly forget her, then return to their respective worlds. They were dears, every one of them, she had no fears about
them...
but what, later, about the Mannerings?

She did not know why that thought occurred to her, and she tried to shame herself for even thinking it. Of course the Mannerings would not object to Harriet, they were used to Harrys and Harriets, it was their world. They might make the remark, as Tim Torrance had made about cake, that taking a calf north was like taking coals to Newcastle, but they would never object. Harriet could stop there with Godfather until after the wedding, then, when she had established herself in the Establishment... now she was say
^,r
ig it! ..
she
would come down to visit
Godfather and when she left again take Harriet with her.

As though sensing she was in Gemma’s thoughts, Harriet sat up now and looked out. There was still nothing to see, but they were climbing a slight hill, and down in the slight valley under the hill the block had been built. It comprised an office, a community dining room, then a number of small, self-contained chalets. Gemma knew all this because she had been here before; she had flown up with Godfather when he had first taken up his post here, flown home again. His chalet was the last of all, which would be advantageous for Harriet. Gemma did not think she would cause any trouble, but if she did feel like kicking up her heels, the remainder of the valley was hers.

She saw the first building loom in sight. No one around as usual. There never was in a scientific place. Scientists did not have time to fill in or to watch out for visitors, nor did they particularly wish to. Their lives were more than occupied. She knew she should call in at the office and present herself first, but she decided to delay that. Better to settle Harriet at once, and anyway, she could not wait to see Godfather. Dear, vague Godfather, who had sent her a letter through Bruce to look up a prescription and bring it along with her, knowing it would take her all that time to sort through his chaos. Dear Bernard, how surprised he would be when he learned how that request to Bruce Mannering had borne fruit.

Gemma lowered the car’s speed and was quietly passing the office when someone stepped out of it. It was Mr. Fortescue, she recognized, a valued retainer who understood the vague ways of Brains, and who knew, among other things, that as often as not, if unprompted, then scientists forgot even to eat or sleep. She waved to him.

But Mr. Fortescue did not wave back, he beckoned her. When Gemma did not obey, he stepped in front of the car, which was barely moving now, and called: “Can I see you first, my dear?”

“But I really can’t wait, Mr. Forty ... you see, I have a passenger.” Gemma pointed to Harriet and smiled, but the smile old Forty gave back was only fleeting.

“Please, my dear, come into my office first.”

Gemma drew up the car, wound up the windows. She did not want Harriet getting out and eating any of the flowers that Mr. Fortescue had very laboriously raised. But then it was goats who ate flowers, wasn’t it, not calves. She wondered uneasily why she was being so vague all at once, and decided it was Forty. He had something to tell her. She could sense it. Would he hint, as she suspected must happen some time, that at Godfather’s age Godfather shouldn’t be out here in the middle of nowhere in case he should be taken ill, gravely ill. But that would be the end of Godfather. Godfather was the kind to die with his boots on.