Jason shook his head slowly, wonderingly.
"You actually did?" he said. "Not variforms - but the original, full-spectrum horses?"
"Yes," said Hal.
He had let it slip his mind that many of Earth's mammals - even the variforms genetically adapted as much as possible to their destination planet - had not flourished on most of the other worlds. The reasons were still not fully understood; but the indications were that, unlike humans, even the highest orders of animals were less adaptable to different environmental conditions, and particularly to solunar and other cycles that enforced changes on their biorhythms. The larger the animals, the less successful they seemed to be perpetuating their own breed under conditions off-Earth; just as, once, many wild animals were unlikely to breed in zoos on Earth. Horses, unlike the ass family, were almost unknown on other worlds, with the exception of the Dorsai, where for some reason they had flourished.
"Do you know anything about harnesses and loading a pack donkey - I mean a pack animal?" asked Jason.
Hal nodded.
"I used to go off in the mountains by myself," said Hal, "with just a riding horse and a packhorse
Jason took a deep breath and smiled.
"Rukh'll be glad to hear this," he said. "Take a look at these donkeys, then, and tell me what you think."
Together they examined the whole string of pack beasts. To Hal's eye they were in good, if not remarkable, shape.
"But if they were my animals, back on Earth," he said, when they were done, "I'd be feeding them up on grain, or adding a protein supplement to their diet."
"No chance for that here," said Jason, when Hal mentioned this. "These have to live like the rest of the Command - off the country, any way they can."
The light had mellowed toward late afternoon as they made their inspection; and it was just about time for the second of the two meals of the day that would be served in the camp. Jason explained this as he led Hal back toward the main clearing.
"We get up and go to bed with the daylight out here," Jason said as they went. "Breakfast is as soon as it's light enough to see what you're eating; and dinner's just before twilight - that's going to vary, of course, if we move into upper latitudes where the day's going to be sixteen hours long in summer."
"It's spring here now, isn't it?" asked Hal.
"That's right. It's still muddy in the lowlands."
The kitchen area turned out to be a somewhat larger tent under the trees on the far side of the clearing. It was filled with food supplies and some stored-power cooking units. A serving line of supports for cooking containers were set up just outside the tent. Inside, were the cook - a slim, tow-headed girl who looked barely into her middle teens - and three assistants at the other end of the age scale, a man and two women in their forties or above. The preparations for the meal were almost done, and food odors were heavy on the twilight-still air. Both Jason and Hal were put to work carrying out the large plastic cooking cans, heavily full with the various cooked foods for the meal; and setting these cans up on the supports of the serving line.
By the time this was done and they had also brought out and set up an equally large container of Harmony-style coffee, the members of the command had begun to queue for dinner, each one having brought his or her own eating tray.
They went down the line of food cans, served by the three assistants with the aid of Jason and Hal. Hal found himself with a large soup-ladle in his hand, scooping up and delivering what seemed to be a sort of stiff gray-brown porridge, of about the consistency of turkey stuffing. To his right Jason was ladling up what was either a gravy or some kind of sauce that went over what Hal had just served.
When the last of those who had gathered had gone through the line the assistants took their turn, followed by Jason and Hal with trays they had been given from the supply tent. Last of all to help herself was the cook, whose name apparently was Tallah. She took only a dab of the foods she had just made, and carried it back into her supply tent to eat.
Jason and Hal turned aside from the serving line with loaded trays, looking for a comfortable spot of earth to sit on. Most of the other eaters had carried their trays back to their tents or wherever they had come from.
"Howard, come here, please. I'd like to talk to you."
The clear voice of Rukh made him turn. She and Child-of-God were seated with their trays, some twenty yards off at the edge of the clearing. Rukh was seated on the large end of a fallen log and Child-of-God was perched on the stump of it, from which age and weather had separated the upper part. Hal went over to them, and sat down crosslegged on the ground, facing them with his tray on his knees.
"Jason showed you around, did he?" Rukh asked. "Go ahead and eat. We can all talk and eat at the same time."
Hal dug into his own ladleful of the porridge-like food he had been serving. It did taste a little like stuffing - stuffing with nuts in it. He noticed that Child-of-God's tray held only a single item, a liquid stew of mainly green vegetables; and it occurred to him that only in one of the cans at the serving line had he seen anything resembling meat - and that had been only as an occasional grace note of an ingredient.
"Yes," he answered Rukh, "we walked through the camp and had a look at the donkeys. Jason seems to think the fact that I've had something to do with horses on Earth would help me be useful with them."
Rukh's eyebrows went up.
"It will," she said. She looked, as Jason had predicted, pleased, and put her fork down. "As I promised you, I haven't said anything to anyone, including James, of what you told me. Still, James - as second-in-command - needs to know much of what I need to know about your usefulness to us. So I asked him to listen while I ask you some specific questions."
Hal nodded, eating and listening. The food tasted neither as dull nor as strange as he had been afraid it would when he was helping to serve it; and his ever-ready appetite was driving him.
"I notice you aren't carrying anything in the way of a weapon," Rukh said. "Even bearing in mind what you told me, I have to ask if you've got some objection to using weapons?"
"No objection, in principle," Hal said. "But I've got to be honest with you. I've handled a lot of weapons and practiced with them. But I've never faced the possibility of using one. I don't know what'll happen if I do."
"No one knows," said Child-of-God. Hal looked at the other man and found his eyes watching. It was not a stare that those hard blue eyes bent upon him - it was too open to be a stare. Strangely, Child-of-God looked at him with an unwavering, unyielding openness that was first cousin to the nakedness of gaze found in a very young child. "When thou hast faced another under conditions of battle, thou and all else will know. Until then, such things are secrets of God."
"What are the weapons you've practiced with?" asked Rukh.
"Cone rifle, needle rifle, slug-throwers of all kinds, all varieties of power rifles and sidearms, staffs and sticks, knives, axe, sling, spear, bow and crossbow, chain and - " Hal broke off, suddenly self-conscious at the length of the list. "As I said, though, it was just practice. In fact, I used to think it was just one kind of playing, when I was young."
Child-of-God turned his head slowly to look at Rukh. Rukh looked back at him.
"I have reason to believe Howard in this," she said to Child-of-God.
Child-of-God looked back at Hal, then his eyes jumped off to focus on Tallah, who had suddenly appeared at his elbow.
"Give me your tray," Tallah said, holding out her hand, "and I'll fill it for you."
"Thou wilt not," said Child-of-God. "I know thee, and thy attempts to lead me into sin."
"All I was going to do was refill it," said Tallah, "with that mess you try to live on. I don't care if you get a vitamin deficiency and die. Why should I care? We can get another second-in-command anywhere."