To Save a World by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page A

gullies where mud was washing down the side of the hills. "Even with this little rain, look at that. If a Ghost Wind blows this summer nothing will be left in these hills but bare rock."
    Riding several hundred feet behind Them, Andrea Closson watched the Darkovan women without interest. Her mind was on her own plans, and she was observing carefully every sign of erosion and change.
    This world might as well be a spaceport town. There's not much here worth keeping, she thought without sentiment. The forests I knew—they must have vanished long ago, with those who dwelt there.
    A fool's errand, to come so far. What was I hoping to find, to see?
    She drew up her horse and waited for the pair of her assistants to come even with her. Both were shivering, wrapped in furs and heat-suits, and she looked at them with dispassionate contempt, wondering how the other agents spread out and filtering around the planet were faring. She herself found the climate damp but tolerable in her ordinary riding dress. She said, "We won't go much further. Have you enough specimens to make it seem credible?"
    One of the men nodded. He said, indicating a pack animal laden with small cages, "Half a dozen, mixed male and female, of at least a dozen small fur bearers. I understand they are the kinds most used by the natives for clothing and ornament. Some are right pretty, too."
    "We'll do a full-scale analysis of their breeding strength, likelihood to prosper in various other climates, and the like, when we return to the Trade City," Andrea said. "The girls have done a good job as trappers as well as guides. Meanwhile it might be a good idea to collect soil and food samples from their natural habitats. We'll camp near here for the night, do that, and turn back in the morning."
    Before long, the clearing they had reached was bustling with the activity of setting up small tents: one for the two Amazons, one for Andrea, one for her assistants. One of the assistants wrote in a locked record book. The Amazon girl Menella went off with her snares to fetch meat for supper. Andrea stood under the trees, silent, her eyes fixed on the distant skyline, the black and jagged stumps rising lonely to the rain. Not a pleasant sight for any lover of trees, she thought dispassionately; but I've seen lovelier worlds than this die in a good cause. In my own way I'm dying in a good cause, helping man to spread further, have more progress. I have no child, nor shall I ever have, but some of these great spaceports, the giant steps mankind takes between stars, are perhaps my children.
    And if a world stands in the way of technology, who is to judge the fittest to survive? One race dies; another is born. Who should know that better than I? A race without the strength to survive dies like the better races which have come and gone before it.
    They told me in the spaceport that Free Amazons were better guides and woodsmen than most men, and so far they are right. Yet it is a strange sight to me; women who might bear children, electing of their own free will not to do so. A sign, perhaps, of a sickness between men and women, in any world. I do not understand men. How could I? I do not understand women, either.
    Does anyone ever understand anyone? I'd better stick to my own job. I understand planets and ecologies and I've got a job to do on this one.
    She returned to her tent and unlocked a metal box with a heavy combination lock. She did not turn the lock, but touched one finger lightly to her temple and laid a finger of her other hand against the lock. After a moment it whirred and dropped open. From inside she took a small sealed packet, which she thrust into her pocket, and went off into the woods.
    Under the trees she knelt, dug up with her own strong hands unaided by any tool a small hole in the ground. She picked up a handful of the soil. It was moist, soft, rain-drenched and sweet-smelling, and alive with small invisible creeping things.
    Andrea unwrapped the small package