h you--and get that lunch basket packed."

She bowed. "Yes, master. Your slave flies on winged feet to execute your
commands."

Kennon chuckled. Copper had been reading Old Doc's romances again. He
recognized the florid style.

* * *

Kennon landed the jeep in a mountain meadow halfway up the slope of
the peacefully slumbering volcano. It was quiet and cool, and the light
breeze was blowing Olympus's smoky cap away from them to the west.
Copper unpacked the lunch. She moved slowly. After all, there was plenty
of time, and she wasn't very hungry. Neither was Kennon.

"Let's go for a walk," Copper said. "The woods look cool--and maybe we
can work up an appetite."

"Good idea. I could use some exercise. That lunch looks big enough to
choke a horse and I'd like to do it justice."

They walked through the woods, skirting scant patches of underbrush,
slowly moving higher on the mountain slopes. The trees, unlike those
of Beta, did not end abruptly at a snow line, but pushed green fingers
upward through passages between old lava flows, on whose black wrinkled
surfaces nothing grew. The faint hum of insects and the piping calls of
the birdlike mammals added to the impression of remoteness. It was hard
to believe that scarcely twenty kilometers from this primitive microcosm
was the border of the highly organized and productive farmlands of
Outworld Enterprises.

"Do you think we can see the hospital if we go high enough?" Copper
said. She panted a little, unaccustomed to the altitude.

"Possibly," Kennon said. "It is a long distance away. But we should be
able to see Alexandria," he added. "That's high enough and big enough."
He looked at her curiously. "How is it that you're so breathless?"
he asked. "We're not that high. You're getting fat with too much soft
living."

Copper smiled. "Perhaps I'm getting old."

"Nonsense," Kennon chuckled. "It's just fat. Come to think of it you
are plumper. Not that I mind, but if you're going to keep that sylphlike
figure you'd better go on a diet."

"You're too good to me," Copper said.

"You're darn right I am. Well--let's get going. Exercise is always good
for the waistline, and I'd like to see what's up ahead."

Scarcely a kilometer ahead they came to a wall of lava that barred their
path. "Oh, oh," Kennon said. "We can't go over that." He looked at the
wrinkled and shattered rock with its knifelike edges.

"I don't think my feet could take it," Copper admitted.

"It