It looked like a grinning ovoid monster-head straining into the western ocean at the end of a threadlike neck. Across the neck Bidgrass Station slashed between parallel lines of forest edge like a collar. Cole watched it again on the landing approach, noting the half-mile of clearing between the great wall and the forest edge, the buildings and fields rectilinear in ordered clumps east of the wall, and then the light aberration of the tender's lift field blotted it out.
"Likely I won't see you till next trip," Daley said, taking leave. "Good luck, Doc."
Cole shuffled down the personnel ramp, grateful for the weight of his two bags in the absurdly light gravity. Trucks and cargo lifts were coming across the white field from the silvery warehouses along its edge. Men also, shaggy-haired big men in loose blue garments, walking oddly without the stride and drive of leg muscles. Their faces were uniformly grim and blank to Cole, standing there uncertainly. Then a ground car pulled up and a tall old man in the same rough clothing got out and walked directly toward him. He had white hair, bushy white eyebrows over deep-set gray eyes, and a commanding beak of a nose.
"Who might you be?" he demanded.
"I'm Flinter Cole, from Belconti University. Someone here is expecting me."
The old man squinted in thought and bit his lower lip. Finally he said, "The biologist, hey? Didn't expect you until next Gorbals. Didn't think you could make the connections for this one."
"It left me no time at all to study up in. But when species extinction is the issue, time is important. And I'm an ecologist."
"Well," the old man said. "Well. I'm Garth Bidgrass."
He shook Cole's hand, a powerful grip quickly released.
"Hawkins there in the car will take you to the manor house and get you settled. I'll phone ahead. I'll be tied up checking cargo for a day or two, I expect. You just rest up awhile."