Chapter 1

The feeling had been with me all day and I didn't know what was causing it. Somehow I just felt like someone or something was watching me, but I knew that wasn't possible. No one could be watching without me knowing.

Since my arrival on Margata I'd been lucky, no doubts about that, but I didn't need to rely on luck anymore. I'd become a first class woodsman in my time here, even though I'd had to use the learn by doing approach. Believe me, it was the only approach available.

No, I wasn't here of my own volition. I didn't know why I was here, I didn't know how I got here, and I didn't really know where I was, exactly. Well, I knew where I was in relation to where I'd been last night, and last week, and I even remembered everywhere I'd been since I'd arrived, about eighteen months ago. The trouble was I didn't know what planet I was on, or at least I didn't know where it was in relation to earth, the planet I'd been born on. I did know its speaking inhabitants called it Margata.

This heavenly body was a lot like earth, and I was thankful for that at least. It had forests, streams, lakes, mountains, rivers, oceans, prairies, and deserts. I'd seen all those with my own eyes. There were edible plants and animals, a sun to give me daylight and two moons to put light on the subject when the sun was down. In fact the moons were the first things to let me know for sure that I wasn't still on earth.

On the second night of a planned two week stay for mostly fishing but some hunting, in Alaska, I had been removed from Earth, whether I wanted to be or not. All I knew for sure was that someone with a lot more on the ball than any earthman had wanted me here. I hadn't had a hint so far of what they wanted me here for.

In my original condition, preflight - or pre-whatever-happened - I wouldn't have lasted two weeks, well with a lot of clawing and scratching I might have made four. Plans and preparations had been made though.

That last night on earth I'd slipped into my two-man tent and into my artic sleeping bag on my twin bed sized airbed and gone almost instantly to sleep. I'd been planning to get up early for my first fishing session.

Of course I had plenty of food and supplies to last for two weeks, the amount of time I planned to spend in the first place. I had my synthetic stocked sporterized M1, my Glock, and more ammunition than I could possibly need in two weeks. I also had my fishing tackle and plenty of lures. For a recreational camping trip I was well prepared.

When it came down to moving to a different planet entirely, I was not well prepared. Two weeks worth of food will not suffice to allow time for acclimation to and learning about a different home planet.

After my first day of some disbelief and mostly panic, and a night I had a hell of a time sleeping during, I got some relief the next morning. There was new information in my head. I know that sounds stupid but that's the best way to put it. I just knew things I hadn't known when I went to bed and tried to go to sleep the night before.

For instance, that's how I knew I was on Margata, the forth planet out from its sun. That's also how I knew qaka, a roe deer size and type animal, was good to eat. That's how I knew zwangi were the easiest fish to catch and probably one of the best to eat, and also how I knew they'd usually hit a Tiny Torpedo, a top-water lure commonly used in bass fishing.

My new knowledge later let me know that mendop, the apple-looking fruit I was thinking of trying would make me sick for days and that the kwaldap was a sort of citrus clone that was very good for me and tasty too.

I didn't even know what all I now knew, because things only popped up when they seemed needed. Like the mendop info made itself available seconds before I pulled one off its bush to take a test bite.

Mendops could be eaten, by the way, but they had to be thrice boiled first, draining away the water each time, a little like poke salad. I also knew that they were even more edible if fried in bacon grease. Of course I wasn't clued in on exactly where to get bacon grease, or bacon either.

This store of knowledge, combined with several timely warning jolts, had saved my ass many times since my second morning here. I'm still firmly convinced that during my first days here I must have been in some type of protective custody situation. Else one or more of the Kwagi would have stumbled on me, and that would have surely been unhealthy for me in the state I was in at that time.

Kwagi were what they called themselves and they were decidedly odd to my way of thinking. They looked like, or very like, a normal human from earth and they seemed to operate on a near identical basis, albeit on a several thousand years in earth's past basis.

They were slightly larger than humans, with most of the men coming in at six foot five or a little better and most of the women ranging from five-eight to six feet.

At six-two and two hundred and forty five pounds, I was a fairly large man on earth. I'm a shrimp here, since I haven't seen an adult male Kwagi that looked an ounce under two-eighty.

To me they seemed smarter and farther along than what I'd thought Cro-Magnon might have been. They seemed to live together in small groups of thirty or so and they either built crude structures or lived in caves if they were available. Of course there was a ritual song and dance when a male wanted to join an established group.

Said ritual was why I hadn't attempted to join any of the groups I had managed to keep from encountering. You see, to join you had to fight your way in.

It normally wasn't a fight to the death or even to serious injury. Winning was not required for entrance, and after the fight, if you were banged up alarmingly, you would be tended to as if you'd been a member all along, even if you weren't going to be allowed to join the group you'd still be nursed back to good health.

These amenities didn't keep me from noting that the fight was usually between the newcomer and the largest member of the established group, or Calak, as they called their small tribes. You fought the largest man, or rarely a slightly smaller man who was probably a much better fighter. You fought the Zakat - the Calak's leader.

All this knowledge had been gathered by me or revealed to me from my new facts. Other provisions had also been made to help me get along on my own here. Most of them, the tangible things, had been in the cache of supplies and equipment that had joined my other supplies the night of my trip, but some had appeared at times when whoever or whatever put me here decided I needed them.

That first day of don't know whether to shit or go blind was pretty much a nonproductive time for me. I didn't even notice that all my camping supplies and equipment had come with me and had in fact been supplemented, and I didn't bother to do anything but fret and worry, not even eating one bite.

By the next morning I was very hungry and even that subsided when I started looking in my things for food, because my things had changed. I'd had them all in traditional camping type storage. You know what I mean, an enormous backpack and a couple of large duffle bags. The M1 was in a hard case and so were both my rods and reels. My remaining fishing gear was in a large tacklebox.

When I discovered that my things had made the trip and started digging in them for food I found them all now stored in what had to be custom made aluminum cases and a large trunk of the same manufacture. It was the size of a big steamer trunk and it was designed to stand on end and open like a steamer trunk did. It even had a set of drawers on one side and a type of closet metaphor on the other.

With only a little examination and fumbling around, I found that all the cases would interlock and ride in a well-balanced state on the two wheeled loading type dolly that had been provided. The dolly was designed for rough terrain in that it had pneumatic tires approximately eighteen inches in diameter and they looked like nothing so much as extra heavy duty bicycle wheels.

A cursory inventory showed me that I had about twice as many sets of clothes as before, nearly three times as much food and oddly I had a thousand extra rounds of ammunition for my M1 and fifteen hundred more rounds for my Glock. I was happy when I saw this since it came up from my new facts that the M1 would be perfect for hunting both the qaka, one of which I'd seen at a distance, and the thaka, a large herbivore seemingly of the bovine persuasion that did not taste just like chicken.