Kath Two was Survey. Whether or not this made her military was a topic of almost theological complexity. But regardless of whether you considered Survey to be a purely scientific corps with ad hoc liaisons to the military—merely for logistical convenience and situational awareness—or viewed it as an elite scout unit working hand-in-glove with Snake Eaters, its stated mission was to observe and report on the growth of New Earth’s ecosystem. Not to kill the animals that the human races had gone to so much trouble to invent and import. During her two-week stint on the surface, she had grown used to the katapult and stopped seeing it as remarkable that she was carrying a weapon. But the awareness that she was going home today made her see all of this through the eyes of the sophisticated urbanites she might be mingling with tomorrow: habitat ring dwellers who would never believe that only a short time earlier Kath Two had been in a place where one did not pee without carefully looking around first, did not venture into the open without a weapon in hand.