Henry Exline was still awake in the hills above the camp when Wash returned in the shuttle. Exline knew he would have to be back sometime soon, those shuttles didn’t have that long a range. Exline looked up when sometime close to midnight the shuttle buzzed overhead and down into the camp.

Who were these folks and what were they up to? They weren’t Alliance, that was for damn sure, and they weren’t planning to settle here, or they wouldn’t have landed inside the perimeter of a mined military camp. Did they know it was mined? In his considered opinion, they did know it was mined. They had settled right down with the water and the little bit of green grass, which suggested they had known what they were doing when they picked that spot.

Exline had kept watch until it was too dark to see. He had to hand it to whoever was in charge down there: Work happened briskly. They had totally emptied that boat of everything it contained by dark. Why, though? That was another perplexing question. Why had they emptied the boat? The way they had done it hadn’t looked like settling in to stay; it had looked more like people dragging their belongings out of a burning building, or carrying stuff that had gotten ruined out of a flooded house.

Way in the evening, getting on toward dark, Exline had seen two men, one of them the man who seemed to be in charge, go into the ship and come out an hour or so later carrying something. They stopped and spoke to another man and then carried whatever it was they had brought off around beyond the ship where Exline couldn’t see. He didn’t know if they returned that evening – they had not come back before it was too dark for him to see.

All the time Exline had watched, something about the man who seemed to be in charge was itching at him. He wasn’t close enough to see faces clearly, so it wasn’t the face he was recognizing, it was the way he carried himself. Wodema, they weren’t going anyplace anytime soon. He might have to slide in a little closer and see whether he could make an ID on that hundan who seemed so familiar.

Once the shuttle passed overhead and landed, Exline allowed himself to go to sleep rolled in a battered blanket, tucked under the edge of a rock overhang.

*** Mal and River finished with grooming the horses just about the same time Jayne reported in that the boat was empty of all moveable goods. It was near dusk, but Mal was determined to find those boxes before he slept that night.

“Get a respirator and let’s start trying to find these gorram boxes of Gowan’s,” Mal said.

“You say he unscrewed vent panels all over the boat and pushed these boxes in,” Jayne said.

“Yeah, that was his story. And he doesn’t know which ones, where,” Mal said.

“Well, I do. The ones with shiny screws, Cap’n. If he unscrewed them vents, he’s gonna have scraped paint off the screws. We get a good light and look for shiny screws. Be way faster’n unscrewing every vent in the boat. ‘N we need a bendy pole with a hook on the end to drag ‘em out with.” Jayne was smug about having already figured out a way to make the job quicker and easier.

“And we need some kind of airtight container to drop ‘em in just as soon as we find ‘em,” Mal added.

“I saw some old waterproof bags when we were moving stuff, Cap’n,” Kaylee said. “Would they do?”

“They would be about perfect, Kaylee. Run go get ‘em,” Mal said

“And I have a curtain pole which is rather flexible,” offered Inara. “I think we could fix a hook to one end easily.”

As soon as they had assembled the hook, they were ready.

“All right, then. Let’s go huntin’.” Mal and Jayne put on respirators, picked up a bright hand torch and the waterproof bags and headed up the ramp into Serenity.

They knew that the most likely vents were those in the dorms. It seemed probable that Gowan had set the boxes while everyone sat at dinner the first night and so the place to start looking was where he had been and they had not been.

Mal and Jayne walked slowly through Serenity, shining the light on every vent. They had not gone far when Jayne said “There.”

Sure enough, in the passageway near Kaylee’s bunk, there was a vent cover with shiny screws. Mal unscrewed them and shone the light inside. There was something in there, well back. Jayne reached in with the hook and dragged a small box to the opening. In the box was a mess of what looked like half-rotted cloth, covered with black fuzz. Carefully not disturbing the contents, Jayne dropped it in the waterproof bag and Mal instantly rolled the bag shut. Two more times they repeated the process, finding a box near the bridge and one near Mal’s bunk. The fourth box, however, was a little different. When Jayne dragged it to the opening, both he and Mal immediately noticed that there was something affixed to the side of the box, some kind of small electronic device. Mal pulled the object off the box and put it in his pocket before dropped the box into a bag.

Once off Serenity, and into the breezy evening, Mal and Jayne took off their respirators before walking over to Simon.

“We got ‘em, Doc. Do you need to see ‘em?” Mal asked.

“I do not.”

“What shall we do with them? What’s the safest thing?” Mal asked.

“Bury them, I think.” Simon responded.

“All right, then, burying it is.”

Mal and Jayne took a shovel and the bags and their light and started off beyond Serenity, walking carefully in the near darkness. They dug a knee-deep hole, dropped in the bags and covered them thoroughly. By the time they were finished it was black dark.

Once Mal reached the fire in front of the tents he called to Kaylee.

“Come look at this thing, Kaylee, and tell me whether we need to start worryin’ again right away about our admirers from Persephone.” Mal held the small electronic device he had taken from the last box out to the mechanic.

“Lemme see, Cap’n.” Kaylee took the device in her hand, turning it over several times in the light from Mal’s lantern. “It’s a whistler, meant to make it easy to find something. It’s kinda like a little radio signaler.”

“Is it signalin’ now?”

“No, it’s got a timer on it. I expect it’s set to start signalin’ about the time we get to Halcion,” Kaylee responded.

“How’s long’s it good for, once it starts?” Mal asked.

“I dunno for sure, but a couple weeks, anyway, I guess.” Kaylee answered.

“Shiny. That means we can use it to toll our visitors right to us. Put it someplace safe for now, we’re goin’ to want it later.” Mal nodded at Kaylee

*** “Doc, how’re they doin’?” Mal stood in the door of the infirmary.

“Both better. I took Zoe off the oxygen and she seems to be breathing fine on her own. Gowan is better, too. You can go speak to them, if you like.”

Mal slipped into Zoe’s cubicle, knelt down and took her hand.

“Hey, there, now. You about ready to get back to work?” Mal grinned at his second in command.

“Yes, sir, any minute now.” Zoe’s voice was a little stronger, but still reedy and insubstantial.

“Well, as it happens, you c’n take a little vacation. We’re gonna sit right here for a few days and get Serenity clean as a whistle. So I guess you can vacate for a while, yet.” Mal said.

“Thank you, sir.” Zoe smiled sardonically. “Too bad there’s no beach handy.”

“That’s a fact. We do have the horses’ water hole, if you’re desperate.”

“Not that desperate, sir.”

“Go on back to sleep, now. Wash’ll be back soon and you’ll want to be awake for that.” Mal squeezed her hand and backed out.

Mal looked in on Gowan, who lay awake and looked back. Simon had taken his oxygen mask away, also.

“How you feelin’?”

“Better, sir.”

“Good, cause we need to have a little talk. Now, so far, you’ve told me several lies and one truthful thing. I’d like to know why you told me the truth about those boxes this mornin’ and whether you plan to keep tellin’ me the truth.” Mal brought a chair to the boy’s bedside and sat down. “I’ll wait while you think a minute.”

“Don’t need to think, sir. I’m gonna be truthful.” Gowan looked at Mal hesistatingly, as though he thought Mal might yet strike him.

“You are. Huh. And why is that? Presumably Atherton Wing or his bullies paid you to do us dirty, so why are you now all ready to be an upright citizen?” Mal leaned in close and looked hard at the boy.

“Cause you didn’t hit me or throw me out the airlock when you figured out I was lyin’ about who I was; and you didn’t let me die when I got sick, and you coulda,” Gowan answered.

“That I coulda. So where does that leave you?” Mal asked.

“Well, I figure that if it’d been the hundans who hired me they woulda – so …” Gowan’s voice trailed off.

“So are you with us?” Mal’s voice and his glance were direct.

“Yessir, I’d like to be. Those hundans didn’t tell me I’d get sick and they musta known, and they said nobody’d die, and your partner almost did. So, I …”

“Well, I don’t need a cabin boy and you’ve already demonstrated you don’t know a thing about horses, and besides you’re too sick to be much use still anyway. But you can make yourself useful someway, I reckon. You sure you’ve told me everything you know? We’re not gonna find some other little nasty hidden away?” Mal stared hard at the boy.

Gowan looked back directly and openly into Mal’s eyes. “No sir, not that I had anything to do with.”

“All right then. When the bad guys show up, you’re one of us. Dong ma?” Mal gave a crisp nod.

“Ma shong. Thank you, sir.”

“You’re not as stupid, boy, as you might be and that ain’t nothing. Get some sleep now.” Mal patted the boy’s shoulder and drew the blanket up under his chin. “Sleep tight. We’ll take you outside maybe tomorrow, get you a little sunshine and fresh air.”

*** Wash got back about midnight. Book, Jayne and Mal were still sitting around the fire when he landed. At the sound of the engine Inara and Kaylee came out of their tent and Simon appeared at the door of the infirmary. River materialized from where ever she had been, and they all walked toward the shuttle.

“How’d it go?” Mal asked.

“Sweet as cream,” Wash answered. “I took it out pretty far and let ‘er go. Turns out that in addition to being fascist bullies and having terrible taste in uniforms, the Alliance is a big bunch of litterbugs. I found a spot where they’d dumped a bunch of junk and just added our little liar to the collection. Maybe they’ll think we are the junk.”

“Mind out how you talk about my boat,” Mal grinned. A little of the tension he had been carrying around his eyes had eased at Wash’s return.

“Well, you know, if we’re space junk, we can’t be in need of a beating. And I personally think that would be just shiny, not to be in need of a beating. How’s my wife?” Wash looked toward Simon.

“She’s doing well. Breathing steadily on her own. Now it’s just a question of letting her get her strength back. And Mal,” Simon said, turning towards the captain, “it’s going to take awhile for Zoe to be herself.”

“Yep, I figured that. And we may need her on Halcion. So we’re gonna stay here a little while, make sure Serenity’s clean, do all our laundry. We’ve got plenty of rations and the horses came with enough feed to take them a good long time –“

“Always worryin’ about them horses,” Jayne interjected.

“ – so I think we’ll just treat this like a picnic. Tomorrow River and I will start workin’ these horses, make sure they stay fit, and Simon you concentrate on getting’ Zoe fit and in five or six days we’ll be on our way.”

***End of part 8*