Free The Whipping Star by Frank Herbert

they be doing with that much quick-scribe powder?" McKie asked.  "There was no sign of a chalfmemory stick -- but that means little, of course."
    "It's just a suggestion," Tuluk said, "but they couldn've chaff-scribed that design on the Palenki."
    "Why?"
    "Give it a false phylum, maybe?"
    "Perhaps."
    "If you smelled chalf after the whip came through, there'd have to be quite a bit of it around.  You thought of that?"
    "The room wasn't all that big, and it was hot."
    "The heat would explain it, all right.  Sorry we didn't have more for you."
    "That's all?"
    "Well, it might not be any use, but the whip had been stored in a hanging position supported by a thin length of steel.  "
    "Steel?  Are you positive?"
    "Positive."
    "Who still uses steel?"
    "It's not all that uncommon on some of the newer planets.  R&R has even turned up some where they build with it."
    "Wild!"
    "Isn't it, though?"
    "You know," McKie said, "We're looking for an outback planet, and that's where I seem to be."
    "Where are you?"
    "I don't know."
    "You don't know?"
    McKie explained his predicament.
    "You field agents take awful chances sometimes," Tuluk said.
    "Don't we just."
    "You wear a monitor.  I could ask this Taprisiot to identify your location.  Want to invoke the monitor clause?"
    "You know that's an open payment clause," McKie said.  "I don't think this is a sufficient emergency yet that I can risk bankrupting us.  Let me see if I can identify this place by other means first."
    "What do you want me to do, then?"
    "Call Furuneo.  Have him allow me another six hours, then get the Caleban to pick me up."
    "Pick you up, right.  Siker said you were onto some doorless S'eye thing.  Can it pick you up anywhere?"
    "I think so."
    "I'll call Furuneo right away."

Facts can be whatever you want them to be.  This is the lesson of relativity.
    -BuSab Manual

    McKie had been walking for almost two hours before he saw the smoke.  Thin spirals of it stood in the air against the backdrop of distant blue hills.
    It had occurred to McKie during his walk that he might have been set down in a place where he could die of thirst or starvation before his legs carried him to the safe companionship of his civilized fellows.  A self-accusatory moroseness had overtaken him.  It wasn't the first time he had realized that some accident of the machinery he took for granted might prove fatal.
    But the machinery of his own mind?  He cursed himself for using the Caleban's S'eye system this way when he knew the unreliability of communication with the creature.
    Walking!
    You never thought you might have to walk to safety.
    McKie sensed the eternal flaw in sentient relationship with machinery.  Reliance on such forces put your own muscles at a disadvantage in a universe where you might have to rely on those muscles at any moment.
    Such as right now.
    He appeared to be getting nearer to the smoke, although the hills looked as remote as ever.
    Walking.
    Of all the stupid damn foul-ups.  Why would Abnethe pick a place like this to start her kinky little game?  If this were the place it had started.  If the Caleban hadn't made another communication error.
    If love could find a way.  What the devil did love have to do with all this?
    McKie plodded on, wishing he had brought some water.  First the heat of the Beachball, now this.  His throat felt as though he'd built a fire in it.  The dust kicked up by his feet didn't help.  Every step stirred up a puff of pale red from the narrow track.  The dust clogged his throat and nostrils.  It had a musty taste.
    He patted the toolkit in his jacket pocket.  The raygen could burn a thin hole in this parched earth, might even strike down to water.  But how could he bring the water up to his demanding throat?
    Plenty of insects around.  They buzzed and flew about, crawled at the edge of the track, attempted at times to alight on his exposed flesh.  He finally took to carrying his toolkit's stim like a fan, setting it at