Nature commits no errors; right and wrong are human categories.

—Pardot Kynes, Arrakis Lectures

Monotonous days. The three-man Harkonnen patrol cruised over the golden swells of dunes along a thousand-kilometer flight path. In the unrelenting desert landscape, even a puff of dust caused excitement.

The troopers flew their armored ornithopter in a long circle, skirting mountains, then curving south over great pans and flatlands. Glossu Rabban, the Baron's nephew and temporary governor of Arrakis, had ordered them to fly regularly, to be seen—to show the squalid settlements that Harkonnens were watching. Always.

Kiel, the sidegunner, considered the assignment a license to hunt any Fremen found wandering near legitimate spice-harvesting operations. What made those dirty wanderers think they could trespass on Harkonnen lands without permission from the district office in Carthag? But few Fremen were ever caught abroad in daylight, and the task had grown dull.

Garan flew the 'thopter, rising up and dipping down to catch thermals, as if operating an amusement ride. He maintained a stoic expression, though occasionally a grin stole across his lips as the craft bucked and jostled in rough air. As they completed their fifth day on patrol, he continued to mark discrepancies on topographical maps, muttering in disgust each time he found another mistake. These were the worst charts he had ever used.

In the back passenger compartment sat Josten, recently transferred from Giedi Prime. Accustomed to industrial facilities, gray skies, and dirty buildings, Josten gazed out over the sandy wastelands, studying hypnotic dune patterns. He spotted the knot of dust off to the south, deep in the open Funeral Plain. "What's that? Spice-harvesting operation?"

"Not a chance," the sidegunner Kiel said. "Harvesters shoot a plume like a cone into the air, straight and thin."

"Too low for a dust devil. Too small." With a shrug, Garan jerked the 'thopter controls and soared toward the low, reddish-brown cloud. "Let's take a look." After so many tedious days, they would have gone out of their way to investigate a large rock sticking out of the sand.…

When they reached the site, they found no tracks, no machinery, no sign of human presence—and yet acres of desert looked devastated. A mottled rust color stained the sands a darker ochre, as if blood from a wound had dried in the hot sun.

"Looks like somebody dropped a bomb here," Kiel said.

"Could be the aftermath of a spice blow," Garan suggested. "I'll set down for a closer look."

As the 'thopter settled onto the churned sands, Kiel popped open the hatch. The temperature-controlled atmosphere hissed out, replaced by a wave of heat. He coughed dust.

Garan leaned over from the cockpit and sniffed hard. "Smell it." The odor of burnt cinnamon struck his nostrils. "Spice blow for sure."

Josten squeezed past Kiel and dropped onto the soft ground. Amazed, he bent down, picked up a handful of ochre sand and touched it to his lips. "Can we scoop up some fresh spice and take it back? Must be worth a fortune."

Kiel had been thinking the same thing, but now he turned to the newcomer with scorn. "We don't have the processing equipment. You need to separate it from the sand, and you can't do that with your fingers."

Garan spoke in a quieter, but firmer voice. "If you went back to Carthag and tried to sell raw product to a street vendor you'd be hauled in front of Governor Rabban—or worse yet, have to explain to Count Fenring how some of the Emperor's spice ended up in a patrolman's pockets."

As the troopers tromped out to the ragged pit at the center of the dissipating dust cloud, Josten glanced around. "Is it safe for us to be here? Don't the big worms go to spice?"

"Afraid, kid?" Kiel asked.

"Let's throw him to a worm if we see one," Garan suggested. "It'll give us time to get away."

Kiel saw movement in the sandy excavation, shapes squirming, buried things that tunneled and burrowed, like maggots in rotten meat. Josten opened his mouth to say something, then clamped it shut again.

A whiplike creature emerged from the sand, two meters long with fleshy segmented skin. It was the size of a large snake, its mouth an open circle glittering with needle-sharp teeth that lined its throat.

"A sandworm!" Josten said.

"Only a runt," Kiel scoffed.

"Newborn—do you think?" Garan asked.

The worm waved its eyeless head from side to side. Other slithering creatures, a nest of them, squirmed about as if they'd been spawned in the explosion.

"Where in the hells did they come from?" Kiel asked.

"Wasn't in my briefing," Garan said.

"Can we … catch one?" Josten asked.

Kiel stopped himself from making a rude rejoinder, realizing that the young recruit did have a good idea. "Come on!" He charged forward into the churned sand.

The worm sensed the movement and reared back, uncertain whether to attack or flee. Then it arced like a sea serpent and plunged into the sand, wriggling and burrowing.

Josten sprinted ahead and dove face-first to grasp the segmented body three quarters of the way to its end. "It's so strong!" Following him, the sidegunner jumped down and grabbed the thrashing tail.

The worm tried to tug away, but Garan reached the front, where he dug into the sand and grabbed behind its head with a stranglehold. All three troopers wrestled and pulled. "Get it!" The small worm thrashed like an eel on an electric plate.

Other sandworms on the far side of the pit rose like a strange forest of periscopes sprouting from the sea of dunes, round mouths like black os turned toward the men. For an icy moment, Kiel feared they might attack like a swarm of marrow leeches, but the immature worms darted away and disappeared underground.

Garan and Kiel hauled their captive out of the sand and dragged it toward the ornithopter. As a Harkonnen patrol, they had all the equipment necessary to arrest criminals, including old-fashioned devices for trussing a captive like a herd animal. "Josten, go get the binding cords in our apprehension kit," the pilot said.

The new recruit came running back with the cords, fashioning a loop which he slipped over the worm's head and cinched tight. Garan released his hold on the rubbery skin and grabbed the rope, tugging while Josten slipped a second cord lower on the body.

"What are we going to do with it?" Josten asked.

Once, early in his assignment on Arrakis, Kiel had joined Rabban on an abortive worm hunt. They had taken a Fremen guide, well-armed troops, even a Planetologist. Using the Fremen guide as bait, they had lured one of the enormous sandworms and killed it with explosives. But before Rabban could take his trophy, the beast had dissolved, sloughing into amoeba creatures that fell to the sand, leaving nothing but a cartilaginous skeleton and loose crystal teeth. Rabban had been furious.

Kiel's stomach knotted. The Baron's nephew might consider it an insult that three simple patrolmen could capture a worm, when he'd been unable to do so himself. "We'd better drown it."

"Drown it?" Josten said. "What for? And why would I want to waste my water ration to do that?"

Garan stopped as if struck by a thunderbolt. "I've heard the Fremen do it. If you drown a baby worm, they say it spits out some kind of drug or poison. It's very rare."

Kiel nodded. "Oh, yeah. The desert people use it in their religious rituals. It makes everybody go crazy, wild orgies and everything."

"But … we've only got two literjons of water in the compartment," Josten said, still nervous.

"Then we only use one. I know where we can refill it, anyway." The pilot and his sidegunner exchanged glances. They had patrolled together long enough that they'd both thought of the same thing.

As if understanding its fate, the worm bucked and thrashed even more, but it was already growing weaker.

"Once we get the drug," Kiel said, "let's have some fun."

Unlike the nomadic Fremen, these villagers were slightly more civilized but also more downtrodden: men who worked as desert guides and joined spice-harvesting crews. They had forgotten how to survive on their world without becoming parasites upon the planetary governors.

On an earlier patrol, Kiel and Garan had discovered a camouflaged cistern on the mesa, a treasure trove of water. Kiel didn't know where the villagers had gotten so much moisture; most likely, they had committed fraud, inflating their census numbers so that Harkonnen generosity provided more than they deserved.

The people of Bilar Camp covered the cistern with rock so that it looked like a natural protrusion, but the villagers placed no guards around their illegal stockpile. For some reason desert culture forbade thievery even more than murder; they trusted the safety of their possessions from bandits or thieves of the night.

Of course, the Harkonnen troopers had no intention of stealing the water—that is, no more than enough to refill their own supply containers.

Dutifully, Josten trotted along with their sloshing container, which held the thick, noxious substance exuded by the drowned worm after it had stopped thrashing and bucking inside the container. Awed and nervous about what they'd done, they dumped the flaccid carcass near the perimeter of the spice blow and then taken off with the drug.

Garan operated the Bilar cistern's cleverly concealed spigot and refilled one of their empty containers. No sense in letting all the water go to waste just for a practical joke on the villagers.

"Do you know what this drug will do to them?" Josten asked.

Garan shook his head. "I've heard plenty of crazy stories."

"Maybe we should make the kid try it first," the sidegunner said.

Josten backed away, raising his hands.

Kiel took the container of worm bile and upended it into the cistern. The villagers would certainly have a surprise next time they all drank from their illegal water hoard. "Serves them right."

Garan looked at the contaminated cistern again. "I bet they tear off their clothes and dance naked in the streets, squawking like dinfowl."

"Let's stay here and watch the fun for ourselves," Kiel said.

Garan frowned. "Do you want to be the one to explain to Rabban why we're late returning from patrol?"

"Let's go," Kiel answered quickly.

As the worm-poison infused the cistern, the Harkonnen troopers hurried back to their ornithopter, reluctantly content to let the villagers discover the prank for themselves.