“Yes.”

“He’s lost it,” he muttered, pushing her down behind some packing crates. “That blow to the head did some serious damage.”

The shuttle’s engines roared into life, drowning out anything else he was going to say.

He leaned over her, putting his mouth to her ear. “Now what? This is going to wake the whole damned village.”

The shuttle rose into the air, the whine of the engines getting louder and louder until suddenly it shot forward.

Jensen flung himself of top of Avana as they heard it crashing its way through the closed doors. Splinters of wood rained down around them.

“Can you get off me now?”

Hearing the pain in her voice, hurriedly he rolled off her. “You sure you’re all right?” he asked, helping her up.

“I’m fine, just landed awkwardly,” she said, but there was a drawn look about her face he didn’t like.

“We need to stop him,” she said. “The villagers will help us now; they wouldn’t have before.”

“You don’t seriously believe there are aliens out there, do you?”

She motioned him to silence, stepping out from behind the crates as the first of the villagers rushed in, half-dressed and brandishing a shotgun. Jensen joined her, determined that whatever happened, she’d not face it alone. He recognized Nolan, the leader of the small colony, instantly.

“Is this your doing, Avana?” Nolan demanded, coming to an abrupt stop when he saw them. “What’s he doing here?”

“It was Weis, Nolan. He was hiding in the shuttle. He’s taken explosives… gone looking for… them.” Her voice trailed off as the hangar began to fill with more of the angry colonists.

“You had to tell him, didn’t you?” demanded the woman next to Nolan. “Just had to meddle again!”

“I told him nothing except his leg was healed.”

“Be quiet, Kate,” said Nolan, lowering his gun. “You’re missing what’s important here. Weis has gone hunting them with explosives.”

“We have to warn them. Jensen is taking me,” Avana said.

“You were going there anyway,” accused Kate. “That’s why you let him out!”

“She’s been Called again, hasn’t she?” said another woman from the rear of the small group. “I told you not to stop her going last time, Nolan, but you had to listen to Kate!”

“No one wanted to take her, Mary, you know that,” muttered one of the men.

“I’m not going near them again, and you can’t blame me seeing as no one else volunteered,” said his neighbor.

Jensen was growing angrier by the minute as he listened to them degenerate into squabbles.

“It wasn’t my decision,” said Nolan, stung by the accusation. “You all voted for it at the town meeting!”

“I warned you there’d be trouble,” said Mary, pulling her fur jacket tighter around her and pushing to the front. “Not only did you break the agreement, but you stopped Avana from going to them. You, Llew, have no backbone!” she said, turning on the youth. “They’ve never done us harm, only helped us. Now this Weis is going to try and destroy them. Just what do you think they’ll do about that?”

“I have to go now,” said Avana, trying to pitch her voice to carry over those of the villagers. “I need to warn them.”

“Just a goddam minute!” said Jensen, raising his voice so it did drown them all out. “I want to know what the hell’s going on here! Who’s this them you keep talking about, for starters?”

Silence fell abruptly as they turned to face him, suddenly remembering his presence.

“Well?” he demanded again when no one answered.

“The yukitenshi,” said someone quietly from the rear of the group.

“That’s Company talk,” another said derisively.

“Snow Angels, the Sidhe, Children of Danu, call them what you will,” said Mary. “They live up in the mountains and mostly keep to themselves, thanks to Avana. They don’t scare me! I’m not forgetting to keep the old ways!” She glowered around at the dozen people gathered in the hangar.

“Snow angels? The Sidhe?” said Jensen, more confused than before.

“Llew, Conner, get the shuttle fueled up and ready to go,” said Nolan abruptly. “You’re right, Mary, we should never have stopped Avana from going the last time they Called her. Fetch food for them, three days’ worth.”

“Mark my words, Nolan, you’ll live to regret this!” said Kate. “Because it was right for you thirty years ago doesn’t mean it is for us younger ones! Let him kill them…”

“Come with me, Kate,” said Mary firmly, grasping the younger woman by the arm and forcefully escorting her from the hangar.

Nelson turned back to Jensen and Avana. “Is there anything else you need? There’s comm units and face masks as well as ropes and other rescue gear on board.”

“A med kit, please,” Avana said. “And sensible winter gear for Jensen. I had some for him in the other shuttle.”

Jensen watched the sudden activity, aware of a dull ache beginning behind his eyes. Doggedly he kept focused on the one fact that currently posed the most danger.

“You’re serious, aren’t you? There really are indigenous natives on Kogarashi.”

Nolan looked questioningly at Avana.

“He’s forgotten, like the others did,” she confirmed. “We call it Danu, Jensen.”

“We don’t rightly know what they are, Jensen, but they do belong here,” said Nolan.

“Why didn’t you tell the Company? These are the first aliens we’ve ever come across! We made laws against colonizing a world that’s already inhabited by intelligent life!”

“We didn’t know at first, and by the time we did, it was too late. The Company had sunk too much into setting up our colony. Besides, what do we tell them? I told you, we don’t know what manner of beings they are.” Nolan glanced obliquely at Avana. “You’ll understand when you see them.”

“How do you know these are the first aliens mankind has met?” said Avana. “None of us trusted the Company enough to tell them.”

“Colonization is a ruthless business, Jensen, you should know that.”

He did, but to think that any company would commit genocide just to remain on a colony world…

“I’ll need weapons,” he said tiredly, rubbing his aching temples. “For Avana too. Weis isn’t going to be easily stopped.”

“We aren’t aiming to stop him directly,” Avana said. “We need to warn them first. Our advantage is he doesn’t know where they live, and I do. Nolan, I’m going to wait inside the shuttle. Don’t let him do any lifting. That leg of his may be healed but it’s still weak.”

The half-hour it took to get them fueled and provisioned was revealing for Jensen-what the colonists refused to say about Avana and the aliens told him as much as what they did. He taxied out into the moonlight, then began to accelerate away from the village.

“What’s that?” he asked as they flew over a ring of small boulders just to the west of the village. “A Zen garden?”

“You could say that. It’s the ring.”

“Any painkillers in your medicine kit? I’ve got the mother and father of all headaches,” he asked as a stab of pain made him wince.

Avana stirred. “There should be. I’ll go look.”

“See if you can find something I can eat now,” he added, checking his bearings on the small nav screen and heading out toward the mountains. “I don’t think they fed me much over the last three days. You should have something too-you’re looking pale.”

Cramped though the bridge section was, there was a reasonable-sized cargo area behind them. As he listened to Avana rifling through the various bags that had been stowed there, he began to relax a little for the first time that night. On the Doppler screen, it showed exactly what Nolan had predicted-clear weather across the plains and into the lower foothills; then they’d hit a storm worse than the one that had caused him and Weis to crash. He planned to land and weather it out, just as Weis would be forced to do.

She came back, sitting down in her seat and stowing the drinks in the armrest console before handing him a couple of pills. When he’d taken them, she held out a regulation non-spill mug.