Since nightfall she had hunted for the refugees, first slowly and cautiously, then with growing desperation. There came a point when she threw caution away and began broadcasting a sonar beacon for them to home in on.

Nothing! There were fen out there, but they ignored her totally!

Only after entering the maze did she get a good fix on the sound. Then she realized that one of the fen was desperately crazy, and that both were engaged in ritual combat, closing out all the universe until the battle was over.

Of all the things that could have happened, this stunned Hikahi most of all. Ritual combat? Here? What did this have to do with the silence from Streaker?

She had an uneasy feeling that this ritual battle was to the death.

She set the sonar on automatic and let the skiff guide itself. She napped, letting one hemisphere and then the other go into alpha state as the little ship slid through the narrow channels, always headed northeastward.

She snapped out of a snooze to the sound of a loud buzzer. The skiff was stopped. Her instruments showed traces of cetacean movement just beyond a sheer shelf of metallic rock, heading slowly westward.

Hikahi activated the hydrophones.

"Whoever you are," her voice boomed through the water. "Come out at once!"

There was a faint query sound, a weary, confused whistle.

"This way, idiot-t! Follow my voice!"

Something moved out from a broad channel between islands. She snapped on the skiff's spotlights. A gray dolphin blinked back in the sharp glare.

"Keepiru!" Hikahi gasped.

The pilot's body was a mass of bruises, and one side bore a savage burn, but he smiled nevertheless.

* Ah, the gentle rains -

Dear lady, for you to come here

And rescue me… *

The smile faded like a quenched fire and his eyes rolled. Then, on pure instinct, his half-unconscious body rose to the surface, to drift until she came for him.

Beie Chohooan cursed the parsimony of her superiors.

If the Synthian High Command had sent a mothership to observe the battle of the fanatics, she might have been able to approach the war zone in a flitter — a vessel too small to be detected. As it was, she had been compelled to use a starship large enough to travel through transfer points and hyperspace, too small to defend itself adequately, and too large to sneak past the combatants.

She almost fired upon the tiny globe that nosed around the asteroid that sheltered her ship. Just in time she recognized the little wazoon-piloted probe. She pressed a stud to open a docking port, but the wazoon hung back, sending a frantic series of tight laser pulses.

Your position discovered, it flashed. Enemy missiles closing…

Beie uttered her vilest damnations. Every time she almost got close enough to 'cast a message through the jamming to the Earthlings, she had to flee from some random, paranoid tentacle of battle.

Come in quickly and dock! She tapped out a command to the wazoon. Too many of the loyal little clients had died for her already.

Negative. Flee, Beie. Wazoo-two will distract…

Beie snarled at the disobedience. The three wazoon who remained on the shelf to her left cringed and blinked their large eyes at her.

The scout globe sped off into the night.

Beie closed the port and fired up her engines. Carefully, she weaved her way through the lanes between chunks of primordial stone, away from the area of danger.

Too late, she thought as she glanced at the threat board. The missiles were closing too fast.

A sudden glare from behind told of the fate of the little wazoon. Beie's whiskered upper lip curled as she contemplated a suitable way to get even with the fanatics, if she ever got a chance.

Then the missiles arrived, and she was suddenly too busy even for nasty, pleasant thoughts.

She blasted two missiles to vapor with her particle gun. Two others fired back; their beams were barely refracted by her shields.

Ah, Earthlings, she contemplated. You'll not even know I was ever here. For all you know, you have been forsaken by all the universe.

But don't let that stop you, wolflings. Fight on! Snarl at your pursuers! And when all your weapons fail, bite them!

Beie destroyed four more missiles before one managed to explode close by, sending her broken ship spinning, burning, into the dusty Galactic dark.

The night blew wet with scattered blustery sheets of rain. The glossy broadleaf plants waved uncertainly under contrary gusts from a wind that seemed unable to decide on a direction. The dripping foliage glistened when two of Kithrup's nearby tiny moons shone briefly through the clouds.

At the far southern end of the island, a crude thatch covering allowed rain to seep through in slow trickles. It dripped onto the finely pitted hull of a small spaceship. The water formed small meniscus pools atop the gently curving metal surface, then ran off in little rivulets. The tappity-tap of the heavy raindrops hitting the thatch was joined by a steady patter as streams of runoff poured onto the smashed mud and vegetation beneath the cylindrical flying machine.

The trickles sluiced over the stubby stasis flanges. They sent jagged trails over the forward viewports, dark and clear in the intermittent moonlight.

Trails penetrated the narrow cracks around the aft airlock, using the straight channels to pour dribbling streams out onto the muddy ground.

There came a tiny mechanical hiss, barely louder than the rainfall. The cracks around the airlock widened almost imperceptibly. Neighboring streams merged to fill the new crevices. A pool began to form in a dirt basin below the hatch.

The doorway cracked open a little farther. More streams merged to pour in, as if seeking to enter the ship. All at once a gurgling stream poured from the bottom of the crack. The flow became a gushing waterfall that splashed into a puddle below. Then, just as abruptly, the torrent subsided.

The armored hatch slid open with a muted sigh. The rain sent a flurry of slanting droplets pelting into the opening.

A dark, helmeted figure stood in the threshold, ignoring the onslaught. It turned to look left and right, then stepped out and splashed in the puddle. The hatch shut again with a whine and a small click.

The figure bent into the wind, searching in the darkness for a trail.

Dennie sat up suddenly at the sound of wet footsteps. With her hand at her breast she whispered.

"Toshio?"

The tent's fly was pushed aside and the flap zipped open. For a moment a dark shape loomed. Then a quiet voice whispered. "Yeah, it's me."

Dennie's rapid pulse subsided. "I was afraid it was somebody else."

"Who'd you expect, Dennie? Charlie Dart? Come out of his tent to ravish you? Or, better yet, one of the Kiqui?" He teased her gently, but could not hide the tension in his voice.

He shrugged out of his drysuit and helmet which he hung on a peg by the opening. In his underwear, Toshio crawled over to his own sleeping bag and slid in.

"Where have you been?"