"Right?" Jak called, crouching with one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives in his fist, waiting to slice the knotted creeper apart.

Ryan took up the mooring line, hung on to it with both hands and braced himself against the pull of the current. He kept the raft steady for the boy to run down and board it.

"Now," he said, staring intently into the gloom, able to see only the splash of whiteness that was the boy's hair.

There was the blur of movement as the knife whispered through the rope, and Ryan felt it go slack, so that all the weight was on him. But, as he watched, he saw a chunk of the night rise from behind the boulder and grapple with Jak.

"Fireblast!" Ryan yelled, helpless to assist the boy.

But Jak could look after himself. The mutie had grabbed at him, pulling him to the earth. It uttered ferocious grunting noises, its foul breath nearly choking him. Its stubby fingers ripped at his coat, groped for his eyes, trying to squeeze them from their soft sockets.

The albino still held the knife, its taped hilt snug in his fingers. Using his superior agility and strength, he was able to wriggle out from under the attacker, turning the creature on its back, digging his knee into the soft flesh of its groin. In pain and shock the air burst from the mutie's lungs, a thin scream breaking the silence of the night.

The flesh of the mutie was coarse, almost reptilian, the skin like flaking scales to Jak's touch. His first cut was deflected, the edge of the blade skittering off the side of the stump of a neck. Jak fended off a flailing fist with the side of his forearm, thrusting once more with the knife. As a weapon, it wasn't ideally suited to hand-to-hand fighting, but against the weak and clumsy mutie it was more than enough.

He felt the blood gush out from the deep, narrow wound, steaming in the pallid light of the moon as it appeared from behind the clouds. Jak turned his wrist, like the experienced knife fighter he was, and drove the steel deeper into the mutie's flesh so that the flow warmed his hand.

The body went limp under him, and he started to rise, pulling the throwing knife from the creature's throat. But the mutie wasn't done yet. In a convulsive spasm of dying rage, it reached up for him, fingers locking around the boy's skinny neck, holding him there, the two locked together in a ghastly tableau.

"Chill him, Ryan!" Jak choked out, hacking at the scaly forearms of the mutie.

But Ryan was too busy struggling to hang on to the frayed end of the creeper that held the raft steady against the driving current. J.B. was in the center of the tossing, waterlogged craft, his pistol drawn, sighting along the barrel. But the movement of the tumbling waves threw off his aim, and he didn't dare squeeze the trigger in case he shot Jak, unable to distinguish between the tangled bodies in the murky light.

The mutie was screeching, its blood spouting black and spattering on the damp stones all around.

"Help me!" Jak shouted hoarsely, trying and failing to break the mutie's death grip.

"Cut the fingers," Ryan yelled, head twisted as he tried to make out what was happening behind him.

"Can't!" The screaming had stopped, but enough noise had been made to rouse a regiment of sleeping sec men.

Krysty saved the moment. Jumping surefooted, like a great panther, she landed on the loose stones, her hair breaking free from its binding and whirling around her head like a torrent of fire. She held her Heckler & Koch blaster in her right hand, the moonlight dancing off the mirrored finish of the barrel. In the blinking of an eye, the girl was alongside Jak and the dying mutie, stooping and placing the muzzle against its sagging mouth.

The crack of the 9 mm round was oddly muffled, almost inaudible against the pounding of the Mohawk. The back of the mutie's skull burst apart as though someone had struck it from inside with a sixteen-pound sledge, the contents of the brainpan slopping in the dirt. The fingers convulsed and then relaxed their grip, allowing Jak to break away.

"Come on!" Ryan called, feeling his boots sliding in the wet pebbles that lined the cold waters of the river.

Krysty led the way, running toward the bobbing raft, holstering her pistol as she sprinted. Planting a kiss on Ryan's cheek as she jumped across the gap, she landed on all fours on the moss-slick timbers, grabbing at the mast to steady herself.

"Double-hard bastard to chill," Jak said as he came down the slope, panting like he'd run a desperate race. "Thanks, Krysty. Owe you one."

"Let her go, Ryan," J.B. said. "Be getting us company soon."

The gap between the shore and the raft had been gradually widening, despite all of Ryan's efforts. He dropped the rope and jumped for it, landing awkwardly on the edge, legs trailing in the icy water.

The raft began to move away from the shore ever so slowly, just as fifty or more muties came bursting over the top of the slope toward them.

Chapter Three

If any of the stupes had owned a blaster, then Ryan's group would have taken some chillings. Even a couple of long-barreled Kentucky muskets would have picked them off like hogs on ice. Even bows and arrows, or straight spears would have been lethal at such close range, against helpless targets. Hanging on the slimy logs of the bobbing raft for their very lives, none of the six could even hold a blaster, let alone hope to hit anyone with one.

The muties hadn't come prepared, and the only weapons they had were the stones from the narrow expanse of the beach.

At less than twenty paces, the jagged missiles were potentially lethal, but the rocking of the raft that prevented Ryan and his friends from wiping away the muties also made them difficult targets. Krysty caught a painful blow on the left elbow, and Doc was cut on the forehead, but most of the stones bounced harmlessly off the raft.

A whirling current made the cumbersome vessel pitch and spin, then it broke free and began to move faster down the Mohawk, away from the murderous muties. As the raft steadied, J.B. stood up with his mini-Uzi, balancing himself against Ryan.

"Want me to take some of the bastards out?" he asked. "Be easy."

"No. Leave 'em," Ryan replied, peering behind them into the darkness. "Best take care when we come back to the gateway.''

"That's too damned right," Krysty agreed, rubbing at her damaged elbow.

The river gradually became wider, the raft floating sluggishly in its center. As it widened it also became calmer, with no hint of rapids. The banks were each a hundred paces away, leaving them safe from attack. The night wore on, and most of them managed to snatch a few hours' sleep, though Ryan took the precaution of keeping one of them awake and on watch.

"Keep careful — keep alive," had been one of the Trader's rules of living.

Just before dawn they passed another of the squalid little riverside communities. From a distance it was hard to see, but Krysty, with her sharp eyesight, was certain that it wasn't a nest of muties. Just double-poor folk dredging up an existence on the razor edge of poverty.

An arrow was fired from a screen of dull green pine trees, but it fell woefully short of the raft. On a narrow headland, daubed pink by the florid orange sunrise, the six were watched by a pack of hunting dogs, with slavering jaws and a crust of yellow froth around their long incisors.

Gradually the sky lightened. Around eight in the morning one of the limitless thousands of chunks of space debris, dating from the ill-founded Star Wars defense system, finally reentered the atmosphere of the Earth. It burned up in a dazzling display of green-and-red pyrotechnics, breaking up and melting as it ripped through the clouds in a fearsome explosion.

Doc Tanner took off his beloved stovepipe hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief, which was decorated with a swallow's-eye design. His eyes dimmed as he rubbed absently at the dent in the crown of the hat. "There will always be that sort of memory. Millenia will come and go and still that damnable filth will boil in the spatial maelstrom, falling now and again to remind us of the futility of it all. Oh, if only..." The sentence, unfinished, trailed behind him like a maiden's hand in the rolling water.