Thomse chuckled; even Desiree's face seemed to soften somewhat. Mark and Amy looked blankly at one another.

"The Goo's a swamp just in from the coast," Yerby explained cheerfully. "It's a bowl twenty miles across and it drains out through cracks in the rock, not by a proper river. I reckon they'll have time enough to get out of the ship, the folks will. The cargo hatches are going to be under a couple yards of muck as soon as they hit, though."

He stretched and grinned. "By the time I show up, I don't guess there'll be much to see of the ship but another hummock in the swamp. Even the island's not as solid as all that, you know."

"I see," Mark said. Yerby's beaming face had just melted away the field of smashed bodies he'd been imagining.

Amy switched the radio to normal operation instead of data link to the landing system. "This is Woodsrunners command to all Woodsrunners," she said into the microphone. "Pass this message on."

"Tell 'em to gather at the north end of The Goo," Yerby ordered in a stage whisper. "That's where I'll take our visitors out."

Amy nodded. Mark and Yerby stepped into the hallway, where they could speak without interfering with Amy. She was switching bands after each set of radioed instructions.

"Are you planning to fly in alone?" Mark asked.

"I'm going to walk in," the frontiersman said. "I figure our visitors are going to keep their personal guns, most of them. I don't want them to capture a flyer. There's enough Zenith settlers on Greenwood that somebody'd likely mount a rescue try if he heard about it. Nobody's going to walk out of The Goo, though, without I lead him and he's real polite."

"I didn't know there was any way into The Goo, Yerby," said Tindouf, a hired logger whose cracked ribs had kept him hanging around the compound for the past few days. "Except you fly."

"There's a way," Yerby insisted. "But nothing some Zenith is likely to find by himself. I'll bring 'em all out and it won't cost them a centime they haven't paid already."

He frowned regretfully and said, "I'd sure like the aircars and other fancy stuff they brought, but I'm not going to try and dig down through a swamp neither. Guess we'll get some guns out of the business, though."

Mark started to speak, then closed his mouth in embarrassment at what he'd been about to ask. Yerby grinned at him and said, "Say kid? How'd you like to come along with me? It'll be muddy, mind."

Amy paused, half turned, then hunched closer to the microphone. She continued to reel off instructions to the militia.

"If you'll have me," Mark said, "I'd be honored."

He'd been afraid of putting himself forward into a situation where he clearly didn't belong; a form of boasting, and therefore unworthy of a gentleman.

"Yeah, I would," Yerby said. He scowled with embarrassment and continued, "Now, don't take this wrong, lad… but I want to make sure the path's safe for somebody who hasn't, you know, spent as many years outdoors as I have. OK?"

Mark grinned. "I'm your guinea pig," he said. "Let's get started!"

22. Greenwood Justice

The mud was gray, sulphurous and stuck like glue. Mostly it was covered by vegetation. Shrubs on firm ground grew as much as ten feet in the air and spread their leaves widely, and dazzling little splotches lifted themselves six inches from the nearly liquid surface.

Every once in a while, a tall stem that cantilevered itself out from a hummock decoyed Mark into placing a foot a little beyond where Yerby'd stepped. As a result, Mark had as good a view of the mud as anybody could wish: it coated his coveralls to the throat. That was a much closer acquaintance than Mark desired, certainly.

Yerby prodded the surface ahead of him with a long piece of tubing. Mark had tried to carry a similar staff, but he'd quickly decided that he was better off with his hands free to clutch shrubs or his companion in the frequent crises. "How you doing, lad?" the frontiersman asked over his shoulder.

"I'm all right," Mark lied. He didn't think he'd ever been as exhausted in his life. The mud was warm as well as being sticky. Trying not to gasp, he added, "I guess this basin must be volcanic."

"Yeah, I reckon," Yerby agreed as he hopped nonchalantly to what Mark would have guessed was a sinkhole. The footing easily held the big man's weight. "It's the prettiest thing you ever saw in winter if the mist blows away, all green and cheerful in the middle of the snow."

Mark jumped. His muddy legs weighed him down. Yerby grabbed Mark's hand and snatched him from disaster. The ground felt like rock beneath a slime of mud.

"Don't worry, lad," Yerby said. "We're just about there. If them Zeniths do half so good as you, we'll get them clear no problem."

Mark took another step by rote. He was too tired to do anything except previous actions. Yerby caught him and steered him to the right, through a copse of virid shrubs. To Mark the ground looked exactly the same.

"Right there," Yerby explained with a nod, "there's a pit that don't stop till you're on the other side of the planet."

He walked Mark through a screen of diaphanous tendrils. About a hundred frightened-looking men and women milled or squatted fifty feet away. The Aten's splashdown had disturbed the expanse of mud between them and Mark. Alternate bands of tumbled plants and glutinous mud marked the arcs of compression.

The starship was a low gray dome behind the Zeniths. Yerby'd been right when he guessed that the ship would have sunk almost out of sight by the time he reached it.

Zenith soldiers-to Mark's surprise they were wearing light blue uniforms-lurched to their feet. A squat man in particularly brilliant garb pointed at Yerby and Mark. "Hold it right there!" he shouted. "I warn you, we're armed!"

"Ah, but you won't be when you leave here," Yerby said without concern. He eyed the pattern of ripples, shock waves frozen or at least numbed into the ground. Despite his weight, Yerby hopped from one point to the next without his boots ever sinking above the instep. Mark followed, his heart in his throat. For a wonder he managed to join the frontiersman and the Zenith troops without another minor disaster.

"Hello, Mayor Biber," Mark said to the Zenith commander, panting only slightly. Success at crossing the open space made him feel so good that he didn't notice the pressure of the dozen or more guns pointed at his head and chest. "I didn't expect to find you here."

Biber glared at Mark, trying to place him. The Mayor of New Paris was all mud to the hips. The same misstep had sucked off one of his knee boots.

"You're under arrest!" Biber said. "Captain van den Brook, take these men into custody!"

These weren't soldiers, they were police-the New Paris Civic Watch, according to the garish yellow-and-orange patches on their left shoulders. Their weapons were a mélange of a dozen different sorts-mostly nonlethal, at least by design. Mark remembered Yerby's warning about the dangers of a badly made nerve scrambler.

"I think you've misplaced your jail, Mayor," Yerby said. He hooked a thumb in the direction of the starship. The vessel gave a sad groan; the ground shivered. "Matter of fact, you've misplaced just about every durn thing, ain't you? Including food."

"All right, Bannock," Biber ordered curtly. He drew a long-barreled, chrome-plated pistol from a holster and pointed it in Yerby's face. "You're going to lead us out of here. Now!"

"And so I am," Yerby agreed. "That's what I come here for. But first you're going to lay all your pretty hardware down. Understood?"

"We can force you to tell us the path!" said Captain van den Brook, a woman whose face could give Desiree points for grim.

Mark started to laugh. Only a shade of his chortling peals was hysteria. "Oh, Captain!" he said. "Oh, Captain!"