Jindigar admitted, //Our previous failures have shaken my confidence. But—//

Then it happened.

One moment, they were in perfect attunement, anchored in the now of the pond waters and the myriad events occurring there but aware of the past and the future all around the colony. The next moment, images flashed wildly through consciousness, shattering their clear pictorial impression of the world, one distorted image overlaying another forming menacing patterns that ripped at sanity. Jindigar caught one sharp view of a horridly distorted Holot face peering into his eyes—no– into Krinata's eyes—snarling.

Clutching at his link to his Outrider, Jindigar felt the Holot's upper hands crushing her shoulders as he shook her. Her head wobbled on her shoulders, her visual field pitching about insanely. The wildly distorted view out of human eyes fought with the Oliat awareness now fragmented, incoherent, invaded. Even through the choke-link Krinata's terror flooded the Oliat.

//It's a break-in!// Jindigar told them, wishing that were reassuring. With fourteen Outriders in the field how could anyone have been allowed to touch one of his officers?

He groped toward Zannesu's awareness, trying to regain command of the linkages and bring them back into now-sync.

Zannesu responded sluggishly. Jindigar barely had hold of the linkages when Eithlarin's Protector reflexes engaged.

She threw a picture of the Holot shaking Krinata onto the inside of the dome image above them. The rest of the Oliat saw the distorted horror of snarling, sharp-toothed, predatory Holot smeared across the gray dome. It was feral, raging at them. Its emotions-reverberated through the Oliat, intensified somehow by being squeezed through the narrow channel from the Outreach: distrust, fear, fury.

Eithlarin's awareness collapsed into a maelstrom of terror pressing in from outside the Oliat. Space and time distorted. Phanphihy turned into a seething pit eating away at the colony.

Eithlarin gave one convulsive shudder, trying to reject the invading malevolence, and then suddenly she pitched them all into nightmare. Above them the dome image split open like the tree log on Vistral, and a gray, hairy, clawed hand reached in to grab at them.

//She's episodic and hallucinating!// Jindigar told them, lighting to wrench free of her power.

But he could only gape helplessly as the hand closed around Eithlarin's neck.

Zannesu cried, //Jindigar! Help her!// just as Eithlarin screamed.

SEVEN

Gamble

Eithlarin clutched at her neck as if to wrench the ugly gray fingers away. Heedless of everything else, she twisted against the hold of her Dushau Outrider, who was the only barrier between her and the edge of the floating platform. Her screams tore through Oliat consciousness on every level, invading past time, echoing into the future.

The filthy gray fingers grated damply against Jindigar's neck, the coarse hair penetrating between his skin nap, torturing his sensitized nerves. Simultaneously he felt the same gigantic, clawed hand closing over the most precious area of Darllanyu's neck. Violated to his core, he roared in outrage. His Oliat joined him, disgust overwhelming their natural paralysis before a predator's attack.

Twisting against his own Outrider, Jindigar glimpsed Krinata. The insane Holot's upper hands clutched at her neck. She bent backward, clawing at his grip. Through her eyes he saw the Holot snarling into her face, revealing teeth like the Vistral predator's, his redolent breath as hot as the winds of Vistral. Must break the feedback!

//Eithlarin! It's only a Holot!// pled Jindigar, afraid of what he'd have to do if she didn't respond. He put everything he had down his link to her. //Eithlarin—we're on Phanphihy!// But which is worse? The Vistral menace was only a hungry animal, but the Holot had been driven insane by a planet that rejected intruders.

Eithlarin fought Jindigar's call as if it, too, were nightmare.

The more forceful his demand, the more wildly she strained against her Outrider until at last she broke loose and sprawled, skidding to the edge of the platform where fetid water sloshed over her face.

Zannesu struggled against his own Outrider, trying to reach his mate. The Outrider looked from Jindigar to Krinata and yelled, "Should I let him go?"

The platform lurched, sending Jindigar and his Outrider to their knees. Krinata went down under the Holot's assault, her strangled scream trailing off, for she had no more breath. She couldn't respond to Jindigar's need to tell the Outrider to hang onto Zannesu.

Jindigar groped for the linkages, amazed that the choke-link to Krinata still held, despite the images hammering through it from the Holot—the malevolent grin of Phanphihy's flowers, the constant rain of poisonous pollen, the conspiracy among dumb animals to destroy anything the offworlders built, and over all, the hives of the intelligent Natives creeping eerily through the night, pulsing with evil—evil that had taken over the Oliat.

The Oliat has to be destroyed–destroyed!

NO!

As Jindigar fought off the Holot's emanations Krinata's Dushau Outrider, helpless before the wrath of a predator, could only yell at the Holot to stop. This was why an Oliat never used Dushau Outriders when off Dushaun.

Where's Storm!

The platform was a churning, seething mass of scuffling, struggling bodies. Jindigar climbed to his feet, searching. Past-time showed him the ephemeral Outriders plunging down the stairs after the ominous intruders and making for the platform. Their images smeared as they breasted the wave of violence erupting in the wake of the intruders who were attacking the Oliat. The Holot in the lead of the intruders yelled at Krinata repeatedly, then, in frustration, grabbed her and shook her, his hopeless rage transmuting into a catharsis of violence.

In present-time, the Outriders formed up and moved like riot police, working their way to the Oliat. Too slow.

Jindigar ripped the control of the linkages from Zannesu's frozen clutch.

He choked down the linkage to Krinata even more tightly, knowing he chanced throwing them all into shock by cutting her link. The remorseless flow of Phanphihy's malevolence abated but, oddly, did not stop. At the same time Eithlarin V primitive terror burgeoned through the inner silence, louder and louder, commanding them.

Darllanyu slumped down and curled on her side, hands clamped over her head, pleading through silent sobs, //Jindigar, stop it. Make her stop....//

That one plea drove him wild. Without thinking he opened his link to Eithlarin, determined to stop her. //Eithlarin!//

But she was fleeing through the corridors of her own mind, chased by that monstrous, hairy hand, detached from its arm and sailing through the air after her while the beast pursued, gesturing with its arm that ended in a bloody stump. Free of its huge, lumbering body the hand was faster than Eithlarin. It gained on her rapidly.

Zannesu joined Jindigar's desperate call. //Eithlarin!//

She turned, and they thought she'd heard them, but all she saw was the filthy animal hand looming at her. Without warning she surrendered to the nightmare image, giving in to it totally, no longer fighting the threatened fate.

//No!// cried Zannesu, plunging after her into her private memory, into Vistral and all that had come before it in her life—for she was lost in her own memory.

Jindigar had only witnessed that total surrender once before, but he recognized it. //She's episodic.//

No one heard his pronouncement.

As one, Venlagar and Llistyien sagged to their knees, faces slack with the same retreat that had claimed Eithlarin and Zannesu. As Venlagar failed, the Oliat's anchor in the outside world slipped free. Venlagar fell away into a memory he shared in common with Llistyien, romping through a bright meadow on Dushaun where they happily trained flocks of colorful Patrol Birds to guard the high-spirited youths of the city. Darllanyu, her strength gone, was about to retreat into her own past, surely to drag Jindigar with her. He had to save them from Eithlarin's retreat. / have to do it.