He stopped, hearing a sound very far away, a droning totally unlike the occasional hum of the insects. Arle heard it too and followed his gaze, scanning the blue-white sky for some sign of an aircraft. It passed, a high gleam of light, then circled at the end of the vast plain and came back.

“All right,” he said, keeping his voice casual. Aiela, Aiela, please hear me.“That’s trouble. If they land, Arle, I want you to dive for the high weeds and get down in that ditch.” Aiela! give me some help!

“Who are they?” Arle asked.

“Probably friends of mine. Amaut, maybe. Remember, I worked for the other side. I may be picked up as a deserter. You may see some things you won’t like.” O heaven, Aiela, Aiela, listen to me!“I can lie my way out of my own troubles. You, I can’t explain. They’ll skin me alive if they see you, so do me a favor: take care of your own self, whatever you see happen, and stay absolutely still. You can’t do a thing but make matters worse for me, and they have sensors that can find you in a minute if they choose to use them. Once they suspect I’m not alone, you haven’t got a chance to hide from them. You understand me? Stay flat to the ground.”

It was coming lower. Engines beating, it settled, a great silver elongated disc that was of no human make. A jet noise started as they whined to a landing athwart the road, and the sand kicked up in a blinding cloud. Under its cover Daniel set Arle down and trusted her to run, turned his face away and flung up his arms to shield his eyes from the sand until the engines had died away to a lazy throb. The ship shone blinding bright in the sun. A darkness broke its surface, a hatch opened and a ramp touched the ground.

Aiela!Daniel screamed inwardly; and this time there was an answer, a quick probe, an apology.

Amaut,Daniel answered, and cast him the whole picture in an eyeblink, the ship, the amaut on the ramp, the humans descending after. Parker: Anderson’s second in command.Daniel cast in bursts and snatches, abjectly pleading with his asuthe, forgive his insubordination, tell Chimele, promise her anything, do something.

Aiela was doing that; Daniel realized it, was subconsciously aware of the kallia’s fright and Chimele’s rage. It cut away at his courage. He sweated, his hand impelled toward the gun at his hip, his brain telling it no.

Parker stepped off the end of the ramp, joined by two more of the ugly, waddling amaut, and by another mercenary, Quinn.

“Far afield, aren’t you?” Parker asked of him. It was not friendliness.

“I got separated last night, didn’t have any supplies. I decided to hike back riverward, maybe pick up with some other unit. I didn’t think I rated that much excitement from the captain.” It was the best and only lie he could think of under the circumstances. Parker did not believe any of it, and spat expressively into the dust at his feet.

“Search the area,” the amaut said to his fellows. “We had a double reading. There’s another one.”

Daniel went for his pistol. No!Aiela ordered, throwing him off-time, making the movement clumsy.

The amaut fired first. The shot took his left leg from under him and pitched him onto his face in the sand. Arle’s thin scream sounded in his ears—the wrist of his right hand was ground under a booted heel and he lost his gun, had it torn from his fingers. Aiela, driven back by the pain, was trying to hold onto him, babbling nonsense. Daniel could only see sideways— Arle, struggling in the grip of the other human, kicking and crying. He was hurting her.

Daniel lurched for his feet, screamed hoarsely as a streak of fire hit him in the other leg. When he collapsed writhing on the sand Parker set his foot on his wrist and took deliberate aim at his right arm. The shot hit. Aiela left him, every hope of help left him.

Methodically, as if it were some absorbing problem, Parker took aim for the other arm. The amaut stood by in a group, curiosity on their broad faces. Arle’s shrill scream made Parker’s hand jerk.

“No!” Daniel cried to the amaut, and he had spoken the kalliran word, broken cover. The shot hit.

But the amaut’s interest was pricked. He pulled Parker’s arm down; and no loyalty to the ruthless iduve was worth preserving cover all the way to a miserable death. Daniel gathered his breath and poured forth a stream of oaths, native and kalliran, until he saw the mottled face darken in anger. Then he looked the amaut straight in his froggish eyes, conscious of the fear and anger at war there.

“I am in the service of the iduve,” he said, and repeated it in the iduve language should the amaut have any doubt of it. “You lay another hand on me or her and there will be cinders where your ship was, and you know it, you gray horror.”

“ Hhhunghh.” It was a grunt no human throat could have made. And then he spoke to Parker and Quinn in human language. “No. We take thiss—thiss.” He indicated first Daniel and then Arle. “You, you, walk, report Anderson. Go. Goodbye.”

He was turning the two mercenaries out to walk to their camp. Daniel felt a satisfaction for that which warmed even through the pain: Vaikka?he thought, wondering if it were human to be pleased at that. A hazy bit of yellow hovered near him, and he felt Arle’s small dusty hand on his cheek. The remembrance of her among the amaut brought a fresh effort from him. He tried to think.

Daniel.Aiela’s voice was back, cold, efficient, comforting. Convince them to take you to Weissmouth. Admit you serve the iduve there; that’s all you can do now.Chimele was furious. That leaked through, frightening in its implications. The screen went up again.

“That ship overhead,” Daniel began, eyeing the amaut, drunk with pain, “there’s no place on this world you can hide from that. They have their eye on you this instant.”

The other amaut looked up as if they expected to see destruction raining down on them any second; but the captain rolled his thin lips inward, the amaut method of moistening them, like a human licking his lips.

“We are small folk,” he said, mouth popping on all the explosive consonants, but he spoke the kalliran language with a fair fluency. “One iduve-lord we know. One only we serve. There is safety for us only in being consistent.”

“Listen, you—listen! They’ll destroy this world under you. Get me to the port at Weissmouth. That’s your chance to live.”

“No. And I have finished talking. See to him,” he instructed his subordinates as he began to walk toward the ramp, speaking now in the harsh amaut language. “He must live until the lord in the high plains can question him. The female too.”

“He had no choice,” said Aiela.

Chimele kept her back turned, her arms folded before her. The idoikkhetingled spasmodically. When she faced him again the tingling had stopped and her whiteless eyes stared at him with some degree of calm. Aiela hurt; even now he hurt, muscles of his limbs sensitive with remembered pain, stomach heaving with shock. Curiously the only thing clear in his mind was that he must not be sick: Chimele would be outraged. He had to sit down. He did so uninvited.

“Is he still unconscious?”

Chimele’s breathing was rapid again, her lip trembling, not the nether lip as a kalliran reaction would have it: Attack!his subconscious read it; but this was Chimele, and she was civilized and to the limit of her capacity she cared for her kamethi. He did not let himself flinch.

“We have a problem,” she said by way of understatement, and hissed softly and sank into the chair behind her desk. “Is the pain leaving?”

“Yes.” Isande—Isande!

His asuthe stood behind him, took his hand, seized upon his mind as well, comforting, interfering between memory and reality. Be still,she told him, be still. I will not let go.