The KGB man’s mental grumbling did not keep him from helping to guide the coracle into the anchorage he had spotted. Fralk climbed out of the boat and tied it to a boulder. “I am back, Omalo, as I said I would be,” he declared. The rest of the males in the coracle waved their arms and hooted.

Lopatin did not join the celebration, though he was as relieved as any of the Minervans to have made it to the other side. He was also a thoroughly practical man. Instead of wasting time cheering, he scrambled after Fralk out onto dry land.

A few hundred meters away, Juksal was already heading upslope. Like Lopatin, he saw no point in staying in his boat an instant longer than he had to. He felt the same way about Ervis Gorge as a whole. The Omalo could do all sorts of hideous things to the Skarmer if they kept them trapped down here. Getting the warriors up to the flatlands was what needed doing, the veteran thought.

Warriors! Juksal’s hands tightened around the spears he was carrying till his fingerclaws bit into the shafts. Calling a bunch of peasants and clerks warriors didn’t make them such, nor did giving them spears. Just getting them to stay in their groups and do as they were told would be a fair-sized miracle.

Juksal wished he knew more about the Omalo. If they all got their eyestalks pointing the fight way fast enough, the Skarmer might be in for a very unpleasant time. But who would believe anyone could cross a Great Gorge in the middle of the summer flood? A year ago, Juksal would not have believed it himself. With luck, the Omalo would not believe it, either, not until too late.

A spatter of snow blew past the warrior. He hoped for more. It would help hide the boats-and the Skarmer males as they climbed the side of Ervis Gorge. Unless the Omalo were complete idiots, they would have watchers out. No one ever lived to be old by assuming his enemies were idiots. Juksal was no idiot.

As if thinking of watchers had made them spring into being, something moved far above him. Swearing to himself, he dove behind a rock. He stuck a cautious eyestalk around it to make sure of what he had just glimpsed. With luck, it would be an animal, not a male.

Now the snow hindered him. He could not tell what the thing up ahead was. He swore again, then paused to take stock of things.

“If I have trouble seeing it, it’ll have trouble seeing me, too,” he whispered. And he carried two spears long and sharp enough to make even a krong think twice.

Keeping himself widened as if before Hogram, Juksal dashed for the cover of another boulder. Again he poked an eyestalk around it and again found himself able to see little. If that was a male up there, though, he had not raised the alarm. More likely a beast, Juksal decided.

Then, through the muttering of the wind, he heard a sound that came from no beast: the pound-pound-pound of a hammer on stone. That was a male, then, and by the racket he was making, he had no idea Juksal was anywhere close.

The warrior scuttled forward, quiet as a zosid sneaking up on a runnerpest.

Shota Rustaveli looked nervously back over his shoulder as he stepped into Tsiolkovsky’s control room. He could have had a dozen legitimate reasons for coming forward, and in any case Yuri Voroshilov was, as usual, preoccupied in his lab at the other end of the spacecraft. Rustaveli was nervous anyhow.

“And I’m not even a soldier,” he murmured to himself, surprised at the way his heart was pounding. The murmur was in Georgian, so that even if someone had been standing right beside him, it would have been only a meaningless noise. Can’t be too careful, he thought-soldier or no, the idea of disobeying orders was seriously scary.

He glanced around again. Still no sign of Yuri. Of course not, he told himself angrily. He walked over to the radio, turned it on, found the frequency he needed.

“Hello, Athena. Tsiolkovsky calling.” He held the mike close to his lips, spoke very softly. “Hello, Athena-”

“Athena here: Louise Bragg.” The reply was likewise a whisper, for Rustaveli had turned the volume control down as far as he could and still hear. The tape would still be there to damn him later, but that was later. Now… now curiosity rode Louise’s voice: “Your call is unscheduled, Tsiolkovsky. What’s going on?”

“The Skarmer fleet is crossing Jotun Canyon, that’s what, and Oleg Lopatin with them. He has his friend Kalashnikov along, as I suggest you remember when you go to tell him hello. That’s all. Tsiolkovsky out.”

He reached out to switch off the set. His hand stopped, just above the switch. The dials had already gone dark by themselves. His jaw clenched until his teeth ground against one another. Of all the times for a malfunction-

Then he heard footsteps coming up the passageway. Voroshilov paused at the entrance to the control room. He was shaking his head. “That was stupid, Shota Mikheilovich,” he said. “Stupid.”

“What was?” If Rustaveli could brazen it out, he would. “This damned radio seems to have gone out on us. I was just checking it.”

“By calling the Americans.” Voroshilov was not asking a question.

Rustaveli sagged. “I should have known the timing of the breakdown was too good.”

“Yes, you should have,” Voroshilov agreed. “I hope I managed to kill the circuit before you blabbed too much, but I’m not certain. You did surprise me, Shota.”

“I’m so glad,” Rustaveli muttered. Then, one by one, the implications of what had happened began to sink in. “You were monitoring me,” he said slowly. With a dignity curious for one admitting such a thing, Voroshilov nodded. “Which means”-

Rustaveli went on; he had not really needed the nod-“ you ‘re KGB.”

Voroshilov nodded again. “But you will not mention that to anyone else, Shota Mikheilovich. Not to anyone. It is not relevant. I would do this no matter what I was, if I came by and found you at the radio.”

“Why? You hate Lopatin,” Rustaveli blurted. He wondered how that was possible if they were both KGB. He also wondered if it was even true or just a cover the two snoops used.

“Lopatin is a pig,” Voroshilov said flatly. That answered that, Rustaveli thought, or at least proved Yuri an actor as well as a chemist and a spy. After a moment, picking his words carefully, Voroshilov went on. “But he is also following the orders he received both from Colonel Tolmasov and from the Rodina, the motherland. You have no business meddling with his mission.”

“No? What if he or his pet Minervan starts shooting at the Americans? Yuri Ivanovich, one of them risked her neck to fly the canyon and help Valery. Shall I repay that by not even warning them danger is coming their way?”

Voroshilov frowned. He still looked, as he always had, quiet, studious, a little boyish. And underneath it he was a chekist, Rustaveli thought. He swore to himself never to judge by appearances again.

“He may be going into danger, too,” the chemist answered. “Bragg would not tell Sergei Konstantinovich whether he was giving firearms to the Minervans on the far side of Jotun Canyon. Had we been sure he isn’t, maybe Lopatin could have stayed here. As it is, no.”

“Would Katya have wanted you to cut me off?” Before this moment, Rustaveli would never have imagined KGB men susceptible to appeals to their feelings. He could not imagine a chekist going home to a wife he loved, to children perhaps, and plopping down in a chair to complain about the hard day he’d had.

But Yuri was different. Damn it, he had lived almost inside Yuri’s socks for a lot more than a year now. Maybe he was a chekist, but he was not a bad fellow. And Rustaveli would have bet anything anyone cared to name that he did love Katerina.

“I don’t know,” he said now. He was troubled; Rustaveli could see that. But then he nodded toward the silent radio. “Too late to worry about it at the moment, though.” He walked back toward his laboratory-and presumably, Rustaveli thought, toward his microphones and secret switches.