"Thy recommendation?" the facilitator persisted.

"Their numbers are not yet a cause of concern. It will take many landings of their flying craft to threaten us. If they are to be our allies, we must first test them," Braan said.

"Test? And how?" Koop asked.

"I know not. yet. Continued surveillance will reveal our path. Hunters will maintain a sentry until the snows come. Perhaps the cruelty of winter will resolve the matter."

The council talked briefly among themselves. Koop stood erect. "Braan, leader-of-hunters, thy plans are our plans. Perhaps the long-legs will define their own fate—and ours—regardless of our wishes. We meet next in one cycle of the small moon."

Braan bowed in good form and led his party through the grand assembly and out into the blustery night. Pouring rain and thrashing breezes eliminated all thought of soaring; Braan walked to the lift. He looked forward to seeing wife and family, but he remembered Brappa, still in the field. The warrior Craag would take care of his last son.

The night grew old. Rain fell hard, blown sideways by gusting squalls, while silver-white lightning danced in the clouds, shooting salvoes of strobing illumination. MacArthur, wiping rain from his eyes, stood back from their handiwork and waited for a blast of lightning to highlight their creation. Chastain knelt and used a stout stick to crank tight the bindings on the last of the cross-supports. He deftly secured the knot and tied off the bitter end.

"That'll hold," Chastain said proudly, rolling back on his knees. Continuous lightning, striking closer each time, splashed his features with white-blue brilliance. A ragged, air-boiling bolt struck the river bank but a stone's throw away; thunder exploded in their faces, loud beyond comprehension. Their ears rang, and electricity hummed in the air, tingling fingers and toes. Ozone stung their nostrils.

"Holy smokes!" Chastain shouted.

"Yeah, no kidding," MacArthur laughed nervously. "Too close. Let's move behind that gravel bar and set up shelter. Wait it out." Another blue-hot streak of lightning flashed to the tree tops on the hills beyond the river. A shock wave blew against their cold, wet faces.

Hours crept by. Finally, the wind abated, and the lightning moved off, flickering to the west and north; but the rain fell even harder—a deluge. MacArthur checked the raft. The river was rising. The rain-swollen river crept inexorably beneath their makeshift craft.

"Time to go," MacArthur shouted. Unbelievably, Chastain had rolled over on the wet rocks and fallen fast asleep. MacArthur envied his companion's stalwart nature and debated waiting for morning, but the rising river was answering his worst fears. There was no telling how much water would be coming down the channel in the next few hours, but MacArthur had a hunch it would be significant.

Chastain rousted out and dragged both packs to the raft, diligently securing the equipment. MacArthur tried to help, but his body responded poorly. His head and shoulder throbbed. He removed his glove and slipped a hand beneath his coat and clothes, exploring clammy, bare skin. The shoulder felt wet, but then his clothes had been soaked through for hours. MacArthur pulled his hand out. His fingers were sticky and slippery at the same time, and even though it was dark, he knew the hand was covered with blood.

"You all right, Mac?" Chastain asked.

"Let's go," MacArthur replied, reaching for a corner of the raft. Chastain copied his action, moving the raft only slightly before the river buoyed its weight. The current was strong. The men walked into the water and were quickly up to their waists, the forceful river tugging urgently on their unwieldy craft and their weary bodies. The icy water jolted MacArthur into alertness; survival instincts pumped adrenaline into his battered system yet again.

"Push off," MacArthur ordered, gasping. "We'll pole it across." Rain pouring from black skies drilled the wooden raft and its hapless crew. Darkness was total. The Marines pushed into the impatient current, jumping sidesaddle onto their tiny craft. The raft tottered dramatically, Chastain' s greater bulk over-ballasting to one side. The burdened logs spun slowly in the rain-gushing murk.

MacArthur gripped his pole. Shoulder protesting, he extended the branch to its limit, searching for the bottom, and felt nothing. The jiggling current tried to bend it from his hands.

"Too deep. Can't touch bottom," he gasped. Chastain groaned.

MacArthur, dizzy from black nothingness, took a deep breath. "Let's swim," he said, sliding into the water. Treading black water and clinging to the raft, he could tell from the craft's severe slant that Chastain was still onboard.

"C–Come on, Jocko. Can't…by myself." MacArthur spewed frigid water.

"I can't swim, Mac."

"Yeah, sure, Jocko. L–Lets go."

"No, Mac! They cheated me through the tests. I played football."

MacArthur dropped his forehead against the weathered wood. He floated alongside for a few seconds, thinking, shivering. Rain hissed.

"J-Jocko. You can get in the water and paddle, or you can stay up there. M-maybe we'll drift gently ashore. Or maybe we'll run out of deep river and find ourselves running this pile of sticks through a set of rapids like the big ones behind us." MacArthur stopped to catch his breath and spit out water.

"You know what will happen if we hit rapids?" MacArthur sputtered. As he uttered those words, his ears detected a faint noise—a rumble. Rapids! Rapids were coming!

"Get your ass in the river!" MacArthur screamed. "You hear that?"

MacArthur's side of the raft slapped into the water as Chastain' s bulk slid off opposite. The big man thrashed his legs and flailed his free arm wildly; the raft turned in a circle.

"Slow down!" MacArthur shouted, but Chastain could not hear; white water noise drowned his words. MacArthur sensed the current accelerating. The surface of the river dipped sharply, as if the torrent was running over a shallow, irregular bottom—over big rocks!

"Hang on, Jocko!" MacArthur yelled. His foggy brain tried to think, but the roar of broken water dominated his senses. The river narrowed, the constricted waters piling current upon current, forming a tortured pattern of choppy waves. The raft pitched and bucked in the troubled waters. A ghostly phosphorescence surged from the darkness. The raft sucked toward the wet glow and was jerked downwards behind it, the reflected upwash spinning the raft and ejecting it onward.

They were on smooth waters again, gently revolving, the crashing noises slowly subsiding behind them. MacArthur took a deep breath and held his face up into the relentless rain. The drops felt warm compared to the chill of the river. He shivered.

"We made it! We made it, didn't we?" Chastain exulted.

"Yeah," MacArthur replied, not wanting to tell him they had navigated a small set of rapids. He tried to match Chastain' s stroke, the raft still spinning in the current. "Keep the river coming from the same direction, and don't burn yourself out," he admonished, his lower jaw trembling with cold.

They paddled diligently, the effort warming their bodies against the bone-chilling waters. Both shores were invisible, the darkness complete, the lightning long past. Heavy raindrops splattered around them, a whispering curtain of water. MacArthur wondered how far downriver they had been carried and how many hours of hiking would be added to their trek. They talked little, the chattering of teeth making conversation untenable. A low rumble flirted on the edge of their senses, cutting in and out of the rain's hiss and the splashing of their arms.

"Shh! H-Hold it!" MacArthur gasped. He strained, trying to detect a noise he did not want to hear. There it was, clearer now—a deep-throated blend, far off. MacArthur uttered an expletive. "Harder, Jocko," MacArthur shouted. They pulled vigorously, backstroking; the ungainly raft plowed across the hardening current.