The lake's surface remained tortured from waves rebounding between the shores. Shannon yelled loudly and held the torch high over his head, directing the downpour-shrouded beam in slow, sweeping circles over the rain-drilled waters. Buccari, shivering, crawled, slipping and sliding, next to him. Nothing could be heard other than the noise of Tatum' s oars, the water slapping the raft's bow, and the hissing sound of raindrops striking the lake. Flares burned dimly on the lake shore. Tatum stopped stroking, lending his eyes to the search.

Shannon wailed the names of the two men: "Rhodes! Commander Quinn!"

They listened—to the sounds of water.

Buccari pointed and called out, "Over there! I see something!"

Tatum bent to the oars and propelled the raft on the designated heading, pulling alongside a shape in the water—a parachute! They leaned over the side, reaching and clawing for handfuls of sodden canopy, and pulled together, dragging the fabric through the raft and off the other side, searching for shrouds. The lines came to hand and were in turn pulled relentlessly inward. The thin, biting cords seemed of interminable length, but they could feel the bulk at the other end, and they hauled with greater desperation. Rhodes's body came to the surface sideways, shrouds tangled around legs and torso—and around his neck. Tatum and Shannon flopped the heavy limp form into the raft, where it lay without movement.

Buccari lost her balance and slipped, landing with her face next to Rhodes's helmet. Shannon heard her gasp. He knelt and pulled the helmet release. The helmet came off with a sucking sound. Rhodes's fully open eyes stared vacantly—the look of the dead—lips deep purple, his skin faintly blue. Suffocated.

Buccari drew a breath, put her lips over the unconscious man's mouth, and blew firmly into his lungs while pinching his nostrils. Shannon knelt down and pushed rhythmically on Rhodes's chest with his powerful fists, difficult to do in the yielding bottom.

"Let's get back to shore. Maybe Lee can do something. We got another one to look for," Shannon said. Buccari did not respond, frantically continuing her resuscitation efforts. Shannon leaned back on his knees and watched. He signaled impatiently, and Tatum grabbed the oars and rowed. The flares on the beach were dying, one by one.

Shannon pushed Buccari aside and took a turn trying to breathe life back into the man. Buccari fell back, exhausted, on the verge of shock. The raft stubbed the shore and a dozen hands hauled it out. Shannon gave instructions to get Rhodes out of the raft, while Jones and Hudson helped Buccari, her legs wobbly with shock and cold. She took three steps and collapsed.

"Get her back to the cave!" Shannon commanded, and Jones, sobbing in his joy, picked her up bodily and started moving.

"Bullshit!" the lieutenant mumbled, regaining awareness. She struggled until Jones set her down. Her legs buckled. Jones held her by her shoulders.

"Shannon, get that.. raft back on the lake!" she ordered. "Commander Quinn is out there! I'm not leaving until…we find…." She fainted.

"Wrap her in blankets and take her to the cave!" Lee snapped as she pounded on Rhodes's chest, swearing through gritted teeth.

With Buccari unconscious and wrapped in blankets, Jones and several others headed off at a trot. Shannon and Tatum pushed the raft back out on the lake. They were moving from shore when Fenstermacher's howl brought everyone to a halt. Fenstermacher pointed into the darkness of the rain-beaten lake, where something was surfacing. All flashlights swung to bear on the dripping shape, the streaming rain attenuating the light beams. Chest deep in water, it was man-shaped but larger; two massive arms moved weakly at its sides. It stumbled, unable to support its own weight. It fell and then tried to stand, its arms beckoning.

"It's Commander Quinn! He's in an EVA suit!" Hudson shouted. Rescuers ran splashing to the commander's wallowing form. Water streamed from the spacesuit as it was hauled up the rocky beach. Shannon shouldered his way into the crowd as the commander's suit seal let go with an audible hiss. Quinn's tired face peered out into the flashlights, ghostly pale and soaking from his own perspiration.

"You okay, Commander?" Shannon asked, stepping into the jerky ring of beams.

"Felt better, Sergeant," Quinn gasped. "What. Buccari and Rhodes?"

"Lieutenant Buccari's all right, Commander," Shannon replied. "She's been taken back to the cave. Lee is working on Mr. Rhodes down the shore."

"Doesn't look good for Virgil, Commander," Chief Wilson said, his voice catching. "He got tangled in his shroud lines."

"Lee says he had a stroke, Commander. He bought it," Hudson added somberly.

Quinn sat there and nodded his head, slowly.

"Check and mate," he said softly, a eulogy.

"Can you be sure?" thundered the blue-robed giant as he reared onto elephantine hinds, straining against the iron chains of gravity. Jook the First, Emperor-General of the Northern Hegemony, was famous for his prodigious strength, infamous for his intolerance, and notorious for his ruthless disregard for life.

"Begging forgiveness, Supreme Leader, I cannot," Scientist Director Moth whimpered. The astronomer's anxiety glands burped yet again, audibly this time. Moth could smell his own fear-scent rising in clouds. He stared at the floor, his broad-nosed, pebbly-skinned image reflected in polished onyx, his muddy brown eyes wide with terror under painfully rigid brow tuffs. Why had he been so rash?

"Could it have been but a clever ruse?" Jook asked, dropping back into his hydrostasis throne. The ruler's ponderous form moved leadenly, searching for comfort on the midnight-blue pneumopillows. "Their communication signals could have been made deceptively simple for the very purpose of making us curious."

"Yes, Exalted One," Moth replied, trying desperately to anticipate correct answers. Surely his career, if not his life, was in the balance. "Communication signals were of remedial simplicity. I tendered the hypothesis of peaceful contact because of the nature of the intercepts. Simple patterns and numerics, music, geometrical formulae would all be typical of such an attempt, Exalted One." Moth displayed his most obsequious posture and awaited his fate, a trembling mountain of misery alone on the center of the imperial court.

"General Gorruk, your opinion," the Supreme Leader barked at a stern visage sitting on a lower level of the black marble throne. Gorruk, commander of the imperial armies, clad in belted khaki with red trim, lifted his gigantic body erect. Gorruk, easily three times the mass of a human being, was even larger than the Supreme Leader. On his epaulets sparkled the silver starbursts of the Planetary Defense Command. Moth was amazed at the time the barrel-chested, slab-faced general took to formulate his response. Such blatant hubris.

"I think," General Gorruk rumbled, luxuriant black brow tufts stiffening and vibrating with concentration, "that this is a waste of the emperor's time. It is transparent. The invaders were closing on our planet to attack, as they did during the reign of Ollant. Trickery."

Gorruk stood over Moth; the prone scientist sensed the general's pulsating body heat and smelled his irritation. Moth clinched shut his eyes and pressed his forehead to the floor.

"Why?" Gorruk queried. "Why does this worthless heap of intellectual offal pretend to your precious attention? The Supreme Leader has greater concerns. Our race is saved from another invasion, the enemy routed, chased from our system—again! Planetary Defense Command, with overwhelming assistance from the Northern Hegemony's strategic rockets, vanquished the intruders. What more news can this worm provide? You, Supreme Leader, taking advice from a petty bureaucrat, a so-called scientist. A sniveling coward. Smell him! Why is he even here?"