His had been a dull life, so far, but he was patient. He had never tried his wings. But the day would come. He looked forward to it.

The Luftmorder was not a particularly bright being, but it would have been wrong to call him stupid. He was single-minded, and quite canny in the pursuit of his goals. He had clung for three myriarevs, feeding on the kerosene drip from the cable. He could cling that long again, and more, but did not think he would have to. He sensed Gaea's excitement. Orders would come.

Clinging to him in turn, squabbling among the rows of cold nipples that lined the undersides of his wings, were scores of creatures called sidewinders and red-eyes. They were quite stupid; a necessary nuisance. Red-eyes were larger, sidewinders were faster-at least, that was the theory. Each would get only one chance to find out, as they were not reusable. Each was an organic creature built around a solid-fuel skeleton. Their brains rode on cores of explosive. They saw in the infra-red spectrum, and they loved bright things just like moths love flames.

The Luftmorder was not a buzz bomb, though he was related. The nine aeromorphs that clung to the cable quite near him, however, were much like buzz bombs, in the same way a greyhound or a Doberman is much like a Chihuahua.

The Luftmorder was undisputed flugelführer of the squadron. He watched with infra-red-eyed concentration as the two planes dallied by far beneath him. He saw them come together for a time, saw the larger begin to burn much faster and pull away to the north. The buzz bombs wanted to go, but he counseled patience. When the larger plane was far away, when it had landed in that kerosene-source which his Gaean instincts told him must be there, he detached five of his underlings, one by one, and watched them fall toward the bright sand.

EIGHTEEN

"You'll have to take a close look at those one day," Conal said, when he saw Nova staring out at the south-central Mnemosyne cable. "I doubt you've ever seen anything quite like it."

"It looks so small from here," Nova said. "Just a thread."

"That thread is about five kilometers thick. It's made of hundreds of strands. There's animals and plants that live on them and never come down to the ground."

"My mother said Cirocco Jones climbed to the top of one once." She craned her neck and discovered the point where the cable joined the arched roof of Mnemosyne. "I don't see how she did it."

"She did it with Gaby. And it wasn't one of these. These go straight up. The one Cirocco climbed angled like those ahead of us. See how they bend up and go into the Oceanus spoke? You can't quite see into the spoke from here. She tells me they're what hold Gaea together."

"Why is everything so dead here?"

"It's because of the sandworm. He could pick his teeth with Mount Everest."

"Do you think ..." She had to pause, and yawn hugely. "... you think we'll see him?"

"Say, why don't you get some sleep?"

"I'll be okay."

"No, really. You ought to. I'll wake you if anything important happens, and if nothing does, then you can spell me in a couple revs."

"How long is a rev?"

"Near enough to an hour."

"All right. I will. Thanks." She turned slightly in her seat.

"How's the hand? You want those bandages wrapped again?"

"It's okay. I banged it while I was hanging onto the wing." She gave him a sleepy, friendly smile, then seemed to catch herself at it. Conal suppressed his own grin; she was definitely improving. She had to remember to be surly. Maybe she'd forget entirely one of these days. Could happiness be too far behind?

She closed her eyes and fell asleep in no more than ten seconds. Conal envied her. It usually took him at least a minute.

Feeling a little guilty, he studied her as she slept. Her face was relaxed, and she looked even younger than her eighteen years.

She still had a little girl's face, with a lot of cheek and a protruding lower lip. Conal could see her mother's features in her upturned nose and large jaw. With her eyes closed that unsettling resemblance to Chris was hard to find.

He resolutely turned away when he found his eyes straying to the full curves of the breast, the round hips, the long legs. Suffice it to say she had a child's face on a woman's body.

"Advisory," the computer said. "Hostile aircraft have been known to-"

Conal hit the override, and glanced at Nova. Her eyes fluttered, then she made an un-ladylike sound and nestled deeper into the cushions.

Once again, a nuisance. The damn computer had a long memory. The results of Cirocco's air war with the buzz bombs had been fed into it, so now it tried to warn Conal of a base that had been empty for eighteen years. The buzzers had liked to congregate at central cables. They could hang for years, nose down, waiting their chance. They had to hang like that, as they couldn't start their engines without first having some forward motion. Primitive ramjets, that's all they had been, nothing like the ultra-refined torch that hummed quietly in the back of the Dragonfly.

He was glad they were all dead.

Still, wouldn't it be funny if ...

He glanced at the central cable, and saw a tiny speck falling toward the sand. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and it was gone. He kept looking at the cable, then shook his head. It was easy to forget how gigantic it was. What did he expect to see? Buzz bombs clinging to the side?

On the other hand, just what the hell could that speck have been?

He fiddled with the radar, but nothing came back. He glanced up at the angel carrying Adam. Nothing wrong there.

On impulse, he fed power to the engine and climbed rapidly to six kilometers.

And the radar pinged.

"Alert," the computer said. "Four-correction, five unidentified aircraft approaching. Correction, three unident-correction, four-"

Conal overrode the voice, which was just a distraction. The graphic display would tell him a lot more.

But it didn't. He saw two blips clearly, down on the deck, moving rapidly in his direction. Then there were three, then another popped into being, "RADAR COUNTERMEASURES IN EFFECT," the computer printed on his screen.

That would seem to indicate Dragonflys, or Cirocco returning in the Mantis. He supposed she could be flying three planes on autopilot, but what for, and why hadn't she mentioned it to him? But buzz bombs couldn't jam radar.

"Hold on there, Conal," he muttered to himself. The plain fact was he had never seen a buzz bomb. He had never fought one. And believing that things always stayed the same in Gaea was a quick way to be dead.

"Wake up," he said, shaking Nova's shoulder. She was alert very quickly.

"Cirocco, I have some unidentified blips on my screen. At least four, probably five. They don't reply to transponders. They are closing on me at about ... five hundred kilometers per hour, and they are employing radar countermeasures. I have climbed to six kilometers in case... in case they take hostile action. I-" he paused, and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "Hell, Cirocco, what should I do?"

They both listened, and heard nothing but static. Nova was searching the sky above them, but he doubted she would see anything. Then, bless her, she turned quickly and began digging out the rest of their flak suits.

"Cirocco, do you read?" Again, silence. She was probably out of the plane, gathering weaponry, doing a check-out. Maybe she could hear him, and was on her way to the radio.

"Cirocco, I'm going to lead them away from Adam, and then I'm going to shoot them down. I'll leave this channel open." Nova was handing him a helmet and leggings. He put the helmet on, then waved the rest away. "Forget about that, we don't have time. Tighten your straps and hold on." The instant she had the strap pulled tight around her lap, Conal pulled back on the stick and pushed the throttle forward. The little plane leaped forward and curved up like a rocket.