As if on cue, he heard faint voices in the direction he'd come from, and maxxed his sound sensor. Alien speech, and not via radio. It sent a chill through him. How many times, as a boy, he'd daydreamed that!

In a perverse way it also irritated him. Their stealth discipline was lousy! They probably thought their quarry was out of reach in warpspace. They were also moving his way. Spotting a strategically situated liana, he tested it, then climbed thirty feet or so to the crotch of a tree.

Now the Wyzhnyny angled off toward the gorge, perhaps to be picked up and returned to their base. Out of his reach. That would never do. Climbing back down, he trotted after them, blaster ready. Shortly he spotted a Wyzhnyny soldier and shot him in the back, then dropped into a hole left by the uprooting of a mouldering, wind-thrown tree. Blaster pulses hissed, fired blindly into the darkness.

He stayed where he was for several long minutes, blaster ready. Probably they'd sent a squad back to look for him, and they'd missed his hole. Cautiously he raised his head, then screened by the log, crept toward another large tree a few yards away. A liana had rooted to its trunk, and he climbed it, to fit himself into a crotch forty feet up. It wasn't comfortable, but it mostly hid him. Minutes later a squad of Wyzhnyny appeared-the searchers returning from hunting him. He shrunk behind one half of the fork, hoping the concept of an enemy who could climb trees hadn't occurred to them. As they passed, he got the closest look he'd had at one. Centaurs? Not hardly, he told himself. Leave off the necklike torso with its arms, and it looked like an oversized mastiff.

But beyond a doubt, they could run a lot faster than he could.

The warp jump from the gorge back to the Bering had been quick. Menges had reemerged in F-space above the lunar farside not far from the survey ship, then closed in gravdrive. Olavsdottir and her techs had promptly disembarked with their winged captives.

Briefly Sergeant Gabaldon told the skipper what he wanted to do. The skipper never blinked. "Go for it," he said. So Gabaldon claimed the pilot's seat, and with Menges as his copilot, moved away from the Bering, generated warpspace, and headed back for Tagus.

This time he didn't need to grope for the gorge. As sensed from the F-space potentiality, the gravitic coordinate system was blurred, but he had a "sort of" fix on Menges' old hiding place.

His plan, such as it was, was based on two operational premises: (1) The Wyzhnyny were already alerted; and (2) the mission now demanded quickness, not stealth, aggression, not caution. But not stupidity, either.

The immediate challenge promised to be finding a place to pull into the forest. He couldn't expect to find Menges' old hiding place; his fix wasn't that good. But his warrior muse smiled on him: he emerged above the gorge at close to rim level, within recognition distance of the gap between trees that Menges had used before. Jockeying the Mei-Li fully into the forest, he set her down.

His marines were already gathered at the gangway; he keyed it open and they moved out, taking defensive positions nearby. The naval gunners sat tense and ready at their heavy weapons. Gabaldon opened his transmitter and spoke. "Stoorvol, this is Gabaldon. We're parked where Menges hid earlier, but close to the rim. Do you read me? Over."

The message took Paul Stoorvol by surprise. "Gunny," he murmured, "there should be a platoon or so of aliens very near you. Maybe just north, if you're where you say. They seem to be waiting for a ride home, or maybe for orders. They've given up hunting for me. I'd about decided I needed to do something more to keep them around. Right now I'm in a tree, a couple of hundred feet from… from the rim."

He'd stumbled orally because the Wyzhnyny on the ground had opened fire, at either the Mei-Li or the marines. He doubted that anything the Wyzhnyny had on the ground was adequate to breach her hull metal, but if they concentrated on her sensor array… Or if a gunboat was still hanging around…

From his perch he could make out two Wyzhnyny, eerie gold by night vision. He unslung his blaster and shot them both, not to draw attention-the firefight with the marines held that-but to help the odds. Then he climbed down the liana, unslung his blaster again, and clicked his helmet transmitter.

One of the Mei-Li's guns began hammering heavy bolts at the Wyzhnyny, bolts crackling and thudding. Stoorvol realized he could be killed by his own people.

"Gunny," he said, "I'm on the ground now. Their attention is on you. I've killed two more of them, and I'll take out as many more as I can. We need to settle this now. Their command is likely to pour support forces in quickly. Over."

"Received. Received. This is Miller in charge. Gunny's out of touch; left the ship. Miller out."

Out of touch? "Got that. Stoorvol out." Gunny knows what he's doing, Stoorvol told himself, and this was no time for discussions. He found himself a new spot, a large tree with a broadly buttressed base. He wished he had a bag of grenades, instead of just the two on his harness. Taking one off, he charged it, then peered around a buttress and chose his next target-three Wyzhnyny thirty yards away, crouching together behind a fallen tree. He threw the grenade to land just behind the one in the middle, then ducked behind the buttress again, heard the explosion and peered out. All three seemed dead.

The firefight ahead of him went on as if he weren't there, so he darted forward in a low crouch to where his latest victims lay. There he raised up enough to peer over the log. Ahead as well as to the sides, he could see numerous Wyzhnyny kneeling behind trees and the occasional fallen trunk. And he could see casualties. The marines weren't laying down much fire now though, as if there weren't many of them left. The thought flashed: How many? Four? Five? But the Mei-Li's starboard gunner, in his armored bubble, was still pumping out the heavy stuff.

With bursts of rotten wood, bolts blew through the log within ten feet of Stoorvol. To his right, a Wyzhnyny he'd thought was dead, stood as if to flee, then stopped as if in freeze-frame, staring at the marine officer. Stoorvol shot him down, then turning, began to shoot at every Wyzhnyny he could see.

It seemed the final straw. All along the Wyzhnyny line, aliens rose to flee. Stoorvol crouched low again, and from his thigh pocket drew his stunner. To his left, a Wyzhnyny cleared the log in a bound, so easily and gracefully it startled the marine. As it landed, Stoorvol thumbed the trigger. The Wyzhnyny stumbled, pitched forward and lay still. Another followed, and it too fell.

The starboard gun hammered a dozen more trasher bolts after the fleeing Wyzhnyny before it stopped. Then, heart in his mouth, Stoorvol stood and jumped onto the log, waving both arms overhead. The Mei-Li's gangway slid open, its ramp extruding. Three marines rode out on an AG freight sled, followed closely by two crewmen riding another.

"Over here!" Stoorvol shouted, again as if he didn't have a radio. "I've got two prisoners stunned." The marines veered to the north as if they hadn't heard. It was the crewmen who responded to Stoorvol, quickly setting down where he indicated. He helped them load an unconscious Wyzhnyny on the sled. "Your gunner did good work with that heavy weapon," he said. "He broke them with it."

"Wasn't that," the older crewman grunted, lifting the second Wyzhnyny's hindquarters.

"What, then?" It seemed to Stoorvol the man was going to give him the credit, for taking them from behind.

"Wyzhnyny aircraft are on their way, sir. They'll be laying heavy fire in here." They finished getting the second Wyzhnyny aboard, and as if that was a signal, an alarm horn blared from the Mei-Li.