"I tried, but she fought like a wildcat. Well, to hell with her."

"Try again later," said Dumarest. "If she's drunk, she isn't responsible. The rest?"

"Warned and as ready as they'll ever be. Now I'm going to look after myself." The steward hesitated. "Do you think we'll make it?"

"If the generator holds out, yes."

"And if it doesn't?" Allain answered his own question. "We burn, we drift, we starve. If we're lucky, we die quick."

"Or we live," said Dumarest. "Luck comes in two kinds."

"Sure, that's what I mean. With good luck we go out easy-with bad we linger. Well, to hell with it. I'm going to hit the bottle."

He headed for his own cabin as Dumarest moved on. As he entered the control room, Egulus said, "Dilys?"

"Still out. I wrapped her well."

"The others?" The captain shrugged as he heard the report. "Passengers! At times they act as if they're crazy. Well, they've had their warning. My main concern now is with the Entil."

A crippled ship, now heading towards an isolated world. Taking his place in the navigator's chair, Dumarest could see it in the screens, a mottled ball of green and ocher, patched with expanses of dingy white, streaked with smears of dusty black.

"That's Hyrcanus, as far as I can make out." said Egulus. "But right or wrong, it's the only chance we have. We make it or burn." He glanced at the sun, which blazed with awesome splendor. "But if the generator holds, we've a chance."

One which grew as the ball of the planet swelled larger, colors breaking into a blurred jumble, the instruments in the control room clicking as they relayed information.

Closer, and the ship began to shudder a little as opposed gravities fought for supremacy. A slight shift told of a dying vortex, spewed from some flaring sun. A peculiar turning sensation as it passed through an area of intra-dimensional instability. The normal hazards to be expected within the Rift.

Another which was not.

Egulus swore as the ship died beneath his hands. "The generator! It's dead!"

Strained beyond endurance by the impact of external forces, the interior now a mass of fused and molten rubbish, the Erhaft field gone, and this time never to be replaced.

And the world was close.

Close!

Dumarest said, "The directional vents, are they working?"

"Yes, thank God."

"Then skip! Skip!"

The only chance they had and one which the captain had already assessed. Now, as they fell towards the mass of the planet below, Egulus proved his skill. In order to kill their velocity and to prevent being burned by the atmosphere, he had to maintain height while remaining within orbit. To use the air-blanket as a boy would a pond. To send the ship skimming over it as if it were a flung stone, touching, bouncing, touching again.

The hull turned red as air blasted over it with a thin, high scream, a scream echoed from somewhere within the vessel. Both screams died as Egulus operated the vents, lifting the ship a fraction, letting it hurtle on to drop again, to glow as it had before, to lift and pray and curse as dials showed red and alarm bells shrilled their warning.

"Kill that damned noise!"

Sweat dripped from Dumarest's face as he hit the switches. The hull screamed again as the bells fell silent, the shriek maintained as the air grew hotter, became stifled, became a searing torment.

"Up! Up, damn you!"

"I can't! I-" Egulus hit the controls, feeding extra power into the vents, praying ever as he worked, prayers which sounded like curses as, slowly, the screaming died and, velocity killed, the Entil fell towards the surface below.

Dumarest watched as the ground streamed past on the screens. They needed a flat and even expanse, covered with soft dirt, sand, snow, stunted vegetation, even ice. A place on which to skid for miles until they came to a halt and, even then, such a landing would be close to a miracle.

"Nothing." Egulus snarled his anger. "The damned place is a nightmare!"

Hills, crevasses, chasms, stony wilderness with boulders like waiting teeth, trees resting on the edges of precipices, plains marked with undulating serrations like the teeth of saws.

"Water," said Dumarest. "We need water."

It showed ahead and a little to one side, a long narrow inlet which opened to the grayness of a sea. A strand, and it was below and before them, choppy waves bearing patches of kelp and whiteness caused by spume thrown from upthrust rocks. Then they were over it.

"Down," yelled Dumarest. "Down, man, down!"

They were going too fast, but ahead he had caught the loom of mountains standing etched against the sky. Pillars of stone too high for them to surmount and too widespread to avoid. The choice between hitting them and plunging into the sea was no choice at all.

No choice, but a gamble, and one Egulus took as he had when entering the atmosphere. The Entil tilted a little, headed downwards, hit the water to bounce as it had when meeting the atmosphere. Steam rose, created by the impact of hot metal, the vapor forming a cushion between the water and the hull.

Bouncing, skipping, as the mountains came closer. As the vessel creaked and shuddered and blood ran from ears and noses, as soft flesh suffered from the savage buffeting.

To hit for the last time. To sink. To hit bottom, to lift a little, to settle again and come to a final rest.

After an eternity, Varn Egulus said, "No water. The hull remained intact." He sounded as if he couldn't believe it.

"Luck," said Dumarest.

"For us, maybe." The captain wiped the back of his hand over his face and looked at the blood. "For the others?"

Chapter Eight

The historian was dead-torn from his restraints to be flung against the hull, to roast, to die screaming in his pain. The dancer was dead, lying wrapped in her cocoon, hands lifted, the ugly blotches of disintegration marring throat and torso. Craters made by the darts from the ring she had carelessly continued to wear, fired by the involuntary contractions of her finger. An irony she seemed to appreciate as she stared upwards with blind eyes, her mouth twisted in the rictus of a smile. The steward was dead, lying in a crumpled heap, a bottle miraculously unbroken in his hand. The special bottle, which was to have been saved to the very last. One he had taken by mistake, perhaps, but his lips bore no smile. Unlike the dancer, he failed to appreciate the jest.

The rest were alive, bruised but otherwise unhurt aside from Charl Zeda. He sucked in his breath, sweat breaking out in globules on his seamed face, as Dumarest used leverage to ease the mercenary's badly dislocated shoulder back into position.

"That's better." Gently he tested the joint. "I was a fool, moved at the wrong time and got caught by one of the decelerations. How's the ship?" He frowned at the answer. "Under the surface, no generator, no power to lift-how the hell are we to get out?"

A question repeated by Gale Andrei when, later, they had gathered in the salon.

"We can get out," said Dumarest. "All we need to do is to cycle through the airlock in the cargo hold. But there are other considerations."

"Such as?"

"What to do once we are on the surface," said Leo Bochner quickly. He sat at the girl's side, his hand touching her own. "We could be a long way from shore and, without navigation aids, may not be able to tell in which direction it lies. Can you swim?"

"A little. Why?"

"A little, you say. How far is that? A mile? Ten? A score? Fifty?" Bochner shook his head. "A little isn't enough. We could be more than a hundred miles from land. Captain?"

"I don't know," admitted Egulus. "We came down fast and had other things to think about. Earl saw mountains ahead, but we were high at the time and they would be below the horizon now. In any case, they were far from close."