"Who are you?!" he shouted. "Where are you from? Where's the girl? What's happening?! What's going to happen! Damn you, I am M'k'n'zy of Calhoun, and you will not run from me!"

There was a gap in the ground directly in his path. If he'd fallen into it, he could easily have broken his leg. It was five feet wide and eight feet deep. He leaped over it without slowing down in the slightest, and he wasn't even really aware that it was there.

And then he saw that the phantom, which was still some yards ahead, was beginning to shimmer. He got the sense that it was fading out on him altogether, and the knowledge infuriated him all the more. "Get back here!" he shouted. ''Get back here!"

The specter faded altogether . . . but there was something standing in its place. Something of far greater substance, accompanied by a few other somethings.

M'k'n'zy's brother, D'ndai, stood there and waved his arms frantically. Around him were several other members of the search party, which had been wandering the Pit for some days in what had seemed increasingly futile search for M'k'n'zy.

D'ndai was a head taller than M'k'n'zy, and half again as wide. He was also several years older. Yet from the way in which D'ndai treated his brother, one would have thought that D'ndai was the younger, for he seemed to regard M'k'n'zy with a sort of wonder. In many ways, truthfully, he was in awe of D'ndai. M'k'n'zy had always taken great pride in the fact that D'ndai was such a confident, trusting soul that he didn't feel the least bit threatened by the fact that his younger brother's star shone far more brightly than his own.

The relief which flooded over and through D'ndai was visible for all to see. He choked back a sob of joy and threw wide his arms, shouting his brother's name.

M'k'n'zy ran up to him . . . . . .

. . . and pushed past him.

"Get back here!" he shouted at thin air.

The rescue party members looked at each other in confusion. On the one hand M'k'n'zy looked to be in absolutely hideous shape; on the other hand, he certainly seemed peppy enough for a man who was at death's door.

"M'k'n'zy?" called D'ndai in confusion.

M'k'n'zy didn't appear to hear him, or if he did, he simply ignored him. Instead he kept on running, gesticulating furiously, howling, "You don't get away that easily!" By the time the rescuers had recovered their wits, he was already fifty paces beyond them and moving fast.

They set out after him at a full run, and it was everything they could do to catch up with him. D'ndai reached him first, and grabbed him by the arm. "M'k'n'zy!" he shouted, keeping him in place. He gasped as he saw the huge gash in his brother's face close up for the first time. He tried not to let his shock sound in his voice. "M'k'n'zy, it's me!"

"Let me go!" he shouted, yanking furiously at D'ndai's arm. "Let me go! I have to catch him!"

"There's nothing there! You're hallucinating!"

"He's getting away! He's getting away!"

D'ndai swung him around and fairly shouted in his face, "M'k'n'zy, get hold of yourself! There's nothing there!"

M'k'n'zy again tried to pull clear, but when he turned to attempt further pursuit of whatever it was that existed in his delusional state, he seemed to sag in dismay. "He's gone! He got away!" He turned back, hauled off and slugged D'ndai with a blow that—had he been at full strength—would damn near have taken D'ndai's head off. As it was, it only rocked him slightly back on his feet. "He got away and it's all your fault!"

"Fine, it's my fault," D'ndai said.

M'k'n'zy looked at him with great disdain and said, "And what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to take you home . . . help you . . . cure you . . ." He put his hand against M'k'n'zy's forehead. "Gods, you're burning up."

M'k'n'zy tried to make a response, but just then the exhaustion, the fever, everything caught up with him at the exact moment that the adrenaline wore off. He tried to say something, but wasn't able to get a coherent sentence out. Instead he took a step forward and then sagged into his older brother's arms. D'ndai lifted him as if he were weightless and said, "Let's get him out of here."

"Do you think he'll make it?" one of the others asked him.

"Of course he'll make it," said D'ndai flatly as he started walking at a brisk clip in the direction of their transport vehicles. "He's got too much to do to die."

III.

M'K'N'ZY HEARD THEM TALKINGin quiet, hushed tones outside his room, and slowly he sat up in bed. He was pleased to see that, for the first time in days, all of the dizziness was gone. He didn't feel the slightest bit disoriented. The pounding had long faded. In short, he finally didn't feel as if his head were about to fall off at any given moment, a state of affairs that could only be considered an improvement.

D'ndai had been cautioning him to stay put, to take it easy, to rest up. He was being extremely solicitous of his younger brother's health, and it was starting to get on M'k'n'zy's nerves. His impulse was to get out of bed and back on his feet, but D'ndai was always cautioning him not to rush things. It was advice that M'k'n'zy was having a hard time taking. It didn't help that it was, in fact, very solid advice indeed. Particularly considering the fact that the first time M'k'n'zy had defiantly sprung from his bed, proclaiming that he was fit and ready to go, the room promptly tilted at forty-five degrees and sent him tumbling to the ground. That had been over a week ago.

Now, though, the room graciously stayed put. M'k'n'zy padded over to a closet, pulled out fresh clothes, and dressed quickly. He didn't feel the slightest twinge of pain or dizziness as he did so, and considered himself on that basis fully recovered.

He stepped out into the hallway and startled D'ndai and the three other Xenexians who were holding a whispered conference. "Oh! You're up!" said D'ndai.

"How could I be anything but, considering the yammering going on out here," M'k'n'zy replied good-naturedly. "What's going on? What are you whispering about?"

D'ndai and the others looked at each other momentarily, and then D'ndai turned to M'k'n'zy and said, "Danteri representatives are here."

"Excellent," said M'k'n'zy. "You hold them down, I'll hack their heads off."

"They're here under flag of truce, M'k'n'zy." M'k'n'zy gave him an incredulous look. "And you acceptedit? Gods, D'ndai, why? They'll think we're soft!"

"M'k'n'zy . . ."

"If we showed up at their back door under a flag of truce, they'd invite us in, pull up a chair, and then execute us before we could say a word. I say we do them the same courtesy."

"M'k'n'zy, they have Federation people with them."

M'k'n'zy leaned against the door, weighing that piece of news. "The Federation?" he said. " TheFederation?"

D'ndai nodded, knowing what was going through M'k'n'zy's mind.

Their father had told them tales of the Federation in their youth. Stories passed on to him from his father, and his father before him. An agglomeration of worlds, with great men and women spanning the galaxy in vast ships that traversed the starways as casually as mere Xenexians would cross a street. Explorers, adventurers, the like of which had never been seen on Xenex except fleetingly. Every so often there would be reports that one or two or three Federation people had shown up somewhere on Xenex . . . had looked around, spoken to someone about matters that seemed to be of no consequence, and then vanished again. It was almost as if the Federation was . . . studying them for some reason. Sometimes it was difficult to decide whether certain such reported encounters were genuine, or the product of fanciful minds.