"Not bad, not bad, I guess. She was more ... talkative than I've seen her. I almost got the impression that it was she who..." She looked up and into Chris's eyes, then pursed her lips. "Tell you later. But I'm nervous. Not anything I can put my finger on, but I had the feeling she was up to something. The sooner we're out of here, the better I'll feel."

"Me, too," Gaby said. "Let's get moving."

Chris had worries of his own as he swung astride Valiha. The palms of his hands were wet, and there was a fluttering in his stomach, heat flashes washing over his body. Combining these symptoms with the sense of foreboding that now crept over him, he was as sure as he had ever been that another attack was imminent.

And so what? Tough it out; let it happen; these folks can take care of themselves. If anyone got hurt, it would probably be he, not they. It was not the first time he had thought of telling someone an attack was coming on. As before, he now decided against it, changed his mind, again elected to say nothing. Part of him knew this process of vacillation was the perfect defense because there was little chance he would act until it was too late.

No! Not this time. He turned to Gaby, who rode a meter to his right. As he did, he saw from the corner of one eye that Valiha had turned her head to look at him, and from the other he detected a flicker of motion.

He saw it a fraction of a second before Valiha did. Just a gaping mouth bristling with spikes, silently expanding, a circle cut by a thin horizontal line. It was far away and it was upon them, just like that. So little time.

He leaped, hit Gaby hard enough to carry her from Psaltery's back.

"Down! Get down!" he shouted, while Valiha shrieked an alarm in Titanide.

The sound hit like a fist, solid as an avalanche, as the buzz bomb ignited its torch and accelerated no more than a meter off the ground. The air pulsed with the rhythm of its engine; then Chris was blinded by what seemed like a flashbulb exploding in his eyes, and the sound dopplered far down the scale. He put his hand to the back of his head and felt hair singed into little knots.

Gaby struggled out from under him, fighting for breath. Robin was prone, ten meters away. Her hands were held together in front of her. A thin blue-white line grew from her fists, followed rapidly by another. The tiny warheads popped like firecrackers, far short of their goal.

"It came from the cable," Cirocco called out "Everyone stay down."

Chris did as she said, then squirmed until he faced the dark prominence silhouetted against the upturned sands of Tethys. He realized that was what had saved them; he had seen the buzz bomb's motion before it was on the deck, during the last part of its fall from a perch on the cable.

"There's another!" Cirocco warned. Chris tried to make his spine meet his belly. The second attacker roared by to his right, followed in echelon by two more, seconds apart.

"I don't like this," Gaby yelled, very close to Chris's left ear. "The Titanides are too big, and the ground is too flat." Chris turned and saw her face, a few centimeters from his own and smeared with dirt He felt his hand squeezed tightly. "Thanks," she whispered.

"I don't like it either," Cirocco shouted back. "But we can't get up yet."

"Crawl to the lowest place you can find then," Gaby suggested. "Come on," she said quietly. "Psaltery's in the lowest spot around here."

The brown-skinned Titanide was two meters behind them, in the center of a depression that even wishful thinking could not make more than forty centimeters deep. Gaby slapped Psaltery's flank as Chris edged in beside them.

"Don't get up and look around, old friend," Gaby said.

"I won't. You keep your head down, Boss." Psaltery coughed, a strange and oddly melodious sound.

"Are you all right?" Gaby asked.

"I hit the ground pretty hard," was all he would say.

"We'll get Hautbois to take a look when we get out of here. Damn!" She wiped her hand on her pants. "Wouldn't you know we'd land in the only patch of wet ground on this stinking hill?"

"Northwest," Valiha called from a position Chris could not see. He did not try to find the approaching buzz bomb but did succeed in making himself smaller and flatter than he would have thought possible. The monster roared by, again followed by two more. He wondered why the first had not come in formation.

When he risked a look, he was actually able to see one dropping away from the cable. It was just a speck, and it must have been three kilometers up. It had clung there, nose down, waiting for the right opportunity. It might have come at them when they approached the cable but had sense enough to know that when the group left, their backs would be turned.

This one also seemed to know it was now useless to try for a kill. It passed fifty meters above them, snorting an insolent challenge. Another ignited shortly after dropping from the cable and could not resist making a pass at about the same altitude. That was a bad mistake since it gave Robin a good wide target at a realistic range, plenty of time to follow it, and three tries to get it right. Both the second and third shots connected. Chris got his best view yet as the swift shape was captured in the twin flashes of the exploding bullets. It was a tapered cylinder with swept-back rigid wings and a double tail. There was an eye tucked under the wing. The buzz bomb was a great black shark of the skies, all mouth and appetite, with sound effects added.

For a moment it looked as if the creature had not been harmed by Robin's shots. Then the creature began to bleed fire that spilled across the sky, and the landscape was washed in a dull orange light. Chris looked up in time to see the explosion and could barely hear it for the shrill, warbling victory cry of Robin the Nine-fingered.

"Send me more buzz bombs!" she shouted.

They all watched as the creature arced high and began its death roll. There was a supersonic keening just before it hit ground on the far side of Ophion.

When ten minutes had passed with no more sign of the creatures, Cirocco crawled to Gaby and suggested they make a run for the boats. Chris was all for it; he worried about being out on the river, but anything was better than hugging this little patch of ground.

"Sounds good," Gaby agreed. "Here's the plan, folks. Don't waste any time. When I give the signal, humans will mount and Titanides will head for the boats at top speed. Ride facing backwards, and keep your eyes open. We've got to cover all points of the compass and be ready to hit ground instantly because we may not have more than two or three seconds. Any questions?"

"I think you must find another mount," Psaltery said quietly.

"What? Is it that bad? What is it, your leg?"

"Worse, I think."

"Hand me that lamp, will you, Rocky? Thanks, now... ." She froze, cried out in horror, and dropped the lamp. In its soft light Chris had seen her hands and arms smeared with dark red blood.

"What has she done to you?" Gaby moaned. She fell on the prone body and began trying to turn him over. Cirocco shouted for Hautbois to come quickly, then ordered Robin and Valiha to stand watch. It was not until she turned back to the injured Titanide that Chris realized the sticky mud on his own face and chest was mixed from the spilled blood of Psaltery. He moved away, appalled, and still he was sitting in mud. The Titanide had bled rivers of it, was lying in a pool of his own making.

"Don't, don't," he protested as Gaby and Hautbois tried to turn him. Hautbois did stop, but Gaby ordered her to start again. Instead, the Titanide healer put her head close to Psaltery's and listened for a moment.

"It's no use," she said. "His death is arrived."

"He can't be dead."

"He still lives. Come, sing good-bye to him while he hears."