Of course escape was an absurd notion. He had only two short-term objectives: doing as much harm as possible, and then ending his own life before he could be forced against his will to betray Gailet.

The former goal he accomplished as he ran, flailing the tip of the chain against every knob, tube, or delicate-looking instrument within reach. Some bits of equipment were tougher than they looked, but others smashed and tinkled nicely. Trays of tools went over the edge, toppling onto those below.

He kept a watch out, though, for other options. If no ready implement or weapon presented itself before the time came, he ought to try to get high enough for a good leap over the railing to do the trick.

A Gubru technician and two Kwackoo aides appeared around a corner, immersed in technical discussions in their own chirping dialect. When they looked up Max hollered and swung his chain. One Kwackoo gained a new apterium as feathers flew. During the backstroke Max yelled, “Boo!” at the staring Gubru, who erupted in a squawk of dismay, leaving a cloud of down in its wake.

“With respect,” Max added, addressing the departing avian’s backside. One never knew if cameras were recording an event. Gailet had told him it was okay to kill birds, just so long as he was polite about it.

Alarms and sirens were going off on all sides. Max pushed a Kwackoo over, vaulted another, and swept up a new flight of steps. One level up he found a target just too tempting to pass by. A large cart carrying about a ton of delicate photonics parts lay abandoned very near the edge of a loading platform. There was no guardrail to the lifter shaft. Max ignored all the shouts and noise that approached from every side and put his shoulder to the back end. Move! he grunted, and the wheeled wagon started forward.

“Hey! He’s over this way!” he heard some chim cry out. Max strained harder, wishing his wounds had not weakened him so. The cart started rolling.

“You! Reb! Stop that!”

There were footsteps, too late, he knew, to prevent inertia from doing its work. The wagon and its load toppled over the edge. Now to follow it, Max thought.

But as the command went to his legs they spasmed suddenly. He recognized the agonizing effects of a neural stunning. Recoil spun him about in time to see the gun held by the chim called Irongrip.

Max’s hands clenched spastically, as if the Probie’s throat were within reach. Desperately, he willed himself to fall backward, into the shaft.

Success! Max felt victory as he plummeted past the landing. The tingling numbness would not last long. Now we’re even, Fiben, he thought.

But it wasn’t the end after all. Max distantly felt his nerve-numbed arms half yanked out of their sockets as he came up suddenly short. The cuffs around his wrists had torn bleeding rents, and the taut chain led upward past the end of the landing. Through the metal mesh of the platform, Max could see Irongrip straining, holding on with all his might. Slowly, the Probie looked down at him, and smiled.

Max sighed in resignation and closed his eyes.

When he came to his senses Max snorted and pulled away involuntarily from an odious smell. He blinked and blearily made out a mustachioed neo-chimp holding a broken snap-capsule in his hand. From it still emitted noxious fumes.

“Ah, awake again, I see.”

Max felt miserable. Of course he ached all over from the stunning and could barely move. But also his arms and wrists seemed to be burning. They were tied behind him, but he could guess they were probably broken.

“Wh… where am I?” he asked.

“You’re at the focus of a hyperspace shunt,” Irongrip told him matter-of-factly.

Max spat. “You’re a Goodall-damned liar,”

“Have it your way.” Irongrip shrugged. “I just figured you deserved an explanation. You see, this machine is a special kind of shunt, what’s called an amplifier. It’s s’pozed to take images out of a brain and make em clear for all to see. During the ceremony it’ll be under Institute control, but their representatives haven’t arrived yet. So today we’re going to overload it just a bit as a test.

“Normally the subject’s supposed to be cooperative, and the process is benign. Today though, well, it just isn’t going to matter that much.”

A sharp, chirping complaint came from behind Irongrip. Through a narrow hatch could be seen the technicians of the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. “Time!” the lead Kwackoo snapped. “Quickly! Make haste!”

“What’s your hurry?” Max asked. “Afraid some of the other Gubru factions may have heard the commotion and be on their way?”

Irongrip looked up from closing the hatch. He shrugged.

“All that means is we’ve got time to ask just one question- But it’ll serve. Just tell us all about Gailet.”

“Never!”

“You won’t be able to help it.” Irongrip laughed. “Ever tried not to think about something? You won’t be able to avoid thoughts about her. And once it’s got somethin’ to get a grip on, the machine will rip the rest out of you.”

“You… you…” Max strugggled for words, but this time they were gone. He writhed, trying to move out of the focus of the massive coiled tubes aimed at him from all sides. But his strength was gone. There was nothing he could do.

Except not think of Gailet Jones. But by trying not to, of course, he was thinking about her! Max moaned, even as the machines began giving out a low hum in superficial accompaniment. All at once he felt as if the gravitic fields of a hundred starships were playing up and down his skin.

And in his mind a thousand images whirled. More and more of them pictured his former employer and friend.

“No!” Max struggled for an idea. He mustn’t try not to think of something. What he had to do was find something else to contemplate. He had to find something new to focus his attention on during the remaining seconds before he was torn apart.

Of course! He let the enemy be his guide. For weeks they had questioned him, asking only about Garthlings, Garthlings, nothing but Garthlings. It had become something of a chant. For him it now became a mantra.

“Where are the pre-sentients?” they had insisted. Max concentrated, and in spite of the pain it just had to make him laugh. “Of… all th’ stupid… dumb… idiotic…”

Contempt for the Galactics filled him. They wanted a projection out of him? Well let them amplify this! Outside, in the mountains and forests, he knew it would be about dawn. He pictured those forests, and the closest thing he could imagine to “Garthlings,” and laughed at the image he had made.

His last moments were spent guffawing over the idiocy of life.

The autumn storms had returned again, only this time as a great cyclonic front, rolling down the Valley of the Sind. In the mountains the accelerated winds surged to savage gusts that sloughed the outer leaves from trees and sent them flying in tight eddies. The debris gave shape and substance to whirling devil outlines in the gray sky.

As if in counterpoint, the volcano had begun to grumble as well. Its rumbling complaint was lower, slower in building than the wind, but its tremors made the forest creatures even more nervous as they huddled in their dens or tightly grasped the swaying tree trunks.

Sentience was no certain protection against the gloom. Within their tents, under the mountain’s shrouded flanks, the chims clung to each other and listened to the moaning zephyrs. Now and then one would give in to the tension and disappear screaming into the forest, only to return an hour or so later, disheveled and embarrassed, dragging a trail of torn foliage behind him.

The gorillas also were susceptible, but they showed it in other ways. At night they stared up at the billowing clouds with a quiet, focused concentration, sniffling, as if searching for something expectantly. Athaclena could not quite decide what it reminded her of, that evening, but later, in her own tent under the dense forest canopy, she could easily hear their low, atonal singing as they answered the storm.