CHAPTER 24

     It was night. Randall Craig was back at the original assault site, in the same building where the prisoners were being held. A faint miasma of death hung in the air from still exposed bodies from both sides. He had allowed no time for burial, nor would he the next day. He intended to simply move their camp forward, nearer to the area where he still had troops searching for survivors of the force from the Houston Enclave. He had had no success in finding the fleeing remnants that day and he cursed himself for ever allowing contact to be broken, even though it had seemed like a good idea at the time. He also realized he had made a mistake in not bringing dogs along, and was trying to rectify that situation now. With dogs, he could track them down, but apparently dogs were hard to come by. There were very few left in the Dallas Enclave; feelings were running high against enhanced animals there.

     Randall spoke forcefully to his contact back in the Enclave. "Pay anything you like. Promise anything you like--just get me some tracking dogs," he ordered.

     "I'll try, commander, but I can't guarantee it," the voice came back.

     "How about the new men and floaters? When can I expect them?"

     "They should be ready to leave in the morning. Give me your grid coordinates so they can locate you."

     Craig entered the numbers into the computer and sent them on. He was just about to break contact when he was interrupted.

     "Coded message for you, Commander. It's from Moon City."

     "OK, patch me through."

     "Randall Craig?"

     Randall recognized the voice almost immediately, even through the decoder. Mayor Roscoe Bascombe. This wouldn't be much fun.

     "Here." Randall described the events of the last twenty four hours in meticulous detail. There was little value in trying to gloss over his failure. Even if he lied, he knew he would be found out, even before returning to the moon.

     "Let me sum it up, Randall. The success of your mission is highly doubtful. Your only chance of succeeding is to capture this Da Cruz fellow, and so far, you haven't been able to locate him. You've called for reinforcements, tracking dogs and more floaters, armed and carrying IR gear. You will resume the hunt in the morning. Does that cover everything?" The mayor's voice was flat and neutral, as if he were speaking to a computer rather than one of his  council members.

     "That's it, Mayor. I'll stay with it right to the end. Just use all the pressure you can on your end to get me the help I need."

     "I will. Now here is an item of information for you. We recorded a signal from the floater you said you shot down. It was definitely received in Houston, so you can expect them to be reinforcing, too. Watch for them and try your damndest. They can get more stuff in the air than we can manage, I think. If you haven't found Da Cruz by the time they arrive, it's unlikely that you will. Understand me?"

     "Yes, sir." Randall understood perfectly. Find Da Cruz. Bring him with you to Moon City. Or don't bother coming back.

 ***

     John Whitmire had spent another almost sleepless night. It seemed lately that any sleep he managed to get was at his office, where he had moved in a couch. He had been told of the signal from the downed floater the morning before and had cursed himself for ever allowing Jeannie to bully him into allowing her to leave the Enclave with it, but it was too late for second thoughts now. He tried to put the fate of the girl from his mind while he organized another expedition. This one would go entirely by air and would leave at dawn.

     There had been no opposition from the previously doubtful council members this time. The fact that his first expedition had been ambushed and perhaps destroyed testified to the importance of the second. Even now, technicians were frantically outfitting floaters with heavy laser guns which could be fired by the pilots, while the Enclave ranger commander was just as frantically scouring the barrier patrols for more troops to send into battle.

     Whitmire had no way of knowing, of course, that the point of rivalry had shifted from the now dead alien and it's destroyed craft to the sole person of Jamie Da Cruz. He conferred with the commander of the new force as dawn approached. They sat side by side, engulfed in a holo image, split between pictures Masters had sent the day before and the grid coordinates of his last position.

     "This is the approximate location where our floater went down," Whitmire said, tracing through the image with his finger. "Send one floater crew to look for them as soon as you can. There might be survivors. Send more when and if you can, but your first priority must be re-capturing the alien and it's spacecraft." He winced inwardly as the young, determined image of Jeannie's face as he had last seen her flitted through his mind, almost as if it represented all the young lives he had seen cut short in his lost England.

     "I'm giving you complete freedom of action," he continued. "Use your force in the way you think best, even if you have to delay looking for that floater. Your command craft will have a decoder we've rigged up, but tell the other pilots that if they lose contact with you to forget about security. Maintaining contact with me has priority. I don't want to be out of touch again until this thing is over, one way or another."

     "Yes, sir. Anything else?"

     "No. Go on and get started. Godspeed."

     The commander left. Whitmire sat for a moment, debating with himself between breakfast or sleep. He needed both and didn't have time for either.

***

     Jeannie stayed in the grounded floater all that day, waiting for the healing medicine to alleviate the pain from her broken ribs. She found some cargo blankets among the gear and used them to cover the bodies of the pilots. Later in the day, when movement became not quite so painful, she thought of trying to signal the Enclave. She uncovered the body of the co-pilot, averting her eyes from the bloody remains. An 'on line' message glowed from the control board, but the computer refused to recognize her voice. Apparently it was tuned to the pilots and no others. Probably it wouldn't have mattered. Even as she spoke, the glowing message dimmed and went out, telling her as plainly as words could have that the last trace of power was gone. She gave up and covered the body again, then moved back into her little alcove in the rear of the floater.

     The daylight hours were not too bad, but she grew increasingly fretful as the sun waned. The inherent horror most citizens felt about the wilds began to creep into her soul. Images of the huge bears and bearded, skin-clad feral humans Kristi had told her about assaulted her mind. Before night fell, she crawled back into the rear of the floater where the protective canopy was still intact and piled gear into a makeshift barricade. She checked her laser gun repeatedly, afraid that it might not work if she needed it.

     Twilight came, then faded into darkness, a dark Jeannie had never experienced before. Every little night sound sent her pulse racing, thinking of huge intelligent rats and bears and dogs creeping up on her in the night. She resolved not to sleep lest she be surprised and eaten, not thinking that she would surely have to sleep sometime, and the relative safety of the wrecked floater might be the best place to do it in. She thought of rigging an alarm of some sort where the shattered front canopy provided easy access, but it was already too dark to see. She moaned to herself for not thinking of it earlier. Between starts of alarm she thought of Jamie and cried silently to herself at the thought that he might be dead. The enemy craft had certainly shown no mercy in attacking Nhu's craft; she could only presume that they had been equally determined on the ground. She wondered where Kristi might be and wept some more at the thought of how safe she had felt that night she had slept with her. Always, though, her thoughts turned back to Jamie. Surely, surely, he could not be dead.

     When not thinking of Jamie or taking alarm at noises in the night, she tried to plan ahead. She couldn't stay where she was, that was for certain. There was no way she could endure another day trapped in the wreckage of the floater with decomposing bodies. But what to do? She had only a vague idea of how far away the Enclave might be, and she was even more uncertain of the direction, knowing only that it lay somewhere to the southwest. Would it be possible to walk that far alone, through the wilds, armed only with a light laser gun and knife, and survive the trip? She doubted it, and doubted her ability to find the Enclave even if she should live that long. Suppose she tried to make it back to their original destination and surrender to the unknown enemy who had shot them down? That didn't seem like a very good idea either. The attacking floaters had been too murderously intent on their destruction. But wouldn't they accept the surrender of a single scared young girl? She just didn't know. The idea of warring factions of humans was so alien to her that for all she knew they might shoot her on sight.

     Surrender really didn't appeal to Jeannie as an alternative, anyway, even assuming that it would be accepted. It went against the grain somehow, disturbingly deep. She didn't like to think about it. Wait! She suddenly remembered the dying pilot's words, giving their approximate location through the froth of his bloody lips. Had that signal gotten through? It would be wonderful if it had. Rescue might be only hours away! Whitmire had told her he would be sending another contingent of scientists and rangers out as soon as the floater returned. When it didn't, surely he would order a search, whether the message had gotten through or not. That possibility seemed to offer the best hope. She decided that as soon as it was light, she would move some distance away from the wreckage, but stay in the immediate vicinity for awhile and hope for rescue.

     Having arrived at a decision, she began to settle down a little, but not nearly enough to sleep. The long night drug on, the longest of her young life.

***

     The large gray rat was having to scout farther and farther to locate sufficient food. The nearby rat town to which it belonged was gravid with unrestrained population, almost to the point of being driven by hunger to burst forth and flow over the land like a living flood, intent on food and nothing else, but not yet, not yet. The scout raised it's oversized head and sniffed the air. Yes, there, where freshly snapped branches were still oozing  sap was the scent of food. It could detect the odor of human mixed with the smell, but it was faint, and overriding it came the smell of ripening meat, meat in quantity.

     Cautiously, the rat crept closer, wanting to make sure. Yes, the human smell was there, but the odor told it that they had been dead for many hours. Now it must hurry and gather it's brothers, before other scavengers arrived. A feast such as this must not go to waste. It broke reluctantly away from the delicious odor and began scurrying back the way it had come. As it ran, it began salivating, thinking of the food which would soon fill it's belly.