More of the high-pitched screams erupted from across the Grid. And more from the right and center. Many hunters were snapped up within her sight, many more beyond. Moments became long, tedious as she waited for the order that they had given the free dancers enough and now it was the Living's turn to feast

 

 

Not far from her, the three Elders raised their arms all at once, and pointed at the free dancer over Riutta's head. "Nets!" they cried.

 

 

Riutta came out of her pose and ducked away from the electrofloss snapping at her side. "Nets!" she re-peated, and dived out of the way.

 

 

Other hunters also scrambled away as the nearest net gunners opened fire. Mesh nets sprayed high, arched overhead, and came down around the free dancer. The enormous creature felt the weight of the net, stopped its feeding, and instantly began to heat up, trying to rise. The net held it down. It shrieked and heated harder and harder, pressing upward.

 

 

At this terrible signal, the swooping herd of free dancers around the Grid broke off their feeding and scattered in confusion, and the Living hunters came out of their terror and concentrated on the one free dancer trapped by the nets. Massive amounts of raw power began to race around the fibers holding the creature down. It roared and snatched outward with its floss, killed five-six-seven more hunters, then tried to snatch at the net itself.

 

 

"Shirts! Shirts!" the Elders called.

 

 

With permission to try to protect themselves, the hunters scrambled toward the perimeters. Many died, agonized, in the stinging floss, but many more suc-ceeded in reaching the piles of link shirts left on the edge of the Grid. They yanked their shirts back on, scooped up the reactor clamps they'd left on the perimeter, and instantly raced back onto the Grid. Riutta found a shirt and pulled it on. With Luntee, also in his shirt, racing at her side back toward the trapped free dancer and the herd of inflated dancers still striking at the bait-the hunters who hadn't made it to their shirts.

 

 

"Spikes and clamps!" Riutta called out. Would Lun-tee and his spikers obey her?

 

 

Of course--they had to.

 

 

The free dancer frantically generated heat, trying to rise, and bloated itself against the net strands. Luntee and the other spikers moved in, speared the bladder in a hundred places between the net strands, and sliced it open. Streams of partially processed candleflies flooded out of the wounds and drained across the Feast Grid's gum panels. Several hunters instantly skidded and fell, slopping into the pasty matter. With horror Ri-utta noted that half of them were reactor clampers. If they didn't drain the power soon enough-if the free dancer rolled onto the metal plain-

 

 

"Get up!" she shouted, and plunged through the gush of candlefly paste. She skidded, slipped, pushed up again, and drove her clamp onto one of the net's strained cables.

 

 

Yes, cables-the net was not only a trap, but a con-duction device. With the reactor clamps in place and their holding cells on, the net began to drain energy di-rectly from the free dancer's bloated body and store it in its fibers. Energy from the sky, otherwise out of reach.

 

 

Feeling itself begin to die, the free dancer screamed to its herd, which now wheeled in midatmosphere over-head, confused and scattered. Having brains the size of toenails, none responded except in more panic.

 

 

Then, a sharp chorus of screams rolled across the Feast Grid. Riutta looked up, over, toward the edge of the Grid to her right.

 

 

A second free dancer! The Elders had tried to cap-ture a second! Unthinkable!

 

 

Such greed and risk! Such unbridled hope! Two!

 

 

A comfortably pre-Elder, Riutta hadn't been in on this decision. This wild decision! They wanted to follow the Anointed to the Outside, but did they want it this much?

 

 

She stared for a shocked moment at the three Elders, the only people among Living whose clustering was ac-ceptable because of its necessity. They were hurriedly consulting with each other-an emergency! The second free dancer had begun to snap its net!

 

 

Why had the Elders ordered a second capture? The resources of the hunters were too strained--even the thousands of hunters couldn't efficiently take two free dancers!

 

 

While the first captive wrinkled and began finally to deflate like a great dying lung, drained of both its raw energy and its candlefly harvest, the second was fight-ing ferociously. It inflated and heated itself against the net strands and began to rise.

 

 

"Clampers!" Riutta dislodged her reactor clamp while it was still hot With her very action she demanded that those within sound of her voice do the same.

 

 

She ran with all her might, blessedly long-legged and strong. The dying free dancer lashed out with its shock floss, snapping at her and those who followed. Riutta felt unrefined energy skitter across her link shirt, rushing and spitting from link to link all around her body. Sparks flew with each stride as her knees snapped up, down, up, down. The shirt did its duty and protected her. Her elbows wagged from side to side with the weight of her reactor clamp.

 

 

The second free dancer radiated its newly generated heat across the Feast Grid. In its fly-sized brain it rec-ognized the trouble it was in. The bladder brightened, glowed, and caused the net strands to overload against the strain. The energy had nowhere to go! Not enough reactor clamps! The free dancer was rising!

 

 

Riutta made a mad dive upward for the net strands with her clamp and caught one. Instantly it began to glow and channel energy out of the bladder and into the hold-ing cells. At her sides Luntee and a flank of spikers knifed the free dancer's flesh as it bloated between the net strands. The wounds burst under the pressure of a luster-less sea of candlefly paste mat gushed around their legs.

 

 

But rather than coming down as it was drained, the vast wounded creature wheeled against the conduction net, swung wide toward the edge of the Grid, snapping at the hunters with its floss. Hunters protected by their shirts were knocked down, but the roaming energy did not ground. Others, though, still naked, fried in their tracks, their screams spreading under the howl of the free dancer.

 

 

The free dancer now abruptly rolled sideways and took the half-applied nets with it.

 

 

"Falling!" someone called-perhaps it was Luntee, or the hunter beside him. All around, shifted and unshirted hunters stumbled through the candlefly paste to get away from the creature as it pinwheeled. Beside Riutta a naked hunter was stricken by a wild strand of floss. Energy transferred instantly into him. His flesh turned crisp and he was cooked where he lay. His legs kicked, his face drew into silent agony, hum marks ap-peared on his neck and shoulders-he wasn't transfer-ring! The wounded free dancer hadn't the strength to absorb him. Anointed!

 

 

An explosion blew Riutta off her feet She slammed into the thick candlefly paste and felt the scratch of woven gum score her left arm and side. She scraped half-processed flies from her face and bunked. Some-where the Elders were chanting directions. She heard them. Before her, more explosions rocketed across the plain's polished surface, blinding and deadly. Shock floss by the bundle was striking the unprotected plain!

 

 

In the tiny moment Riutta needed to push herself up on her elbows, the exhausted free dancer rolled completely over twice, mowing down dozens of hunters, and fell off the Feast Grid onto the bare metalliformed landscape.

 

 

Superlightning flashed from here to the mountains. Beneath the overwhelmed hunters the Feast Grid mats heaved upward on a roll of electrical power. Everyone went to his knees. Quicker than a blink the free dancer's lifetime of stored energy sizzled back into the planet in a single massive, wasteful transfer.

 

 

Riutta dug her long fingers into the mat and pulled to her feet. Her legs-they were burned.

 

 

She felt nothing from her wounds. Instead she stared at the gaudy flattened burn mark where a moment ago a bloated animal had rolled. The sheer speed with which the planet reclaimed energy astonished her again, as it always had. Sprawling out from the mark lay smaller ashy marks where brave hunters had died in their at-tempts to drag the dancer back onto the nonconducting mats. Farther out, the charge had done its killing, but left bodies for anointment.

 

 

Should she look for her children?

 

 

She couldn't turn to her side, to look over there, far down the Grid where her family members had been milling before the descent

 

 

Her burned feet felt no pain when she stepped not around but forward toward the crisp death zone of the second free dancer. Behind her were the clamoring noises of other hunters dutifully draining the first cap-ture of its energy and its candleflies harvest When the beast sighed its dying heave, she sighed too. With so many hunters lost and so much risk, she wondered if this hunt had been a waste.

 

 

Luntee magically appeared beside her, gasping and frantic. **Where are they! Where are they! Does anyone see them? All of you! And you there, come look for them! Help us look for them!*9

 

 

The last few words broke into a miserable sob. He stumbled ahead of Riutta. Hot ashes flew from his bare hands and feet He dug and flailed, but there was nothing here but crisp residue of matter tried at the atomic level.

 

 

The horror of grounding and instant discharge left everyone

 

 

**Where are they!" Luntee sobbed, stumbling. "Look! Look... look for them, please..."

 

 

Around him hundreds of stunned hunters wandered into the smoldering remains. Their legs were darkened with burn marks and boils, their hands also dark and stiff. Some had marks up to their necks which even now emitted tiny trails of smoke. Riutta's eyes tightened.

 

 

The others were still searching when she stopped at the edge of the Feast Grid, just before the place where the free dancer had rolled off.

 

 

She bent stiffly over and pushed her hand through a layer of hot black flakes. When she drew it back, she held in her grip several link shirts, airy and lightweight, dirty tiny black ashes caught between the links. They were so light that she had grasped over a dozen of them in one hand.

 

 

Slowly she began to drop them, one by one, until she held only two. These two were, unlike the others, long-sleeved and marked with light bands of authority. Where the third one was buried in this mess, she couldn't begin to wonder.

 

 

The message of these two shirts remained clear enough. Luntee froze in place and gaped at her, at her hands. Around them, Living hunters stopped their search and stared too. Realization crawled through the ranks.

 

 

Riutta squeezed the two shirts between her fingers. In her mind she heard the third shirt whimpering as bits of ash ran from it.

 

 

'The Elders..."

 

 

Chapter Four

 

 

"they're corpses."

 

 

Savannah Ring's blunt declaration forced Nick Keller to muffle the primordial shudder charging up his spine. He completely failed. Be the commander, be the leader, show the strength, display aplomb.

 

 

Forget it This place had him by the neck. The eyes of the dead hundreds in this chamber, from the former chambers and whatever lay beyond, were on him and weren't looking away, even if they were facing the other direction. His imagination went wild. He saw through their frozen hair, their limbs, their turned-away glances. Somehow they knew he was here, that their tomb had been disturbed by the living. All around them, tableaus of past lives were acted out, perhaps to the points of death. Many were held still in enactments of great drama-pas-sion, pain, joy, a 3-D stone frieze of life in the streets of some unnamed city. Pompeii in the last couple hours.

 

 

But more than that... there were more stories than just drama. Some of these displayed people were simply standing or sitting around, looking at a stone flower, reading a book, polishing a spear.

 

 

Spear? There was a clue he'd missed.

 

 

Could Savannah be just plain wrong? Keller's nerves said something else.

 

 

He felt Shucorion struggle up behind him, unsteady, shocked, cautiously silent Everything abruptly changed. Savannah suddenly liked it better here. Shucorion, worse.

 

 

Zoa... she actually blinked a couple of times. A sign of life? To make sure nobody mistook her for one of these... others?

 

 

"Anybody there?"

 

 

Keller shot out of the nightmare and took a couple of steps just to separate himself and his living companions from the stillness. He could barely feel his knees. He raised his communicator.

 

 

"Right here, right here," he assured. "We're closing in on you. Hold your position."

 

 

"No choice, believe me... I think I got the poem worked out... see, there's this little boy-" Suddenly Bonifay cut himself off with a fierce groan, wrenched by whatever was happening to him, and what a pitiful sound it was.

 

 

Empathy twisted a wince out of Keller. Around him the damnably directionless chamber offered no help. In his periphery he saw Zoa move again, lurking between the stony figures.

 

 

Nearby, Savannah didn't take a step. Instead she turned in place. The action put her a little nearer to the "person" behind her. In her hand the medical scanner flickered.

 

 

"They're also..." she began slowly, "... solid."

 

 

Instantly Keller latched onto her tone. "Explain that."

 

 

"No organs. No bodily cavities at all. They've all been filled with something."

 

 

"Embalmed?"

 

 

'Tilled up with something that turned hard. I think," she revised, " 'molten* might be a better term. And it turned to solid. Obviously they're not mummies, be-cause they look as good as they probably did in life."

 

 

"Some of them are pretty banged up, though. As if they died in accidents or disasters."

 

 

"But there's no desiccation like a mummy would have. They each weigh, I'd say... maybe a ton."

 

 

Keller stepped to the mannequin with the spear and squinted into its face.

 

 

"My God " he murmured, "we're in Pompeii...."