CHAPTER EIGHT

I sat, over my head in black water, breathing through a reed, feeling the ooze of the lakebottom beneath me sucking at me; feeling the unsettling bump and nudge of night-blinded things slithering against me.

I sat, waiting for those who would make of me their prey to tire in their hunt

Tire, not enough to abandon their searching for me, I could not hope for that. To them, I was a would-be killer, and vicious.

Vicious and callous, to place their children in so terrible a danger. Their determination to seize me was, I was certain, as great as mine would have been had I been in their place; had it been a child of mine so placed in jeopardy. But they would tire enough, I hoped, to be for the moment satisfied with the setting up of a guard and the waiting out of the night that, on their moonless planet, was shorter, even, than the tune of their daylight.

A letting up of vigilance that might give me the slim edge I needed to evade them completely, or at least until the telltale dye lost its green glow ... or I could learn how Brigit meant to tell her story.

Around me, the water churned up by the blast from the crossing and recrossing hover-craft had let up its tugging at me. They might still be aloft, their heat-detectors dangling, but if they were, they had at least shifted their operations away from the weeds in which I was hiding.

Cautiously, I raised myself up, rocking a little to break the sucking grip of the mud that would hold me, until my head was clear enough of the water's surface for me to listen. From across the lake came the sound of the hover-craft beating.

Good. For that much, then, I could be thankful. They were now searching to find me on the far shore which I probably would have struck out for had I been able to swim.

But I couldn't swim, so I was still on the same side of the lake as when I'd plunged into it A hard fact I was hoping my pursuers would not guess.

Slowly, keeping my ear on the high sound of raised voices as best as my phasing hearing would let me, and using it as a guide, I groped along the lake bottom with feet I could not fully trust to have the strength to hold me, the full sense of feel to guide me.

Breathing through my reed where the water was so deep as to close over my head; slithering on my stomach and hands where it wasn't, I made my way along the shore, expecting at any moment to hear a rousing shout of discovery, feel the stupefying blast of a stun-gun, or the knifing slash of a pistol's laser.

And at long last, the voices in my ear were faint, even when my hearing reached a high point in its ebb and flow, ebb and flow.

In toward the shore I turned. In toward the faintly blacker mass the scrubby undergrowth made against the starshine that was the only relief from its darkness that Poldrogi's moonless night afforded.

In I moved, until the upward slope of the rock-studded bank was unmistakable, the water frothing lightly against my ankles.

Up the bank I staggered, fell forward onto it with something akin to a gasp of relief, in spite of its sharp and craggy feel.

I did not hear him approach. In the blackness I certainly did not see him.

Face down, I felt only the hard pressure of his weapon on the back of my skull; heard only his voice, flat and quiet in my ear.

"Freeze," he said.

I froze.