Acorna's World Part 8

As soon as the pain stopped and the bone had knitted, Acorna raised herself up to see the Khieevi grab for the dancing Thariinye with its front pincers. Thariinye screamed, and Acorna grabbed the nearest object-a rock from the ground beneath her-and threw it at the Khieevi.

The big insectoid was not so quickly fooled this time. It grabbed Thariinye and began slas.h.i.+ng at him with its razorsharp pincers, leaving gruesome wounds on Thariinye's upraised hands and arms. Acorna leaped across the fallen trunk of the tree and pounded on the carapace of the creature with her fists -while her old s.h.i.+pmate's heart-rending cries rang in her ears.

"Let go, let go, let go!" she bawled.

The Khieevi did let go, and Thariinye, bleeding from many wounds, fell like a limp doll very close to Maati's still form. Acorna turned and ran.

The Khieevi rounded on Acorna, its pincers snapping. Only a single tree hung between them. Then, with a chomp and a noisome burst of gas, the tree -was gone. Acorna turned and ran, leaping over the fallen tree this time, putting it between herself and the Khieevi. She dashed past frond after frond, only to have them vanish down the Khieevi's maw to reappear behind the creature as another smelly bit of trail.

The Khieevi seemed to smile as it took its last bite from the tree trunk, taunting her with its deliberate progress as it ate away her only barrier. She kept moving, mentally calling to Maati and Thariinye, hoping to hear a response but urging them to lie still.

The Khieevi finished the tree trunk. Acorna backed up against another tree. It followed her slowly, taking first one chomp and then another from fronds she thrust between them. It was clearly enjoying the game.

She shrieked as a pincer came within a centimeter of her face. The Khieevi snapped at her, then brought its pincers up again, close to her horn. She dodged and tried to dive between its lower legs.

All at once, from the corner of her eye, she saw a white blur. The Khieevi fell over backward, a Linyaari form bearing it to the ground, surrounded by its flailing legs and pincers.

(Kh.o.r.n.ya, run!) Aari's voice was mental, but far from a whisper. (Get Joh. Get weapon. I will keep it here as long as I can, but you must save yourself and my sister.) (You can't fight it alone, Aari.) (No, but I can Delay it. Go!) (It will kill you!) (I am carrion already.) She ran through the woods screaming for Becker, screaming Ae names of her fallen friends.

Much to her surprise, Becker and Mac, brandis.h.i.+ng weapons, bounded toward her through the woods, Becker yelling, "Where is he? Point and duck!"

She turned and ran back toward Aari, who, much to her ^rprise, was raising himself unharmed from among curled ^leevi legs and pincers. The creature made no attempt to stop him or damage him. Instead it stayed on the ground, emitting the same high-pitched "eee-eee-eee" sound their prisoner had made back on the s.h.i.+p. Decker paid none of that any attention at all. As soon as Aari -was clear, Becker pressed his rifle against his hip and fired. A huge crackling hole opened up in the creature and it was still.

The echo of the shot had not yet faded when a pair of Linyaari figures carrying what looked like strips of metal came running over the hill. (Maati? Aari? By the ancestors, are they ()ea()1) Acorna grabbed Aari's arm and heard the mental call when she touched him. (Mother? Father?) he said, stunned.

Maati sat up, groggy. "Did somebody call me?"

Acorna released Aari and moved to kneel beside Thariinye. Her old s.h.i.+pmate did not look up, but she could see he was breathing. His s.h.i.+psuit was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess. One of his hands dangled from a sc.r.a.p of skin protruding from his sleeve. A chunk was missing from his right cheek and one of his eyes *was swelled shut, the lid and brow lacerated. His horn was an inch or so shorter than it had been.

"Thariinye!" Maati cried, and rose to her hands and knees to do a very fast crawl to Thariinye's other side. "Oh, no, look at his hand."

"Maati? Baby, is that you, all grown up?" the male Linyaari who had appeared during the fight asked.

Maati's face rose to look at the two tall Linyaari strangers. Once she got a good look at their faces she ran to them, crying. "Mother? Father? Help us! Thariinye's hurt bad. He made the Khieevi fight him so it wouldn't kill me." She dragged her parents back to Thariinye's side.

"My goodness," her mother said. "The young man certainly is in a bad way, but this young lady is doing a fine job or healing him. Maati?"

The male Linyaari gently shoved Acorna aside and bent his own horn to Thariinye's hand. "Allow me, my dear. This boy was little more than a toddler when we left narhii-Vhiliinyar. And now he's been wounded protecting our little girl."

Acorna willingly surrendered Thariinye's care to the man. She was weary beyond belief from her own ordeal, but she needed to see to Aari. He hadn't appeared to be greatly harmed by his own encounter with the Khieevi, although he had been locked in its multilegged embrace. But there had been something odd about their "parting."

Becker and Aari were both bent over the corpse of the Khieevi, studying it.

"The Khieevi -was dying when you shot it, Joh. It could not hold on to me. See how its legs are curled?"

"Lead poisoning -will do that to you," Becker growled.

"Lead poisoning? Where was the lead?" Aari asked. "You used the laser canon."

"Figure of speech," Becker replied.

"Aari, are you hurt?" Acorna asked, looking him over careful. "The front of your s.h.i.+rt-it's a mess."

Aari looked down and said with satisfaction, "Khieevi blood, mostly. You or Thariinye must have wounded the creature before I reached it. I had no -weapons."

"Neither did we," Acorna said. "We weren't expecting trouble here." She knelt to examine the dead Khieevi. Gingerly, she touched its chest along the edge of the wound made by Becker's laser cannon. "What is this? It's not the same color as the Khieevi blood."

"Oh-that's from me," Aari said, "I fell in the sap on the robohft when I left the s.h.i.+p. It was all over the front of my ^ipsuit."

Acorna tried to remove the sap with her finger but it had ^tually sunk into the Khieevi's carapace. In fact, she saw as ^e pulled some of the sap aside, it had eaten away a portion or the creature's sh.e.l.l-like protection. She looked up at the two men who were frowning down watching her. "What became of the other Khieevi?"

"It was dying when -we left the s.h.i.+p," Aari said. "I came to get you to heal it."

"Did you harm it?"

"No-no, we did not have to harm it. It seemed to ... believe we were harming it, though, and we let it think so," Aari said.

"We really were going to let you heal it up, honest," Becker said. "As soon as -we got all the information we needed. Figured maybe the scientists could study the thing-" He tried to sound innocent. Acorna knew? that Becker had just thought of the scientists studying the Khieevi. He had been very much against healing its wounds. "Maybe it was hurt worse in the crash than we figured. It told us what we wanted to know and then- really, pretty conveniently-it keeled over. Aari was coming to get you to see if you could maybe heal it or something."

Both men looked very uncomfortable. Acorna looked from one to the other. "I don't think it was the injuries in the crash that killed that prisoner-and I suspect this one was mortally wounded from the moment Aari jumped on him."

"You jumped that thing, buddy?" Becker asked Aari, clapping him on the back. "Way to go. I didn't think you had it in you. Not bad for a pacifist."

"You miss the point, Joh. Kh.o.r.n.ya just said I killed the Khieevi. How did I do that, Kh.o.r.n.ya?"

"The sap on your s.h.i.+psuit," Acorna told him.

"Ye-es," Aari said. "Yes. That makes sense. I remember the first time we saw the sap. It killed small insects preying upon the vines in the home-world."

"Yeah, the plants thought -we were a bug, too," Becker said. "They slimed the Condor, trying to get through its sh.e.l.l. Lucky us, it didn't work."

"The sap probably only destroys selected organic sub stances. Judging by the results, I would guess that the polysaccharides in the Khieevi's chitin carapaces are susceptible to it, Joh," Aari said.

"Good. Anything that eats up Khieevi sh.e.l.ls is fine by me," Becker rejoined.

Acorna glanced over and saw Maati and her parents were helping Thariinye stand. His clothing was still b.l.o.o.d.y, but he was moving the fingers of his formerly injured hand, and all of the gashes and gouges were cleaned up. His horn, however, remained shorter than it had been.

Aari deliberately turned his back on the Linyaari quartet as he, Becker, and Mac began pulling another of the t.i.tanium cargo nets around the dead Khieevi. Acorna, panting and catching her breath, stared at his back, and shook her head. He was clearly not going to fall on the necks of his long-lost parents and rejoice at their presence. In fact, it looked like he was going to avoid dealing with them at all, if he could.

Miiri-Maati and Aari's mother-was the first to discover the rash on Aari's hands. While Aari's palms -were now mostly cleaned of sap, they were red and itching, swelling in places. He kept pausing in the journey to rub his palms on the legs of his s.h.i.+psuit. His mother, who had been trying to run along beside him to talk to him, noticed.

Aari tried to ignore his mother but Acorna stopped him, turning to rest a hand on his arm, raised his palm and examined it. I had an itchy red place like this on my finger just now, from where I examined the sap on the edge of the Khieevi's wound, but I put it up to my horn and it healed. Let me see if I can help you," she said, lowering her horn to Aari's palms and touching them lightly, first one hand and then the other.

The pain he was in was all too evident in his rigid posture and the look in his eyes. Finally he let out a sigh of relief and gave her a look half of irritation, half of grat.i.tude.

"That sap, which eats into the Khieevi sh.e.l.ls and kills them in short order, apparently merely causes an allergic reaction in our species," Acorna said. "It's irritating, but the sap doesn't appear to be lethal to us."

"Mac," Becker said, "-when we get back to the s.h.i.+p, priority one is for you to sc.r.a.pe all that sap off the robolift and collect it, then stow it in one of the unpressurized cargo bays. I want samples of it a.n.a.lyzed as soon as possible. This stuff could be useful."

The next few hours were a blur of activity. Maati and Aari's parents thought-spoke with the other Linyaari while everyone worked, telling a little bit of their adventures while stranded on this planet. Their survival here was a testament to both their courage and cleverness. But Maati had so much to say to her mother and father that she chattered away like a magpie, using her newfound telepathic abilities. So, consequently, most of the conversation centered on Maati's recent escapades, rather than on her parents doings since they left their home-world in search of their children. And, despite the need to reconnect with the -wanderers, there was too much to accomplish to truly do justice to the occasion. All the Linyaari, as well as the remaining crew of the Comfor, bent their backs to the tasks at hand. They wanted to load both the crashed Khieevi shuttle and the remains of the Nilkaavri aboard the Condor, as well as any other cargo they could reach or Mac could -wade out to retrieve. The main Khieevi s.h.i.+p was simply shattered, most of the resulting fragments of debris too small to be of interest even to Becker, though they salvaged what they could.

(Why are we bothering with this trash right now?) Kaarlye, Maati and Aari's father, asked Maati. (Don't we need to get in contact with our people? The Khieevi were here.) The parents, without time to sleep-learn standard Galatic from the LAANYE, could make no sense of Becker's or Mac's thought patterns, though RK-as always-managed to make himself understood.

(I will see what I can find out,) Maati told him.

"Captain," Maati said in Linyaari, following Becker down the beach until -when he turned back to pick up another piece of salvage he nearly stepped on her. "If the Khieevi are scouting this area and the swarm is near, shouldn't we leave this stuff until later and return to narhii-Vhiliinyar to warn the people ~ "

Becker tried to answer, first in Standard, then in the broken Linyaari he had picked up from Aari. Before Kaarlye's confusion became total, Acorna hurriedly translated Becker's answers as physically transmitted by Maati.

"Well," Becker said, "except for finding you and Thariinye here, we haven't had any communication from your planet since we sent the pilyi data, honey. We told 'em to get back to us with a translation, remember? I don't think they're listening to us, and I'm sure they're not talking to us. I don't imagine that's going to change now, even though -we've got things to tell them. I hate to say it, but for all we know, the Khieevi could be there already, maybe even been there and left.

"That monster we -were able to question only knew the position of the fleet as of the last transmission he'd received, which was days ago. If it helps, as far as the prisoner knew, the Khieevi -weren't on your -world yet at that time. But -we dont know what's going on at your home, nor can we give them any solid information other than the warning about the iMueevi maybe being in the neighborhood that we already sent-you know, the one that made you and Thariinye go hur"ing into s.p.a.ce? We gave your people that warning when we fansnutted the piiyi contents-though from what you've told us about that horse-faced vilsmar of yours, it might not have Re any good. All we can really add to our first broadcast is at we've found your parents here. Whatever's happening back your planet, our help's too far away and will arrive too late to change anything. That's why I'm not in any hurry to talk to your planet.

"Right now, I'm more worried about us. That bug we talked to told the rest of the bugs exactly where this planet is, and how rich it is in Khieevi food. The swarm could be on their way here, for all we know. We could have a lot of time, or -we could have very little, before they arrive. My scanners don't show anything, but that's not conclusive. So that's why I -want all the salvage we can manage to get aboard the Condor before we take off. If the com system in the Khieevi shuttle is undamaged-it looks pretty good to me-and if we can turn it on and get it working, there's a chance it could still be getting signals from the fleet, which would tell us where they are, and maybe even where they're going."

So everyone pitched in and worked for hours gathering the cargo and transporting it to the s.h.i.+p. After they got it all stacked ready to stow, they watched Mac open his forearm and extract a paint-sc.r.a.ping tool. Then the android punched a b.u.t.ton just under the skin of his wrist that switched him to what looked like a holovid on fast forward. With rapid sweeps, he cleaned the robolift of sap and stored the sticky stuff carefully in one of Captain Decker's ceramic yogurt containers-after first evicting the yogurt and cleaning the dish, of course. "What am I to do with this, Captain?" Mac asked. "Stow it in one of the outer holds, not a temperaturecontrolled one. The sap was doing just fine out there in the cold vaccuum while we traveled here. I don't want to mess with a working system. Great stars and asteroids, -will you look at my hull?" The ConSor was normally a silvery metallic color but now was covered with broad trails of the yellowish sap as vines would cover a quaint cottage. "I guess this stuff "was frozen in s.p.a.ce and is having a field day here thawing out."

Acorna stopped relaying his words to the non-Standardspeaking newcomers, and suggested, "Captain, -we should make certain none of the sap is left behind since it is alien to this ecology, and may greatly damage it."

"I was gonna say that next," Becker told her. Once the lift was cleared and they were sure no sap remained on the ground, everyone helped load the cargo. Mac returned from stowing the sap and carried the heavier items such as the nearly intact Khieevi shuttle. Becker cast a regretful glance at the hull of the Linyaari vessel. "I really want to take that with us, but I can't justify the time it would take to grab it, disa.s.semble it, and stow it. Well, I guess since you guys came with it, it's not really salvage anyway."

Acorna thought he was going to cry in his mustache at leaving such a valuable item behind, so she patted his arm and said, "When the crisis is over. Captain, we can always return for it."

"That's right," he said, and brightened up immediately. She translated for the newcomers again and Kaarlye said, "Yes. Perhaps when he returns the captain could retrieve our escape pod as well. We're very fond of it. It saved our lives, you know."

I think -we'd all like to know how you came to be here and what has happened to you since you left narhii-Vhiliinyar," Acorna said much later to Kaarlye and Miiri. Becker, RK, and Mac were manning and catting the helm. Aari and Acorna led their new guests to the hydroponics gardens to graze.

"There's not much to tell really," Miiri told her. "We left as soon as Maati could be cared for by someone else." She ran her hand over Maati's mane. "You do understand, my dear, that we didn't think we would be gone long, and we didn't wish to endanger you, should the Khieevi still be in the area of our old home. We hoped somehow our boys-you, Aari, and-"

"Laarye died. Mother, -while I -was a prisoner of the Khieevi," Aari said. "I'm sorry. I couldn't save him."

"Yes," she said simply. "I felt it."

(Did you feel me, too, Mother? Did you feel my suffering?) At his mother's shocked look, the stolid, mildly bored look Aari wore as a mask left his face and he, too, looked shocked. "I didn't say anything," he said a little pleadingly to Acorna. She let out the breath she had sucked in when he spoke to his mother.

(You used thought-speak, as you did with me earlier -when the Khieevi attacked me.) (I-did not think anyone could hear me. I did not realize-) (I heard you,) Acorna said. (I heard you this afternoon *when the thing -was attacking me. It gave me courage, knowing you were coming.) "I heard you, too, my son," his mother said. The light in the hydroponics gardens was dim now, simulating nighttime to give the plants a rest. The air smelled sweet and fresh down here. The rest of the s.h.i.+p'd had a very pungent odor when the six Linyaari boarded. Even though Mac had dragged the Khieevi corpses into another outer hold, and cleaned the sap and the Khieevi blood from the decks, the Condor reeked. Of course, the Linyaari horns cleansed the air. But it still seemed like the dead Khieevi could stink up the place a little faster than the Linyaari horns could clean it.

This area of the s.h.i.+p was something of a showplace, one Acorna and Aari had worked hard to bring into being. They had draped drop cloths from the bulkhead above the s.p.a.ce so that they resembled clouds and sky. The s.h.i.+p's artificial lighting now shone down on them, filtered gently by the "sky." All six Linyaari were squatted in grazing posture, in a circle, staring at each other through eyes s.h.i.+ning with the reflection of the simulated moon. A little enclosed pond Acorna had created to make the area nicer as -well as to maintain the humidity needed for optimum plant growth sent rippling shadows across the billowing drop-cloth clouds.

"I heard you across the galaxies, Son. I heard your brother die and I heard your screams," his mother said. "Why do you think we left Maati with Grandam and returned?"

"To join me in the Khieevi torture chamber?" he asked. Aari's bitterness -was all too visible then. He could not choke it down, and Acorna knew that this was some of the buried pain she'd been unable to touch in him. "What a waste that would have been. You would have done better to have parented Maati, even if you hadn't given up on Laarye and me."

"Hear me," his mother said. "I heard you. We came when we could."

"She heard you," his father said, his face solemn and his eyes deeply sad. "She screamed at night along with you. She lost all sleep and appet.i.te as she endured with you what you endured. Did you. not hear her as our enemies killed not only your brother Laarye, but the twins she lost before she carried Maati?"

Acorna gazed at Miiri more closely. She was very thin, but then, Linyaari -were inclined toward slenderness as a rule. Her eyes were a beautiful copper color, but set deeply in her head. The color and texture of her skin -were not good. Not sickly- her lifemate would have healed her if it had been merely an illness that troubled her-but unhealthy nonetheless. Strain had etched deep lines from her nose to her mouth, and other lines formed a diamond with points at the base of her horn and the bridge of her nose.

"And you, Father?" Aari asked. "You felt nothing."

"You know I have very little of the empathy that is your both your mother's gift and her curse. I concentrated on sending. Sending you the directions to our new world, suggesting ways to escape, and praying to our ancient friends that somehow you would be saved, that Vhiliinyar itself might cast out the invaders and preserve my sons."

Aari looked aghast. "But-I did know how to get to narhiiVhiliinyar. Were we not all programmed that way?"

Kaarlye shook his head, his mane flying and settling again, briefly silver in the lamplight, a slight whuffling snort emitting from his nostrils and lips. "Of course not. I am a strong sender."

Aari looked abashed for a moment, then defiant. He inclined his head briefly in acknowledgment.

"But-you had me," Maati said, almost wailing.

"Yes, youngling my own," her mother said, stroking her cheek with the back of her fingers. "We had you. It was your birth that delayed us. Grandam would not permit me to move, she kept me sedated with good herbs and sang me soothing songs through the night and a circle of women laid horns on me for hours a day until you were safely into the world. But then, oh Maati, my love, we haS to go. With you there to carry on the clan name, safe with Grandam, we had to go find your brother. I heard him no longer, you see, once you were born. And yet I had not felt his death. As terrible as his torment had been, I knew what it meant "while it continued. It told me Aari lived and he felt and that I was in contact with him. But then he was lost and I did not know what to think. I could not feel him, I could not-"

"My horn," Aari said, touching the slightly indented scar on his forehead. "They had taken my horn. It nearly killed me. No doubt the loss also . . . lessened . . . my ability to transmit to you, Mother."

"Yes," his father said. His mother could not speak for the tears choking her. Acorna was rapidly wiping away her own. Maati sniffled and snuffled. Thariinye, strangely quiet, put his arm around her. Maati's mother also held her daughter close. Acorna laid a hand on Maati's knee and one on Aari's. He lifted her hand and held it against his face for a moment, bending his head to press it between his jaw and his shoulder. His face was damp, but she thought it was perspiration rather than tears. This confrontation was very painful for him, but a good pain, she hoped, a healing pain. Aari's nerve endings burned with life again.

"To lose a child to untimely death is almost the worst thing there is for a parent. To know a child is being deliberately and terribly injured is even *worse. But when I lost you, when I didn't know where you were or what was happening to you, to know you were there but not to feel you-that was unbearable.

Had it not been for the twins, and then Maati, we -would have left to find you long before we finally departed."

Miiri reached out to Aari, but he flinched away from her touch. She withdrew her hand and rested it on her knee. Raising her chin, she continued her tale. "When -we could, -we flew back to Vhiliinyar. We maintained radio silence lest the Khieevi trace the signal. But our old home planet had been violently altered, and it seemed it was now fighting back. From our vantage point in low orbit -we could see that the beautiful greens, blues, and purples of our world were gray and black now, with angry red sores and craters all over. The seas had dried up, leaving behind cracked and broken soil, and where once streams had flowed through mountain meadows the barren riverbeds flowed instead with magma from the ravished peaks. Indeed, many of our mountains had hurled themselves into the heavens, erupting violently. One of these eruptions destroyed our s.p.a.cecraft before we could raise our s.h.i.+elds. It came from nowhere. We took heavy damage. Knowing that the s.h.i.+p was likely to break up at any time, -we headed toward the nearest habitable planet. As we approached the atmosphere of this world, we barely had time to slip into the pod and eject before the s.h.i.+p was destroyed. We landed here, much as Maati and Thariinye did, the pod's sensors guiding us to a safe landing. Here there was food and water, and breathable air. We survived and waited for rescue, so that we could continue our search for our son." Mini's voice grew small and stilled, her hands clasping and unclasping on her knees, her eyes dropping from Aari's.

Acorna, her hand still in Aari's, with her other hand took one of Miiri's and joined it with her son's. They did not clasp hands, but they touched. Miiri raised her eyes again and searched Aari's.

Kaarlye took up the tale. "There was little we could do but survive, and wait, and hope that you would somehow free yourself from the Khieevi. And here you are."

He ruffled Maati's hair. "And here you are, too, our beautiful daughter, starclad and a young lady now."

Aari's hand clutched his mother's now, and Acorna slipped away as the family reunited. Thariinye sat there watching, so quiet it was hard to believe he was Thariinye.

Acorna joined Becker on watch. Mac had shut himself down to conserve his batteries. RK sat cleaning himself, warming his underside on the lights from the console. The piiyi that had played constantly on the corn screen was blessedly shut off for the moment.

Becker looked around as Acorna slid into the chair beside his.

"Family reunion stuff, huh?" he asked.

Acorna nodded, feeling happy but subdued. The emptiness that was in Aari was filling in like a dry spring after a dam had broken, and to a lesser extent, the same thing was occurring with Maati. It made Acorna feel wistful, wis.h.i.+ng that perhaps her own parents had escaped somewhere, could rejoin her. But no, she did not feel that would happen. She had not known them, had missed them as a baby only long enough for dear Gil, Calum, and Rafik to learn her Linyaari baby names for mother and father, and then she had been wrapped in the loving care of her three "uncles" who -were actually her fathers, and all of her other new friends, who were her family. Now she had an aunt and a planet and so much more-and she did not begrudge Aari finding his parents and learning of their continued love for him and Maati. And yet- Becker leaned over and patted her shoulder. "Makes you wonder, doesn't it, Princess?"

"What?" she asked. Becker was better at reading thoughts than she'd realized.

"What your own folks were like, what it would have been like to be with them, you know. I knew my mother a little- she was a scientist someplace, I'm not really sure where. I was about three "when there were a lot of explosions and gunshots and she fell down with blood all over her and then I was taken to the slave farm on Kezdet. Maybe it's because I -was only three then, but what I remember most about it was, it was boring being with my mom. And one thing about Dad-Dad Becker, I mean-there was nothing boring about him. I don't reckon I've missed anything, come to think about it." But she saw, in his heart, where that creek in him "was still dry, 'waiting for the dam to break and water it. , And she knew that in spite of all of her friends and her adopted parents and her real Linyaari kinfolk, she had a similar dry creek inside herself. But dwelling on such things was pointless. Besides, she had work to do. She looked out at the stars and asked, "Where to now, Captain?"

For the Balakiire, tracing the signal to the blue planet -was not difficult. The coordinates had been on the piiyi, and the NiikcLavri's ion tracings led straight to the planet. But none of the crew was prepared, as the Kalakiire began to home in on the beach where once the Condor had landed, for the site of the Niikaavrl's broken sh.e.l.l, lying open to the elements as if some ma.s.sive chick had hatched from it and abandoned it there.

They saw wreckage bobbing in the sea as well, and was.h.i.+ng up onto the beach. After a closer look at it, Neeva recognized some of the fragments as coming from a Khieevi vessel. A quick trip back to the s.h.i.+p to consult the scanners gave no indication of a continuing Khieevi presence on the planet. From there it was just a matter of figuring out exactly what had happened. Beginning at a debris-littered indentation in a sand dune, they followed a trail of Khieevi excrement. Liriili was given the honor of walking in front, *which she did with the poor grace Neeva expected of her. The broken trees, the large, coagulated pool of blood surrounded by many other blood-stained fronds and ruined trees and crushed leaves, drew a low, painful groan from all them. They followed the trail further up a hill, until they came to a place where a tree was surrounded by broken heaps of the solidified dung. They searched farther still, and found that beyond this last hill, the woods thinned once more into a low marshland of reeds, and beyond that stretched the "wide blue sea. Only a few pieces of debris bobbed on the -waves on this side of the landspit. But tucked up next to the trees, in a small clearing that showed signs of occupation, lay an eggshaped vessel covered with a symbolic design. Liriili gasped as if this came as a surprise to her, which of course it should not have done.

The Linyaari made their way to the shuttle and examined it.