WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(92)

"Even humans?" Adele said, now looking toward the globular fungus. Her control wands were motionless.

"Especially humans," Daniel agreed. "There's a few cases every year, city folk having a picnic and children who haven't been trained to be careful."

He grinned broadly. "I am getting a first-hand look at Kostroman natural history, aren't I? Rather fortunate to have been wrecked here, don't you think?"

"I don't know that I'd go that far," Adele said with her dry smile, "but I'm willing to be happy for you."

The rain hit when they were halfway back. At least, Daniel noted, it did something toward washing the caked sweat from their clothing.

* * ** * *

By the time Adele and Daniel staggered into sight of the salvage crew on the Ahura she was dizzy with . . . well, she wasn't sure where to assign causation. The pain in her arm and shoulder muscles from hanging on while the yacht thrashed in the monster's grip was a factor. Exhaustion from walking through a landscape that fought her, carrying at the same time several pounds of mud clinging to either foot, was certainly a factor also.

And she assumed that the oppressive heat and humidity were working on her as well. She'd never before been in a climate where sweat beaded and rolled down her skin because the air was too saturated to accept even the least further increment.

Adele hoped that fear of the unknown wasn't weighing on her also. She was lost in a wilderness of the mind, a place where she didn't know any of the rules. Daniel and his sailors seemed perfectly comfortable here. Perhaps they'd been trained for this sort of uncertainty, in which gunmen might walk into a library at any instant or an ugly-looking fruit could disgorge lethal insects.

It wasn't the physical environment that bothered Adele, but rather the randomness of her present life. She was used to the stress of grinding poverty and demanding work, but there'd been a sameness of existence until now. She desperately missed that predictability.

Woetjans was with the salvage crew. The bosun's mate wore a look of relief as she saw Daniel reappear from the jungle. Obviously the cycle of random disaster hadn't ended yet.

"Sir, we got a problem," Woetjans said before Daniel could catch his breath at not having to fight the vegetation for a while. "Last night those wog bastards must've got the lifeboat from the ship."

She nodded toward the Ahura. The stern seemed to have settled lower since Adele last saw it, but Barnes still perched there.

"I should've known there'd be one," Woetjans continued. "It's my own damned fault. It was in a compartment under the stern decking, but I'd never thought to wonder why the panel had a red stripe around it. Hafard found it hanging open when she was feeling around in the water this morning."

The sailors who'd been nearby on shore came close enough to listen. The pair who were diving in the lagoon paused, clinging to floats made from bundled reeds. They and Barnes looked shoreward, straining also to hear.

Woetjans handed Daniel a thin metal plate with rivet holes on either end. "This was pinned to the inside of the panel," she said. "The wogs must've known what was there all the time."

"Well, they can't go far in an inflatable boat," Daniel said. "And if . . . Oh, I see what you mean."

Adele leaned over Daniel's shoulder to read the legend on the plate. Its raised letters read:



EMERGENCY EQUIPMENT

RAFT (CAPACITY 10) AND MOTOR

SOLAR STILL

EMERGENCY RADIO

FISHING L . . .



"Oh," said Adele.

She took out her personal data unit and seated herself on the ground, using a case of rations as a desk. She crossed her legs reflexively. The jolt of pain from her bruises didn't hit before she'd started the movement and wasn't severe enough to prevent her from finishing it. When she was working, nothing short of decapitation was going to stop her.

Daniel and his sailors were talking and looking toward the next island of the atoll, across the line of reefs. Adele dropped into the universe of her holographic screen. The natural world sloughed from around her.

She quickly located the first mention of Daniel's detachment. It was a radioed note from an Alliance liaison officer with the port authorities in Kostroma City to his superior in the Alliance military government. Cinnabar pirates had marooned Kostroman citizens on a barren island but had been stranded on the same island themselves. The Kostromans would guide troops to destroy the pirates.

Adele smiled slightly as she noted the time slugs on that and the first followup. There'd been no action on the report for several hours. It had been received not long after midnight, and if anybody noticed it they'd put it in a class with sightings of angelic visitors.

An officer had probably come in at dawn. Shortly thereafter somebody had refined Ganser's original SOS, though the exchange wasn't recorded anywhere Adele could find it. The followup, now reporting Cinnabar naval personnel were operating on Kostroma, had been passed on to Blue Chrome Operations. The invasion force was wholly distinct from the Alliance military government here.