“You’re going to be all right,” Talina told him, looking up from his hugely swollen left calf. The thing looked as if it were overinflated, the skin so tight it would burst at any moment.

“Wha . . . ? What?” He blinked, tried to focus. Seemed to drift sideways as the ground went rubbery.

“Relax,” she told him. “Don’t try to think. You can’t. You’re doped up past your gills. It’s a painkiller. One of Dya Simonov’s concoctions made out of blue nasty.”

“But I . . . ?”

“I said, don’t try to think.” She shifted enough to take his hand, the side of her face golden in the firelight. “Just listen.” She squeezed his hand as if in emphasis. “You did fine, Dek. You were prospecting. When the mobbers flew over, you played dead. Even though a gotcha vine grabbed hold of your leg. That took some real guts. Don’t know how you endured it. Then, when the mobbers flew off, you fought your way free of the gotcha vine. But its spines were embedded in your calf and foot.”

He blinked, struggling to remember. Wondered if the kaleidoscopic images cartwheeling through his memory were real. Had to be. Those four-winged creatures, alternately glowing in laser-bright patterns of blue, red, yellow, green, and orange? He’d never seen a live flock of the feared predators. This had to be a memory.

“I threw myself flat on the ground. Remember that. Roots were wiggling under me. But the mobbers were fluttering around, making that odd chitter. Checking the trees, looking under branches, trying to scare up anything that would move. Saw one get a tree clinger. Sliced the poor guy into ribbons as the things flew off with it. Left the bones to fall back to the ground.”

“Sounds about right.” Talina gave his hand a squeeze again.

“Pain started in my leg,” Dek told her. “I couldn’t let myself move. Not until those flying bastards had moved on.”

“If you had, that tree clinger’s bones wouldn’t be the only ones out here.” Talina gave him a ghostly smile. “The first time I got into gotcha vine, it was just a couple of spines. I thought someone had poured boiling acid into my arm. Second time left scars on my hip and upper thigh. It’s your whole lower leg, Dek.”

“Did I really try to cut my leg off?”

“I stopped you.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Sheer dumb luck. You were down in the canyon. Vixen just happened to be overhead when you called out a mayday. They relayed your signal to Two Spot. You were still lucid enough to give your location. Said you were going to try and make it to a basalt outcrop at the top of the canyon. Closest aid would have been Chaco and Madison, but they were on the way to Port Authority and didn’t have enough charge to turn back.”