“Nope. It was the quetzals’.” She looked around at the roiling water as it swirled and sucked its way on both sides. The closest bank was a good thirty meters away, but the basalt walls were sheer. The other shore, maybe sixty meters distant, was wooded back for a distance of ten meters or so before the vertical wall of stone rose to the tree-topped heights so far above. “But, more to the point, how are we going to get out of here and back to the dome?”

Dek made a face as he glanced around. “Okay, now there’s a question. And we’ve got another problem.”

“What’s that?”

“After I dragged you out and got you breathing, I pulled a number of soft tube-shaped sucker things from where they were chewing on our overalls.” He pointed to a frayed spot on his sleeve and then to a couple more on his and her pant legs. “See? None of them had latched onto flesh, but if they could do that kind of damage to fabric, I’d bet skin wouldn’t even slow them down.”

Talina fingered one of the frayed spots in her right coverall thigh. “Well that sucks snot, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Dek was staring back up at the falls, at the high cliff from which they’d fallen. “Got my pistol and your rifle up there. That pistol on your hip still functional after a soaking like we just had?”

“Military model. It will take a lot more than a dunking to disable it. But it’s a short-range weapon. Only carries ten rounds of explosive tip. We run into a Tyson-type treetop terror, we’re gone. If what’s left of those mobbers find us, we’re going to end up sliced finer than sandwich cuts. If we come face-to-face with a quetzal, I can put him down if we’re up-close and personal. The good news is that it will make sausage out of sidewinders, bems, and skewers. But that’s assuming we can get back to land.”

“Yeah.” Dek glanced around, fixed on something large that passed just under the water’s surface and made a splash. “That was a whole lot bigger than one of those tube things. Think it’s dangerous?”

“Just what planet do you think you’re on?”

Talina turned her attention down-canyon. The distance was perhaps another four hundred yards, and she couldn’t be certain, but it looked like an alluvial fan spread out from under a crack in gorge’s sheer walls.

She pointed, saying, “That might be our way out.”

“How are we going to get there? I consider it a miracle that I was able to tow you to this gravel bar without being eaten. After seeing that big thing swim by, getting in the water is about as exciting as letting quetzals back into my mind.”