The pigs, of course, outran Dura and Farr easily. Within a few heartbeats the animals were disappearing into the darkness of distance, trailing clouds of jetfarts...

But there were Adda and Philas, waiting just a little further down the Magfield, with a net pulled tight between them and with stabbing spears at the ready.

The first two pigs were moving too rapidly to stop. They turned in the Air and tumbled against each other, their huge mouths popping open to emit childlike squeals, but they hurtled backside first into the net. Philas and Adda worked together, a little clumsily but effectively. Within a few heartbeats they had thrown the net around the two pigs and were prodding at them, trying to force them to subside. Green jetfarts squirted from the pigs, and the net bulged as the terrified animals strove vainly to escape. By the time Dura got there they would have the animals trussed up and then...

There was a scream behind her. Farr's scream.

She whirled in the Air, Adda and Philas forgotten. The third pig — the pregnant sow, she saw — had evaded Adda's net. Terrified and enraged, it had flown down, away from the root ceiling, and was now plummeting up through the trees, back along the Magfield flux... and straight at Farr.

The boy gazed at the animal's flapping fins and rigid, staring eyestalks, apparently transfixed. He isn't going to get out of the way, Dura realized. And the momentum of the pig would crush him in a moment.

She tried to call out, to move toward the boy — but she was plunged into a nightmare of slow motion. The Magfield was thick, clinging, the Air a soupy mass in which she was embedded. She struggled to get free, to shout to her brother, but the hurtling, blurring speed of the pig reduced her efforts to the trivial.

There was barely a mansheight between the pig and the boy. Dura, trapped in viscous Air, heard herself scream.

Suddenly the sow opened its mouth wide and bellowed in agony. Jetfarts staining the air, it veered abruptly. One ventral fin caught Farr with a side-swipe which sent him spinning against a tree trunk... but, Dura saw with a flood of relief, he was no more than shocked.

As the sow tumbled in the Air the reason for its distress revealed itself: Adda's long spear, protruding from the sow's belly. The spear quivered as the beast thrashed, seeking an escape from this sudden agony.

Now Adda himself raced along the Magfield, ungainly but determined. Behind him the two trapped pigs were struggling free of the abandoned net. Adda bellowed: "She's gone rogue... Dura, get to the boy and keep him away."

Now the pig settled in the Air, all six of its eyestalks triangulating on the old man. Adda slowed to a hover, arms and legs outspread, his gaze locked on the pig.

Dura said uncertainly, "Adda, get out of the way... I think..."

"Get the damn boy."