“It’s water,” Rad told the guy, producing a plastic bottle. “Just water.”

The leader said something, and the hunter lowered the spear.

Rad twisted the cap, breaking the plastic seal, and took a gulp. When Marty and Jacky had their share, she dumped the bottle back in her bag.

Marty glanced up the hill, trying to determine how much higher it rose. All he saw were trees and trees and more trees.

The leader set off again.

Groaning, Jacky reluctantly got up. Rad glowered at the hunters prodding them to move. Marty cursed them under his breath.

Yet they all fell into line.

Some ten minutes later they reached the summit. Marty thought he might be sick from the exertion. Rad, who was in the best shape of the three of them, was calling him to come over and look. He joined her at a break in the vegetation. They stood, it turned out, not at the top of a hill but on the rim of a caldera. The bowl-shaped hollow was several kilometers across and rimmed with steep forested slopes and rocky scarps. At the bottom of the depression was a small aquamarine lake shrouded in mist. They were at the lowest section of the rim, likely where the molten lava had escaped the crater before the volcano collapsed in upon itself.

“Huh,” Marty said, struck by the contrast between the lush calm of the caldera today and the extreme violence and chaos that would have accompanied its formation all those millennia ago. “Didn’t expect this.”

“Isn’t it incredible?” Rad said.

“Oh, wow,” Jacky said, appearing at Marty’s shoulder. “We can finally see the sky.”

Marty glanced at the tribesmen. They were a dozen feet away, conversing amongst themselves. “Do you think those guys just took us here to show us the view?”

Rad said, “I think they want to stick us in a pot of boiling water with carrots and potatoes.”

Jacky said, “Not funny.”

“They’re not cannibals,” Marty assured her.

“Then you tell me what they want from us,” said Rad. “The only good we are to them is either forced labor or as a food source.”

Jacky moaned and turned away.

“Jesus, Rad…”

“You tell me what their interest in us is then, Marty.”

He squeezed Jacky’s shoulder affectionately. “You okay?”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“We’ll be back on the Oannes soon enough.”

Shaking her head, she stepped away from him, and his hand fell limply to his side.

∆∆∆