They were separating. It would be three operations. Jayan and Jinny first. They faced each other across clasped hands, as they had after Dalton-Quinn Tree caine apart. They seemed calm enough under the circumstances. The cam eased toward them.

The silver man was crawling around to the airlock.

"Hang on," the Grad said, and he started the cam spinning. Faster. His head spun too; he could see sickness in the faces behind him. The silver man, caught rounding a corner, was hanging by his hands. The Grad used the motors again, against the spin, and slapped the silver man hard against the hull. He flew free.

The Grad opened the doors. The twins were flying at him. He jetted

flame to slow the carm; stopped just alongside them, backed and moved sideways. Then they were crawling into the carm.

Blue shapes crawled within the green sky. Armed Navy men, carrying jet pods and footbows and a massive thing that took three men to handle.

The reunion would have to wait. "Get 'em into chairs," he called back to Clave. Minya next. He was flying the carm like he'd done it all his life. He got a little careless; Minya thumped the hull, then came in with a bloody nose. "Sorry," he said. "Gavving, never mind that, get her to a chair! Who's the other one?"

"It's lisa," Anthon said. "They're shooting at her! Grad, get her!"

"I'm doing that. Do we need the food and other stuff'?" He was alongside LIsa now, between her and the failing Navy men. Voy glared behind her. Footbow arrows ticked off the hull.. . but that thump had no place in his scheme. What-?

Lisa's look of terror and determination faded into blissful sleep. He knew before he looked: the silver man was back, spitgun and all. He was on the dorsal surface, out of reach of the doors, and Anthon had thrown a line round lisa's waist and was pulling her in.

"Get her into-" The chairs were full. "Get her against the back wall and stay with her. Don't turn any fixtures. Debby, put a tethered bolt in that carcass and we'll pull it in."

Anthon said, "The silver man-"

"These are close quarters. if he gets through the door, swarm him. The spitgun doesn't kill, but if he shoots us all, he owns us."

Jinny called to the Grad, "We brought a stack of clean laundry and a water supply."

"We've got water. Laundry . . . why not? Hey, I told Minya to go up. You did it right, we'd never have found you-"

Minya said, "if you had the carm, you could find us in the sky. So we grabbed what we could and went down."

The Navy men had not left the branch's green underside. Hardly surprising. if they failed to capture the cam, how would they reach the tree again? They would have looked futile, the Grad thought, were it not for the bulky starstuff thing they handled like a weapon.