The salmon bird carcass was a black silhouette with Voy painfully bright behind it. Anthon and Debby had to squint.. . but their tethered arrows nailed it and they reeled it in. Maybe the silver man was hoping someone would show his head, none did. He tried to enter with the stack of ponchos, and the Grad almost managed to catch him

in the closing door. That left the laundry outside top, and a red border around the yellow diagram. "I never saw red before. What's it mean?"

Lawn deigned to answer, contemptuously. "Emergency. Your line's holding the airlock open."

The Grad opened the door (the red warning disappeared) and Debby pulled the mass in. The silver man didn't try to follow. The door may have scared him. It was his last chance: the Grad closed the doors and sighed with satisfaction.

His sigh chopped off when his ventral view flared pure, diizzling red, then disappeared from the bow window.

From other displays he caught glimpses of painfully bright scarlet. "Can that thing hurt us?" Anthon demanded, while Lawri cried, "Now you'll see! They'll cut us in half!" and Clave said, "They're almost on us. We'll have them all over the hull if-"

"Feed it to the tree!" the Grad shouted at them all. He couldn't think. What could that light do to them? Neither Klance nor Lawri had ever mentioned such a thing.

We've got what we need~ Forget the bread~. forget the water. Get out! They'll never catch the carm.

Lawri saw his hand move and screamed, "Wait!" The Grad didn't.

He tapped the center of the big blue vertical bar.

Chapter Twenty - The Position of Scientist's Apprentice

THE AIR SIGHED OUT OF THE GRAD's LUNGS. HE WAS BEING

crushed flat. His left arm had missed the arm rest; it was behind him, being pulled gradually from the shoulder socket. The chair was too low to support his head. His neck hurt savagely. Above the muted shriek of the main motor he heard his passengers fighting for breath.

This must be killing the jungle giants.

London Tree dwindled like a dream in the aft view. They were in the storm now, and blind. The Grad tried to raise his right arm, to touch the blue bar, to end the force that flattened him. Up, up . . . farther

his arm fell back across his chest with a jolt that smashed the last

sipful of air from his lungs. His sight blurred.

Lawn's chin was tucked down against her collarbone. She was sure that if she relaxed her neck the tide would snap it.

She watched Jeffer trying to turn off the motor and knew he couldn't make it. And Lawti's arms were bound.

ThLc will kill some mutineer~ she thought with alloyed satisfaction. And I did it to them. The corn laser would burn or blind at close range, but almost certainly it would not have hurt the cam. She'd lied in hope