Hours passed. I rolled over on my back and gazed up at a redwood canopy set against a backdrop of stars—stars that would allow my bio-chip to recalculate its chronometer. Instructing ABE to alert me to any unusual sounds or movements, I closed my eyes and slipped inside the warmth of my forest cocoon.

*   *   *

INTERNAL ALERT! NEW ENTITIES PRESENT!

I opened my eyes to an ABE-evoked rush of adrenaline. Where are they?

FIFTY-SEVEN METERS TO THE WEST. DESCENDING FROM AN ALTITUDE OF 792 METERS.

Looking up, I could see nothing but the dark outline of the redwood treetops and a sprinkling of stars. Then I held the night-vision binoculars to my eyes and the invaders became visible.

The platform was hexagonal and dark and I would have missed it except it blotted out a section of stars twenty-feet long. Hovering above the forest canopy, it appeared to be motionless, lacking any obvious means of propulsion. Zooming in on the undercarriage, I saw a faint pattern of spinning circles, the movement generating a soft green glow in my otherwise olive-tainted field of vision.

I was looking at the bottom of the hovercraft when a life-form appeared above the treetops, rising eerily toward the levitating object. At first I thought it was one of the giant bats, only the creature wasn’t flapping its wings, it was using them like a kite, catching the wind to increase its altitude. As my eyes adjusted to the starlight, I saw a pair of dangling biped legs and then arms—human arms. The faceless head, the fleshless skin … everything was cloaked in black to blend in with the night.

Rising in tow behind the flying biped was a pod trap, and there was clearly something thrashing about inside. ABE quickly confirmed it to be a cephaloped.

Was it Oscar, or another one of its kind?

Cursing under my breath, I parted the leaf blind and searched for the primary redwood limb with my binoculars, tracing the highway of bark and ferns back to the buttress. My heart pounded in my chest as I peered inside the fire cave, staring at the dark silhouette of another winged being poised just outside the entrance. For a long moment the biped simply remained there, its head slightly cocked as if evaluating—

Womp!

There was no scream or screech, just the report of a vine snapping beneath the weight of the now dangling log and the panicked flutter of leatherlike wings beating the night air as one of the trap’s snares wrenched tightly around the ankle of my quarry, flipping it upside-down and pinning it to the ceiling of the fire cave.

Got you, you bastard! How’s it feel to be—

DETECTING AN INCREASE IN PARTICLE WAVES. WARNING: INTRUDERS CAN DETECT YOUR THOUGHT ENERGY.

Huh?

Before I could muzzle my mind, a blinding white searchlight ignited from the platform’s hexagonal undercarriage, the beacon cutting a swath of day in my direction through the chaos of foliage.