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supposed to search after dark? He feared tomorrow morning would be too late.
He passed on to his comrades what the officer had said. Horken vez Sofana made swimming motions.
Radnal stooped for a pebble, threw it at him.
A helo soon landed beside the seven walkers. Someone inside opened the sliding door. "Come on!" he
bawled. "Move it, move it!"
Moving it as fast as they could, Radnal and the rest scrambled into the helo. It went airborne before the
fellow at the door had it fully closed. A couple of hundred heartbeats later, the helo touched down hard
enough to rattle the tour guide's teeth. The crewman at the door undogged it and slid it open. "Out!" he
yelled.
Out Radnal jumped. The others followed. A few cubits away stood a man in a uniform robe similar but
not identical to the one the militia wore. "Who's freeman vez Krobir?" he said. "I'm Turand vez Nital."
"I'm vez Krobir. I " Radnal broke off. Two bodies lay behind the Tarteshan soldier. Radnal gulped.
He'd seen corpses on their funeral pyres, but never before sprawled out like animals waiting to be
butchered. He said the first thing that popped into his head: "They don't look like you shot them."
"We didn't," the officer said. "When they saw they couldn't escape, they took poison."
"Theywere professionals," Peggol murmured.
"As may be," Turand growled. "This one" he pointed at Evillia "wasn't gone when we got to her. She
said, `You're too late,' and then died, may night demons gnaw her ghost forever."
"We'd better find that cursed bomb fast, then," Radnal said. "Can you take us to where the Krepalgans
were cornered?"
"This very heartbeat," Turand said. "Come with me. It's only three or four hundred cubits from here." He
moved at a trot that left the worn walkers gasping in his wake. At last he stopped and waited impatiently
for them to catch up. "This is where we found them."
"And they were coming east, you said?" Radnal asked.
"That's right, though I don't know for how long," the officer answered. "Somewhere out there is the
accursed starbomb. We're scouring the desert, but this isyour park. Maybe, your eye will fall on
something they'd miss. If not "
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"You needn't go on," Radnal said. "I almost fouled my robe when we had that little tremor a while ago. I
thought I'd wash ashore on the Krepalgan border, ten million cubits from here."
"If you're standing on a starbomb when it goes off, you needn't fear the flood afterwards," Turand said.
"Gak." Radnal hadn't thought of that. It would be quick, anyhow.
"Enough chatter," Horken vez Sofana said. "If we're to search, let us search."
"Search, and may the gods lend your sight wings," Turand said.
The seven walkers trudged west again. Radnal did his best to follow the donkey's trail, but the soldiers'
footprints often obscured them. "How are we supposed to track in this confusion?" he cried. "They might
as well have turned a herd of humpless camels loose here."
"It's not quite so bad as that," Horken said. Stooping low, he pointed to the ground. "Look, here's a
track. Here's another, a few paces on. We can do it. We have to do it."
Radnal knew the senior trooper was right; he felt ashamed of his own outburst. He found the next
hoofprint himself, and the one after that. Those two lay on opposite sides of a fault-line crack; when he
saw that, he knew the starbomb couldn't rest too far away. But he felt time pressing hard on his
shoulders.
"Maybe the soldiers will have found the starbomb by now," Fer vez Canthal said.
"We can't count on it. Look how long it took them to find the Krepalgans. We have to figure it's up to
us." Radnal realized the weight on him wasn't just time. It was also responsibility. If he died now, he'd die
knowing he'd failed.
And yet, while the searchers stirred through Trench Park, the animals of the Bottomlands kept living their
usual lives; they could not know they might perish in the next heartbeat. A koprit bird skittered across the
sand a few paces in front of Radnal. A clawed foot stabbed down.
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