A distant rumble of thunder rolled past. The hot air stirred slightly. Juete caught the scent of impending rain.

"Pretty soon," Scanner said, "I don't think we'll be able to start a fire."

Dain unpacked the three survival blankets. They were thin, but lined on one side with mirrored plastic to keep in body heat. "Anybody want to risk going to the opposite side of the clearing to get some branches? We can make some shelter, unless you'd rather take a shower in your clothes."

Raze started for the trees opposite the pig-dogs, and Sandoz followed her. "Hey," Dain said. Sandoz turned, and Dain tossed the flare pistol at him. Sandoz caught the weapon, spun it in his hands back and forth, and grinned.

By the time the schweinhunds caught on, Raze and Sandoz had chopped several long branches loose and were returning to the others. The wind had picked up, and the clouds had covered the sun. It took a few minutes to rig a rough cone from the wood, and they managed to tie the blankets over and around the top before the first fat drops began to pound the clearing. The schweinhunds vanished into the brush as the thunderstorm unloaded its heavy rains. The makeshift tent leaked, but it kept most of the water off. One at a time, the others stripped and went out into the rain to sluice away some of the day's sweat. Juete watched, admiring the various bodies, especially Dain's and Raze's, but she did not shower herself. No point in taking any more risks than she had to.

As night crept up on them, the storm continued. It was past dark when the rain finally stopped. The sound of water faded, and insects began to buzz as the group ate dry and nearly tasteless concentrates for their cold supper. They were tired, sore and uncomfortable, but as Juete snuggled against Dain's back, she realized that she had never been happier. They might die, but they would do it free.

Chapter Eighteen.

Berque's scream woke them.

The fat man was thrashing around, knocking the makeshift tent askew. Maro sat up, b.u.mped into Raze's muscular back and rolled clear of the collapsing folds.

The others were also moving. Maro saw Juete's pale form in the darkness and grabbed her hand, jerking her toward him. He vaguely glimpsed somebody shifting past to his left; from the smoothness of the movement, it had to be Sandoz. Maro slapped at his hip pocket for the flare gun, but it wasn't there. He remembered then that he had given it to Sandoz earlier.

What was going on? Not even a minute had elapsed since he had been awakened by Berque's screams. The man was still screaming, a hoa.r.s.e and guttural sound, and Maro couldn't see anything in the darkness.

"Sandoz! Put a flare into the ground, give us some light!"

A second later Maro heard the pok! of the pistol firing, and a dim red glare enveloped the clearing. The flare sputtered, illuminating a scene that could have come from some artist's conception of h.e.l.l. Maro saw Chameleon first, scrambling away from the flattened tent on his hands and knees. Sandoz stood with the flare pistol, close to the guttering flare; Raze was in a fighting crouch, her arms spread, the fitful light making her look as if she were carved from iron. As he watched, Scanner scrambled out from under one of the damp blankets, got to his feet and took two steps, then tripped on a thick vine and fell flat. Maro cast a quick glance at Juete, who wore a fearful look but seemed unharmed.

Still under the collapsed tent, Berque thrashed and screamed.

Maro moved toward him, snagged his foot on another vine and fell to one knee. As he did, he felt something sc.r.a.pe his leg. He looked down and saw that his pants had caught on a thorn. The dying red light revealed what looked to be black fluid running from his leg. Blood, he thought, it only looks black because of the light- Sandoz cursed. "Look at the G.o.dd.a.m.n vines! They're moving!"

Maro jumped up. The vine clung to his ankle; he kicked hard, and ripped it away. Sandoz was right, the vines did seem to be writhing. Not fast, like a snake, but definitely moving...

He leaped to the fallen tent just as Raze pulled it clear of Berque. Sandoz fired another flare. This one hit something solid and didn't sink into the ground like the first had; the light was brighter. It showed Berque, almost covered in the vines. The black liquid that Maro had seen on his leg poured from dozens of cuts and slashes on Berque's exposed body. As he watched, a thorn extruded from one of the vines like a cat's claw unsheathing and stabbed into Berque's bicep. Many of the vines' tendrils ended in suckerlike polyps that were securely fastened to the man's skin. Maro grabbed one-they were no thicker than his little finger, though they were swelling rapidly as they engorged with blood- and yanked with all his strength. He could not break its hold. Berque screamed louder.

"Help! Get them off, get them off of me-"

Raze had the machete, and she chopped at the vines where they left Berque, but the things were tough. Even with her strength, only a couple of them parted. The rest showed only gouges and cuts. Blood oozed from the cut vines as it did from Berque's body.

Scanner moved in, trying to pull the living ropes away from the dying man. Maro didn't doubt that Berque was dying. The screams had grown hoa.r.s.e and weaker. From the corner of his vision, Maro saw that Scanner's shoulders bore several oozing cuts as well. When he had time to notice, the smuggler found small bleeding circles on his own body.

"H-h-help... me..." Berque whispered.

They couldn't get him free, Maro realized. And, even if they could, there was no way to replace the blood he had already lost. The man's face looked like warm wax in the fading red glare, sinking in on itself. He was an organlegger and a cannibal, but even he deserved a better death than to be sucked dry by alien plants on this h.e.l.lish world.

There was barely enough of the second flare's light to see when Maro turned to Raze. They exchanged quick looks. Maro glanced at the machete. Raze nodded.

She moved in and raised the machete. The flare died as the metal sang downward.

The messenger from Omega City arrived, just as Stark had expected. Stark met him in his office.

"We have an emergency," the warden said. "As of now, we are under cla.s.s-one military quarantine."

"But-but-"

"Sorry. I'm invoking my authority as Sector Commander. You understand?"

"Yessir." The man took a deep breath. "I have a high-level message from Commander Karnaaj-"

"It'll have to wait. I'm in the middle of some very delicate operations."

"Sir, it's only a verbal-"

Stark jabbed his finger at the messenger's chest as though aiming a weapon. "I said it can wait. And that's the way I want your report to read, copy? You were unable to deliver Karnaaj's message upon your arrival due to a military emergency in progress."

The messenger glanced at the wall of the office, then back at Stark. The warden could almost read his mind: Cross this b.a.s.t.a.r.d and his a.s.s would be skewered. Kamaaj was worse, maybe, but he was in the city and Stark was here.

The man nodded. "I copy that, Commander. Whatever you say."

Stark smiled. "Good man. One of the guards will find you a billet and get you settled in. It'll only be a few days. I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay."

When the messenger had gone. Stark turned back to his computer for an update on the hunt for the escapees. It had better be only a few days. Otherwise, it was his neck that would feel the axe.

Through the swamp they slogged, now down to six. They'd left Berque's body to the vampire vines; there was no way to bury it, and tossing it in some stagnant pool would be no better. Juete had seen three of the suckerlike abrasions clotting on her own skin when the sun had risen; all of the others also had "bites." Apparently the plant used some kind of deadening agent before locking onto a victim-she hadn't felt a thing.

They took a break two hours into the march. The sun was already raising clouds of vapor from the swamp, and the heat made Juete's temples pound. Under the sunblock, she felt hot and itchy.

"I should have known something was wrong when the pig-dogs didn't charge," Sandoz said. "I wasn't paying proper attention."

"We didn't see it either," Raze said.

"That doesn't matter. In my job, if you miss a detail, it kills you."

Juete looked at Scanner. "I have a question."

"Ask away."

"The hound exploding-why didn't you just rig it to blow up at the prison? That way they couldn't have gotten so close."

Scanner laughed. "Good point. The problem was, I did the rigging on those beasts more than a year past. At the time I didn't think they'd be chasing a wounded flitter, homed in on the leaking fuel. I figured they'd be chasing somebody on foot."

Raze said, "You were planning on cutting free a year ago?"

"Not me. But I figured somebody might try it, and I just wanted to throw a break into the trackers' circuit. They run checks on the gear, but they're electronic, and the rigged hounds pa.s.sed that. Once they actually started running down human scent, that was another matter."

"Risky, when you weren't even planning on using it yourself," Sandoz said.

Scanner shrugged. "One has to keep one's hand in. I didn't want to get rusty."

"All right," Sandoz said. "As long as we're playing Q and A, I got one." He looked at Maro. "Why the f.u.c.k are we heading away from the starport at the mines? There's nothing human between us and the Roog Sea this way, and that's five thousand klicks if it's a centimeter. I went because you seemed to know what you were doing, but I want to know, too. In case you don't make it."

Dain stretched, catlike, before he spoke. "Once they found the flitter, there was only one way we could reasonably be headed. That's where they'll be looking. Even in the swamp, with all the animals squishing around, seven people would cast one h.e.l.l of a heat-shadow. They'd spot us, very likely, unless we were in a real hot spot."

"That's only part of an answer," Chameleon said.

Dain nodded. "Right. Our chances of making it to the working mines are dirty ice. I figure the warden doesn't want anybody to know we're gone, so he probably won't set up people at the port. It'd take weeks for us to travel that far on foot, and he's got to know it. So I figure he'll comb the woods for us for a few days before he gets nervous. A week or two, at least."

Juete said, "That keeps us free for a while, but what about the long run?"

He smiled at her. "That's why we're going southeast instead of northwest. We can't make it to the port in less than a couple of weeks on foot. We need transportation."

"Is there a shuttle stop here in the swamps I haven't heard about?" Raze asked.

"Maybe. Scanner?" .

Scanner looked up from rubbing his feet. "About fifty klicks further on is an abandoned mine works. It was set along the top of a half-klick-wide strip of rocky ore that runs across half the continent."

"The Granite Girdle?" Raze asked.

"You've heard of it. Well, they pulled silver and platinum out of the rock there for about thirty years before it played out, which was about six years back. By that time, they had pretty well amortized the cost of the buildings, the mining gear and the transports."

Chameleon caught it before Juete: "You mean there are b.l.o.o.d.y transports just parked around waiting for us?"

Scanner shrugged. "No guarantees that anything there will run. But according to the records of the company working the area, all the heavy ground vehicles were cheaper to leave than to airlift out. No aircars, probably, but plenty of rolling stock."

"What about scavengers?" Sandoz asked. Again Scanner shook his head. "Like I said, no way to tell. It could be that everything was stripped. Six years is a long time, and with this climate, there might not be anything there but big piles of corrosion."

"You're risking our a.s.ses on a lot of maybes," Sandoz said to Dain.

Dain returned the gaze levelly. "I'm open to suggestions. If you've got a better idea, let's hear it."

Sandoz glared at him. Juete felt the a.s.sa.s.sin's rage boil briefly. She tensed- Then Sandoz laughed. "No, I guess you're right, Maro. Skinny odds are better than none."

Dain stood up. "Let's get moving, then. I wouldn't be surprised if the warden sent somebody to check the back trail, just in case. The further away we get, the better."

Maro took the lead, wielding the machete. The thing's usefulness was almost done; whatever edge it had was gone, and the metal was bent and nicked. An hour later, he hit a particularly thick branch blocking their path, and the blade snapped in half. He stuck the remaining piece in his belt-it had a jagged point that might be useful for prying or stabbing-and they continued as best they could through the underbrush.

Around noon, Scanner took a sighting with the laser-compa.s.s. "Another ten klicks and we'll be out of this mora.s.s."

"Yeah? What then?" Chameleon asked.

"A stretch of the Teenig Desert extends a sandy finger up next to the swamp. Ecologically, it's a nightmare, but the sands have been creeping this way for a long time. Another hundred years, and this spot will probably be a dune. Forty klicks past that is the Girdle."

"Only forty kilometers. Why don't we do it backwards, just to make it interesting?"

n.o.body acknowledged Chameleon's sarcasm. Maro was tired, and he knew the others were also. A forty-kilometer walk across a desert was not something to look forward to. The choices were limited at this point, however-it was that or go back to the Cage.

He looked at Juete and smiled. It would be worse on her than the others, even with the sunblock. He would have to try to figure out a way to cover her.

He stiffened suddenly. At the edge of his sight he caught Sandoz staring at Juete. Maro knew the look well enough. The man wanted her. Fortunately, he had better control of himself than most. Maro didn't want to think about what would happen if Sandoz lost that control. He could probably kill all of them without working up a major sweat. Worse, he still had the flare pistol, their only weapon. Maro hadn't asked for it back, and Sandoz hadn't offered it.

They moved, shoving aside the thick brush, wrapped in the heat and stink of the swamp. Right now, the desert would seem almost a relief.

Right now...

Chapter Nineteen.

"Report," Stark said. He leaned forward in his chair.

The voice from the holoproj image sounded hot and tired. "Nothing, Warden," the leader of the search said. "We've spread-and-pinched for a hundred klicks from the flitter. No sign of 'em."

Stark stared at the man's image, thinking quickly. "Could they have gotten some other form of transport onto the flitter with them? A cycle, or maybe another one of those jury-rigged repellor plates?"

"None of the cycles are missing, sir. It's possible they might have been able to stack a plate, but I don't think so. They couldn't have known they'd have mechanical failure."

He was right, Stark knew. "All right, then you've missed them. They didn't take a direct path to the port. Maybe they didn't know the right way to go."

"The flitter's laser-compa.s.s was missing-"

"Or maybe they went in another direction to throw us off. Sweep the main track again, then fan out from the flitter. Maybe they planned to move at angles before cutting back."

"Yessir. Discom."

Stark felt a flutter in his belly, a roiling like some small creature having a nightmare. It had been almost two full days since the escape, and his men should have found them by now. So far, he'd managed to keep the break confined to his own people, but within a few days Karnaaj was going to come storming in here, regulations or not, and then there would be the devil to pay. What could he do? They hadn't found any bodies, and Stark was certain that the escapees were still alive.

He would find them. He had to find them.

In the late afternoon they came to the end of the swamp. The mire didn't thin out -it simply stopped. They could see the edge of it a few hundred meters ahead, almost knife-sharp. Dead trees stuck up through sand drifts, some of which were twenty meters high. The swamp had swallowed what it could of the desert, but in the end, Juete thought, it had choked.

"Let's rest here for a while," Dain said. "Sleep if we can. It makes a lot more sense to try the desert at night."

Juete collapsed gratefully, leaning back against the rough bark of a tree. Sleep? She could sleep for a week!

"A night crossing might not be a good idea," Sandoz said. "The sand will cool, and we'll stand out like bugs under a scope if they come looking for us."

Scanner shook his head. "There are hot spots; rocks buried under the sand, and like that. They'll have to check them all if they bother looking in this direction. During the day they can see us, but at night all they'll have are doppler and heatscopes. Better odds."

Dain said, "Besides, we only have three bottles of water. With the sun baking us, we won't be able to make forty klicks. If we push, we can cover twenty-five or thirty tonight, maybe more. Come morning, we can do the rest of it before it gets too hot."