"He doesn't look like he's very distressed to me."

"His distress is well hidden," Lauren informed him, "which is more than I can say for you, Sal. I'm surprised at you. We'll be back real soon."

"Uh-huh. It's just that I'm not a very good liar, Lauren. You know that."

"Do the best you can." She patted his cheek affectionately. "And I'm not lying. He really is in trouble."

"But the skimmer skimmer, Lauren."

"You still have the lodge mudders and the boats. Short of a major catastrophe of some kind, I can see no reason why you'd need the skimmer. It's really only here to be used in case of emergency. To my mind"-she gestured toward Flinx-"this is an emergency."

The a.s.sistant kicked at the dirt. "It's your neck."

"Yes, it's my neck."

"Suppose they ask which way you went?"

"Tell them I've headed-" A cough interrupted her. She looked back at Flinx and nodded once. "Just say that I've had to go across Patra."

"But which way across?"

"Across the lake, Sal."

"Oh. Okay, I understand. You've got your reasons for doing this, I guess."

"I guess I do. And if I'm wrong, well, you always wanted to be manager here, anyway, Sal."

"Now hold on a minute, Lauren. I never said-"

"Do the best you can for me," she gently admonished him. "This means something to me."

"You really really expect to be back soon?' expect to be back soon?'

"Depends on how things go. See you, Sal."

"Take care of yourself, Lauren." He watched as she turned to rejoin the strange youth, then shrugged and started back up the steps into the lodge.

As Lauren had said, it was her neck.

It didn't take long for the skimmer to be checked out. Flinx climbed aboard and admired the utilitarian vehicle. For almost the first time since he left Drallar, he would be traveling totally clear of such persistent obstacles as mist-shrouded boulders and towering trees. The machine's body was made of black resin. It was large enough to accommodate a dozen pa.s.sengers and crew. In addition to the standard emergency stores, Lauren provisioned it with additional food and medical supplies. They also took along the dart rifle and several clips and a portable sounding tracker.

Flinx studied the tracking screen and the single moving dot that drifted northwestward across the transparency. A series of concentric gauging rings filled the circular screen. The dot that represented their quarry had already reached the outermost ring.

"They'll move off the screen in a little while," he murmured to Lauren.

"Don't worry. I'm sure they're convinced by now that they've lost us."

"They're zigzagging all over the screen," he noted.

"Taking no chances. Doesn't do any good if you're showing up on a tracker. But you're right. We'd better get moving."

She slid into the pilot's chair and thumbed controls. The whine of the skimmer's engine drowned out the tracker's gentle hum as the craft rose several meters. Lauren held it there as she ran a final instrument check, then pivoted the vehicle on an invisible axis and drove it from the hangar. A nudge of the alt.i.tude switch sent them ten, twenty, thirty meters into the air above the lodge. A touch on the accelerator and they were rushing toward the beach.

Despite the warmth of the cabin heater, Flinx still felt cold as he gazed single-mindedly at the screen.

"I told you not to worry," Lauren said with a glance at his expression as they crossed the sh.o.r.eline. "We'll catch them."

"It's not that." Flinx peered out through the transparent cabin cover. "I was thinking about what might catch us."

"I've yet to see the penestral that can pick out and catch an airborne target moving at our speed thirty meters up. An oboweir might do it, but there aren't any oboweirs in Lake Patra. Leastwise, none that I've ever heard tell of."

Nevertheless, Flinx's attention and thoughts remained evenly divided between the horizon ahead and the potentially lethal waters below.

"I understand you've had some trouble here."

Sal relaxed in the chair in the dining room and sipped at a hot cup of toma as he regarded his visitors. They had arrived in their own mudder, which immediately stamped them as independent as well as wealthy. If he played this right, he might convince them to spend a few days at the lodge. They had several expensive suites vacant, and if he could place this pair in one, it certainly wouldn't do his record any harm. Usually, he could place an offworlder by accent, but not these two. Their words were clear but their phonemes amorphous. It puzzled him.

Routine had returned as soon as Lauren and her charity case had departed. No one had called from down south, not the district manager, not anyone. He was feeling very content. Unless, of course, the company had decided to send its own investigators instead of simply calling in a checkup. That thought made him frown at the woman.

"Say, are you two Company?"

"No," the woman's companion replied, smiling pleasantly. "Goodness no, nothing like that. We just like a little excitement, that's all. If something unusual's going on in the area, it kind of tickles our curiosity, if you know what I mean."

"You had a man killed here, didn't you?" the woman asked.

"Well, yes, it did get pretty lively here for a day." No accounting for taste, Sal mused. "Someone was killed during a fight. A nonguest," he hastened to add. "Right in here. Quite a melee."

"Can you describe any of those involved?" she asked him.

"Not really. I'm not even positive which guests were involved and which day visitors. I didn't witness the argument myself, you see, and by the time I arrived, most of the partic.i.p.ants had left."

The woman accepted this admission with a disappointed nod. "Was there a young man involved? Say, of about sixteen?"

"Yes, him I did see. Bright-red hair?"

"That's the one," she admitted.

"Say, is he dangerous or anything?" The a.s.sistant manager leaned forward in his chair, suddenly concerned.

"Why do you want to know?' the man asked.

"Well, my superior here, the regular manager-Lauren Walder. She went off with him."

"Went off with him?" The pleasant expression that had dominated the woman's face quickly vanished, to be replaced by something much harder.

"Yes. Three, maybe four days ago now. I'm still not completely sure why. She only told me that the young man had a problem and she was going to try to help him out."

"Which way did their mudder go?" the man asked.

"North, across Lake Patra," Sal informed them. "They're not in a mudder, though. She took the lodge skimmer."

"A skimmer!" The woman threw up her hands in frustration and sat down heavily in a chair opposite the a.s.sistant. "We're losing ground," she told her companion, "instead of gaining on him. If he catches up with them before we do, we could lose him and and the..." Her companion cut the air with the edge of his hand, and her words trailed away to an indecipherable mumble. The gesture had been quick and partly concealed, but Sal had noticed it nonetheless. the..." Her companion cut the air with the edge of his hand, and her words trailed away to an indecipherable mumble. The gesture had been quick and partly concealed, but Sal had noticed it nonetheless.

"Now you've really got me worried," he told the pair. "If Lauren's in some kind of trouble-"

"She could be," the man admitted, pleased that the a.s.sistant had changed the subject.

Sal thought a moment. "Would she be in danger from these people who had the fight here, or from the redhead?"

"Conceivably from both." The man was only half lying. "You'd better tell us everything you know."

"I already have," Sal replied.

"You said they went north, across the lake. Can't you be any more specific than that?"

Sal looked helpless. "Lauren wouldn't be any more specific than that."

"They might not continue heading north."

"No, they might not. Do you have a tracker for following other craft?" Sal asked.

The man shook his head. "We didn't think we'd need one. The last we knew, the young man we'd like to talk with was traveling on stupava-back."

"I think he arrived here in a mudder."

The woman looked surprised and grinned ruefully at her companion. "No wonder we fell behind. Resourceful, isn't he?"

"Too resourceful for my liking," the man murmured, "and maybe for his own good if he backs those you-know-whos into a corner."

The women sighed, then rose from her chair. "Well, we've wasted enough time here. We'll just have to return to Pranbeth for a skimmer and tracking unit. Unless you think we should try to catch up to them in the mudder."

The man let out a short, humorless laugh, then turned back to the a.s.sistant manager. "Thanks, son. You've been helpful."

"I wish I could be more so," Sal told him anxiously. "If anything were to happen to Lauren-you'll see that nothing happens to her, won't you?"

"I promise you we'll do our best," the woman a.s.sured him. "We don't want to see innocent bystanders hurt. We don't even want to see noninnocents hurt." She favored him with a maternal smile, which for some reason did nothing to make the nervous a.s.sistant feel any better about the situation.

Chapter Eleven.

The tracker hummed quietly, the single glowing dot showing clearly on its screen as the skimmer rushed northward. It was clipping the tops of the tallest trees, more than eighty meters above the bogs and muck that pa.s.sed for the ground. They had crossed Lake Patra, then an intervening neck of dry land, then the much larger lake known as Tigranocerta and were once more cruising over the forest. A cold rain was falling, spattering off the skimmer's acrylic canopy to form a constantly changing wet topography that obscured much of the view outside. The skimmer's instruments kept its speed responsive, maintaining a predetermined distance between it and its quarry to the north.

Awfully quiet, Lauren Walder thought. He's awfully quiet, and maybe something else.

"No, I'm not too young," he said into the silence that filled the cabin, his tone softly defensive.

Lauren's eyebrows lifted. "You can read minds?"

He responded with a shy smile. "No, not that." Fingers stroked the head of the minidrag sleeping on his shoulder. "I just feel things at times. Not thoughts, nothing that elaborate. Just the way people are feeling." He glanced up at her. "From the way I thought you were feeling just now, I thought you were going to say something along that line."

"Well, you were right," she confessed, wondering what to make of the rest of his declaration.

"I'm not, you know."

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Sixteen. As best I know. I can't be certain."

Sixteen going on sixty, she thought sadly. During her rare visits to Drallar, she had seen his type before. Child of circ.u.mstance, raised in the streets and instructed by wrong example and accident, though he seemed to have turned out better than his brethren. His face held the knowledge withheld from his more fortunate contemporaries, but it didn't seem to have made him vicious or bitter.

Still she felt there was something else at work here.

"How old do you think I am?" she asked idly.

Flinx pursed his lips as he stared at her. "Twenty-three," he told her without hesitating.

She laughed softly and clapped both hands together in delight. "So that's what I'm helping, a sixteen-year-old vengeful diplomat!" Her laughter faded. The smile remained. "Tell me about yourself, Flinx."

It was a question that no stranger in Drallar would ever be so brazen as to ask. But this was not Drallar, he reminded himself. Besides, he owed this woman.

So he told her as much as he knew. When he finished his narrative, she continued to stare solemnly at him, nodding her head as if his words had done no more than confirm suspicions already held. She spared a glance to make sure the tracker was still functioning efficiently, then looked back at him. "You haven't exactly had a comfortable childhood, have you?"

"I wouldn't know," he replied, "because I only have hearsay to compare it with."

"Take my word for it, you haven't. You've also managed to get along with the majority of humanity even though they don't seem to want to have anything to do with you. Whereas I've had to avoid the majority of people who seem to want to have a lot to do with me."

Impulsively, she leaned over out of the pilot's chair and kissed him. At the last instant, he flinched, nervous at such unaccustomed proximity to another human being-especially an attractive member of the opposite s.e.x-and the kiss, which was meant for his cheek, landed instead on his lips.

That made her pull back fast. The smile stayed on her face, and she only blinked once in surprise. It had been an accident, after all. "Take my word for something else, Flinx. If you live long enough, life gets better."

"Is that one of the Church's homilies?" He wondered if she wore some caustic substance to protect her lips from burning, because his own were on fire.

"No," she said. "That's a Lauren Walder homily."

"Glad to hear it. I've never had much use for the Church."

"Nor have I. Nor have most people. That's why it's been so successful, I expect." She turned her gaze to the tracker. "They're starting to slow down. We'll do the same."

"Do you think they've seen us?" Suddenly, he didn't really care what the people in the skimmer ahead of them decided to do. The fire spread from his lips to his mouth, ran down his throat, and dispersed across his whole body. It was a sweet, thick fire.