r's voice
bellowed frantically after him, unheeded, while he fed into the ship's
autopilot a command that would send her plunging skyward bare minutes
later.

Then, ignoring the waiting mechanical's passive stare, he went outside.

The valley beckoned. The elfin laughter of the people by the lake
touched a fey, responsive chord in him that blurred his eyes with
ecstatic tears and sent him running down the slope, the Falakian girl
keeping pace beside him.

Before he reached the lake, he had dismissed from his mind the ship and
the men who had brought it there.

* * * * *

But they would not let him forget. The little gray jointed one followed
him through the dancing and the laughter and cornered him finally
against the sheer cliffside. With the chase over, it held him there,
waiting with metal patience in the growing dusk.

The audicom box slung over its shoulder boomed out in Gibson's voice,
the sound a noisy desecration of the scented quiet.

"Don't let him get away, Xav," it said. "We're going to try for the ship
now."

The light dimmed, the soft shadows deepened. The two great-winged moths
floated nearer, humming gently, their eyes glowing luminous and intent
in the near-darkness. Mist currents from their approach brushed
Farrell's face, and he held out his arms in an ecstasy of anticipation
that was a consummation of all human longing.

"_Now_," he whispered.

The moths dipped nearer.

The mechanical sent out a searing beam of orange light that tore the
gloom, blinding him briefly. The humming ceased; when he could see
again, the moths lay scorched and blackened at his feet. Their dead eyes
looked up at him dully, charred and empty; their bright gauzy wings
smoked in ruins of ugly, whiplike ribs.

He flinched when the girl touched his shoulder, pointing. A moth dipped
toward them out of the mists, eyes glowing like round emerald lanterns.
Another followed.

The mechanical flicked out its orange beam and cut them down.

A roar like sustained thunder rose across the valley, shaking the ground
underfoot. A column of white-hot fire tore the night.

"The ship," Farrell said aloud, remembering.

He had a briefly troubled vision of the sleek metal shell lancing up
toward a black void of space powdered with cold star-points whose names
he had forgotten, marooning them all in Paradise.

The audicom boomed in Gibson's voice, though oddly shaken and strained.
"Made it. Is h