n alien
mask. It had passed well on to the horizon, and its large yellow
companion had risen when a yapping broke the small sounds of the night.

As the _yipp, yipp, yipp_ arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting
one hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and
sat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did not look
back at it.

Instead, he got to his feet and staggered out into the direct path of
the moonlight. Inside his brain there was a whirl of thoughts, memories,
emotions. Perhaps Ruthven or one of his assistants could have explained
that chaotic mixture for what it was. But for all practical purposes
Travis Fox--Amerindian Time Agent, member of Team A, Operation
Cochise--was far less of a thinking animal now than the two coyotes
paying their ritual addresses to a moon which was not the one of their
vanished homeland.

Travis wavered on, drawn somehow by that howling. It was familiar, a
thread of something real through all the broken clutter in his head. He
stumbled, fell, crawled up again, but he kept on.

Above, the female coyote lowered her head, drew a test sniff of a new
scent. She recognized that as part of the proper way of life. She yapped
once at her mate, but he was absorbed in his night song, his muzzle
pointed moonward as he voiced a fine wailing.

Travis tripped, pitched forward on his hands and knees, and felt the jar
of such a landing shoot up his stiffened forearms. He tried to get up,
but his body only twisted, so he landed on his back and lay looking up
at the moon.

A strong, familiar odor ... then a shadow looming above him. Hot breath
against his cheek, and the swift sweep of an animal tongue on his face.
He flung up his hand, gripped thick fur, and held on as if he had found
one anchor of sanity in a world gone completely mad.

3

Travis, one knee braced against the red earth, blinked as he parted a
screen of tall rust-brown grass with cautious fingers to look out into a
valley where golden mist clouded most of the landscape. His head ached
with dull persistence, the pain fostered in some way by his own
bewilderment. To study the land ahead was like trying to see through one
picture interposed over another and far different one. He knew what
ought to be there, but what was before him was very dissimilar.

A buff-gray shape flitted through the tall cover grass, and Travis
tensed. _Mba'a_--coyote? Or were these companions of his actual