human being, crowded
between a Darkovan free-Amazon and half a dozen assorted roughnecks. I
turned the thought off, fearing it might somehow re-arouse him in his
brain.

But I had to think of something, anything to turn aside this
consciousness of the woman's head against my chest, her warm breath
coming and going against my bare neck. Only by the severest possible act
of will did I keep myself from slipping my hand over her breasts, warm
and palpable through the thin sweater, I wondered why Forth had called
me undisciplined. I couldn't risk my leadership by making advances to
our contracted guide--woman, Amazon or whatever!

Somehow the girl seemed to be the pivot point of all my thoughts. She
was not part of the Terran HQ, she was not part of any world Jay Allison
might have known. She belonged wholly to Jason, to my world. Between
sleep and waking, I lost myself in a dream of skimming flight-wise along
the tree roads, chasing the distant form of a girl driven from the Nest
that day with blows and curses. Somewhere in the leaves I would find her
... and we would return to the city, her head garlanded with the red
leaves of a chosen-one, and the same women who had stoned her forth
would crowd about and welcome her when she returned. The fleeing woman
looked over her shoulder with Kyla's eyes; and then the woman's form
muted and Dr. Forth was standing between us in the tree-road, with the
caduceus emblem on his coat stretched like a red staff between us.
Kendricks in his Spaceforce uniform was threatening us with a blaster,
and Regis Hastur was suddenly wearing Space Service uniform too and
saying, "Jay Allison, Jay Allison," as the tree-road splintered and
cracked beneath our feet and we were tumbling down the waterfall and
down and down and down....

"Wake up!" Kyla whispered, and dug an elbow into my side. I opened my
eyes on crowded blackness, grasping at the vanishing nightmare. "What's
the matter?"

"You were moaning. Touch of altitude sickness?"

I grunted, realized my arm was around her shoulder, and pulled it
quickly away. After awhile I slept again, fitfully.

* * * * *

Before light we crawled wearily out of the bivouac, cramped and stiff
and not rested, but ready to get out of this and go on. The snow was
hard, in the dim light, and the trail not difficult here. After all the
trouble on the lower slopes, I think even the amateurs had lost their
desire for adventurous c