ie!"

He felt his heart lurch. "She's hurt?" he demanded, and was already on
his way to the door.

"She are about to cry and she are going to where the tree tigers riv.
They wirr kirr her--prease come with me!"

He asked no more questions but went out the door and up the path, Alonzo
running ahead of him.

The ghost trees grew thinner as they went up the mountain's slope, and
the blue-green fernlike trees of the tiger forest began to appear. They
grew thicker and thicker, until the ground was black with their shadows
and the midday sunlight was filtered out by the foliage overhead. Alonzo
was trailing her, his nose to the ground, and Hunter hurried close
behind him, watching for the red-and-white of the clothes she was
wearing and hoping they would not find her too late.

They were deep in the forest when they found her.

She was standing motionless in the center of a clearing, facing away
from him and looking as small and alone as a lost child. She seemed to
be waiting....

He realized for the first time how alone she really was, with only a
doglike alien, Alonzo, to love her or care what might happen to her, and
with a future she could not bear to face. But Rockford had been wrong
when he had said, _For her, there is no escape_.

There was escape for her. She had only to wait, as she was waiting now,
and it would come in the windlike whisper of a tiger's rush through the
grass behind her....

He hurried to her. She turned, and he saw the stains of tears now dry on
her face and in her eyes the darkness of utter defeat.

"I was afraid you might get hurt, Lyla--"

Then, seemingly without volition on his part, he put his arms around her
and she was clinging to him and crying in muffled sobs and trying to say
something about, "_I didn't think anybody cared...._"

It was some time later, when her crying was finished, that he was
reminded of the tigers by Alonzo:

"Rootenant ... awr the time, some tigers are coming croser and croser.
We better get her out of here, Rootenant, before they find us."

Lyla looked down at Alonzo. "Thank you, Alonzo, for watching over me and
... and--" Her voice caught and she dropped to her knees and hugged the
shaggy head tight against her.

Hunter watched ahead, Lyla beside him as they went through the dense
trees. Alonzo walked soft-footed behind them, watching the rear. When
they came to the first ghost trees and the dwindling of the tiger trees,
Hunter thought it safe to w