And he called with furious mood,

lungs well developed from singing opera and crystal. Physically, too, she was immensely fit. She could swim from island to island until she found one that was inhabited, one from which she could be rescued. Unless all the islanders were in on this insidious kidnap scheme. The hazards that she must overcome were only two: lack of water was one, but she felt that she could refresh herself sufficiently from the polly fruit the tree flourished on all the islands she could see. Too, the larger denizens of the sea constituted a real problem. Some of them, cruising beyond her lagoons, looked deadly dangerous, with their pointed, toothy snouts, or their many wire-fine tentacles which seemed to have an affinity for the same yellowback fish she favored. She had spent enough time watching them to know that they generally fed at dawn and dusk. So, if she made her crossings at midday, when they were dormant, she thought she had a fairly good chance to avoid adding herself to their diet. Three weeks on the island was long enough! She had a few of the emergency food packets left and they would be unharmed by a long immersion. Following the directions in her useful little pamphlet, she had made several sturdy lengths of rope from the coarse fiber of the polly tree, with which she could secure the hatchet to her body. Her original clothing was down to shreds which she sewed with lengths of the tough stem into a halter and a loin cloth. By then she had become as tan as her abductor and was forced to use some of the oilier fishes to grease her hide for protection. She would coat herself thoroughly before each leg of her swim to freedom. Having made her decision, Killashandra implemented it the next day at noon, swimming to her first destination in less than an hours time. She rested while she made up her mind which island of the seven visible would be next. She found herself constantly returning to the one farthest north. Well, once there, none were far away if she decided shed overshot the right line to take. She made that island by mid-afternoon, dragging herself up onto the narrow shore, exhausted. Then she discovered some of the weak points in her plans: there werent many ripe polly fruits on the island; and fish wouldnt bite on her hook that evening. Because she found too few fruits, she was exceedingly thirsty by morning and chose her next point of call by the polly population. The channel between was dark blue, deep water, and twice she was startled by dimly seen large shapes moving beneath her. Both times she floated face down, arms discount memory sony digital camera and legs motionless, until the danger summoned by her flailing limbs had passed. She rested on this fourth island all the rest of that day and the next one, replenishing her dehydrated tissues and trying to catch an oily fish. To her dismay, she could only attract the yellowbacks. Eventually she had enough of them to provide some oil for her raddled skin. On her voyage to the fifth island, a fair sized one, she had her worst fright. Despite the suns being at high noon, she found herself in the midst of a school of tiny fish that was being harvested by several mammoth denizens. At one point she was briefly stranded on a creatures flank when it unexpectedly surfaced under her. She didnt know whether to swim furiously for the distant shore or lie motionless, but before she could make a decision the immense body swirled its torpedo tail in the air and sounded. Killashandra was pulled under by the fierce turbulence of its passage, and she swallowed a good deal more water than she liked before she returned to the surface. As soon as she clambered up on the fifth island, she headed for the nearest ripe polly fruit only to discover that she had lost her hatchet, the last packets of emergency rations, and the fish hooks. She slaked her thirst on overripe polly fruit, ignoring the rank taste for the sake of the moisture. That need attended to, she gathered up enough dry fronds to cushion her body, and went to sleep. She woke sometime in the night, thirsting for more of the overripe fruit which she hunted in the dark, cursing as she tripped over debris and fell into bushes, staggering about in her search until she had to admit to herself that her behavior was somewhat bizarre. About the same time she realized that she was drunk! The innocent polly fruit had been fermenting! Given her Ballybran adaptation, the state could only have been allowed by her weakened constitution. Giggling, she lay down on the ground, impervious to sand or discomfort and fell into a second drunken sleep. Much the worse for her various excesses, Killashandra awoke with a ghastly headache and a terrible need for water. Number five was a much larger island than her other way stops and she was searching so diligently to relieve her thirst that she almost passed the little canoe without its registering on her consciousness. It was only a small canoe, pulled up beyond the high tide mark, a paddle angling from the narrow prow. At another time and without her

O'er his white banes, when they are bare,

cracking roar of the flames. "Incendiaries, boss," he announced. "What did you think they were using?" Mallory asked shortly. "Matches? They're trying to smoke us out, to burn us out, get us in the open. High explosive's not so good among trees. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred this would have worked." He coughed as the acrid smoke bit into his lungs, peered up with watering eyes through the tree-tops. "But not this time, not if we're lucky. Not if they hold off another half-minute or so. Just look at that smoke!" Miller looked. Thick, convoluted, shot through with fiery sparks, the rolling cloud was already a third of the way across the gap between grove and cliff, borne uphill by the wandering catspaws from the sea. It was the complete, the perfect smoke-screen. Miller nodded. "Gonna make a break for it, huh, boss?" "There's no choicewe either go, or we stay and get friedor blown into very little bits. Probably both." He raised his voice. "Anybody see what's happening up top?" "Queuing up for another go at us, sir." Brown said lugubriously. "The first bloke's still circling around." "Waiting to see how we break cover. They won't wait long. This is where we take off." He peered uphill through the rolling smoke, but it was too thick, laced his watering eyes until everything was blurred through a misted sheen of tears. There was no saying how far uphill the smoke-bank had reached, and they couldn't afford to wait until they were sure. Stuka pilots had never been renowned for their patience. "Right, everybody!" he shouted. "Fifteen yards along the tree-line to that wash, then straight up into the gorge. Don't stop till you're at least a hundred yards inside. Andrea, you lead the way. Off you go!" He peered through the blinding smoke. "Where's Panayis?" There was no reply. "Panayis!" Mallory called. "Panayis!" "Perhaps he went back for somethin'." Miller had stopped half-turned. "Shall I go " "Get on your way!" Mallory said savagely. "And if anything happens to young Stevens I'll hold you . . ." But Miller, wisely, was already gone, Andrea stumbling and coughing by his side. For a couple of seconds Mallory stood irresolute, then plunged back downhill towards the centre of the grove. Maybe Panayis had gone back for something and he couldn't understand English. kodak dcs 420 digital camera specs Mallory had hardly gone five yards when he was forced to halt and fling his arm up before his face: the heat was searing. Panayis couldn't be down there; no one could have been down there, could have lived for seconds in that furnace. Gasping for air, hair singeing and clothes smouldering with fire, Mallory clawed his way back up the slope, colliding with trees, slipping, falling, then stumbling desperately to his feet again. He ran along to the east end of the wood. No one there. Back to the other end again, towards the wash, almost completely blind now, the super-heated air searing viciously through throat and lungs till he was suffocating, till his breath was. coming in great, whooping, agonised breaths. No sense in waiting longer, nothing he could do, nothing anyone could do except save himself. There was a noise in his ears, the roaring of the flames, the roaring of his own bloodand the screaming, heart-stopping roar of a Stuka in a power-dive. Desperately he flung himself forward over the sliding scree, tumbled and pitched headlong down to the floor of the wash. Hurt or not, he did not know and her did not care. Sobbing aloud for breath, he rose to his feet, forced his aching legs to drive him somehow up the bill. The air was full of the thunder of engines, he knew the entire squadron was coming in to the attack, and then he had flung himself uncaringly to the ground as the first of the high explosive bombs erupted in its concussive blast of smoke and flameerupted not forty yards away, to his left and ahead of him. Ahead of him! Even as he struggled upright again, lurched forward and upward once more, Mallory cursed himself again and again and again. You mad-man, he thought bitterly, confusedly, you damned crazy mad-man. Sending the others out to be killed. He should have thought of itoh, God, he should have thought of it, a five-year-old could have thought of it. Of course Jerry wasn't going to bomb the grove: they had seen the obvious, the inevitable, as quickly as he had, were dive-bombing the pall of smoke between the grove and the cliff! A five-year-old-the earth exploded beneath his feet, a giant hand plucked him up and smashed him to the ground and the darkness closed over him. CHAPTER 12 16001800 Once, twice, half a dozen times, Mallory struggled up from the depths of a black, trance-like stupor and momentarily touched the surface of consciousness only to slide back into the

Robin Hood took his mantle from 's back,

he was injured by the shards or because he had destroyed the manual. That would have only got him sent to rehab. Who is responsible for the subliminal programming? Lars grinned maliciously, My own personal candidate is Ampris; he is musically trained. It wouldnt take musicality to strike notes in the right sequence, Trag said. True, but he knows as much about the organ as every performer must and he became head of the Conservatory about the time the subliminal conditioning started. It began shortly after my father arrived, and he was here to investigate the first request for the revocation of the planet-bound restriction. Then, too, Torkes has always favored the propaganda control of population. But what one Elder does, the others invariably condone. And subliminal conditioning sustains them in their power. Arrange for me to meet your father, Lars Dahl. Lars grinned. His credentials are as suspicious as mine, Guildmember. I doubt we could reach him. In any event, we are here, close to the damning proof of what we suspect. Surely a bird in hand Bird? The word exploded from Killashandra, a result of the tension she felt and a combination of surprise and respect for Larss sterling performance under Trags unnerving scrutiny. Perhaps the analogy is wrong, and Lars shrugged diffidently. Well, Guildmember? Have I my day in court, too? Three more crystals? Trags manner gave no indication of his thoughts. Two more, Killashandra said, if we are using the original key. Trag made a barely audible grunt at that comment before he reached for the next crystal and motioned Lars to place his bracket. Killashandra could not keep her mind entirely on the task at hand for she suddenly realized just how much rested on the truth of the dissidents contentions. Had she indeed allowed a sexual relationship to cloud her judgment? Or favorable first impressions from Nahia, Hauness, and the others to color her thinking? And yet, there was Corish von Mittelstern, and Olav Dahl. Or was that convoluted situation carefully contrived? She might be out on a limb, the saw in her own hand, she thought as she delicately tightened the bracket on the second crystal. She didnt dare look at Lars across the open case as they straightened up. Expressionless as ever, Trag handed Lars the tuning hammer. Lars gave Killashandra a rakish and digital olympus camera repair reassuring grin and then tapped out the sequence: da da da-dum, da da da-dum. For one hideous moment nothing happened and Killashandra felt the last vestige of energy drain from her body with the groan she could not stifle. A groan that was echoed by a muted noise and a slight vibration in the floor. Startled, she and Lars looked down but Trag remained with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Clever! was his comment as the wall sank slowly and, to their intense relief, noiselessly apart from the initial protest. Clever and utterly despicable. As soon as the descending wall reached knee height, Trag swung over it, Lars right behind him. For a heavy man, Trag moved with considerable speed and economy of motion. He did a complete circuit of the room, his eyes sweeping from one side to the other, identifying each bank in the complicated and extensive rack system, and the terminal which activated the units. He completed his circuit at the three heavy cables that provided the interface between the two sets of computers. No one has been in here for some time, he said finally, noting the light coating of dust on the cabinets No need, Guildmember. You may address me as Trag. Lars grinned triumphantly at Killashandra, where she stood, resting her ear against the door panel. Nothing must interfere at this critical moment. Trag. The yearly dose for Optherians occurs shortly before the Festival season begins, and the tourists arrive. All Optherians are given the opportunity and privilege, and Larss voice was mildly scornful, of attending the preliminary concerts for the current years Festival selections. The Mainlanders get their dose then, to keep them contented while the tourists are here. Then, the tourists get theirs, which includes sufficient Optherianisms to prevent them from accepting messages from strangers for posting once they return to their homes. Some dont, you know, having fallen for the vastly superior and secure Optherian natural way of life. Trag dropped his gaze from the fascinating cable. How many escape these conditioning sessions? Not many Mainlanders, though there are a few who independently discovered the subliminal images. Lars turned to Killashandra. Nahia, Hauness, Brassner, and Theach. Over the last ten years, theyve been able to warn those they felt could be trusted. Do the Elders