3 x T

"Explosives people tend to, at least the ones who live long enough to get a handle on what they're doing," Greenberg said. He spoke into the communicator again. "This was a good test, Enfram Enfram Marf. If your figures for the column are accurate, we won't have any trouble getting inside when we try this on the Great Unknown."

Again Enfram Enfram Marf did not reply. Je

"That's his problem. His bosses think I'm worth talking to, and they thought you were worth kidnapping so they could talk to you. I'm not going to lose a minute of sleep worrying about what the high-and-mighty Enfram Enfram Marf thinks of me."

Je

"The same way I do with humans: I try to gauge whether the person who's talking has any idea of what he's talking about. A lot of humans are damn fools, and so are a lot of aliens, Enfram Enfram Marf included. Just because he knows his explosives, he thinks he knows everything. I don't know much, but I know he's wrong."

Je

Before she had a chance to try, the sledge speaker spoke up again. "Humans Bernard and Je

To Je

"That is the desired outcome," Thegun Thegun Nug agreed.

"What I want to learn is how to get out of here," Je

The two sledges purred away from the Foitani research base toward the Great Unknown. Enfram Enfram Marf's new shaped-charge device sat behind Bernard Greenberg. Je

They'd only gone a couple of kilometers, barely even to the edge of the radius of doom, when a loud, warbling whistle began behind them. "What the devil is that?"

"It's a Foitani alarm," Greenberg answered.

"It sure alarms me."

Greenberg spoke into the communicator on the sledge. "Human Bernard to Foitani base: Why have you switched on your alarms?" He repeated himself several times.

For a long time?more than a minute?no answer came. Je

"We'd better head back," Je

Then, from nowhere, a flier shrieked overhead at treetop height. A string of what might have been fi

More explosions came, some distant, some close enough to lift her off the ground and slam her back down. During one brief lull, she looked over and saw Greenberg beside her. She had no idea how or when he'd got there. Then more bombs fell. Shrapnel whispered overhead.

Greenberg put his mouth next to her ear. "We can't go back," he screamed through the din.

"We can't stay here, either," she screamed back. As if to underscore her words, a fragment of bomb casing went spaang! off the side of a sledge.

"Then we head for the Great Unknown," Greenberg said, still at the top of his lungs.

Je

"The ones from Odern can't, anyhow," Greenberg said. "We just have to hope that holds for the ones from Rof Golan, too."

"I wish you hadn't said that," Je

More bombs struck, so close that she felt the impact with her whole body much more than she heard it. She and Greenberg clutched each other, life clinging to life in the middle of mechanized death. He shouted something at her. She knew that, but she was too stu

"I love you," he said again. She still could not hear him, but his lips were easy to read.

"Why are you telling me now?" she said, slowly and with exaggerated movements of her own lips so he could follow. "We're liable to get blown to bits any minute."

He nodded vehemently. "That's just why. I didn't want to die without letting you know."

"Oh." She supposed it was terribly romantic, but she needed to be able to think about it. Thought was impossible here; she was battered and deafened and more frightened than she'd ever been in her life. Holding on to him still seemed like a good idea, so she kept on doing it.

The explosions grew more distant. Je

"If we're ever going to move, this is probably the time to do it," she told Greenberg. "Nobody seems to be paying attention to us."

"Let's go, then," he said. "The farther inside the radius of insanity we are, the better I'll like it." They scrambled onto their sledges and sent them dashing ahead at their best?and only?forward speed. No healthy Foitan would have had the least trouble ru

Greenberg looked over his shoulder. "Good thing we didn't head back to the base," he said. Je

"I wouldn't have wanted to meet them up close, no," Je