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Updated: May 15, 2025
Shann drew up the hood of his jacket and snapped the transparent face mask into place. He must get away then find food, water, a hiding place. That will to live which had made Shann Lantee fight innumerable battles in the past was in command, bracing him with a stubborn determination.
Those crisp words in his own tongue brought Shann away from the window to Thorvald. The Survey officer was no longer locked hand to hand with the Wyvern witch, but his features were alive with a new eagerness. "We are going to try your idea, Lantee. They'll provide me with a new, unmarked disk, show me how to use it. And I'll do what I can to back you with it. But they insist that you go today."
Almost, Shann thought, as if he could turn that blade of rage against one Shann Lantee for being yet alive when more important men had not survived. "I saw the attack from an upper ridge," the younger man said, having been put on the defensive. Yet he had a right to be alive, hadn't he? Or did Thorvald believe that he should have gone running down to meet the beetle-heads with his useless stunner?
Now he moved through that haze as one walks through a dream approaching nightmare, striding with an effort as if wading through a deterring flood. Sound, sight one after another those senses were taken from him. Desperately Shann held to one thing, his own sense of identity. He was Shann Lantee, Terran breed, out of Tyr, of the Survey Service.
There had been one cadet on this team; why did Thorvald want to remember that? "Also," the other's voice sounded remote, "there can be appointments made in the field for cause. Those appointments are left to the discretion of the officer-in-charge, and they are never questioned. I repeat, you are not in uniform, Lantee. You will make the necessary alteration and report to me at headquarters dome.
Unexpectedly, he hurled himself forward, his hands clawing for Shann's throat. He bore the younger man down under him to the sand where Lantee found himself fighting desperately for his life against a man who could only be mad. Shann used a trick learned on the Dumps, and his opponent doubled up with a gasp of agony to let the younger man break free.
There was a waiting starship. And he Shann Lantee from the Dumps of Tyr, without any influence or schooling was going to blast off in her, wearing the brown-green uniform of Survey!
But at the moment the information concerning the other captive was of more value to Shann. He steadied his body against the wall with his good hand and got to his feet. Thorvald watched him. "I take it you have visions of action. Tell me, Lantee, why did you take that header off the cliff to mix it with fork-tail?" Shann wondered himself. He had no reason for that impulsive act. "I don't know "
That note in the other's voice wiped away a measure of Shann's confidence, threatened something which had flowered in him since he had struck into the wilderness on his own. Three words had reduced him again to Lantee, unskilled laborer. "Lantee. I'm from the camp...." Thorvald's eagerness was plain in his next question: "How many of you got away? Where are the rest?"
Fear made a thicker fog about him than the green mist of the illusion. Only this was no illusion. Shann stared at the Throg officer with sick eyes, knowing that no one ever quite believes that a last evil will strike at him, that he had clung to a hope which had no existence. "Lantee!" The call burst in his head with a painful force.
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