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He turned to see what the reaction was, and then stared open-mouthed at his surroundings. There were no lights from the plane factory. In fact, there was no plane factory. In the half-light of the sky, he saw that the plant was gone. No men were left. There was only barren earth, with a tiny, limp sapling in the middle of empty acres. "What happened?" Nema glanced around briefly and sighed.
The huge bird braked savagely, barely stopping before they were under its feet. From its back, a ladder of some flexible material snaked down and men began descending. The first were mandrakes in the uniform of the Satheri, all carrying weapons with evil-looking blades or sharp stickers. The last man off was Bork. He came toward Hanson and Nema with a broad grin on his face.
Dave stopped as the door closed behind him. Sather Karf nodded, as if satisfied, and Nema tied a complex knot in the threads, then paused silently. Sather Karf looked far less well than when Dave had last seen him. He seemed older and more shriveled, and there was a querulous, pinched expression in place of the firmness and almost nobility Dave had come to expect.
Maybe he was better off returned to the death that had claimed him. Reluctantly, he returned to his own problems. "All right, then, if you thought I was dead, what are you doing here, Nema?" "I felt the compulsion begin even before I returned to the city. I thought I was going mad. I tried to forget you, but the compulsion grew until I could fight it no longer." She shuddered.
Then he slumped, steamed ... and was nothing but dust falling toward the carpet. The salamander turned, heading toward the others. But it was to Nema it went, rather than the two men. She was trying something desperately, but fear was thick on her face, and her hands were unsure. Abruptly, Sather Karf was in the doorway. His hand lifted, his fingers dancing.
Then the whole building began to change. It slowly blossomed into a huge cloud of pink gas that rifted away, to show people and objects dropping like stones to the ground below. Nema sighed and turned her eyes away. "But it's ridiculous!" Dave protested. "We heard the rip and less than five seconds later, that piece fell.
Except for the one patch where the bird had lighted, they were in the middle of a dense forest. Dave and Nema were hustled into the cave, while the others melted into the woods, studying the skies. She clung to Dave, crying something about how the Sons of the Egg would torture them. "All right," he said finally. "Who are these sons of eggs? And what have they got against me?"
He expected to be sent to the deepest, dankest cave of all the world as a laboratory, and to find it equipped with pedigreed bats, dried unicorn horns and whole rows of alembics that he couldn't use. Nema smiled brightly. "Of course. We've already prepared a construction camp for you.
The old man sighed, his face slumping into lines of fatigue and age. He caught his breath. He held out a hand to the salamander, petted it to a gentle glow and put it back over Dave's chest. "Good work, Nema," he said wearily. "You're too weak to control the salamander, but this was done well in the emergency. I saw them in the pool, but I was almost too late. The damned fanatics.
But what about his recovery, if that was supposed to be determined by the signs of the zodiac? He had no time to ask. The carpet bucked, and the girl began speaking to it urgently. It wavered, then righted itself, to begin sliding downwards. "There is a ring of protection around your camp," Nema explained. "It is set to make entry impossible to one who does not have the words or who is unfriendly.
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