rth, and give the message
from Dr. Jason Allison."

Regis looked at me curiously--it was the first time I had spoken my own
name in the hearing of the others. But he nodded, without comment. For
the next hour or two he seemed somewhat more pre-occupied than usual,
but after a time he came to me and told me that the message had gone
through. Sometime later he relayed an answer; that airlift would be
waiting for us, not at Carthon, but a small village near the ford of the
Kadarin where we had left our trucks.

When we camped that night there were a dozen practical problems needing
attention; the time and exact place of crossing the ford, the
reassurance to be given to terrified trailmen who could face leaving
their forests but not crossing the final barricade of the river, the
small help in our power to be given the sick ones. But after everything
had been done that I could do, and after the whole camp had quieted
down, I sat before the low-burning fire and stared into it, deep in
painful lassitude. Tomorrow we would cross the river and a few hours
later we would be back in the Terran HQ. And then....

And then ... and then nothing. I would vanish, I would utterly cease to
exist anywhere, except as a vagrant ghost troubling Jay Allison's
unquiet dreams. As he moved through the cold round of his days I would
be no more than a spent wind, a burst bubble, a thinned cloud.

The rose and saffron of the dying fire-colors gave shape to my dreams.
Once more, as in the trailcity that night, Kyla slipped through
firelight to my side, and I looked up at her and suddenly I knew I could
not bear it. I pulled her to me and muttered, "Oh, Kyla--Kyla, I won't
even remember you!"

She pushed my hands away, kneeling upright, and said urgently, "Jason,
listen. We are close to Carthon, the others can lead them the rest of
the way. Why go back to them at all? Slip away now and never go back! We
can--" she stopped, coloring fiercely, that sudden and terrifying
shyness overcoming her again, and at last she said in a whisper,
"Darkover is a wide world, Jason. Big enough for us to hide in. I don't
believe they would search very far."

They wouldn't. I could leave word with Kendricks--not with Regis, the
telepath would see through me immediately--that I had ridden ahead to
Carthon, with Kyla. By the time they realized that I had fled, they
would be too concerned with getting the trailmen safely to the Terran
Zone to spend much time looking